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| FIRST ANNUAL SESSION
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2024-ca. Cº-º-º:
(FIRST ANNUAL SESSION)
HELD IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON, D.C.,
February 17, 18, and 19, 1897
INCLUDING THE JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS,
THE ADDRESSES AND DISCUSSIONS,
AND OTHER MISCELLANY OF
THE MEETINGS
$
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF *
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS
N E W Y O R K
D. A P P L E T O N A N D C O M P A N Y
I897
CoPYRIGHT, 1897, By
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
*
PR E FA C E .
THE Report of the Proceedings of the National Congress
of Mothers at their first meetings in Washington, D. C., on Feb-
ruary 17th, 18th, and 19th, is offered to the public with the
statement that this first conference has taught them a great
deal. Truly grateful for the hearty response which was manifest
by the large attendance drawn from all parts of our country,
the report is printed as a slight token of our appreciation for the
generous co-operation of the clubs, organizations, and individ-
uals who came, some of them from great distances and at great
expense, to attend the Congress. The enthusiasm and inspira-
tion of the meetings were largely due to the constant presence
and undivided attention of these delegates. Aside from their
numbers, the large correspondence with those who could not
come and yet who wish to know of the Congress, what was said,
what was done, and what is to be done, furnishes us with still a
second and larger audience.
For the benefit of all these the report has been prepared.
The special essays and the extempore addresses have been gath-
ered up and stand classified in this volume that they may become
a ready reference to clubs studying upon parallel lines. The
programme as presented at the Congress is reprinted here, not
omitting the appropriate and beautiful quotations which adorned
its pages. In the Appendix may be found a commentary on the
Congress, since it is impossible to enlarge the report sufficiently
to include all of the excellent words delivered in the side con-
ferences. Stenographic reports were not made at these branch
meetings, but a few papers were written out, which the Board
of Officers may sometime decide to print as leaflets for distribu-
tion on demand.
iv. NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
There may also be found in the Appendix the resolutions
which were adopted by the board and the delegates at the close
of the Congress; the Declaration of Principles of the Congress
and some plan of organization, with a promise of further details
to be sent out on application in the early fall; the List of Dele-
gates with addresses; also of clubs and organizations having
departments of study germane to the purposes of the National
Congress of Mothers.
All is here presented in these pages, not as a profession of
work accomplished, but as a first attempt to correlate all the
forces that are working for the betterment of home life and
family life.
The effort was a grand one. If the result was crude in any
particular, if the report is in any sense open to criticism, will
the reader kindly remember that in each and every instance
only the most generous and noblest motives have ruled the par-
ticipants from first to last; from the inception of the idea by the
President, Mrs. Theodore J. Birney, who spoke before the Chau-
tauqua of New York, to the last speaker on the programme. Miss
Janet Richards, at Mrs. Birney’s request, read the call to the
Congress before the meeting of the General Federation of
Women’s Clubs at Louisville in May, 1896, a similar call was also
presented before the Home Congress held in Boston in October,
1896. Besides these specific calls, circulars and press notices
echoed the words from day to day, until at last those who came
to hear and those who came to serve gathered together, and no
one place in Washington could contain them all at a time.
The power that worked this result was the power of love and
the might of need. That same power still sways and the needs
are not satisfied.
Then in love we send forth the words and work of the Na-
tional Congress of Mothers, trusting to the charity in your hearts,
while we hope for a more glorious wisdom to guide the growing
development of the mission of the National Congress of Mothers.
}
THE FIRST
NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
FEBRUARY 17, 18, 19, 1897.
BANQUET HALL, ARLINGTON HOTEL,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
O FFI C E R S.
PRESIDENT.
Mrs. Theodore W. Birney.
WICE-PRESIDENTS. WICE-PRESIDENTS.
Mrs. Adlai Stevenson. Mrs. Phebe A. EIearst.
Mrs. John R. Lewis. * Mrs. Mary E. Mumford.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY. TREASURER.
Miss Mary Louisa Butler. Miss Emma Morton.
CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES.
EXECUTIVE. RECEPTION.
Mrs. Theodore W. Birney. Mrs. William L. Wilson.
TRANSPORTATION. • . ENTERTAINMENT.
Mrs. H. W. Fuller. Mrs. James H. McGill.
ARRANGEMENTS. LITERATURE.
Mrs. A. A. Birney, Mrs. Harriet A. McLellan.
PRESS.
Mrs. Henry J. Finley.
“A” baby: a tiny feather from the wing of love dropped in the sacred lap of
?motherhood.”
WEDNESDAY MORNING, 10 O'CLOCK.
I. Prayer.
Rev. W. H. MILBURN.
II. Address of Welcome.
Mrs. THEoDoRE W. BIRNEY, Washington, D. C.
III. Response.
Mrs. MARY Lowe DICKINSON, New York city.
IV. Reception by Mrs. Cleveland at the White House.
“The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of women—the mothers—than in
the possessors of powers”
1
2 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
*
“It is impossible to give a sound intellectual education to a child who has not a true
moral development: and a child can not have that who is separated from other children
and led to imagine himself as having a superior nature.”
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, 2:30 O'CLOCK.
I. Mother and Child of the Primitive World.
FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING, Washington, D. C.
II. (a) Mothers of the Submerged World;
(b) Day Nurseries.
Mrs. LUCY S. BAINBRIDGE, New York city.
III. What the Kindergarten means to Mothers.
Miss AMALIE HoFER, Chicago, Ill.
IV. Parental Reverence as taught in the Hebrew Homes.
Mrs. REBEKAH KoRUT, New York city.
WEDNESDAY EVENING, 8 O'CLOCK.
I. Mothers and Schools.
Mrs. W. F. CRAFTs, Washington, D. C.
II. The Value of Music in the Development of Character.
Rev. W. A. BARTLETT, Lowell, Mass.
“True glory consists in so living as to make the world happier and better for our
living.”
“A baby; that which makes home happier, love stronger, patience greater, hands
busier, nights longer, days shorter, the past forgotten, the future brighter.”
THURSDAY MORNING, 10:30 O'CLOCK.
I. Devotional.
Mrs. MAUD BALLINGTON Booth, New York city.
II. Dietetics. -
Mrs. LOUISE. E. Hog AN, Germantown, Pa.
III. Mother's Relation to the Sound Physical Development
of her Child.
Mrs. A. JENNESSE MILLER, Washington, D. C.
IV. Reproduction and Natural Law.
Mrs. ALICE LEE Moquß, Washington, D. C.
V. The Moral Responsibility of Women in Heredity.
Mrs. HELEN. H. GARDENER, Boston, Mass.
“Go, make thy garden as fair as thou canst,
Thou workest never alone ;
Perchance he whose plot is neart to thine
Wºl! See Zł &nd mend his own.”
PROGRAMME. 3
“Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work
of the coming man ; it is early training that makes the master.”
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, 2:30 O'CLOCK.
I. The Mother's Greatest Needs.
Miss FRANCEs NEWTON, Chicago, Ill.
II. Playgrounds.
Miss CoNSTANCE MACKENZIE, Philadelphia, Pa.
III. Some Practical Results of Child Study.
Dr. G. STANLEY HALL, Worcester, Mass.
“To play, to build, to construct, are the first tender flowers of a child's life.”
“If you would see a reflection of your own life, look at the life of your little child.
If you would set a right copy you must follow the life of Christ. Let his life shine
through you?' life and illuminate it, since you will not stand nor fall alone.”
THURSDAY EVENING, 8 O'CLOCK.
I. Reading Courses for Mothers.
Mrs. MARGARET E. SANGSTER, New York city.
II. Presentation of Resolutions.
PRESS CoMMITTEE Wom EN FRIENDs, Baltimore, Md.
III. How to Guard our Youth against Bad Literature.
ANTHONY CoMSTOCK, New York city.
“We dream of doing great things when we have need only to be content with doing
little things close at hand.”
“Life is half spent before we know what it is.”
“She is only half a mother who does not see her own child in every child—her own
child's grief in every pain which makes another child weep.”
“Mother is the name of God in the heart and lips of little children.”
FRIDAY MORNING, 10:30 O'CLOCK.
I. Devotional.
Mrs. H. A. STIMSoN, New York city.
II. Heredity.
Mrs. W. H. FELTON, Cartersville, Ga.
III. Physical Culture.
Miss JULIA KING, Boston, Mass.
IV. Character building in Education.
* Mrs. ELLEN RICHARDSON, Boston, Mass.
V. National Training School for Women.
Mrs. SALLIE S. CoTTEN, Falkland, N. C.
“Character can not be talked into or taught into a child; it must be lived into him.”
“Do you realize that many habits and much of your.baby's character is formed in
the cradle?”
4. NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
“Of all the burdens of childhood the greatest and most frequent is that of being
doubted.”
“There is more danger of a parent's hindering a child than of a child's hindéring
a parent. And the hindering that a parent can do is a thousand times more harmful
than any hindering that can be done by the child.” *
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, 2:30 O'CLOCK.
I. Nature Studies in the Home.
Miss ANNA. A. SCHRY VER, Ann Arbor, Mich.
II. Importance of bringing the Youth in Touch with Great
Literature.
Mr. HAMILTON W. MABIE, New York city.
III. Stories.
Dr. WALTER L. HERVEY, New York city.
“The child is the hope of the race.”
“Love is most divine when it loves, according to needs and not according to merit.”
“The clearer the thread which runs through our lives backward–back to our child-
hood—the clearer will be our onward glance to the goal.”
FRIDAY EVENING, 8 O'CLOCK.
I. How shall the Nation secure Educated Mothers ?
Mrs. STANTON BLATCH, New York city.
II. Club Organization:
(a) Need of Organization;
(b) How Organize?
Mrs. ELLEN M. HENROTIN, Chicago, Ill.
“It seems wonderful how much the memory retains and how our thoughts can call
it all up at different times. A great deal often remains that is useless, and this should
be a warning to us to give the child the best that we possibly can.”
“Nothing, perhaps, has been more misunderstood than childhood.”
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WEDNESDAY MORNING, 10 O'CLOCK.
OPENING PERAYER.
By REv. WILLIAM H. MILBURN,
Chaplain of the United States Senate.
O thou, whose well-beloved Son took the little children into
his arms and blessed them and the mothers that brought them,
representing the infinite tenderness and compassion of the Al-
mighty and everlasting Ruler of the Universe, we come to thee
to-day to ask thy blessing upon this gathering of women from
all over our land and from other lands—this gathering to con-
sider woman’s deepest problem, highest duty, Sweetest grace,
divinest benediction. We pray that thine infinite love may
swell every heart, kindling an enthusiasm which shall never de-
cline, an enthusiasm for woman’s highest work, an enthusiasm
that shall manifest itself in the grace and care of the little ones.
The mother is the maker of the child’s life, the shaper and
builder of its destiny.
O God, inspire this gathering of women, and through them,
and by the influence of thy Holy Spirit, the women all through
this nation, and hence to other nations, until it shall be the
glorious crusade of this closing century and at the opening of
the next, not the rescue of a tomb from the grasp of infidels
who hold it, but the rescue of the cradle of childhood from the
evil influences which have encompassed it, and its uplifting,
under the benediction of the cross, to the resurrection and the
eternal life which are granted unto us all as the children of
the most high God.
Keep these women in peace, in health, in comfort, in true
wealth, prosper them in their deliberations, and send them to
their homes again with the grace and blessing of this great
gathering and the influences enkindled by it. We humbly ask
all these blessings in the name and through the merits of our
divine Lord and Master. Amen.
5
6 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
By Mrs. THEODORE W. BIRNEY,
President of the National Congress of Mothers, Washington, D.C., February 17, 1897.
GENTLEMEN AND LADIES: In coming before you as the
President of the First National Congress of Mothers, it is my
pleasure and privilege to extend to each and all of you a heart-
felt welcome, and to express the hope that this large and gratify-
ing audience, this more than encouraging response to our uni-
versal call, may prove an earnest of the success destined to
crown the work to which our best and highest efforts are now
consecrated. While I welcome you, I recall the mass of printed
matter which has preceded this Congress—I refer to the detailed
accounts of this movement which have been presented to the
reading public, both through the medium of the daily press
and by the means of the literature which has been freely dis-
tributed from our headquarters; yet, despite the full and gen-
erous statements which have thus been given, the inquiry still
comes, “What is the Mothers’ Congress? What are its aims and
objects?” * *
Doubtless each one present has some idea, more or less defi-
nite, as to the general object of the Congress, but still the ques-
tion is repeated what and how do we expect to accomplish it.
To answer this and kindred questions briefly and clearly,
and at the same time to impress you fully with what we deem
to be the importance of this work, shall be my purpose this
morning.
First, then, as to our object: The age in which we live is, as
every one knows, an age of “movements”—it is a time of
specialized work and of organized effort. Every conceivable in-
terest, from the clothing of the Hottentot to the study of oc-
cultism, has been the subject of attention, of inquiry, and often
of organization.
It has therefore seemed to us good and fitting that the high-
est and holiest of all missions—motherhood—the family interest
ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 7
upon which rests the entire superstructure of human life—and
the element which may indeed be designated as the foundation
of the entire social fabric, should now be the subject of our
earnest and reverent consideration. I refer to what is called
child study—that broad, deep theme, most worthy, in all its
varying phases, of our study and attention, because the funda-
mental one.
This is a time known pre-eminently in the history of the
world as “woman’s era.” Much has been said and written in
these latter days about woman’s higher education and her ex-
tended opportunities, so much that we have failed to hear the
small voice appealing to us in behalf of childhood; yet how, I
ask, can we divorce the woman question from the child ques-
tion? Is not the one the natural, logical corollary of the other?
Let us then consider for a moment some of the needs of child-
hood. --
There is good literature, many books and articles pertaining
to child culture and kindred topics, pre-eminent among them
the thoughts given to us by that friend and benefactor, the
great and good Froebel. When a mother in her own home ap-
plies what she may learn from these books, reverently studying
the threefold nature of the immortal being committed to her
care, she will acquire the truest, finest culture the world can
offer, and then knowledge will be added to love, mother-patience,
and gentleness—attributes which transcend all learning.
It is because most women have not had the knowledge and
training which would enable them to evolve the beautiful possi-
bilities of home life that they have in many instances found that
sphere narrow and monotonous.
Now that reform is being effected in the domestic depart-
ment of home by the establishment of schools where servants
can be properly trained, and by the lifting of household and
kitchen work from the realm of drudgery to that of science,
there is a fair prospect of more bodily rest for mothers, more
time for study and recreation helpful to mind and body.
The higher branches of book learning are well enough for
the girl or woman who has the inclination or time for them,
but they should be secondary in her education to the knowledge
8 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
which shall fit her for motherhood. True, she may never marry,
but, as one of the sex on which the care and education of child-
hood must rest, she should know how with head, heart, and
hand to serve the cause of helpless infancy in any emergency.
Is it probable that a boy of twelve, who has had the ideal
life of the kindergarten, followed by a course of instruction in
which the proper development of the child’s nature was made
equally important with mathematics, would be a terror to his
home? Would he fill his little sister’s heart with truly maternal
anguish by pretending to torture her doll or drive his little
brother to tears and angry words by persistent teasing? “Tri-
fles,” people say; but these habits are no trifles in the building
of character. All too soon the plastic period of childhood is
over, and too often, alas! health, strength of physique, and
strength and sweetness of character is sacrificed to indifference
in training and education if character building has been sub-
ordinated to the so-called cultivation of the mind.
How strangely the world has worked! How at variance with
all natural law!' For every kindergarten there are a hundred,
nay, a thousand prisons, jails, reformatories, asylums, and hos-
pitals. And yet society cries out that there is need for more
of these. Are we blind that we fail, as a nation, a State, and as
individuals, to recognize the incontrovertible fact that such de-
mand will never cease until we cut off the supply? And does
it not behoove us to work with a will and together, that the
little ones of to-day may not require such training as civilization
offers through its police and courts of law in place of the kinder-
garten schools. *
Reformers are often called visionary because of their ex-
pressed belief that rapid changes could be brought about if cer-
tain practical plans were pursued. Heredity has been an argu-
ment against Such views, and yet the medical faculty, once the
champion of physical heredity, now claims that “tendency’ is
the correct word to use, while the world draws a sigh of relief,
and the men and women who have carried in their hearts the
gnawing fear of inherited evils imbibe fresh courage and listen
eagerly to the methods by which the evil tendencies may be
OWerCOIOle.
ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 9
Children of so-called depraved or vicious parents born into
surroundings which develop the inherited tendency to crime
should be given a better environment to secure improved results.
I could not do better than to quote from Jacob Riis’s book, The
Children of the Poor. Referring to the wonderful results
achieved by means of the Children’s Aid Society of New York
city, he says: “It is not at the child’s past, but at its future, that
men look. That it comes from among bad people is the best
reason in the world why it should be put among those that are
good. That is the one care of society. Its faith that the child
so placed will rise to their level is unshaken after these many
years.” &
“Human nature” is another fictitious excuse to rapid progress
in bettering social conditions. It is claimed with zeal which
merits a nobler utterance, “You can’t change human nature.”
How old, how trite the cry, and yet how false! Human nature
changes constantly, and if we doubt that it may be changed
for the better, a glance at the pages of history will dispel such
doubt. e
Let us have no more croaking as to what can not be done;
let us see what can be done, and, above all, see that it is done.
This is in no sense a sex movement, nor has the appeal to
take up this child culture and kindred topics been made to
mothers alone. Men have a thousand imperative outside inter-
ests and pursuits, while Nature has set her seal upon woman
as the caretaker of the child; therefore it is natural that woman
should lead in awakening mankind to a sense of the responsi-
bilities resting upon the race to provide each new-born soul with
an environment which will foster its highest development.
Our plan of work is exceedingly simple, and is clearly out-
lined in our pamphlet Suggestions for Mothers’ Clubs, which
will be found in the literature room in the rear of the hall. We
ask all those who have not carefully read this circular to do so,
if possible, before the afternoon session.
There are many in this audience who have come a great dis-
tance to attend this First National Congress of Mothers, while
many of you are from neighboring cities. That this Congress
(which we all feel must mark an epoch in the individual lives
10 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
of those at least who attend) has been possible is due to the
noble generosity of a woman whose intellectual grasp of human-
ity’s greatest needs have numbered her for many years among
America’s truest philanthropists. I refer to our first Vice-Presi-
dent, Mrs. Phebe Hearst.
You have come with full hearts and high hopes, and with
such we greet you. Bachelor or maid, father or mother, you
are all most welcome. The love of childhood is a common tie,
which should unite us in holiest purpose, and on this common
ground of our beautiful national capital let us devote our best
efforts during these three days to a prayerful consideration of
our highest objects, and go forth determined to bring the work
to full fruition.
The women who have for months past with tireless energy
and enthusiasm given their time and strength to this cause
need no words of thanks from me, with such an audience as this
facing them, beautiful in its earnestness and inspiration.
The mental attitude of the world to-day is one of receptivity;
never before were people so willing to accept new thought from
all sources. It has been truly said, “To cure was the voice of
the past; to prevent, the divine whisper of to-day.”
May the whisper grow into a mighty shout throughout the
land until all mankind takes it up as the battle cry for the clos-
ing years of the century. Let mothers, fathers, nurses, edu-
cators, ministers, legislators, and, mightiest of all in its Swift,
far-reaching influence, the press, make the child the watchword
and ward of the day and hour; let all else be secondary, and
those of us who live to see the year 1925 will behold a new world
and a new people.
Untiring, universal, individual effort, with such organiza-
tion only as may prove helpful, will build a bridge upon which
struggling humanity may safely cross into a new land, leaving
forever the old, with its unending reformatory movements, its
shattered homes; and the keystone of that bridge will be ma-
ternal love, while in that fair domain the splendid edifice of the
new civilization will bear the corner stone of home.
RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 11
RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
By MRs. MARY LOWE DICKINSON,
President of the National Council of Women, New York City.
DURING the journey to Washington the question arose, “How
many minutes will be granted for the response to the welcome
offered by the Congress of Mothers to us pilgrims from near and
far?” In my own mind I answered, “It will require every
minute of the whole three days, and then we shall go home
laden with a burden of unuttered thanks.”
A response to such a royal welcome as has been given us
is not to be conveyed by any mere utterance of words. It should
rather be counted out by separate heart throbs, beat on beat,
or, better still, our appreciation and gratitude should be meas-
ured by the new thoughts we gather, the new inspirations we
receive, the new plans we evolve, the new lives we touch, the
new hopes or purposes we bear away. Since these things can
only be measured at the time of parting, perhaps this word of
thanks should have been one of the last instead of one of the
first words on your programme. Indeed, it is a question whether
it might not properly have been deferred altogether until your
next convention, since no adequate thanks can precede an accu-
rate knowledge of how much we have to be grateful for, and
that we never shall know until the results of this Congress have
been wrought out by a multitude of mothers, and by varied meth-
ods, in countless distant homes.
Believing, therefore, that the future holds possible oppor-
tunities for better utterance than mine can be to-day, I yet am
glad to speak, in behalf of these guests who are here before you,
and of many times as many more from the North and the South,
the East and the West, who, regretting that they can not be here
in person, yet would offer most cordial greetings and assurances
of all good will and sympathy with the objects and desires of
the Congress. These objects of the National Congress of Moth-
ers are largely common to our common womanhood. The feast
12 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
to which you have invited us is primarily a feast of recognition.
It is a welcome to the same spirit that has inspired this gather-
ing, whether you find it as the chief impulse in organized move-
ments or as the underlying motive of individual effort. And
the gracious courtesy that has welcomed us personally to your
firesides has offered also that higher hospitality that welcomes
our thoughts, our convictions, our theories, and our opinions
by making them equally at home with your own. And in that
fact is an assurance of results from this Congress such as could
arise from nothing but frank interchange of thought on the
part of lovers of a common cause.
As women, as mothers especially, we would fain see better
things in the future that is to be the inheritance of our chil-
dren, and we are constantly rejoicing in the fact that our civiliza-
tion shows that there never before was a time when at the heart
of every movement, large or small, lay such consideration for the
welfare of human beings as to-day.
Notwithstanding this, we are forced to admit that the whole
world groaneth and travaileth in pain. Until now the problems
of education, of labor, of philanthropy, of politics, of religion
beat against the heart of humanity as they beat against the
heart of Christ in that far-away day when they questioned how
in the midst of the world’s great misery could come the kingdom
of God. And, as we have all recognized, down through the
centuries there has come no better answer than that which shone
in the face of a little child whom “Jesus took and set in the
Imidst.” *.
Amid the maze of manifold theories and schemes for human
betterment the idea has been growing that the answer to the
crowding problems of the race lies in the conditions and possi-
ble development of the childhood of the race, and every organ-
ization and every institution has begun to give its share of atten-
tion to the development of the child. Yet it has remained for
this new society to “take the child and set him in the midst,”
making him who is already the center of love the center of
strong endeavor, the key to the closed gates of our highest
progress, the heart and Soul of our hope that the world, becom-
ing as a little child, may yet enter the kingdom of God.
RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 13
The spirit that inspires this Congress is near akin to that
which, permeating home and church and social life, has been
making women write over the portals of their hearts not only
“Whatsoever things are stylish,” but “Whatsoever things are
helpful, whatsoever things are pure.”
It is the mother heart that has shown itself in the unprece-
dented growth of philanthropic movements, in the vigorous
grip now being felt upon the problem of poverty and pauper-
ism, in the loving sympathy with sickness and suffering, and
in its recognition of the starving and blunted aesthetic tastes of
the masses. It is that spirit that is answering to the cry of the
womanhood and childhood of other lands by thousands of tender
voices and myriads of helping hands. And do we ask more
when it has already made women the foster-mothers of every
moral movement of our time? Yes, more; and if this new
society justifies its right to be, we shall see a day when the out-
stretched hands of mothers shall make an orphanage for the
whole world’s childhood, and their beating hearts will form a
bulwark against every tide of evil that, threatening, dares to
creep to the threshold of our homes. This being true, no cloud
of prejudice or precedent should hold back our eyes from the
vision, or our hearts from bidding this new organization God-
speed. It is no child’s play which has been undertaken.
In considering questions that touch the welfare of the race,
the mind naturally dwells upon those that emanate from the
spirit and action of men; the world looks at manhood for the
destruction of its evil and for the salvation and development
of its good. Behind the everlasting principles of righteousness
with which we see our life permeated stands the living man.
Behind the man, the environment, the history, the tradition, the
circumstances, the education, the comradeship and experience
of youth. Behind all these are the influences of childhood,
motherhood, and the home. Behind the home and child stands
the mother. Here we are at the secret and heart of humanity.
Now we know the beginnings of manhood. Mental scientists
tell us that the mind receives more impressions in the first
few years of childhood than in all the after years of life. During
this earlier period the mother has her boy. Soon enough the
2
14 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
world takes him, but it is her voice and her eye and her touch
that are upon his mind and heart during these formative stages
of being. In after years he may drag the chain of her words
and her tender care and her love and her prayers through the
dust and mire of every degradation, but he can not break all
these links. Soon or late he will feel them tugging at his heart
and drawing him childward and Godward. The man may hold
the destiny of the nation in his hands, but the mother holds
the destiny of the man.
Co-operation is the watchword of the century. Not all old
sayings are true, nor are the oldest sayings the truest, but there
is both ripeness of years and power of truth in the common
adage that “In union there is strength.” Women are proving
it by combination for the moral welfare of the young, for home
protection, for supremacy of spiritual influences—for 'whatever,
in short, arouses their sympathies, stimulates their aspirations,
or offers a prize to their hopes.
With men the power of co-operation is felt primarily in
outward and material things; with women, in inward and spirit-
ual concerns. Men unite in enterprise with other men who can
supply the necessary capital; women with other women who can
supply the necessary sympathy, and the energies to produce
practical results are required by both.
Concerning the influence of motherhood, we often hear it
quoted that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that
rules the world.”
The truth of the saying would be more impressive if the
world to be ruled in each generation were the world that is in
its infancy. At that stage rocking and ruling are synonymous,
for the Soothing that keeps the subject sleeping is giving it its
best chance to grow. Later on it is not soothing and sleeping
that are needed, but everything to waken faculties, to guide tend-
encies, to check the lower, to develop the higher nature.
The mother, to remain the ruler, must also be the leader.
The impatient march of young and eager feet will, not keep
time to the strains of lullaby. The hand that tenderly, through
fretful days and wakeful nights, kept her kingdom in the slum-
ber of peace must be able to grasp new Scepters if she would rule
TESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 15
the new world, that would not be kept in its cradle, however
Sweet her song.
In this new day of earnest study, when we too are being
shown “the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them,”
the mother’s kingdom, whose beauty and power have rarely been
measured or displayed, is claiming its due of attention and
thought.
Science, education, art, social life, philanthropy, economics,
have each their kingdom and their rulers and their laws. Mother-
hood, that underlies and overshadows all, has been the most
neglected of them all. It is time that they who enter its sacred
borders knew the greatness of their inheritance, the glory of its
possibilities.
To know her child’s real inward life, his inherited tenden-
cies, tastes, habits, temperament, temptations, aspirations, as she
knows the outward facts of his existence, is not only the moth-
er’s sacred privilege, but her high obligation—to know herself
in order that she may know her child, and the measure of her
self-knowledge is the measure of her sense of responsibility. If
you doubt that statement, that mothers will accept responsibil-
ity and opportunities up to the limit of their knowledge, try
to enlist women in hearty co-operation in noble work for human-
ity. You may find possible failure to appreciate either the wide
extent, the profound importance, or the exalted possibilities of
your plan. You may find lack of experience, no adequate ap-
prehension of true conditions of need and supply, mistaken views
as to methods of work, misguided, impulsive, and ill-considered
action; but rarely, if ever, will you find resistance to sincere con-
viction or withdrawal from manifest right.
Yet history and observation and experience have taught
mothers a few facts. They saw on every hand evils that threat-
ened the nobility and purity of their boys, and they have learned
the fact that no government ever rouses itself to restrain an evil,
to correct a wrong, or to restore a right until driven to do so by
the demand of the people.
Another significant fact is this, that the people will never
make an effective demand for reform along any line until to the
majorities the need of change is apparent.
16 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Another fact is that the need of reform can only be made
apparent to the many by the investigation of truth and the dis-
Semination of knowledge on the part of a few.
And another fact is that the few rarely, if ever, begin to
investigate evils or to disseminate truth concerning them until
they have grown to the proportions of gigantic wrongs.
When a national evil becomes a national disgrace, we women
speak of it as a burning shame. That ought to mean that the
iniquity, which alone makes the shame of things, is under the
power of a consuming or refining fire, and that sooner or later
it will be purified or it will be destroyed. Such a fire may fail
to bring us to sackcloth and ashes, but a burning thing emits
light and shows depths of misery and guilt such as at another
stage of iniquity would never have been revealed.
As down through the centuries one wrong after another has
moved on into this catalogue of burning shames, there has
always been found a few brave mothers to stand beside the men
who were servants of their country and lovers of their kind and
to light their torches in the burning, and to go forth bearing
their light into the world.
So, when evils crept in that defiled and polluted religion,
there were goodly mothers among the promoters of the Reforma-
tion. So, when British tyranny threatened colonial liberty,
there were mothers among the promoters of the Revolution.
So, when illiteracy has seemed to blunt and paralyze the power
of the people, mothers have stood among the fathers as evan-
gels of education. So, when the tide of intemperance rises
till it sweeps across our thresholds and threatens the children
in the cradles, mothers are first among the pioneers of pro-
tection.
Over and over again in the course of our national existence
has the same fact reappeared. We never grapple with begin-
nings. As a people, we never put forth our strength against evils
when they are small. We feel ourselves to be a nation young
and strong, and, like David, we are not going to the brook for
smooth stones for any but a giant worthy of our sling. Not a
serpent that has ever stung us, corrupting our national life with
its poisonous touch, but could have been crushed in its infancy—
RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 17
even if men had thought it beneath their notice—by the lifting
of the woman’s heel.
And in that final clause we have the alphabet, from which
may be spelled the story of our country’s future weal. Let the
present wrongs and evils result as they may. Let them grow to
be even greater than they are. If each American mother can
rear her boy to see the giants in all their hideousness, and to
feel that he is to be the hero that is to help to overcome them
one by one—if she can help him choose the smooth pebbles of
truth that the current of swift-running events will always Sup-
ply, teach him to hold the sling of courage with steady hand,
then we shall have a foundation that would make the mother’s
kingdom ever after sure. They will meet the obligation.
Let the opinion that possibly a mother’s temper, spirit, de-
gree of cultivation of mind and manner, her thoughts, prayers,
loves, may influence her child give way to the conviction that
they do and must inevitably shape it for evil or for good, and
we have given woman the strongest incentive to cultivate in her
own character “whatsoever things are true and lovely and of
good report.” What surer death to envy, vanity, malice, mean-
ness, fretfulness, and all the horrible brood of passions that nest
out of sight in many a woman’s life than to know that the whole
black-winged flock will make home in the white soul of her
child?
We are busy in these days with our provisions that the next
generation of mothers shall be a generation that has a college
training, a man’s knowledge of books. Only those of us who
knew what it was to knock, and then to plead, and then to batter
at the brazen doors of prejudice that shut us out of college,
clamoring for our right to the knowledge that was denied, know
how rightly to estimate, rightly to encourage, rightly to rejoice
that our coming mothers may enter freely as they will.
But the world’s childhood should not wait for that next
generation to rear its children by the help of its better knowl-
edge of books. The living book is open to the mother to-day.
The child is here, its young life asking for bread upon which
it can grow bravely up to the full stature of the perfect man.
It asks for fish caught in our widespread nets of true knowledge,
18 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
for fish in whose mouths shall be found the coin which they
will need for the tax which life makes on every soul.
How much of the hardness of heart, think you, in the man-
hood of to-day, how much of the slimy sinuosity of our political
life, how much of the wriggling inconsistency of character that
marks life in high places, how much of the hiss and sting that
awaits the highest endeavor and the noblest aspirations are due
to the fact of a persistent diet of serpents and of stones?
What, then, would we have? First, that women, mothers
especially, who are becoming students of everything else under
the Sun, become students of childhood and students of every sys-
tem, scheme, plan, and practice for the development of the body,
mind, and character of the child; not that the students of to-day
shall make good mothers, but that the mothers of to-day shall
make good students. It is the one thing of universal interest
to the present, of universal importance to the future of the indi-
vidual, of the nation, that the women of to-day accept, as their
divine responsibility, the childhood of to-day.
I am not unmindful of the objections that arise to the mind
already accustomed to the idea of letting their own grow up
and out and away into a life the mother can but share through
her affections and her prayers.
There is no time, we say; but there is time for the Shakes-
peare and Browning clubs, and the social world and the mission-
ary society, and the Daughters of the Revolution, and the house-
hold, and the father of the children. Yet how the flavor of it
all turns to ashes on the lips when the boy—0wr boy—belongs
to the world or to the wine, or to the life that is not life but
death, and is no more our own! In the bitterness of such hours
mothers speak the truth, if the anguish is not so deep that they
can not speak at all: “No one knew him as I knew him. He
ought to have had this influence and that guidance and that
help along the way.”
And that utterance is the very truth of God concerning the
motherhood and childhood of to-day. No one knows them as
we know them, and no one should and no one can; and, know-
ing through our hearts what they are and what they need, it is
for us so to strengthen the life of knowledge and of thought
RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 19
that we shall walk beside them all the way, and to study to
strengthen all influences that may avail for their good, that
the true education may result in such citizens and patriots, such
men and women as we shall be proud to call our daughters and
Oll].” SOIlS. *
The childhood of the land is in the hands of the mothers.
The father’s own life is too absorbing to allow much training
in principles or practice during the formative years. Multitudes
of good men so trust the good women who are their wives that
they leave their boys almost entirely to their guidance until
they are young men.
Said a man of prominence: “My wife has it all her own way
with our boys. She can shape them as she will. If they come
out with their mother’s principles and their father’s politics,
they will be all right for this world and the next.”
And yet the pitiful fact was that the mother’s principles and
the father’s politics were as wide apart as righteousness and sin;
and another more pitiful fact was that that good mother could
safely be trusted by her husband with her boys, for she did not
know there was this difference, and she never would find it out.
Do you remember the following lines written by a poet to a
woman?
The bravest battle that ever was fought,
Shall I tell you where and when 3
On the map of the world you will find it not—
It was fought by the mothers of men.
Not with cannon or battle shot,
With sword or mightier pen;
Not with wonderful word or thought
From the lips of eloquent men.
But deep in some patient woman's heart,
A woman who could not yield,
But silently, cheerfully bore her part,
Aye, there is the battlefield.
No marshaling troop, no bivouac Song,
No banners to flaunt and wave,
But, oh, their battles, they last so long—
From the cradle e'en to the grave,
20 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
O woman, white in a world of shame,
With splendid and silent scorn,
Go back to God as white as you came,
The noblest warrior born.
No one of us questions that it is the first duty of every
woman soul—or, I should say, every human soul—to “go back
to God as white as it came.”
“The noblest warrior born.” Yes, but the glory of her war-
fare is neither her splendor nor her scorn. She who makes that
march homeward, even with feet that falter, with hands out-
stretched to help the weaker, and even the defeated, who are
often the majority on every moral battlefield, with the gentle
and gracious mien that bids the disheartened struggler to come
up higher with touch of tenderness and word of pity and heart
of grace—she is the warrior who should wear the poet’s crown,
for she not only goes back to God as white as she came, but she
bears in her arms and on her heart the little ones of God, and
shrinks from neither wound nor stain so that these whom he
has given her may be presented faultless in the day when he
makes up his jewels. Will she go back to God as white as she
came while the little children plead? Not if she goes alone.
As I went about that wonderful White City during the
Columbian Exposition, and saw it shining at night with the
purple and rose tint and gold, I said softly to myself, “We
women have it in our power to make a white city, whose founda-
tions shall be laid, deep down in women’s and children’s hearts,
of the everlasting principles of truth and justice, on which our
next four centuries of prosperity must rest.” It will be literally
a “city not made with hands.” The stones of its buildings will
be the white thoughts of white-hearted women. It will be a
city that shall grow sometimes with the rose tints of our hope for
the race, with the golden glow of our purposes for good, and
may be by and by with the purple of our honest pride in the
good that we have wrought.
The material for such a city has long been lying in the hearts
and brains of America’s women. If we are wise enough to
choose and brave enough to build, and true enough to keep our
work white and clean from all touch of ignoble things, we may
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 21
have by and by, as an outgrowth of our nation’s birthday festi-
val, a “city that hath no need of the sun,” a structure of char-
acter and life and glorious work, of which that White City was
but an evanescent prophecy and a dream.
Standing on the threshold of this new movement, remember-
ing, as we all ought to remember, that noble lover of little chil-
dren who gave her life in mistaken martyrdom of motherhood,
I feel the solemnity of this occasion, and as if we had been called
to lay here and now the corner stone of our White City, never
for one moment forgetting that we work not single-handed, for
“ the builder and maker is God.”
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, 2:30 O'CLOCK.
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREHOOD.
By FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING,
Of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.
IT is not strange that so few of us pause to consider, even in
these days of busy and searching thought, that motherhood was
the foundation of an institution in the primitive world; that
this institution of motherhood was, indeed, the first, the very
oldest institution, that ever existed among communities of men.
It is not strange, I say, for since the long-forgotten time when
the institution of motherhood was the acknowledged basis and
center of every organization among men, since the days when
it avowedly involved society and government and the religion
of reproduction and earth and Sun and ancestry, all of the more
than five thousand years of written history have intervened;
and throughout the countless pages of that long-continued his-
tory, whence our conclusions are chiefly drawn, motherhood has
been recorded as subordinate to fatherhood.
22 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
And so quite naturally it has happened that never until
to-day, in these waning years of the nineteenth century, has a
Congress of Mothers, a National Congress for the reorganiza-
tion, I trust—albeit along quite different lines—of motherhood
as a recognized institution and a force in human Society, been
called together.
Great is your honor, then, ye founders of this Congress, and
the greater do I esteem the honor you have so graciously ac-
corded me, even though it was by reason of the primal nature of
my theme, that you named me your earliest speaker.
Probably many of you know that for some five or six years
I lived familiarly, as one of themselves, among a primitive peo-
ple, the Zuñi Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. They were a
people who had reached, and still almost perfectly exemplified
in their modes of thought and daily life, the last or highest
stage in the first of the three great periods of human develop-
ment. These periods have been named by anthropologists, first,
that of Savagery; second, that of barbarism; and, third, that of
rational civilization. Perhaps nothing has distinguished them
from one another so much as the differing states of society or
sociologic organization that has characterized each. The first
was organized on the basis of the clan as a unit, and of mother
right as the governing institution; the second on the basis of the
gens as a unit, and of father right as the governing institution; .
the third on the basis of the individual as a unit (standing for
the family as we understand it, in place of the consanguineal
group or communal family of families), with representation based
upon territorial rather than on social subdivision of the nation,
as the governing institution. But, strikingly enough, in this
latest, most democratic development, as among ourselves, even
here and to-day, the unit is always a man, and in this fact there
lingers still a survival of the next last phase of development,
as well as in our legal and Social recognition, to some extent, of
the old father right of the barbaric or patriarchal phase.
Beyond illustrating, by reference to known peoples, precisely
what is meant by Savagery and barbarism, as designating the
first two stages of cultural and social progress, I will not pause
to consider their many other characteristics. The condition of
& /
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 23
savagery so called was represented perfectly and almost from
beginning to end, by the multitude of diverse Indian tribes that
dwelt within our ample borders previously to the sixteenth cen-
tury, previously, that is, to the discovery of the New World by
Columbus. The world they lived in was only in a sense the
newer; it was the older world in its human aspect at least, for
the ancestry of these Indian peoples had been so late to come,
or else had been for ages so cut off from the rest of mankind,
that they lingered on in their pristine state and fashion, and
still, therefore, represented well-nigh the infancy—at any rate,
the adolescence—of our race. Highest among them, and there-
fore almost barbaric in their progress toward ultimate civiliza-
tion, as occupying the uppermost status of savagery, stood, as I
have said before, the Zuñi Indians, even as lately as when I be-
came a member of their tribe, in 1879.
Next above them stood the Aztecs of Mexico, the Mayas of
Central America, for they, in a general way, corresponded to
the oldest Egyptian tribes, to the predecessors of the Baby-
lonians, as shown by recent excavations made by the Archæo-
logical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, or (to
make my meaning clearer) to the progenitors of the peoples of
biblical times.
As the Zuñi, comparatively speaking, stood one degree below
these barbaric Old-World peoples, so the Greeks of Homer’s
heroic time stood one degree above them in the upward march
toward the true civilization that the Greeks of later centuries,
with their written language and schools of philosophy, contin-
ued even unto the beginning of its modern development through
Latin law and learning.
Thus, the Zuñi Indians take their place in the scale of human
evolution just at the close of the childhood of the race, and
hence may be reckoned, chronologically, as living still the man-
ner of life that generally prevailed between six and seven thou-
sand years ago. I have taken pains to show quite precisely where
they belong, because in so many respects they represent that
period of the world’s history, elsewhere past, in which mother
right universally obtained—the period of the truly primitive
world in every land.
24 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Men have erred grievously in styling such primitive peoples
“Savages”; for in continuing to call them savages we have
naturally come to consider them so, and to regard them as savage
by very nature—as ferocious, innately depraved. Far other-
wise were they. You will understand this better if I say of
them that they were simply grown-up children; if I say again
that they belonged not merely to the beginning, but literally to
the childhood of our race. True, it has been said that children
themselves are only savages; but how many of you would sanc-
tion this saying save in my acceptation of its meaning? Who,
at any rate, would say of our little girls that they are savages?
Yet, believe me, these loving little creatures of to-day are, in
their dispositions and their modes of mind, the truest representa-
tives on earth of what our gentle mothers used to be in the
morning of man’s creation, and very like them are the little
Zuñi mothers that I knew so well, and of whom I will tell you,
anon, more particularly.
When the first white men came to our shores they found
that the native tribes generally, even those less advanced than
are the Zuñis, were nevertheless like them—gentle, not ceaselessly
at war, as we have supposed them to have been, but kind to
One another, and in the beginning, at least, kind even to these
strangers who came but to despoil them. And especially, as the
pages of all the old chroniclers tell us again and again, were
the men of these tribes gentle and kind to the women. This
was so because these people were at that time all living under
the tenderest, and yet in some respects the strongest rule, that
ever governed communities of men—the mother rule.
Among tribes that are better known to us than are the
Zuñis all this has been changed by the long and bitter struggle
with our race that they have been forced to undergo—a struggle
which until recently the Zuñis were spared, living apart, as they
were, in their distant and forbidding desert home. And so I take
them to be typical to-day, and perhaps the last representatives
we now have, of the primitive order of humanity as it quite gen-
erally existed here in America before the period of discovery
and colonization.
In that old order of things, mother right, or the institution
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 25
of motherhood, both led to and was founded upon the recog-
nition of woman, of the mother, as first, not second, in the Social
organization. She was, quite otherwise than we have been
taught to suppose, the center and head of the family, since in
her was vested the clan; from her the clan or family name
descended, and therewith inheritances of every kind, for to her
belonged alike the home and its contents, to her and to her sis-
ters belonged the lands of the tribe. From them visibly sprang
the men of the tribe, as from the Earth Mother sprang the sus-
tenance of men and all creatures; and so, as a right, and not by
compulsion, they tilled or directed the tillage of the soil, and
the products thereof were possessed solely by them. Therefore a
woman did not go to her husband’s lodge or household when
she chose or accepted him as a suitor in marriage, but he came
to her home and remained there only by her consent and at her
will. His children, were first her children, and less his own than
were the children of his blood sisters, his nephews and nieces;
for, as I have before suggested, the children always belonged to
the clan institution of their mothers, and as marriage within the
clan was prohibited, their fathers had no right therein save by
marital alliance and sufferance, and necessarily belonged, there-
fore, to the clan institutions of their own mothers and sisters, in
turn.
All this may seem strange, so differently have we been in-
formed—at least popularly—as to the constitution of Indian
society, and especially as to the relations that the men of Indian
tribes held toward their women, or “squaws” so called; yet
more surprising still is the fact that in such a primitive state of
society as I am describing monogamy, not polygamy, was the
rule. During the childhood age of our race marriage was not
promiscuous, as we have been told by so many students. It was
generally, in a more strict sense than even in our highest state
to-day, monogamous. And this was due to the universal preva-
lence of the institution of mother right in earliest times, for
this institution grew naturally out of the visible relation of the
mother to her child, as being its creator and sustainer in one,
and whose right of possession was therefore never questioned,
and whose right of choice, as keeper of her kind and clan, was
26 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
recognized as supreme. I have said that in pre-Columbian times :
the Indians of our particular land still exemplified this primitive
and natural state of human society, notwithstanding all we have
been taught to the contrary regarding the Indians of more recent
times. It must be remembered that when the white man first
began to traffic with these Indians for their lands and other pos-
sessions, which belonged, it must also be remembered, to the
women of the tribes, the first blow to their primitive or matri-
archal constitution of society was struck; because naturally, if
only from habit, these men of our race dealt by preference with
the men of this other race. To the men they gave their objects
of metal, their guns and other weapons, and, worse than all,
their domesticated animals, especially the horse. These things
were useful in the chase, and the women did not want them.
But then it was that for the first time in the long course of their
history, these Indian men became possessed in their own right,
of property apart from that of their wives and sisters, and became
possessed as well of the means of effectually, though unequally,
contending with one another, tribe with tribe, over these new
possessions. With the acquisition of such right to property,
especially in animals that served, came greed of possession, the
tendency to make conquest alike of the lives and the possessions,
and, finally, of even the wives and sisters of weaker or of sub-
jugated tribes; and thus it was that here in America the position
of woman was first degraded, and that polygamy, wife purchase,
and woman slavery were ushered in tragically and suddenly, so
much so as to destroy the best that was in clan or mother rule,
and substitute only the worst that in the Old World ages before
had been naturally and more slowly developed in father rule, by
the transition from one kind of property right to another kind,
wrought by the domestication of animals and the consequent
adoption of the pastoral and nomadic mode of living that broke
up clan existence.
It is, then, with the Indian who is the descendant of such
a changed ancestry that we are most familiar; and so I have
claimed that the Zuñi, having been so far away, so isolated in his
arid environment, has remained relatively unchanged, abides
still under the benign and protective but forceful rule of mother
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 27
right, and is even now typical of what his race more generally
was in early times.
In strict accord with the system of organization and faith
in motherhood to which the Zuñis still cling, is their belief in
the origin of things and of this system. They say: “The first of
all beings was the ‘Brooding Mother Darkness of Space,” whence
came the First Father of all in the “Light of the Dawn.” For in
darkness the seeds of all things are conceived, and out of dark-
ness comes every morning the light, and in it all things appear
as new. The Son of Darkness and Dawn, the Sun Father him-
self, and the Daughter of Darkness and the White Mists of
Dawn, the Ocean herself, then appeared, as in the white mists
of breaths that follow darkness each morning, even unto this
day, appear the sun and the abundant drops of dew. Daughter
of the Sun and the Ocean in turn was our Mother, the Earth,
and the children of her and of the Sky Father were the mothers
of all men and all creatures here below, born from her fourfold
wombs or cavern depths.” Believing so, these people hold that
women, not men, are the inheritors of earth, since they were
and are still, her first children, and on this poetic belief is based
their matriarchal or clan and totem system of society and gov-
ernment and their rules of mother right and inheritance.
Said the old Zuñi priests and chiefs to me one night when
gathered in council to request that new teachers be sent: “Send
women this time, for ye men of the Mé-li-ka-na-kwe would pos-
sess yourselves of the grandmother of all men, the mother of
our mothers, the Earth Mother herself; yea, and would drive
away even her daughters, her heiresses, from their inheritance,
which, even as milk to their babes, gladly do they share with
us men in all we need. Send, therefore, women, to whom we
will be brothers and sons, nor will they seek to rob our mothers
and sisters and wives of their inheritance.”
It is no wonder that with a people believing thus the very
name of woman is O-kya, meaning “creator (or Maker) of
being.” Nowonder they hold that the highest personages of their
nation or tribe is the Táv-a-Shi'-wan O-Kya, Priestess of
Corn and the Seed. No wonder that with their women them-
selves the thought of maternity, and of the mother right it in-
28 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
sures, is the one central thought throughout all their lives, in
everything they do and in everything they teach their little
girls to do. Beautiful beyond any ideas of the kind I have
ever learned of are the thoughts that the Zuñi women have of
this great mission of theirs, the mission of maternity, and of the
commanding privileges that are accorded to them therein. They
verily believe that not only are they the first descendants of
the Earth Mother herself, and first, therefore, in the rights of
her possessions, but also that they, like her, are the virtual cre-
ators of being, and that never until they be old may they forget
for a moment the responsibility of this, for around these funda-
mental beliefs cluster many singular notions in regard to their
powers.
I well remember that when I had been some time living
among the Zuñis I happened to send away for as beautiful a pic-
ture in colors, of an American woman, as I could get. I wished
to have it as an illustration of my talks about my own people, for
the Zuñis had very rarely seen any women of my nation, more
rarely still the beautiful and refined among them. After the
picture—one of Mary Anderson—came, I framed it and placed it
on the end wall of the council chamber, which was next to my
own little room, and left it hanging there. One morning, a few
days after, some of the women, the little mothers of the tribe
(for all of them could easily have walked under my arm), came
quietly into my room. They greeted me, bowed, and sat down,
patiently waiting, as was customary, until I asked them what
they would have. They then said:
“Younger brother, we are told that you have a picture, a
glowing shadow, of an extremely fair and beautiful face, in this
house, and we would sit before it for a little while each day, if
so be you will that we may.”
I did not know why they asked this privilege, but, of course,
I granted their wish. Day after day these little women would
come and sit on the floor in front of this picture, their eyes fixed
eagerly upon it, their hands crossed over their bosoms. They
would occasionally unclasp their hands, reach them up toward
the picture with a sweeping motion, and, breathing from them,
would pass them down over their persons, then fold them again.
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 29
Almost every day as they went away in the same quiet fashion
in which they had come they would say to me: “Thanks, little
brother, for the privilege thou hast given. If so be, lo! our
children will be fair and beautiful even as the face we have gazed
upon and carry away in our hearts is fair.” I afterward learned
that the reason why they came to this little shrine, as they had
constituted it, was because they believed that whatsoever is most
impressed upon the mind of the mother, whatsoever she most
dreams of, or thinks of and sees in her thoughts, that will her
children resemble.
So profoundly do these people believe in this idea, indeed,
that it not only influences the behavior of their women in
mature life, or when they expect to become mothers, but even
during girlhood. For they suppose that the very thought of
things seen or felt so as to dwell constantly in the minds of
maidens themselves, will in after life, when they become moth-
ers, shape and disclose themselves in their offspring. Accord-
ing to such beliefs, rather than from considerations such as we
would naturally attribute or enjoin, the maidens of these people,
though more knowing than are our own, are retiring and cir-
cumspect. And their elders are watchful not only that they
shall form no actual alliances that are opposed to the restrictions
of the clans they represent, but that they shall be guarded lest
even they form attachments which, by dwelling too much upon
their minds, shall influence them in ways such as I have re-
ferred to. If, for instance, the personal presence of a stranger
or some youth, with whom union in marriage is supposed to be
for one reason or another impossible or objectionable, chances
to impress some susceptible one of these little maidens, and if
perchance also she smiles upon him in such wise that he too
is impressed, and especially if his heart be quickened and his
love, no less than her own, be thereby aroused, then, when this
is discovered, when it is seen that it dwells in the thoughts of
the maid and influences the mind of the youth, the most elab-
orate of ceremonials must be observed to overcome the pre-
formative and subtly potential influence of their feelings for
one another. The maid—for maids make the first sign in Zuñi-
land, since theirs shall be the household—is the more greatly at
3
30 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
fault, and must therefore prepare of the choicest seed-grains a
perfect basket tray of meal, and, with a bundle of fuel for its
cooking, must make present thereof to the youth or to his fam-
ily, for lo! the life that might have been conceived from him
is thereby given back in the seed substance of life itself; and
he in turn must give, in semblance at least, the bridal gifts of
raiment and other things that else he had provided for her and
for their unrealized children; so deep seated, so fundamental,
and so influential on life are thoughts of these matriarchal
people regarding woman and woman’s motherhood!
For reasons kindred to this, when a woman in Zuñi-land ex-
pects to become a mother, she is guarded from contact with
the breath of strangers who may have done violent deeds, and
from seeing the more horrible of the masked figures of the
demons of creation and war that perform in the sacred dance
dramas of her people; from sight of hamstrung deer or slaugh-
tered animals when brought in; from reptile creatures, or from
passing over giddily flowing waters, in order that her offspring
be not timid or violent; be not frightful of visage; go not
maimed; turn not giddy or unsteady of thought.
For reasons like these, too, when a Zuñi woman is about to
give birth she is, if possible, rétired into a room of “sacred
inclosure.” The entrance and windows of this room are care-
fully screened with blankets, and over or on the entrance way,
whether door or sky hole, a plume of warning, or taboo, is
attached, so that none but the appointed may enter. Here the
child must remain until the morning of the tenth day after its
birth. For as yet it is not born into the world of men. Nine
days, representing the months of its gestation, are required for
its formation and “hardening,” as a human being, against all
malign influences. For it is supposed by them that during the
period of this formation, the child is, as were all the beings
of creation when the world was new, kyái-u-na-unripe and
susceptible, impressionable, even as are the grains of growing
corn when in milk, which, if a stalk or their husks or threads
of silk be too tightly drawn over them, lo! the impress thereof
remains, even when they be hardened and grown old. And
so they believe that if any one who has committed deeds of vio-
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 31
lence, even in defense of his people (like a warrior of the tribe),
comes too near this new-born presence, the bane of violent deeds
will enter into its being in the shape of evil tendencies or pre-
disposition to disease or other ill. Therefore not only must
strangers, but friends and relatives alike, even the father of the
child himself, remain aloof. Only some grave old priest or medi-
cine man, whose life has been spent in meditation and prayer-
ful penances, and who is supposed never to have “allowed his
heart to beat quickly in anger or passion,” who belongs to the
clan of the mother or father, and is for the time being called
“Grandmother ”; and some old woman of experience, also of one
or the other of these clans, and sometimes a clan brother or
clan sister, whose breath of help or blessing is desired, may, as
a rule, enter and minister to the mother. When the little child
is born, the mother of its mother, or some one representing
her, takes it. She carefully puts away the cord that bound it
to its mother, to be sacrificed, that it may ever after be the
shrine of attachment to the Earth Mother. Then she lays the
infant on a mound of warm sand. This miniature mountain of
sand represents the Earth Mother, from whom the parents of
men and all beings came in the days of creation, and whence
all men must even now ceremonially come, in remembrance of
that time, even as do creatures and seeds from burrows and soil
of the earth. Then an ear of corn, full and perfect—red for a
girl, white for a boy—is placed by the left side or heart of the
child, that it may be nourished with the perfect life of man that
was born of the virgins of corn when all was new. Soon a grand-
mother of the father’s clan, being duly summoned, enters, bring-
ing a little mantle or blanket; for she comes to represent the
father and his clan, and because the father is supposed to be
the provider of clothing for the mother and for her children, so
one of the father’s mothers or sisters must therefore provide this,
the first clothing for the little one.
I will not enter into details regarding the ceremonials that
attend all the following days of seclusion. At the end of the
fourth day it is supposed that the child changes its skin, which
previously was like that of the ancestors of man—like that of
reptiles or serpents—because in the time of creation men lived,
32 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
as these creatures now live, within the bowels of the earth, and
were protected by such skins as theirs; and when they came
forth from the Mother Earth into the heat and dryness of the
sun they shed this skin, even as crawling reptiles and serpents
now shed theirs in warm springtime or dry summer. So on
this fourth morning of its life, which is supposed to correspond
to that time, it is considered necessary to bathe the baby in Suds
of yucca root, in order that its new skin be perfected; and also
to paint it with ashes and a white pigment made from kaolin
and sacred corn powder, in order that unseemly growths of hair
may be prevented. But, to be brief, on the early morning of
the tenth day the mother of the father may again come into
the room. The blankets may now be lifted, the light of dawn
let in. For now she takes once more the little one and wraps it
in the mantle she gave, and with the joyous father, who first
sees his child this day, goes forth followed by the mother, from
the room and from the house, into the light of the rising Sun,
and holds the child up that it may be introduced to the rising
Father of all mankind in the morning of its new life, when he,
like the little one coming newly from its mother, is himself,
though so ancient, coming from the Ocean and Earth Mother,
new-born for another day. It is only then that the child is Sup-
posed to be really born into the “world of daylight,” as these
people poetically call our mortal life.
It is now taken back, not into the room of seclusion, but
into one of the living rooms of the house, and there, with elab-
orate ceremonials, and in the presence of the assembled repre-
sentatives of the clans of both mother and father, its little ears
are pierced, and the blood dripping from them is mingled with
pure or virgin water taken from flowing springs at night time—
ere the sun has kissed them with warmth—and this, dipped up
in an ancient seashell, is handed about, that it may be partaken
of by representatives of the gathered clans and that they may
so be actually and visibly united in blood relationship to this
new-born child. Only now is the child supposed to be initiated
into the tribe of its father, and clan of the mother from whom
it received its life, its flesh and blood, and from whom, therefore,
it must receive its inheritance and take its name. And this, its
PRIMITIVE MOTHERHOOD. 33
first name, is therefore sacred, not a name of use, but a name
symbolic of some part, some function, or some characteristic of
the totem animal, or plant, or household god of the family of
its mother.
The days of natal seclusion being over, and the life of day-
light begun, a cradle board or framework of basketry is pre-
pared for the little one. It is flat, straight, rounded at the ends,
a little broader above than below, and furnished with hoops or
bows at the head, which can be raised like those of a carriage
top, to support a cloth or other covering, as a canopy to screen
the light or keep flies away from its occupant when sleeping.
|Upon this flat cradle frame or board shredded cedar bark and
folded cloths, or a thin, rather hard little deer-hair mattress is
laid, while a tiny, equally flat pillow, usually also of deer hair
or soft bark, is put at the head. Before being placed on the
board the baby is clouted with cedar bark or soft rags, and is
then swaddled or rolled in soft cotton cloth wide enough to
cover it from neck to feet, and neatly bandaged like a thinly
wrapped little mummy, and then laid upon the cradle board and
as neatly lashed thereto by bands that are passed through loops
at the sides and regularly crossed like laces. Thus the child
can neither turn nor move, save to wiggle its little feet and hands.
Here it must remain whether it cry or no, tenderly soothed, it
is true, nursed, dandled, and tossed up and down—a whole house-
hold regulated on tiptoe, so to say, around its little life—but
still never removed, save at stated times to be bathed in yucca
suds, allowed to roll and kick about for a little, very little, while,
then painted with the pigment of perfection, and strapped into
its straight-laced bed again. If the baby be a boy, a flint knife
or arrow point, or some other amulet, is tied to the hoop over
his head, that he may fare well in the hunt and in war by and
by, and that evil may be cut off from his “trail of life '; but if a
girl, a little bit of green stone, the symbol of fertility and growth,
or a T-shaped figure is attached, that she may live to be the
mother of many children.
Undoubtedly the use of the cradle board or baby frame sur-
wives with these Zuñis from the time when they led a more or
less wandering life, like that led by Indian tribes with whom
34 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
we are more familiar; and in such a state of life, of course, it
was to the last degree a suitable contrivance, for by means of
the burden band fastened at either side of its upper part, it
could be strapped to the forehead or the back and borne about
without inconvenience, or it could be set up with the child still
in it against a convenient tree or log, or laid in the shade of
some bush, its little inmate saved from straying away or from
other harm. But for ages the Zuñis have led a life as settled
almost as our own; their little mothers, therefore, never have
need to carry their children far away from home, and yet the
traditional cradle board remains in honored use among them.
They themselves assign a very quaint, but definite reason for
this. From the first time when the infant is placed upon it
until it can creep and walk about and is permitted to leave it
finally it is, as I have suggested above, kept rigorously fastened
to it for stated lengths of time each day, no matter how much
it may rebel or cry. This, so they say, is done in order that it
may learn to lie straight, yea, and to walk straight in the path-
way of life, in order that it may learn the hardest lesson any
one has ever to learn in this life—namely, that it can not have
its own way, can not have the things that it would in this world,
at least as it would have them, but must e'en be content to take
them as they come or are vouchsafed. And it is thus, through the
very first lessons given to children among the Zuñis, that they
begin to acquire that wonderful power which in the Indian has
so often excited our remark—the power of absolute self-control,
of that kind of impassivity, even under the most difficult and
trying, and perhaps painful of circumstances, which the Indian
idealizes as the embodiment of perfect behavior, since it is the
sort of behavior that he witnesses in the animal—the eagle, the
panther, or other silent creature—whose name he bears as the
totem of his clan. It is the kind of calm that he believes the
gods of his clan, the gods of his household maintain, in both evil
times and good, and he would fain emulate them reverently and
strenuously, having gained, as we never do, the power of so
doing, thus in his earliest infancy.
I most vividly recall that, when I first became a member of
the tribe of Zuñi, and it was decided, after months, that I should
PRIMITIVE MOTHERHOOD. 35
be initiated into one of the clans, they took me into a room
apart precisely as they would have taken one of their own little
babies. They pretended, at least, to shut me up for ten days,
and fed me on a particular kind of seed food, and on that only.
Then, at the end of the make-believe period of nativity, they
called me forth, and although the ceremonial was here inter-
rupted through my own folly and ignorance, yet ultimately
my would-be father succeeded in inducing me to allow him to
pierce my ears. Then it was that the ceremonial was resumed
by the kinsfolk of his clan and of the clan that thereby became
mine, and it was carried through as fully and almost as perfectly
as if I had been born there but ten days previously, as though
I had just been taken forth on the tenth morning to greet the
Sun and meet the people of my clan. They pierced my ears
and mingled my blood with spring water, drank of it, and
greeted me by a new name, that I ever after bore—the name of
Té-na-tsa-li, the “God and Flower of all Seasons.” Then they
sprinkled the remainder of the water abroad upon the soil of
Zuñi, that of my being it might partake and wherefore return
unto me life. But they said:
“Lo! little child, alas! We can not put you on the cradle
board because you are too long and big, and, oh, what a pity
that your American mother brought you up on a soft bag of
feathers! Never can your meat be hard, never can your sinews
be stayed with patience, nay, and never, never, will you grow
old in age and have dignity until old age itself compels you so
to do.” Then I recognized what they had meant when for a
long time previously the young people, at least, had banteringly
called me by a name that was not now any longer considered
complimentary, for they had named me Kéts-îthl-to (“Cricket"
or “Happy Insect’), since I was forever “whistling and sing-
ing, moving and jumping about, running hither and thither
over the housetops and up and down ladders, without ever
staying myself to behave seemly or with dignity,” so they said.
When at last the child is released from daily bondage to the
cradle board—which it has learned to love and laugh at-even
before it can walk, as soon as it can creep about and begin to
babble, the mother takes it in her arms and carries it with her
36 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
when mealtimes come, and each time, she takes a little pinch of
each kind of the food, and breathing upon it and presenting it to
the lips of the little one also, whispers into its ear, be it boy or
girl, its first oral lesson, which is a prayer to the beloved gods
and souls of the ancestors:
“Isá' Náma-kwe, téu-ko-lia tap-te, i' taw-ina-we; yam kwa-
hothl tem-thla ténè hallo-illin illup-a'-teu-na kya, hāw-no ton àn-
ik-tehia-nap-tū, yam tă-ko-ha-na ta-tehoi!
“Yan-ha-ku ma, “hua” tehi-ta tsa-na / ?”
Free translation: “Take, oh, ye ancients, this offering, what
though poor it be, and of it eat; and of your all abundant good
fortune, difficult for us to have in life, unto us grant of it as ye
will, and light of your favor withal.”
“Breathe ‘h u a,’ little motherling,” she continues, herself
breathing over the food as she casts it into the fire. And never,
even though it be “ said in the heart alone * when strangers are
by, is this prayer and sacrifice so early taught, omitted by man,
woman, or child of Zuñi-land in after life, at any meal.
And now proverbs without number, centuries old, are re-
peated to the little child, varied according as it be boy or girl,
especially by the oldest members of the household, as they sit
by the fire, night or morning, and unweariedly play with this
new member of the home.
“Look at the bow and quiver on the wall,” says the scarred
old warrior, “ and at the beads on my wristlet, that mark the
bad men I have slain so that your mother might be spared to
bear you, ungrateful little man! Yet here sit I, with snow of
many winters in my hair, unharmed! It is because I obeyed
when my grandfather told me, “Run early to the river and
brighten your eyes with water ere the sun has melted the ice
therefrom, that they may keep bright and wakeful and see first
the cunning swift creatures of food or the lurking foe who makes
tears!” It is because I did this that I sit here by the warm fire
dandling thee on my knee and talking to thee. Hast thou been
to the river this morning?”
“Sit straight, little ones,” say these old oracles when of an
evening in the light of the dancing fire they begin to tell one
of their beautiful tales of how beasts and plants and men all
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 37
talked together and were children in the great sky house of the
gods, and helped them make all things, “as children ought al-
ways to do—help their elders.” “Sit straight, nor blink with
sleepiness. My stories shall last until the louse stars of the sky
pass over [the nebulae of the Milky Way], and whoever is caught
napping when they pass will be spilled upon, and be a lousy,
good-for-nothing lout, scratching himself instead of doing deeds.
Think ye that a boy who goes to sleep when tales of heroes are
being told, or a girl who dozes when some one who is old enough
to know, is telling how the poor Maid of the Turkeys won a god
of the sky for her suitor and slave, will see an enemy, when he
stealthily comes, or will win a youth who can make happiness
and a proud heart as well as garments? Sit straight, little women
and men, and watch with wide-open eyes.”
“Little man,” says a mother to a boy who has been greedy
and comes crying with a swollen stomach, “when you ate this
morning you did not lay your left hand across your stomach
to keep the food from coming too high! Do you think that any
boy who eats with both hands instead of laying one across his
stomach will ever know when to stop? Why, young men who
eat with both hands go homeless. What maiden would want
such a one to come and live in her house and devour everything
in it forsooth P”
“Poor little woman,” she says to her tiny girl, who has left
her painted slab of a doll lying on the floor instead of wrapping
it up and tying it to the cradle board—“my poor little mother
of a girl, how she will cry when she loses the babies she has let
to go as they will!”
This kind of talk to children, as though they were men and
women, is universal in Zuñi. They are never punished by whip-
ping or other hurt, these little children. Their longing to be
“like big people’’ is constantly appealed to. Both boys and
girls are dressed and trained as little men and women. If bad,
they are shown how “men and women do not behave like that.”
And if still incorrigible, the masked demons they have heard
of in the stories, with staring eyes, are summoned, and their
resistance is at an end. And so these dear little brown-eyed,
smooth-skinned mites who tagged me or hung around me by
38 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
dozens, though veritable children, dirty and, when at play, noisy
to the last degree, were so quaintly old-fashioned in behavior
whenever I talked to them or particularly noticed them, and
were so gentle to one another and especially to their elders
withal, that I came to love them as I have loved no other chil-
dren on earth.
The lives they lead and the training they receive is to the
last degree interesting, and it is instructive too. It is a strange
blending of never-neglected religious and practical instruction in
the ways and ideals of their elders. I would fain, therefore, de-
scribe it in detail, but that would require hours, and I have to
make haste lest I intrude unwarrantably on the time of others
who are to follow, and tax further your own kind patience.
I must not omit, however, to tell you somewhat concerning
the later training of these dusky little children of the Earth and
Sun. There comes a great day for all of them who chance to be
about three years old, when late autumn comes, and the har-
vest, or “gifts of the beloved gods of wind and the rain,” has
been gathered in. For this is the Christmastide of Zuñi-land,
when the mothers take all the children of that age, full dressed
as little men and women, into the great square dance court in
the midst of the many-terraced houses, and sit there with them
on gay-colored rugs and blankets around the southern edge of
the plaza, which is especially reserved for them. Then the long
line of dancers, gorgeously plumed, painted, and appareled, and
startlingly masked, to represent the gods of creation time, file in
to the Sound of rattle and drum and reed, and perform their
majestic, loud-songed dramas, and tell again—hoping thereby
to renew in some measure the time thereof—the story of creation,
when all things were new. These dancers bring, in bundles sus-
pended to their backs and in their hands, mysterious packages,
decked out with sprigs of evergreen and strings of white pop-
corn. These, ere they begin the drama, are laid in orderly rows
upon the Smooth and beaten ground. There are ten clowns,
So grotesquely disguised in warty, close-fitting masks which
wholly cover their heads, and with paint and scant tattered
clothing, that they look like human reptiles who have crawled
forth from some pool of red mud and on whom the mud has
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 39
dried. They are comical creatures, but, in truth, are some of
the gravest priests in the tribe, whose mission it is, in this guise,
to amuse the spectators while the dramatists are resting; and
yet, with all their buffoonery and wit, to act as choruses and
convey to the uninitiated, especially to the children, the meaning
of these sacred performances. They gather around the bundles
that have been laid down, and appropriate them with loud talk
and much pretense at speculation regarding their contents.
Then, when the drama is closed, and in the wake of a solemn
priest, sprinkling prayer meal as he goes, the performers retire,
these clowns take up the bundles and open them, and seem to
be surprised that one after another proves to hold a present for
this little one or that. There are beautifully painted bows and
arrows, to which are tied little loaves of bread and cake made
into figures and symbols of deer and antelopes and mountain
sheep and other animals of the chase. And there are also minia-
ture cradle boards elaborately decorated with plumes, and upon
them are laced gorgeous but hideously carved and painted figures
of the dancers who have just gone away, representing the an-
cient gods of creation, each of the kind that belongs especially to
the clan institution of the little one for whom it is designed.
It is chiefly by the symbolism of the bows and arrows and other
miniature implements of the chase and husbandry (for the
boys), and by the totemic characters portrayed in the sacred
dolls (for the little girls), that these old clowns are enabled in-
stantly to recognize each present as destined particularly for
this child or that one.
And now they take them up and dangle them in the air
with the most ludicrous gestures and postures, and slowly ad-
vance with them toward the children to whom they are to be
given. The children, feeling that they must behave as men
and women, are stoical and will not cry, though they are sorely
frightened by the singular beings that thus come near to them
and talk so very loudly, and many of them hide their faces in
the dresses of their mothers. Yet they are induced by much
coaxing and talking and by explanations as to what these things
are, and as to how they should be used by little men and women,
that at last they stretch out their tiny hands and receive the
40 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
gifts. The sage priest-clowns never fail, as they hand them over,
to repeat many proverbs for the guidance of these little ones,
and especially to instruct them in the prayers and rituals they
are to use in connection with them, for they themselves will
some day perform in the sacred dramas. Then, too, when they
are taken home with these precious toys that pertain alike to
the religion and the works of their elders, the mothers fail no
less to remind them from day to day of the instructions they
have heard from “the good ancient ones.” So, while the little
boys play at hunting with their bows and arrows, and the little
girls play at caring for children with the ill-favored, though
gorgeous wooden dolls, they are learning, my means of a singular
sort of primitive kindergarten method, the arts and ways of
life that they shall have more seriously to follow by and by.
Day after day, while they are playing with these things, they
are reminded also that other things must be done, and are
taught by means of little short-cut formulas, if I may call them
so—that is, little rituals or directions, often in rhyme, as old as
their village itself, and so short and so measured that they may
easily be remembered—just what and just how they shall do
things with and for the playthings and dolls they have been
given. When, for example, the mothers are kneading clay and
making pottery for the household, they always make some tiny
vessels for the little girls themselves, and while doing so remind
them that their little girls (the painted dolls in the plume-
trimmed cradles) must have vessels too; and so these diminutive
scraps of humanity very seriously yet delightedly join in the
work, making vessels for their babies, thus learning, long before
they are grown, the arts of their maturer years. Thus, too,
when, early in the morning, the corn is being ground to meal
and flour on the flat millstones in the trough by the side of the
fireplace, they are cautioned that their little doll children should
be provided with food, and, with like gravity and joy, they join
in this other work of their mothers and elder sisters. Thus
the play life of these little children in Zuñi, whether they be
boys or girls, is ever made to simulate the real life of their
elders, and hence very early they come to learn familiarly the
duties and the arts of the time of maturity.
PRIMITIVE MOTHERHOOD. 41
But even before that time their more serious duties begin.
Scarcely are the little girls grown as high as one’s hand ere
they are given charge of their baby brothers and sisters; and
when these are released from the cradle boards and allowed to play
upon the floor, or are to be taken out for an airing, the little
sisters, scarce larger than themselves, are taught how to bundle
them up in their mantles and so, carry them on their backs.
It is a singular picture they make of a summer afternoon around
the sunny outskirts of the ancient town. The babies have very
big heads, almost as large as those of the sisters who carry them,
and as these sisters carry them flat against their backs, closely
held in the blankets that envelop themselves as well—when you
look at them from a short distance it seems exactly as though
two-headed children were coming toward you! But these little
bits of mothers never let their baby brothers or sisters come
to harm, never neglect them for a moment, and learn ere they
are grown old enough, we would think, to run about freely
by themselves, all the practical duties of maternity. I may as
well add here, as elsewhere, that as they grow older and older,
yet long before they are grown to young maidenhood, they are
instructed fully and carefully and candidly in all, not only of
what is practical, but also in the mysteries of their missions in
life as mothers, and both the women and men talk to their boys
also, never reserving, as we so curiously and timorously do,
aught that they should know about that which relates so vitally
to their destined relations in family life.
This, indeed, is the keynote of the thoughts and, I may
almost say, of the religion of these people, for more than any-
thing else they worship the sun and the moon, the earth and
phenomena of the seasons, personified chiefly in relation to
reproductivity and growth. In other words, these people are so-
called “Phallic worshipers,” but a far better name for this
kind of worship would be “Mother worshipers.” I have scant
patience with those of our race who denounce, on the mere no-
tion that its name conveys, this religion of reproduction; for in
reality although one of the earliest, it is certainly also one of
the most beautiful of the religions of mankind. We hear much
about sensuosity and indecency as connected with the cere-
*
42 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
y
monials of this worship, but, believe me, such claims are in most
cases due to the evil imaginations or else misinterpretations of
those who make them. There is certainly no truth in their alle-
gations regarding the worship of reproductivity, so long, at least,
as it is associated or identified with the matriarchal phase of
human development, with the worship of motherhood.
You have seen, by what I have said in an earlier paragraph,
the moral influence that the constant dominion of mother wor-
ship has over the minds of its votaries—an influence more con-
stant, beautiful, and effectual than that of any number of pre-
cepts which could be taught would have—and I can easily ex-
plain the evil repute that this worship has gained, in the same
way in which I have explained the debasement of woman here
among our native Indian tribes, when property right and mother
right were transferred from woman to man, and to father right—
just as this old worship was transferred and degraded, by sur-
vival into patriarchal times in the Old World.
Let me give you one more instance before I close of the in-
fluences of such beliefs. They are not only continuous, as I
have said, but, according to their teachings, women are the Cre-
ators of being, and this is believed so profoundly that nothing
which the women touch or make is supposed to lack, when it
come from their hands, life in some form or other. I was sitting
one day, during the second summer of my stay with the Zuñis,
in the upper or summer room of our house, watching a little
company of women making food and water vessels. They had
formed the vessels by coiling up ropes of clay and deftly welding
and shaping them, on little molds that turned upon the floor,
with scrapers of gourd rind. They had smoothed and dried the
vases and bowls, and now, finally, they were painting them with
various symbols that suited them, so they thought, to use in their
own particular families—that is, related them to themselves.
I observed that they did not close the bands of paint which they
drew around the upper parts of these vessels, and so I suddenly
asked:
“Why do you leave that little space near the rim of each
jar, open?”
They were startled, and immediately hushed me. “Do not
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 43
speak,” whispered they. “These are the children of our hands,
and are not yet born, and are therefore ai'-ya-vui ’—“very ten-
der and susceptible.” And taking me aside, one of them fur-
ther explained that they left these little spaces in order that
the vessels might breathe in the fire when burned, and not
break, and also keep their contents of food and water good and
alive. And then they went on with the painting of the decora-
tions, and I noticed that whenever any one of them had nearly
closed the bands around the jars or bowls she turned her eyes
away, as she finished the ends of the lines, lest by accident she
might happen to close them in her own sight, and thus be held
guilty of having done so purposely or knowingly—that is, within
her own sight—and my old sister, who was among them, ex-
plained to me afterward that if any of them chanced thus “know-
ingly ” to close a jar, her own source of life might be closed by
the guilt, and her own children sicken and die, or go blind, or
come to some other evil.
I offer this as an example of the mood in which these little
women, from youth to oldest age, do all the things they have
to do, with reverence of their idea of themselves as the creators
of being, and this belief of theirs is so fundamental that, when
a man finishes an implement of husbandry—as, for example, the
sticks of the family loom or a tilling staff, with which the corn
is planted—this implement, so associated with the needs of life,
is not considered fully alive, not born, until he brings it to the
matron of his home, as household priestess, and presents it to
her over the hearth, that she, being a mother, may breathe upon
it and give it life, and therewith the ability to foster fertility in
the works that it shall be used for doing.
I can not refrain from giving you one more illustration of
this curious and beautiful phase of thought and belief. When
the cornfield is planted in Zuñi, after it has been duly laid out by
an initiated priest and priestess, the men take their planting
sticks—which are spud-shaped implements of wood, with a con-
venient prong left near the lower end, for the foot—and with
them dig deep holes in the soil. Into each of these they drop
several kernels of corn, and carefully cover them over with the
loosened soil. Only the fathers do this dropping of the corn,
44 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
because they are the givers of seed, in life. Then the women—
at least ceremonially—nurse these grains of corn until they begin
to sprout, and the children it is, that weed the young shoots.
When the plants are grown a little larger the youth lead in hoe-
ing them, and when the corn is in milk, and just about to come
to maturity, the unmarried maidens of the tribe watch the ripen-
ing fields from little booths that are built for them by their
lovers. When the first ears are gathered, the mothers and ma-
trons of the family are the ones who must pick them, ere the
full crop is gathered in; and the lingering ears of the corn,
that are not quite ripe when the frost kills and Sears the leaves,
are watched over and picked by the old grandmothers and grand-
fathers of the tribe, until they can be garnered. The corn is re-
garded, since it is supposed to have sprung from the seven celes-
tial virgins, the Corn Maidens and Youth of the Dew, in olden
time, to be, above all other growing things, the human plant of
the world, and so, according to the various stages and periods of
its growth, it must be attended first by the children, then by the
youth, then by the mothers and fathers, and finally by the
grandmothers and grandfathers of the tribe, that it may be per-
fected as human food and the seed of human food!
I will not draw morals from the tale of primitive mother-
hood that I have been telling, nor will I pronounce homilies
thereon, for morals are less irksome if inferred, and homilies
are tedious and presumptuous if pronounced. We know that
the primitive child-woman I have so told you of, is mistaken in
believing as she does that, for instance, by touch or breath she
can infuse into the insentient household things she makes some-
what of the vitality, of the life, she gives to her beloved little
children. Yet, after all, it still seems to me beautiful that so
she thinks. I can not help feeling, whatever science and prac-
tical sense may say, that some part of the gracious and tender
and living presence of a woman is communicated to the things
she uses and the home she makes and abides in. Only less lovely
and sweet and living than herself does this presence that she
somehow creates and leaves when she goes away, seem to me;
and this I recognize as feelingly as did the men of ancient days,
who actually believed what I feel, and lived the better therefor.
PRIMITIVE MOTHEREIOOD. 45
Believing as she does, the primitive mother knows none of the
longings or crimes against her estate, against the being she may
create, that are so associated with the later, the patriarchal and
derived phases of existence. Her own faith in her natural mis-
sion in life begets the same faith in her sons, her brothers, her
husband, and leads to her actual as well as theoretical Supremacy
among her people.
No, her spirit is born, after all, of the relationship which
seems so very large to her and to her people—her relationship to
her little child—and which is so truly great that you, who have
little ones yourselves, what though the notes and the words be
strange to you, will recognize its meaning in the lullaby song I
used to hear them sing as they tossed their tiny babies up and
down in those little cradle boards, and which, in closing, I will
sing that you may so recognize it.
ZUNI LULLABY.
(To BOY BABY.)
E-lu haw-no tú-tu tsa-na,
Ak'-tsik tsā-na, Ót-si tsā-na;
Wé-tsi te-na thiá-tan a-na,
Ök-tsik tsā-natá-pan àn-a!
(Refrain.)
He-lu he-lu he-lu hé-lu
E-lu' E-lu.
(Repeat refrain.)
E-luhăw-no wi-hatsá-na,
Åk-tsik tsā-na, Öt-sitsä-na;
Ót-si tsā-na thiá-tan a-na,
Tú-tu tsā-na tä-tu tsā-na.
(Refrain.)
He-lu he-lu he-lu hé-lu
E-lu' fl-lu.
(Repeat refrain.)
(To GIRL BABY.)
É-lu haw-no à-shotsä-na
Ryāt-sik tsā-na Ó-kya tsā-na
Wé-tse te-na i-tah-na-na
Tchi-ta tsā-na yö-a-na-na.
NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
(Refrain.)
He-lu he-lu he-lu he-lu
E-lu' E-lu.
(Repeat refrain.)
E-luháw-no wi-hatsá-na
A-shotsä-na Ó-kya tsā-na,
E-lua haw-notsí-ta tsā-na.
Hé-lu haw-no à-shotsá-na!
(Refrain.)
He-lu he-lu he-lu hé-lu
E-lu' fl-lu.
(Repeat refrain.)
TRANSLATION (Boy lullaby.)
Such a joy! our little man child,
Little boy, little, man;
Soon will he to hunt be going,
Little rabbits will be running !
(Refrain.)
Joyful, joyful, joyful, joyful,
Such a joy!
(Repeat refrain.)
Such a joy, our little baby,
Little boy, little man;
Little man a-hunting going,
Little man child, little man child !
(Refrain.)
Joyful, joyful, joyful, joyful,
Such a joy!
(Repeat refrain.)
TRANSLATION (Girl lullaby).
Such a joy our little maid child,
Little girl, little woman :
Soon will she be wooed and wedded—
Little motherling becoming !
(Refrain.)
Joyful, joyful, joyful, joyful,
Such a joy!
(Repeat refrain.)
MOTHERS OF THE SUBMERGED WORLD. 47
Such a joy our little baby,
Little maid child, little woman,
Little woman, little mother 1
Such a joy our little maid child !
(Refrain.)
Joyful, joyful, joyful, joyful,
Such a joy!
(Repeat refrain.)
MOTHERS OF THE SUBMERGED WORLD-DAY
NURSERIES.
By MRS, LUCY S. BAINBRIDGE,
New York City.
WHEN the arm is wielded by a brain trained in the Schools,
or when it is matured by all the culture of a beautiful home, it
is very easy for us to say, “The arm that rocks the cradle rules
the world.” But when that arm has been roughened by toil, and
the cradle is a dilapidated rocking-chair, it is not so easy to real-
ize the power of the mother behind it.
The immortal Lincoln said, as you, of course, remember,
“All that I am, and all that I can hope to be, I owe to my
mother ”; and that mother lived in a cabin, and was a woman
of toil.
What are the conditions existing in the submerged world—
among the mothers of that under world, the world of poverty?
Perhaps one letter of the alphabet alone could be used as an
initial in the description—the letter D. One of the first condi-
tions of the submerged world which we must consider is Dark-
ness, because the larger number of the women in that world live,
eat, sleep, and raise their children in semilight. It seems as if it
might be easy enough to have God’s sunshine and pure air even
in our great cities; but this is not always the case, and many
mothers of the submerged world do not share with us these
blessings.
48 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Another evil naturally follows—that is, Dirt. The mother
of the upper realm may say, as many of you have probably said,
“There is no excuse for dirt.” The mother in the submerged
world has often to decide whether it shall be a cake of soap or a
loaf of bread, and, with the children hanging to her skirts, the
bread is bought; and the woman who washes during the morn-
ing and scrubs throughout the afternoon, and then comes home
with her back aching and her knees sore, is easily enough in-
duced to let the little nine-year-old house mother do what scrub-
bing is done at home, and that is very little. And then Disease
follows easily, for consumption loves dark corners and rheu-
matism is fond of damp air, and these and other ills feed on
the children of poverty. The next one of the temptations
to be mentioned is Dress. Ah, you say, they are so very poor!
Yes, but the mother of the submerged world, whose only music
throughout the day is that made by the rubbing of the wash-
board, that mother will allow the hair of her little girl to grow
long, and loves to fondle it very kindly; and then she scrimps
the food of the family in order to buy a gay hat to crown that
pretty head. And when that child goes into the factory the first
thing she wants is cheap jewelry and cheaper lace—I have known
a girl in a home where the only skillet for all the roasting,
frying, and boiling was a cracked iron affair, which was all
that family could afford, and yet that girl appeared upon the
streets in light-blue silkaline and yellow kids. Extravagance
in dress is one of the evil conditions of the submerged world.
Then naturally follows Debt, because this induces buying on
the installment plan and on credit; and then Distress follows,
and then easily we can follow on to the Drink, the Disaster, and
the Death. A
What is going to be done with these women? Practically,
what are you going to do with these conditions which exist in
that world, wherever you find it, whether it be in New York
or any other city? I feel to-day something like a diver coming
up from the depths of darkness into this beautiful American
city. I hardly know how to talk to you of the bright upper
world about the darkness and depth below. But it is a practical
theme, and all of us should be in some way practically inter-
MOTHERS OF THE SUBMERGED WORLD. 49
ested. One of the first ways to help the women of the submerged
world is by personal contact—personal visiting, personal interest,
and kindness. I do not mean that we are to go to the women
of the submerged world in our finest costumes, and in a patron-
izing way, gathering our skirts about us, give them alms, await-
ing their “God bless you!” but we should go to them in our
kindest manner, with tact and wisdom, becoming their friends.
Some people say that the first need of the submerged world is
better tenements. But it seems to me that we must first ele-
vate the woman herself, and then she will be capable of using
a better tenement. The woman, the mother, must be helped
by other women. In the work I represent in New York there
are fifty earnest women, ten of whom are nurses, who are trained
for efficient service, and are giving their lives to this house-to-
house ministry in the homes of the lower part of our crowded
city. While I would not underestimate Bible instruction, our
first efforts are with the body. We must reach souls through
these houses of clay, for God hath joined them together and we
may not put them asunder. The trained nurse is able to open
a wide door into homes of the poor, and other workers may
easily follow with patient teaching and training.
Ignorance is often the first cause of misery, and children are
poorly nourished because the mother, married young from fac-
tory life, does not know the A B C of home-keeping. These
mothers need to be taught how to cook and what to buy and
what to do with their old bread and how to manage a day’s wage
to make it better meet the wants of the family. The parent
comes from the day’s toil, and Johnny is sent out, it may be,
for a piece of Bologna sausage, and Mary for baker's bread, and
one of the others for beer, or strong coffee is made, and on that
kind of a meal these growing children are fed. With such a diet
they can not resist the strains that come upon body and soul.
Let me add one suggestion in this line: If you go to such women
and say, ever so kindly, “You are poor; here is a kind of food
which is good for poor people and within your means,” you will
find that they do not want it. They want to eat the same kind
of food that you—the people up town—eat. I had at one time
a company of mothers gathered together to whom I was en-
50 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
deavoring to teach something of this kind, and I took a can of
tomatoes and a quart of milk and so combined them as to make
a very reasonably priced soup for a family (you all know what
bisque soup is); and in teaching them to make it, I said, “The
first time I ever took dinner at a Governor’s house we had this
kind of soup, and it was his favorite soup.” Immediately after
this there was quite a raid made upon the grocery store in that
vicinity for cans of tomatoes, because they all wanted to eat what
Governors eat. In your dealings with these people of the sub-
merged world, you must give them the thought that you are
not coming down to them, but recognize that you stand with
them. One young woman in New York voiced the feelings of
many by the words, “I am willing to have it said that I belong
to the poorer classes, but not to the lower classes.”
Another way of reaching the women is to go into the homes
and teach the mother how, even in quarters so cramped that the
five or six members of one family must occupy two small rooms,
modesty may be preserved. Among these people there are many
who are very careful, and manage adroitly in curtaining off a
part of their abode so that they live very decently in very small
space. They are capable of being taught by the tactful friendly
person who goes to them.
Another thought: We should teach the mothers how to
amuse their children. When the child in the “upper realm ’’
plays, you will notice that that child imitates its mother. She
receives and pays visits; hence the child dresses in old finery and
receives and pays visits with her playmates. The child of the
submerged world, whose mother toils over the tub all day or
goes out to clean offices, has little to imitate that is pleasant.
The street is the playground, and its influence full of evil. I
have been surprised at the quickness with which the women of
the submerged world have taken up this new thought of their
trying to amuse their children and yet not stop work. In one
tenement the little ones play doctor, the mother suggesting now
and then the different ailments. With a pair of blunt scissors
and a newspaper, and with dolls made from clothespins, many
a poor child can spend a happy hour.
Another and most important lesson needed to be taught in
MOTHERS OF THE SUBMERGED WORLD. 51
these homes is to show the mother how she can gain and keep
the respect of her child. The great trouble in our large cities,
and one which leads to the anarchism, socialism, or any other
bad ism, is that the mothers lose the hold they have upon their
children, and the child ceases to obey or respect her. The boy
who scoffs at mother's authority will soon defy the law of the
land. You remember the story of the prisoner who, on his way
to jail, turned to his mother, an aged woman, as though he
wished to kiss her, and when she turned her face to him he put
his teeth in her cheek, and said, “If it had not been for you, if
you had made me mind you, I wouldn’t be a criminal.” These
mothers are willing to learn how to cultivate respect for them-
selves in their children, but they do not know how of themselves.
They need to be told of a better way to make a child obedient
than slapping the child on the head or screaming at it. These
mothers have the habit of frightening and lying to their chil-
dren. But many people in the upper world as well as in the
submerged do that to gain temporary power.
There are various plans of reading carried on for these moth-
ers of whom I speak. Doubtless you are familiar with that
called
EIOME STUDY OF THE BIBLE.
Women who work at the washtub and with the scrubbing
brush study a few verses between times. The visitor talks to her
of her reading and helps her. Storybooks are taken to her—
stories which give her courage and brightness. “My Jimmy
respects me more now than he used to do,” said one mother,
“ because I can talk about things.”
Mothers’ meetings naturally follow. In my work we have
the babies, who must come if mother does, tended in another
room, so that the tired arms may rest for the hour. Hot coffee
and buns warm the heart as well as the stomach. Talks on how
to make the poorest home a little brighter, how to mend and
sew, cook and clean, train and nurse the babies, prevent sick-
ness, etc., are given. These “prisoners of poverty,’” shut within
their narrow houses, with only the high tenement on the oppo-
site side of the narrow street, and only the gossip of the tene-
52 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ment to think about, need to be lifted out into a broader place.
We must broaden their horizon, tell them of women who have
blessed the world—of women of other lands and how they live,
and, best of all, give them the comfort of the Gospel. Tell them
also of the better land which is opened to her by the promises
of God, that land to which we are all looking forward. And so
I repeat that personal visitation, personal instruction, personal
influence from house to house, hand to hand, and heart to heart,
afford the best possible solution of the difficulties met with in
the submerged world.
My topic has reference also to another class of women which
I am specially asked to mention—women who do not specially
belong to the submerged world, but who reach it—I mean the
mothers of illegitimate children. We have in New York a
Society which has been helping some of these mothers by finding
for such a mother a place in the country, where she may take
her child with her. When possible, mother love should be en-
couraged, and by holding them together for a time at least the
woman is kept from utter despair. Without hope, without love,
who can get right or keep right? We have a loving duty to do
for these women, more sinned against than sinning, but such
personal work as I have outlined will, by the blessing of God,
help to cut off the supply.
Is the picture of the submerged world, with all its poverty
and ignorance, too dark? There are bright spots. The poor are
almost always ready to be helpful to each other, and their sacri-
fices in giving are most noble.
Only last week a little boy, whose father and mother had
died—a little foreigner, unable to speak our language, and liv-
ing down in the most miserable part of New York—was taken
in and cared for by a family almost without food. The day
before they took the child to live with them they had had little
to eat, and at the time they had but one meal in the house, but
in order to help the boy the man pawned his own coat. I will
defy any one in the upper realm of life to show any kind of
charity equal to that.
A woman and her family who had lived in furnished rooms
and were unable to pay the rent were put on the street. They
MOTHERS OF THE SUBMERGED WORLD. 53
had no furniture, but from one friend and another we secured
a bed, chair, and table, but lacked a stove. A poor woman—as
poor as the one who had been placed upon the street—came
forward and gave her an old stove, which was cracked, to be
sure, but would answer for a time, and she had her husband
carry it to the new place. There was no stovepipe, and another
woman, equally poor, said, “I have a pipe that she may have.”
And the stove was fitted into the chimney. The co-operation,
the sympathy of the poor with each other, is very real.
Take the matter of sickness. You will find the women of
the submerged world sitting up all night with other women
whose homes are desolated by sickness and death, and then find
them going to work the next day as usual. I have in mind the
case of a boy whose father died and whose mother married again,
and then the mother died and his stepfather married again, so
that I shall have to leave it for you to name the relationship;
but somebody six or seven degrees removed from him took the
boy and said: “You may have a shakedown in the corner. We
are poor, but we won’t turn you out.” He was a cripple for life,
and they were too poor to feed him, but he was fed by neighbors
who from their poverty threw down to him, as he sat on the back
steps a bone or a crust of bread, or shared their very scanty meal
with him.
One other thought: What the people of the submerged world
are able to accomplish in spite of crushing difficulties? Let me
give one instance: A lad about fourteen years of age, whose
whole stock of linen consisted of one collar and a pair of cuffs,
was so cared for by his mother in her poverty that every night
this collar and these cuffs were made clean, and every morning
he went out from his attic home looking as nice and fresh as
a boy would wish to look. That lad has studied nights, his
mother has been interested in every step of his progress, and
from cash boy he has taken a position in one of the large whole-
sale stores of our own city. He is an active Christian, and from
the present outlook may yet become a man after the noble pat-
tern of the late William E. Dodge.
I have been asked to use a part of this time allotted to me
on your programme in speaking of the work done by the
54 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
DAY IN URSERIES.
Jacob Riis has written graphic stories of how, in lower New
York, he has seen in some of the down-town fires the charred
bodies of children brought out from burning tenements, children
who had been locked in while their mothers were away at work.
When mother must be breadwinner, it is the business of those
who would build the nation wisely to help her with her children,
and to help the mother by teaching her to help herself. The
day nursery is one of the best of these methods. If you doubt
the need of the day nursery in every locality where there are
toiling mothers, visit the tenements. Here a group of children
cared for by a paralyzed grandfather, there a room where three
children are locked in from morning to night, and still another
place, where children who had been locked in by their mothers
I saw engaged in holding a patriotic celebration with matches
and sticks, and what the end of that conflagration would have
been had not the play been interrupted you can imagine. At the
nursery the child is trained to love of cleanliness and to obedi-
ence; is taught how to play and work by kindergarten plans;
the good food and regular daily maps, the merry games, build
up the growing body.
The Virginia Day Nursery of my own society in New York
is situated in the crowded East Side, and from fifty to sixty little
ones daily enjoy the sunny rooms, the plants and birds, the
kindergarten and games. Mothers are able to work better, be-
cause they are sure no harm can come to their children. Healthy,
happy, obedient children will make brighter homes and better
citizens. The home and the citizen make the nation.
One other thought as I close: There is no wide chasm be-
tween the avenue and the alley, and no great, high, impenetra-
ble wall between the submerged world and the world of wealth
or culture, and there are thousands who are constantly passing
from one to the other. General Grant said, “We are members
of a republic in which one man is as good as another before the
law,” and the vote of the child down in the slums by and by
will count for just as much as the vote of the boy up on the
avenue. Let us make this a personal matter, we mothers of the
WHAT THE KINDERGARTEN MEANS TO MoTHERS. 55
republic. What are we doing for the homes of the submerged
world? No matter how beautiful may be the edifice of our social
life, if it is rotting at the foundation, that edifice will surely
fall.
WHAT THE KINDERG ARTEN MEANS TO
MOTHERS.
By Miss AMALIE HOFER,
Chicago, Ill.
IN the face of the facts which Mr. Cushing has told us con-
cerning the life of the Indian mother, and in the face of the
facts which Mrs. Bainbridge has just recorded about the life of
the down-town New York mother, let us suppose that we live in
the days of good fairies, and may choose from all the kinds of
mothers in the world. What kind of a mother would we choose
here to-day for our mother? I can not avoid a momentary feel-
ing of discouragement when I hear such stories as those we
have just heard from this platform, and yet I do know that great
reconstructive work is going on also not only under the names
of philanthropy and reform, but in the thousands of homes
which have never yet descended to that low plane which makes
reform and philanthropy necessary. This great current of con-
structive work should have its representative right here and
now; and I am glad to speak to you from the kindergarten
standpoint, considering the kindergarten in its general sense,
in its social and educational significance, rather than as a philan-
thropic factor. To be sure, the kindergarten has been one of
the means of reconstructing motherhood in its daily practice
in family life in a thousand city districts which have not other-
wise been reached; but I like to think of the work that the
kindergarten is doing at the other end of the social line, of the
work which I believe it has done to bring many of you mothers
here to this Congress, such work as to make such a Congress as
56 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
this a national demand. Such work is its greatest glory and its
greatest credit. • .
As we speak of the work of the kindergarten, each think
immediately of the kindergarten she herself has seen. Those
from California will think of the Silver Street Kindergarten,
and those from New York the particular, favorite mission which
you have visited or in which you have worked, and will recall
the class of children and possibly the quality of the kindergartner
in charge, and all will remember that it afforded a pretty sight.
Why is the kindergarten a pleasing sight even under the most
disadvantageous circumstances? One reason is that she who
goes into that work has laid upon her heart as her chief work
that of typing humanity in the best sense she may to the chil-
dren who shall come to her. You often hear that the kinder-
garten philosophy is something so deep or profound that not
every one can comprehend its teachings, or at least that it takes
years of study to understand it; but I can give you in a few
words the reason why that philosophy has come to be so potent.
Its main and fundamental idea is that the great function of the
adult is not to serve the child, not to reform the child, not to
feed and clothe and dress the child, but to practice in the pres-
ence of that child, as a type, as a pattern, all that the child
should aspire to become. It sounds presuming, does it not?
And yet we do not hesitate to teach color in the kindergarten by
giving the standard, typical, pure colors, and our artist friends
think that this is wise and right. We teach form by giving
the children the type forms, so that they may look out into the
world and find it simplified and classified. We present Nature
lessons in a large and general way, so that the child shall not
be impeded by detail before he is ready to use it, but may go
out and find the beautiful world a place that is readable, even
though he may never come to study botany or geology. We
present all the so-called lessons in the kindergarten, whether
intellectual or ethical, from the standpoint of fundamental law
and eternal facts.
These, however, would not in themselves constitute a social
reform or usher in an educational movement, but would rather
provide an expedient and better method of teaching children,
WHAT THE KINDERGARTEN MEANS TO MOTHERS. 57
perhaps economically, by ways and means which are more direct
in making them familiar with form and color, and later with
reading, writing, and arithmetic, and still later with Science
and art. But we go further than this. We aim, as kindergart-
ners, to consciously type the race life to the child, believing that
the purpose of adults “being mixed, as God has mixed them,”
with little children in the human family, believing that the
function and purpose of our existence along with the children
is to epitomize to them what has gone before, and hold before
them the reasonable object lesson of what is in store for them.
We aim at nothing less than the reflecting to the children given
into our charge as nearly as possible, and as impersonally as pos-
sible, the fair average of a beautiful, perfected human life. This
is why it sometimes takes two years to learn how to be a good
kindergartner.
Why are we always sorry when we hear of little children
being left as orphans? There are plenty of grown people in the
world to take care of them. There are all manner of institu-
tions waiting, and other mothers’ hearts everywhere ready to
take up these children, and yet we are invariably sorry when
we hear of a father who is left with three or more little ones.
Can anything in the world replace to the child that peculiar
quality not merely of being loved, but of being served and loved
at the same time, which it is the mother’s privilege to afford? I
believe if we were to generally accept as true the claim of the
kindergarten as to what constitutes motherhood, our State insti-
tutions would be reformed, and while we would not rest content
until kindergartners were placed in charge of the inmates to
transform the institution into a family, we would also speedily
lessen the need for those institutions.
Those of you here to-day who have little children at home
will want to know what you can do at your end of the line, per-
haps at the same time that you are busy helping on the work
being done for the less fortunate. What can you do to prevent
that subtle disintegrating element from creeping into your own
households? What can you do to keep your boys and girls from
becoming such problems that it requires a whole institutional
government to legislate and punish and finally reform them?
58 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
We have been told that the deficiencies of motherhood are found
not only in the submerged parts of the city. I know this to be
a fact, and I believe that this Congress is the strongest proof that
earnest, intelligent women want to know not merely “scientific
methods of bringing up children’’ (as some one remarked on
the street to-day), but economical measures. I believe in the
kindergarten because it is economical. It saves—yes, it saves in
dollars and cents—because it conserves that wonder product
known as human energy, through starting the children right
in their ideals of what constitutes life and the purpose of human-
ity. It does this through its teaching of the value and meaning
of human fatherhood and motherhood, brothers and sisters, and
neighbors. Its educational idea is the greatest social economic
measure of the day. I believe that the kindergarten put into the
public Schools of our country (when the time is ripe, when you
and I have helped to make it ripe) will, as an institution, do for
society at large what the young child does for every individual
of the family into which it comes—that it will serve as a daily
reminder to those in power that their highest duty is to serve
as the pattern of what these little ones should become and should
wish to become.
Coming on the train to Washington, there was a party of
five children with a beautiful mother. The smallest child,
scarcely three years old, walked up to us and said: “See how
big I am now. I was not so big once, but just see how big I am
now,” just as we did when we were children, just as every child
who has breathed and lived and grown has said. I replied,
“Pretty soon you will be bigger, and then what will you be?”
“I am going to be just like my mamma.” This earnest mother
of the child could be quite happy in her child’s aspiration.
Another instance of how children aspire to become as their
elders: An unattractive child in the Chicago Orphan Asylum had
waited long for some one to come and take him away, having
witnessed how this and the other child had been “taken home.”
As an explanation, the matron had said that Johnny's papa had
come to take him home or Mamie's mamma had come to take
her home. Finally he asked, “Why doesn’t my papa come?”
Again and again he demanded to know why his papa did not
WHAT THE KINDERG ARTEN MEANS TO MOTHERS. 59
come to take him home, growing more and more impatient. One
day a gentleman of very fine appearance came into the office,
and in the most polite and courteous manner made inquiry to see
the baby girls, as he might wish to adopt one. Then this little
boy walked up to him and asserted, “You are my papa.”
“No, indeed, I am not your papa.” But the child, tired
of waiting for his turn, appropriated the newcomer, and accom-
panied him as he was shown through the wards, holding him by
the hand. Later while the gentleman was waiting, seated in
the office, Joe climbed to his lap, fumbled with his watch chain,
and patted his cheek; and as a last resort this fine gentleman
asked whether it would be possible for him to make arrangements
to take the little fellow home with him for a brief vacation.
This was arranged, and little Joe, with his scarred face, and with
the complexion which had been largely to blame for his being
left behind, was taken away by the strong, handsome gentleman.
After two weeks the word came that they could not get along
without Joe, and wished to keep him, with the added comment
that there was every reason to believe that Joe would make his
way in the world.
That eraving, that demand for a human ideal, is the salva-
tion of little children; that demand and the fidelity to that
craving for an ideal within human reach, within sight, within
touch, and that can be handled and loved, is what helps chil-
dren to grow up and out into beautiful lives in spite of the im-
mediate shortcomings of father or mother, or possibly the ab-
sence of either. One of the most sacred duties of the kinder-
garten is to cherish and honor every trace of this craving for
the ideal on the part of the child; to send that child home to
honor fatherhood and motherhood, no matter what the father
and mother may be. It is sometimes our most difficult work,
and yet it is the only chance of sustaining respect for the human
life and preserving to the child the power to aspire.
Not long ago I was in a street car in which there was a beau-
tiful child kneeling on the seat, looking out of the window, giv-
ing a full side view of her animated, beautiful face to the people
in the car. Among the other passengers was a young man who
is an illustrator for one of our daily newspapers. He was sketch-
60 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ing the profile of a prominent politician who sat across the aisle,
and was very much engrossed in his work. Knowing him, I
asked: “Why don’t you sketch that child? It is not every day
that you can have a child pose for you in that beautiful, uncon-
Scious way, and you can find a politician on any street corner.”
The young man drawled in a worldly way (and I would not have
had his mother hear him say it): “Children are such strange
Creatures. I never know just what to make of them, and so I
keep my distance.” He was a man possibly twenty-five years
of age. A gray-haired man, who had lived long enough to know
Some things, took up the conversation at this point, and in-
quired, “How long, my dear young friend, is it since you were
a child?”
The tendency to grow away from all that is free and spon-
taneous and childlike is certainly not to be encouraged, and is
only too often a result of an indifference on the part of parents
as to the ideals of their children. The mother or father who
patronizes the child is not the kindergarten kind of mother or
father. The business man who merely tolerates his children
is not our ideal of what a father should be, and brothers and sis-
ters who scorn the companionship of younger ones are quite out
of warp. If the kindergarten philosophy restores the adult world
to the right attitude toward little children, and reminds those
who have no little ones of their rightful claims, it will have
done a great social service. If the presence of the kindergarten
in our system of public education serves as a child-nature re-
minder to the great teaching force of this country (which num-
bers many times that of our standing army), it will have done
a great educational service. If, by having a corner of its own
in every public school building, the kindergarten preserves to
the thousands of growing boys and girls, as they pass from grade
to grade, that perennial Sweetness and spontaneity which is the
glory of every human life, it will have done a great ethical
service for all time to come.
The other day a little boy asked, “Why don’t people in our
days talk the way they did in the Homer days?” He had been
told stories in which the gods and goddesses appeared among
men, and spoke in flowing, poetical, metaphorical style, and he
PARENTAL REVERENCE IN THE HEBREW HOME. 61
liked it. It suited his ideal of grown folks. You may remem-
ber, away back in the beginning of your own time, how you
looked up to grown people, and ascribed to them all the qualities
of kings and queens and those other rare people who live in the
child’s Olympus—his imagination? These qualities the children
literally force upon us grown people. The kindergartner believes
that their visions of adult perfection may be realized. If chil-
dren want us as gods and goddesses, it is our privilege to make
it the business of our life to become such. Until the individual
family sustains that dignity and majesty of human life within
its own circle, no reforms of institutional life, political or ethical,
can replace in the hearts of the growing children those ideals and
aspirations which their souls will always crave.
PARENTAL REVERENCE AS TAUGHT IN THE
ELEBREW BIOME.
By MRs. REBEKAH KOHUT,
New York City.
PROF. LAZARUs, of Berlin, in his first essay on the Psychology
of Nations, has referred to the typic-symbolical fact that with
all civilized nations their founders came near losing their lives
during childhood. They were saved—among the gentle Greeks,
Zeus by a goat; among the rude Romans, Romulus by a she
wolf; and Moses by Jochebed, his own mother. This last fact,
that the founder of the Jewish nation was saved by his own
mother, suggests, it seems to me, in the strongest manner the
family devotion which has distinguished the Jewish race from
so many nations since the earliest times. *.
To the prophetess Deborah was granted the title “Mother
in Israel,” because of her valiant deed for Israel’s welfare, and,
of course, this was supposed to be the highest title that could be
given her.
b
62 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
The Hebrew words meaning house and mother are coexten-
sive, the mother and the house being one. Indeed, all through
the Bible, from the pictures of the mothers Sara and Rebekah
and the rest, we can glean how much woman’s word was re-
spected, and how important a position she held in the home.
To be a mother was the crown of the Jewish wife. Bible and
Talmud say, “The house is the real temple of woman, the edu-
cation of children her divine service, and the family her con-
gregation.” Solomon sang of the ideal Jewish mother in his
Proverbs, and if the most beautiful picture in the world is that
of the Virgin and Child, is it not at the same time the picture
of the Jewish mother?
The Bible makes man’s parents equally deserving with the
Most High of his honor and reverence. “Honor thy father
and thy mother ” is one of the precepts of the Decalogue; and it
is also written, “Fear thy mother and thy father.” These are
divine inculcations, while the penalty for the blasphemous child
who sins against his earthly parents or the great Father of the
universe is the same, for it is written in the same spirit, “Who
curses his father and mother shall be put to death,” as it is said.
“And every man who blasphemes God shall carry his death.”
“Three friends,” said the rabbis, “ has man—God, his father,
and his mother.” “He who honors his parents,” says God,
“honors me, even as though I lived among them; ” and it is ex-
plained by the rabbis that the Fifth Commandment is placed in
the Decalogue between the other nine because respect for par-
ents binds together the first four, our duty toward God, and the
last five, our duty toward our fellow-men. It is, of course, a
difficult matter to outline distinctly now the relations which
then existed between Jewish parents and their children, for here
we are dealing with an impalpable sentiment, which but imper-
fectly materialized itself in quaint and ennobling customs. Tho
full pathos of the love which linked a Jewish father to his son
can not be set down in words. It is natural that the Jewish
law books fail us here. Judaism, it has been said, is a religion
of laws. I am glad to say that the duties of children to parents
are very imperfectly codified, though there are enough still to
give us a broad view of those relations; but the Jewish heart
PARENTAL REVERENCE IN THE HEBREW HOME. 63
was free to follow its emotions. To their obedience to the Ten
Commandments is due primarily the survival of the Jews. For
more than two thousand years they have been playing the part of
scapegoat in the drama of the nations, and have been driven
from land to land. To what, then, is due their continuing ex-
istence? It is to their religion. Greece and Rome, with their
splendid civilization and legislation, have vanished. Judea,
inferior in the arts both of war and peace, still exists, a witness
to the truth of the idea that there is but one God, Father of
all, and holding in his hand the destinies of all.
He loves the good and hates the bad. This is and has been
the keynote of the Jewish religion. But this religion was never
restricted to holidays and Sabbaths, and to fulfillments in the
synagogue alone, but almost revery daily action of man or
woman in the household and out of it was accompanied by the
performance of some religious rite. A people that believes that
religion is not for any distinct time or place, but that it must
enter into every phase of life, is virile; and when we remember
that in the Jewish home the father was to the child the repre-
sentative of God, the Father in heaven, it is easily conceived that
the practice of religion by the child’s father was of the highest
value in the conduct of his own daily life.
The Bible places the duty of honoring parents in a special
category, suggesting longevity as a reward for the observance of
this obligation, but specifying no penalty for its neglect.
The Jewish prayer book includes the honoring of parents
among those things the fruits of which a man enjoys in this
world, while the principle remains with him for the world to
come. Even the babbling child was taught to utter prayers of
thanks to God on rising, and to invoke his divine grace for the
coming day; after each meal prayers of thanks were said; and
before retiring the last conscious act was the saying of a prayer.
And in these several prayers to the Father in heaven there was
always included an invocation of divine blessing for the parents
on earth. Indeed, it was by this constant reminder of the re-
ligious importance of honoring father and mother that it became,
as it were, the nature of the child.
Innumerable passages might, of course, be quoted from the
64 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Old Testament to show how much religious importance was
attached to the honor shown father and mother, viz.: “Every
one shall fear his mother and his father ” (Lev. xix, 3); “Cursed
be he who despiseth his father and his mother, and the whole
people say Amen” (Deut. xxvii, 16).
The Temple was destroyed; the Jews became a scattered
nation; little of earthly goods did the Jew carry with him to
his exile. But he had possessions of which no tyrants could rob
him—they were his Bible, his law, and his traditions; and
wherever he pitched his tent, driven as he was from land to land,
his home became a sanctuary unto the Lord, a bulwark of social
and moral strength, a headlight of home purity and equality
amid the darkness of the surrounding nations, by reason of the
religious atmosphere that pervaded it. Soon the Ghetto walls
arose, and more than ever, from religious motives, was the Jew’s
home to become his world. Love, of necessity, grew too deep
to need legal encouragements or restraints. The same courtesies
of etiquette which were observed between parents and children
in England only a generation or two ago prevailed in Jewish life
for centuries, when life had become a real burden to the Jew,
and persecution’s rage was the only kind of tolerance he knew.
A Jewish son always stood in his father’s presenge. The
father’s seat was never occupied by any one else. In the syna-
gogue, when the father was called to read the law, the son rever-
ently rose from his seat and remained standing during the read-
ing. On the eve of the great Day of Atonement the children
were summoned to appear penitently in the father's presence,
to invoke the parent’s forgiveness for the sins of the year, even
before asking forgiveness from God. But most valuable in the
complete picture of home life in the Middle Ages is the Sabbath
eve celebration. How impressive when the father, returning
from divine service, folds his hands upon the bowed heads of
his children, giving them his blessing in God’s name, thus im-
buing the child with filial love and veneration, and himself with
moral responsibility toward his offspring. A number of writers,
mostly German, have caught this undercurrent of beauty in the
lives of a hampered people, who quietly passed their days in the
shadow of the Ghetto wall. But most touching of all is that "
PARENTAL REVERENCE IN THE HEBREW HOME. 65
particularly beautiful picture of the Ghetto Jew by Heinrich
Heine. Here you see him all the week with the pack upon his
back, almost doubled with the very burden of life; but on the
Sabbath eve he is suddenly transformed into a prince of men
as he returns from the synagogue with the divine benediction
upon his now almost spiritual countenance, hastening to his
humble home (but which is at the same time his castle), his wife
and children running eagerly to greet him; the Snowy cloth,
the Sabbath lights, the poor man too (for it was Jewish law to
provide for the poor); and as he stretches out his hands to bless,
with the blessing that Jacob gave to his children, he is no longer
a poor Jewish peddler, but a high priest, and his wife a veritable
high priestess. What mattered to him the stones and cuffs of the
week? It was the Sabbath, and he was lost in its glory and
beauty. Can you not see the value of such scenes as an influ-
ence for good in a child’s respect for parents? Or shall we go
further and relate how, even to this day, no Jewish child fails to
light the taper on the anniversary of the death of his or her
parents, carrying the respect for father and mother even beyond
the grave? And the rabbis taught this, that the child who for-
gets to respect the wishes of his parents by doing those things
which are prescribed, and not keeping those commandments
which father and mother taught him to keep, whose relation
to his children does not reflect the religious and moral training
he received at home, creates a chasm in his life which he can
not bridge, even by lighting the anniversary lights.
Rabbi Ulah, one of the Talmud rabbis, was once asked, “How
extended should be the honor due to parents?” He replied:
“Listen, and I will tell you. There was a diamond merchant,
and the sages desired to purchase from him a jewel for the ephod
of the high priest. When they reached his house they found
that the key of the safe in which the diamond was kept was in
the possession of Damalis's father, who was sleeping. The son
absolutely refused to awaken his father to obtain the key, even
when the sages in their impatience offered him a much larger
sum for the jewel than he had demanded. And, further, when
his father awoke, and he delivered the diamond to the purchasers,
and they gave him the larger sum they had named, he took
66 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
from it his first price, returning the balance with the words,
‘I will not profit by the honor which I have for my father.’”
The Talmud abounds in such stories, iterating again and again
the importance attached to the proper relations between parents
and children. This, then, was the compensation the Jew re-
ceived for the persecution of the Middle Ages. Walled in from
the outside world, all he had was his honor and the recollection
of a glorious past, and he knew it, and he preserved his tradi-
tions to the highest degree in his home life. Judea's Temple
fell, and the biblical Jews became a scattered people. The walls
of the Ghetto fell, and the Jew could walk out among the people
of the world, rich with the knowledge and traditions of a nar-
rowed life. Since Mendelssohn’s time many of the barriers which
separated Jew and Gentile have been gradually removed, until
now we stand alongside of each other, working hand in hand
in all that is for the good and for the amelioration and emanci-
pation of mankind. Even a Jewish mother has been asked to
bring her simple message to the mothers of other denominations,
hopeful that perhaps in some home the good old spirit of paren-
tal reverence will take root and grow.
Simultaneously with the granting of civil and religious rights
the Jewish mind, trained for centuries almost exclusively in the
study of the Bible and Talmud, eagerly sought other avenues.
The horizon widened, and religious ceremonies no longer played
So important a part in their lives, as, indeed, it has ceased to
play in the lives of many people who are not Jews. But the
strong family ties, the honor of father and mother, parental
affection, so typical of the Jewish parents, and which grew and
were fostered in the true religious sense, because God com-
manded that it should be so when he gave the law to Moses, and
which were the Jews’ compensation for the Ghetto life—these
still live, and have become proverbial among the nations of the
earth.
Should you go into any American-Jewish home, or into the
Jewish home of any other land (and in what land is there not
a Jew?), you will, on the whole, find that home the same as the
other homes of that country. The Jew is a citizen of that part
of the world in which he lives. But “Mother of Israel” is still
THE AFRO-AMERICAN MOTHER. 67
a title of honor, and “Father ” is still a word of holiest meaning.
Parental reverence still exists, for the Jew is still, to a large ex-
tent, a creature of traditions.
There can be no more important theme for mothers to dis-
cuss. It is a pathetic picture we ofttimes see, this relegating of
parents by children to a secondary place in the home. It is a
picture which no one can see without a sense of shame, a sense
of pain.
Teach your children while they are young the way in which
they should go, and in your old age they will not depart from
the path. Begin with the Decalogue, as the wise old Hebrews
did, and every day make your children realize that father and
mother are Heaven’s representatives on earth, and that to be
disrespectful to them is a sin against God, the Father in heaven.
THE AFRO-AMERICAN MOTHER.
. By MRs. FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER,
Philadelphia, Penn.
It is now more than thirty years since a newly emancipated
people stood on the threshold of a new era, facing an uncertain
future; a legally unmarried race to be taught the sacredness of
the marriage relation; an ignorant race to be taught to read
the Book of the Christian’s law, and to learn to comprehend the
claims of the Gospel of Christ of Calvary; a homeless race to be
gathered into homes of peaceful security, and instructed how to
plant their strongest batteries against the sins that degrade and
the vices that demoralize; a race unversed in the science of
government, and unskilled in the just administration of law,
to be translated from the old oligarchy of slavery into the new
commonwealth of freedom. To the men of this race came the
right to exchange the fetters on their wrist for the ballots in
their right hands—ballots which, if not vitiated by fraud or
restrained by violence, would count just as much as those of the
“r.
68 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
most talented and influential men in the land. While politicians
may stumble on the barren mountains of fretful controversy,
and while men who lack faith in God and the invisible forces
which make for righteousness may shrink from the unsolved
problems of the hour, into the hands of Christian women comes
the opportunity of serving the ever-blessed Christ by minister-
ing to his little ones, and striving to teach neglected and igno-
rant mothers how to make their homes the brightest spots on
earth and the fairest types of heaven.
The school may instruct and the Church may teach, but the
home is older than the Church, antedates the school, and is the
place in which to train children for useful citizenship on earth
and a hope of holy companionship in heaven. Every mother
should endeavor to be a true artist. I do not mean by this that
every woman should be a painter, sculptor, musician, poet, or
writer, but that the mother should be an artist who can write
on the tablet of childish innocence thoughts which she will not
blush to see read in the light of eternity, and placed amid the
archives of heaven—thoughts which the young may learn to
bind as amulets around their hearts and throw as bulwarks around
their lives, so that in the hour of temptation and trial the voices
from home may linger in their paths as angels of guidance
around their steps.
As marriage is the maker of homes, its duties and responsi-
bilities should be understood before it is entered upon. A mis-
take made here may run through every avenue of our lives, and
cast a shadow over all our coming years. In education we may
become well versed in ancient lore and modern learning, able
to trace the paths of worlds that roll in light and power on high,
and tell when comets shall cast their trails over our evening
skies; we may learn to understand the laws of stratification well
enough to judge where lies the vein of silver or where Nature
hides her virgin gold; we may be able to tell the story of de-
parted nations and conquering chieftains who have added pages
of blood and tears to the world’s history; but our education is
deficient if we are ignorant of how to guide the little lives in-
trusted to our care, and if we can not see in the undeveloped
possibilities of our children gold more fine than the pavements
THE AFRO-AMERICAN MOTHER. 69
of heaven and gems more precious than the foundations of the
Holy City.
When a woman marries she helps to lay the foundation of a
new home, and she should be careful in choosing the building
mate. If it would be folly for a merchant to trust an argosy
laden with the richest treasures at midnight on a moonless Sea
without a rudder, a compass, or a guide, is it not worse than mad-
ness for a woman to trust her future welfare and the happiness
of her home in the unsteady hands of a man who by intemper-
ance has lost his self-control?
We need an enlightened parenthood. The moment the
crown of motherhood falls on the brow of a young woman God
gives to her a new interest in the welfare of the home and the
well-being of society. Society acquires an added interest in the
welfare of each new member that enters it. Whether his advent
shall prove a blessing or a bane, an addition to the dangerous
and perishing classes, or a moral and spiritual force, making life
brighter and better, depends upon the home and mother influ-
ence. Not only for the sake of our own people, but for the sake
of the nation, there is need of an enlightened parentage.
You of the Caucasian race were born to an inheritance of
privileges; behind you are ages of civilization, education, and
organized Christianity; behind us are ages of ignorance, poverty,
and slavery; and now into your hands, oh, my favored sisters,
God has placed one of the grandest opportunities that ever fell
into the hands of a nation or a people. Has not the colored
mother a claim not simply upon your compassion, but also upon
your sense of justice? If the great apostle to the Gentiles felt
that he was a debtor to the Jew and the Greek, the Roman and
the barbarian, have you no debt to be paid to the colored mother-
hood of the country? If St. Paul felt that the barbarian had
made him a debtor by building the roads on which the tidings
of the Gospel he loved could run with nimble feet, that the
Jews had a hold upon his gratitude for preserving the idea of
the unity of God—the great, the grand, and central thought of
the universe—and the Greek for the development of a literature
that added to his resources of expression, has not the negro
also a claim upon a nation in which he helped build up the
70 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
great cotton power, rendering the toil of his hands to the
mills?
I do not ask any special favor for the colored mother. Only
let us be tried by the same rules and judged by the same stand-
ards as are other people. I am not asking any material favors
from a thread to a shoe latchet. But I do ask you to give what
we can not touch with our hands, the ideal things that can not
be measured with a line nor weighed in a balance, just those
things which gold is too poor to buy—kind words and holy
wishes, and the clemency of hearts inspired by love to God and
man. I ask that you will do what you can to create a public
opinion which will not class the worthy and the worthless to-
gether, nor say to the most intelligent and virtuous woman
applying for a situation, “The color of your skin must be a
badge of exclusion; no valor nor any virtue can redeem you,
nothing can wipe off the ban that clings to you.” Trample, if
you will, on our bodies, but do not crush out self-respect from
our souls. If you want us to act as women, treat us as women.
If you want us to become good Christians, teach us concerning
our high origin, our relation to God, our possibilities of rising
so high in the scale of moral and spiritual life that from being
a little lower than the angels we may become one with God,
even as Christ was one—one in spirit and One in harmony.
I am not here to laud the progress of the colored woman, nor
to attempt to soothe our people by humming a pleasant lullaby,
saying that we are a race which has made a wonderful progress
in the short space of time since our emancipation. Never before
was there a race of enslaved people who lived in such a wonder-
ful period of history. The sun is now our engraver, the swift-
winged lightning our messenger, and steam our tireless beast
of burden. Never before, I think, in all the history of slavery,
ancient and modern, was there an emancipated people upon
whom so much money was bestowed in providing them with edu-
cation. Never, do I think, was philanthropy more widespread
nor charity more thoughtful than it has been since the war.
Nor has all this outlay been barren of results.
In 1860 the Commissioner of Education showed the number
of negroes enrolled in the schools as absolutely trifling. In 1870,
THE AFRO-AMERICAN MOTHER. 71
five years after they became free, the records of the census show
that only two tenths of all the negroes over ten years of age in
the country could write. Ten years later the proportion had
increased to three tenths of the whole number; and in 1890,
only a generation after they were emancipated, not less than
forty-three out of every one hundred negroes of ten years of age
and over were able to read and write. These figures show a
remarkably rapid progress in elementary education. In all the
Southern States, except in North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana,
and Texas, it appears from statistics that the enrollment of negro
children has increased more rapidly than that of the whites.
This is the era of golden opportunity for American woman-
hood. It is theirs to exert their influence against the lawlessness
in the land which is not merely racial, but a symptom of disease
in the body politic. And now, in conclusion, permit me to en-
treat you that as numbers of the young women of the colored
race are around you as servants, and come in constant contact
with your children, that you will hold it as a sacred trust to instill
into their minds the best principles, and hold up before them
the highest ideals of integrity of character and purity of life.
What is noblest and best to teach your daughters is not too noble
and good to teach them. Close not the door of opportunity upon
any on account of color or race. In domestic service place a
premium on industry, virtue, and intelligence. A young girl
trained as a kindergarten pupil might be of great value to a
young mother as a useful assistant in the work of child-rearing.
Between both branches of the human race in this country there
is a community of interests, and their interests all lie in one
direction.
72 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
WEDNESDAY EVENING, 8 O'CLOCK.
MOTHERS AND THE SCHOOLS.
By MRs. WILBUR. F. CRAFTS,
Washington, D. C.
A YOUNG wife chose for a motto to place in her private room
the words of Jesus when he said, “Suffer little children to come
unto me.” She subsequently became the mother of ten sons
and one daughter. When she went out to drive her commodious
carriage was filled with her children and with flowers. The
flowers were for other people's children. She drove not only
through the parks and finest streets for her own pleasure and
that of her children, but she also went through sections of the
city where the streets were filled with poor children at play, so
that she might scatter flowers among them. Through her long
life her words and deeds ennobled motherhood, and taught other
people with whom she came in contact that motherhood is wom-
an’s noblest condition.
The world loves to pay tribute to motherhood. There are
Some great mothers whose names are honored of many nations,
but every mother has a shrine in some loving heart. It has long
been held that mother, home, and heaven are the three sweetest
words in our language.
Among the many tributes which the world pays to mother-
hood, the kindergarten is perhaps the greatest, not excepting
art and literature. It is higher than painting, because life itself
is greater than the representation of life. A group of dimpled
darlings, instinct with ever-changing grace and mood, are far
more interesting than any painted group could be, even though
Raphael be the artist. These life pictures are day by day being
produced in the kindergartens of our land, where not alone the
graceful games and occupations form the setting of the pictures,
but where soul development is an element beyond a painter's
brush to depict.
MOTHERS AND THE SCHOOLS. 73
The kindergarten is higher than the poem because it not
only develops lofty imaginations and ideals, but it provides ways
and means of carrying them out. There are lyrics and idyls and
pastorals being enacted every day in kindergartens.
We lay the kindergarten at the feet of motherhood because
Frederich Froebel, its founder, tells us that his system is the
“science of motherhood.” He went about among peasant moth-
ers, observing the sweet plays which they had instinctively with
their little ones; these he caught and fixed forever in picture
and Song and motto in his so-called Mütterbuch, which a lead-
ing kindergarten author in somewhat mistaken zeal calls “the
kindergarten Bible.” It is not a Bible in any sense, but it is
one of the noblest books to guide in the right development of
little children. Froebel is said to have been the possessor of a
well-worn Bible, and he certainly would not wish to be credited,
or rather discredited, with making one of his own for others to
study.
The genius of the kindergarten system is motherhood, but
it does not put mothers on a pedestal and say, “Here are unerr-
ing guides '; instead, it seeks to educate mothers as well as
children, but the fact remains that true motherhood is the right
standard in education, and not in elementary schools alone. I
have long felt that the school should not be an institution sepa-
rate from the home and peculiar to itself, but should rather be
the broadening out of the home life. Just as we now have
“Greater Chicago’’ and “Greater New York,” let the school
be. looked upon as a part of the greater family. Or, turning the
picture about, let us compare it with Magna Grecia. The penin-
sula was not Greece alone, but the outlying islands and colonies
as well. Let these two illustrations serve to carry the thought
that the home element must be in the school and the school
element must be in the home.
This is the ideal; what is the reality? Almost universally
mothers sigh with relief as their children take up their books
daily and start off to school. They have the feeling that for a
few hours, at least, they are “rid of them.” They know hardly
anything of the conditions by which their children are to be
surrounded during the five or six hours of their absence from
74 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
home. They would hardly know the teacher of their children if
they should meet her on the street. The teacher, on the other
hand, does not know them, and the two who should know each
other best, because both have the welfare of the same children
at heart, are as ships that pass in the night.
As a schoolgirl I was taught to sing about the parents:
They visit their cows,
They visit their farms,
But why don’t they visit their schools?
Even this did not bring the mothers to visit the school!
As a former teacher, I must confess that the unusual sight
of a mother coming toward the schoolhouse always filled me
with trepidation, because I knew some complaint was about to
be brought against me. A friendly visit from a mother was an
incident almost unknown. I have questioned teachers of this
present time, and those beyond the kindergarten tell me that
their experience is like my own.
Let us discover if we can why the school and the home are
so far apart. When civilization was young and homes were
isolated, the children were taught at home by their parents. As
wealth increased, social duties made it necessary that tutors
should be employed. As the population increased, and homes
became closer together, the idea grew apace that one tutor might
do for all the children in a neighborhood, and the schoolhouse
was erected as a common place of meeting. The teacher
“boarded around,” and so in a certain sense the school was a
family matter. Under such conditions it was hardly possible for
the school to, be a law unto itself.
As the number of children increased, it became necessary to
build larger schoolhouses and more of them, and the school
system was established. It was then that parents took upon
themselves the attitude of laisser faire. They Americanized the
French motto, “Laisser faire et passer le mond va de liw-meme,”
to read, “Let the school alone, it revolves of itself.” The re-
sult has been that our schools have become almost devoid of
practical training or religious teaching—something very unlike
MOTHERS AND THE SCHOOLS. 75
the true home. Instruction rather than education seems to
have become the aim of the school, and our boys and girls,
particularly those who must early set about earning their daily
bread, are not prepared for the tasks before them. Their
acquirements in the school have given them distaste for hand
labor, and therefore many pursuits are left untouched by
them, to be taken up by those who come as foreigners to our
shores.
It were better if the home idea should again prevail, not to
the extent of each family having a tutor or of the restoration of
the village school, but let there be a renaissance of home interest
and co-operation with the school. Let parents, particularly
mothers, put in the list of their solemn obligations: 1, Frequent
visitation of the schools attended by their children; 2, thorough
acquaintance with the teachers of their children; 3, co-opera-
tion with the school plans.
A movement in the right direction was a reception given in
Boston by parents to the teachers of their children, in order to
express their appreciation and gratitude. “Had those teachers
not received their salaries?” asked some Shylock. I would reply
that noblesse oblige has no money value; it is above and beyond
it. Better than the public reception was the taking to one’s
heart and hearthstone the teacher of one’s children. If there
should be a difference in culture and in social standing, it can
best be overcome by repeated acts of such kindnesses, and the
reflex influence will be seen in the more refined and delicate
handling of the children in the schoolroom. Before leaving this
part of my subject, I can not refrain from saying that as mother-
hood has given a science to education, it would be wise to con-
tinue woman in its councils, and give her places upon school
boards, as has been done in some of our States and Territories
and in a few of the large cities of the world. Let the mothers
share with the fathers in plans for public education as they share
in the home training.
As a suggestion of what mothers can do for the schools, let
me remind you that the organized motherhood of the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union, under the inspiring leadership in
this department of Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, has secured compulsory
76 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
scientific temperance education laws in forty-one State Legis-
latures and in Congress for the Territories, so giving to sixteen
millions of children knowledge of the perils that lurk in alco-
holics and narcotics. If one thirtieth of the motherhood of the
churches can do so much, what might not be done if all the
mothers could join in the work of improving the school? Could
we not even bring back the Bible?
Viewing the school as a part of the greater family, many
small and irritating questions will disappear concerning distinc-
tions between the rich and poor. It will tend to unify all cir-
cles of life, and bring about the true meaning of the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man. The foundations for this
must be laid in the school if it is ever realized, and they must
be laid by the home as the divinely appointed center of love and
good will. w
Some years ago I saw in one of the illustrated weekly papers
a colored cartoon which amused and interested me much. There
was a large punch bowl filled with little men out of every nation
in the world; there was the Russian, the Chinese, the Japanese,
German, Frenchman, Spaniard, Jew, Italian, etc. Columbia,
as the Goddess of Liberty, stood beside the aforesaid bowl, and,
with a long spoon in her hand, was effectually stirring them into
the mixture, all of which signified the Americanizing of for-
eigners. I would like to change the picture. I do not at all
believe in a national punch bowl, but instead I will place the
schoolhouse; around it shall be a circle of mothers. The teacher
is the presiding genius, and the little boys and girls of all
nations and stations are the materials which are being stirred
together to produce Americanism. To cultivate true Ameri-
canism the flag has been brought into school life; the Bible
should be brought back with it, because this is a Christian
nation. z'
And yet the picture does not satisfy me. I will put in its
place one which I saw in the Louvre—a picture of Christ at the
wedding in Cana of Galilee, seated at a table, not with Galilean
guests, but with people of all nations gathered about him. That
is what the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God
means—one in Christ.
MOTHERS AND THE SCHOOLS. 77
I live to hail that season
By gifted minds foretold,
When men shall live by reason,
And not alone by gold.
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted,
As Eden was of old.
As the first division of my subject has been the relation of
the mother to the secular school, the second division shall be
the relation of the mother to the Sunday School. I will say in
the outset that when the Church takes from the home the duty
and the privilege of religious instruction it is doing an irrepara-
ble injury. I have seen in a foreign city hundreds of little boys,
averaging ten or eleven years of age, passing through the streets
in a procession, attired in long, black robes, bare-headed, and
shaven in such a way as to look bald-headed. Perhaps you have
heard of that precocious little American boy who went to the
barber's alone for the first time, and, on being asked how he
would have his hair cut, replied, “Just like papa’s, with a round
hole on the top.” But those little boys had round holes on the
top, not because they wanted them, but because it was the rule
of the school that no boy should be allowed to spend a single
night in his home after having been entered as a pupil. The
Church assumed the full control of the body, mind, and soul
of the child.
I feel the shuddering of every mother heart. That is an
extreme we practically know nothing about in the United States,
but we are drifting in that direction by giving over to the
Sunday school so largely as we do the religious instruction of the
children, which should be an essential part of home life. I
strongly assert that this usurpation has not been sought by the
Sunday school. It has not even claimed co-ordination with the
home in this work, but rather unification. For the past twenty
years, since the advent of the uniform lesson system, “Home
Readings” have been arranged which, if faithfully carried out
in the home, would practically make a unit of the home and the
Sunday school. And more than this: ten years ago the home
6
78 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
department of the Sunday school was organized, which gives
to every father and mother the opportunity of belonging to the
Sunday school even though they can not attend it. The con-
ditions for joining the home department are simply the signing
of an agreement to study the Sunday-school lesson one half hour
a week and report at regular intervals to the superintendent
directly or through a home department visitor.
Busy mothers will see at once that this plan will make it
possible for them to become identified with a movement which
is of the greatest importance to their homes. Those are the
wisest mothers who most closely connect themselves with what
their children are doing, whether in pleasures, pastimes, or
studies. A mother should never allow herself to get into a posi-
tion where her son or daughter could say, “Oh, mother doesn’t
know anything about that!” ſº
Those were wise but unusual parents who, when their little
Son entered the primary department of the Sunday school, came
with him, and remained, leading the music and helping in the
teaching, until he was large enough to be transferred to the
main department, and then passed up with him. That was a
wise mother who took a class in the primary department, de-
clining an advanced class of adults, for which her attainments
would have fitted her to be the teacher, on the ground that she
wished to teach the kind of class that would keep her in closest
touch with her own little daughters. There are many mothers
who could become teachers in the Sunday school if they would.
Perhaps it has never occurred to them that they are needed.
Let me make an earnest plea by saying to you that there are at
least ten millions of children in our land who have not yet been
brought into the Sunday school. They are indeed as “sheep
having no shepherd.”
Since the Bible has been so largely discarded from our public
schools, sad to tell, and since it is more than probable that the
vast number of children ungathered by the Sunday school have
no religious instruction in their homes, because it is the Christian
home that sends its children to the Sunday school, it becomes
necessary, in order that our claim of being a Christian nation
may be sustained, that these children shall be reached by the
MOTHERS AND THE SCHOOLS. 79
Sunday school. It can not be done with the present teaching
force. More fathers and more mothers are needed for the work.
Plainly these have not done their whole duty as those who love
their country when they have provided religious instruction for
the children of their own household. In the light of this great
need, should any argument be required to secure the co-
operation of parents in the religious instruction of their own
children?
The home department of the Sunday school is proving itself
to be one of the most effective agencies yet devised to secure not
only home co-operation in improving the Sunday school, but
also in extending it. Lack of time alone forbids me to relate
many incidents showing how it has made a bond between the
Sunday school and nonattendants; how it has increased Chris-
tian influences by the enlargement of sympathies; how it has
promoted Bible study and increased attendance upon the Sunday
school and the Church. It is good for the mother in her isolated
life on the farm; for the mother kept at home by infants; for
the mother too sick to go out; for the aged mother, who can
thus take a new hold on life.
Let no mother adopt the laisser-faire theory in relation to
either the secular or the Sunday school on the ground of having
no time. To do so would be equivalent to saying, “I am so busy
with temporalities I have no time for eternities.” Old Sojourner
Truth, nearly one hundred years old, gave as the secret of her
long life that she had not worried out her life thinking on small
subjects. “Only that is important which is eternal,” a motto
over the central portal of the Milan Cathedral, will help us to
set aside the small subjects and give our time to greater things.
In the words of Mary Lowe Dickinson:
We should fill all the hours with the sweetest things,
If we had but a day;
We should drink alone at the purest springs
On our upward way;
We should love with a lifetime's love in an hour,
If the day were but one:
If what we remember and what we forget
Went out with the sun.
\
80 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
We should be from our sinful selves set free
To work and to pray,
And to be what our Father would have us to be,
If we had but a day.
THE WALUE OF MUSIC IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF CHARACTER.
By REv. W. A. BARTLETT,
Lowell, Mass.
THE other day I sat at my piano, playing Softly, when my
little girl, two years of age, began to sing. Her natural and un-
taught song was the struggle to express herself, her growing self,
her developing and beautiful little self. That is, in miniature,
the illustration of my theme. It demonstrates our proposition—
namely, that music has value in the development of character.
Shelley has said that
... most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
And that is eminently true. But we have come to an age
which believes that song may not only be the passion flower of
suffering, but that character may be the blossoming of song.
It may fairly be asserted that we have forever passed away
from the barbarism of music taught to the young woman as they
teach her dancing steps or glove her hand. We have passed
from this in the most artistic circles. It is no longer an orna-
ment; it is a means of refinement. It is no longer an accom-
plishment; it is a pathway to God.
The meaningless tinkle on the spinet of meaningless fingers
evoking a meaningless tune will never again have charm. They
used to think then that music was a frill, but they know now
that it is the garment itself.
VALUE OF MUSIC IN DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER. 81
And why do we have a right to make such assertions? Sim-
ply because, as in the discovery of all truth, we have been
forced to.
Testimony is pouring in from so many directions that we
discover the thought which has been in God’s mind from the
time the morning stars sang together. Time was when men
watched the display of lightning in wonder and fear. Now we
are shown how to reach up and capture it for our work. That
was the beginning of a new era.
So time was when men listened idly to music, and went away
unconscious that they were trifling with a force. Now we know
that melody is power. Some artist has said that we must come
back to the Bible in all our discussions. We find that it is
always just ahead of our last discovery. When the head of a
reform school tells us that “songs in the mouths of unruly boys
are more effective than switches for their legs,” we are reminded
how the unruly horde of slave Israelites began their new life
with a song of triumph. That rude monotone was the intro-
ductory note of an ever-increasing Te Deum, which led them
through the wilderness, as Napoleon’s troops were lifted over
the Alps by a song when all military tactics had failed. The
song, the “new song * was Israel’s schoolmaster; it was the indi-
cator of his national prosperity. From the harsh shout it grew
and developed till in the gorgeous Temple of Solomon the great
choirs and orchestras made music in their stately antiphons that
was a suggestion of what we shall hear in the New Jerusalem.
With Israel’s decline and captivity her music lost its power.
They could not sing the old jubilant anthem in a strange land;
so the harps were hung on the willows, never to be taken down
till the return to a neglected God. God had intended song to
be sweet discipline, a gentle preceptor. That it failed was no
fault of the song, but the perverseness of the singers.
The superintendents of asylums for the insane have known
for years that music has a quieting effect on their patients, and
in many retreats music is constantly used for this beneficent
purpose.
A European authority reminds us that in the sixteenth cen-
tury the singer Bellari put to sleep the Italian patron of sculp-
82 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ture, Prince Bellargravia, and that in the eighteenth century
the singer Raaf sang away a raging fever from the Princess
Pignatelli by singing the Saxon to her. But we are told by
another authority that in the ten hundred and sixty-third year
before Christ “it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God
was upon Saul, that David took an harp and played with his
hand, so Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit
departed from him.” The modern surgeon may believe he has
discovered the necessity for absolute cleanliness in operations
and to prevent disease, but after all he is but following out the
requirements in the book of Leviticus.
The modern “music cure * is credited to Dr. Paul Riverra,
a learned physician of Munich. He believes that before the year
1897 has closed this method will be firmly established in all
hospitals of the world. He claims that by his ingenious device
the most acute neuralgic pain may be almost instantly relieved.
But ages before Munich was thought of the Psalmist spoke of
the songs of deliverance, and said that after the Lord had res-
cued him from the horrible pit he put a new song in his mouth.
In the long hours of wakefulness he remembered his song in the
night.
It is stated that although Christ’s greatest command was
concerning mission work, the Church did not really awake to
the fact until within the last ninety years. So you may take
down volume after volume of systematic theology and find every
doctrine in the Bible or out of it most exhaustively and exhaust-
ingly discussed except that of music. It is strange when so much
of Old Testament history floats on melody; when the Psalms
are songs; when the Apostle urges us to speak to one another
in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; and when we remember
how the Saviour gave utterance with the disciples to the Hebrew
melody at a time when words failed them all and each heart
was big with tears. y
I remember hearing the editor of a religious newspaper Say
that he did not give much attention to music in his columns
because he was not musical himself, and did not care for it. For
a newspaper man the remark was as sensible as for a hardware
dealer to refuse to keep nails because he did not enjoy driving
VALUE OF MUSIC IN DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER. 83
them himself. This brother has passed on, we may hope, to
heaven. It is to be supposed that he is now taking a special
course in heavenly harmony. If the description given us of
heaven be correct, song will be a large part of the divine activity,
and he needs a probation after death.
If I understand the purpose of this Congress, it is to be for
the practical help of every mother. Even if I were able to give
you a learned treatise on the subject of music, it would have
no value to you and those who will share with you the benefits of
this grand idea unless it touched directly upon the great prob-
lems in a mother’s life. In what I have already said it has been
shown that music is now regarded by medical men as a source
of relief, if not of healing. I have also hinted at the expert
testimony of disciplinarians as to the softening or restraining .
value of music in the treatment of unruly boys. One of the most
remarkable sights I ever saw was in a mission school, where the
boys were hardened and intractable. For weeks it had been im-
possible to repeat the Lord’s Prayer because of the rowdyism
and catcalls. Night after night, after all gentler means had
been tried, from ten to fifteen boys were ejected from the room.
One evening a male quartette came down and sung a number
of college Songs and religious selections. From the moment the
Songs were heard the order was perfect; indeed, the stillness
was almost uncanny after what we had been through. We could
do anything with those boys until they found there was to be
no more singing, when they threw off the spell, and read the
riot act to us again. But one thing was sure: we had seen those
boys as gentle as lambs. No one could ever assert that there
had not been a time when they could be touched. For we had
looked down into souls at that hour, and had discovered that,
however dim it was, there was still uneffaced a little of the image
of God. Who can say that in that moment there was not a
real lifting and development of those low lives?
Dr. Riverra, of Munich, states that in the experiments to re-
lieve pain by music no music is so effective as that of Wagner.
His music has been found particularly effective in nervous dis-
orders. The doctor attributes this to the descriptive character
of Wagner's music. “For example,” he says, “you see a milk-
84 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
maid leave the house and go to the barn with her pail in her
hand. You hear the first tinkle of the drops in the pail, with
the maid crooning her song as she fills her pail. One by one
the cows are mooing for their turn, and at last, when all the
cows are milked, you see the maid carrying her burden to the
dairy. Now the story will first be told the patients in mere
words, after which they will hear it expressed in music, the effect
of which will be to relieve them from pain, and so make them
well, all being accomplished, as you see, through the spell of
music.”
This is of special interest when we remember Wagner’s own
ideas.
I think musicians will agree with me when I say that no
composer except Beethoven has made such a deep impression on
the musical world as Wagner. The man we railed at a few years
ago we now crown king. Why are we moved by his music?
Because he was moved when he wrote it. Music written to please
will last only so long as that particular whim of the public lasts.
But when Beethoven struggles, gropes, and conquers in the
Ninth Symphony, all who come after him whose lot it is to grope
and struggle too learn how to conquer. The poem and the song
born out of the deeps of experience will always call down to us
in our serious moments, as deep calleth unto deep. That is why
we must have My Faith looks up to Thee in our hymn books,
because it was written by a young man who was groping for
more light. And we like to sing Just as I am whatever our
creed, because something in it tells us that it was the glad utter-
ance of a soul that had long resisted the light. Tennyson’s In
Memoriam was not written to sell. It was the outburst of grief
and the triumph of faith. It makes no difference whether it
tickled the popular fancy at first or not. It would always be
loved, for did it not say:
If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice “Believe no more.”
And heard an ever-breaking shore that tumbled in a godless deep—
A warmth within the breast would melt the freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath, the heart stood up and answered “I have felt.”
So Wagner could afford to wait, because he did not write
to people's fancies, but to their hearts. What he said in music
VALUE OF MUSIC IN DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER. 85
was the strong utterance of a strong soul. It takes time to
reach hearts.
When he hear those marvelous harmonies, we are impressed
with the fact that Wagner put his religion into his music, or
rather his music was the result of his religion. This is his idea
in his own words. “God,” he says, “ was about to vanish from
our sight; he left us for an eternal memorial of himself our
music, which is the living God in our bosoms. Hence we pre-
serve our music and ward off from it all sacrilegious hands, for
if we harken to frivolous and insincere music we extinguish the
last light God has left burning within us to lead us to find him
anew.” In commenting upon this, Mr. Albert Ross Parsons,
in his paper on the Parsifal, has said:
“We are not to understand Wagner to mean that hearing
good music will reform a man’s character and renew a right
spirit within him. No one knew better than Wagner that to
become an artist one must not only be a hearer but also a doer
of the word, developing one’s individual powers by a diligent
use of suitable means. In like manner, although in a mate-
rialistic age, holy music, as witness of the indwelling Spirit,
may lead the way to find God anew. Religious perceptions
alone will not insure personal attainments in religion; that
only a diligent use of suitable religious and devotional means
can do.”
This brings us to the very point which I desire to emphasize
to-night and all my life.
Wagner calls music an eternal memorial of the living God.
He goes further, and says it is the living God in our bosoms.
Whatever our own views, we will at least admit that this beauti-
ful quality of soul, our ability to love music, is God given, and
is in that respect a memorial of himself. I would not say that
it is the only one. If love is a rainbow, then music must be one
of the colors of it. Love is the memorial of God in our hearts.
So when the Spirit whispers to us, it may set to vibrating the
violet of song.
When my little girl began to sing that morning, God
through music was talking to her. All unconscious of it, she
made answer, “Here am I.” The music that she heard set to
86 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
vibrating the memorial of God in her. She became both a
hearer and a doer of the word.
There never was a day when the reverent artist and the
reverent theologian came so close together as now. They recog-
nize each other as brothers. They believe that all truth came
from and leads back to God. I do not speak to-night from the
standpoint of the preacher, except as we are all priests and artists
together. The mother is the most eloquent preacher I know.
And true art was cradled in a mother’s heart after it came from
God. I speak to you to-night as one who believes that all art,
science, and high thought are coming home to God, and that
when character is truly developed it is the reshaping of the Soul
into the likeness of God, the Lord Christ being the embodiment
of that likeness restored.
To develop character through music, then, would be to make
Christlike through music.
But in order to have her character developed through music,
my child must be a conscious doer as well as hearer of the word.
She answered sweetly up to her Father, “Here am I,’” but she
was as ignorant that it was God calling as Samuel was when he
said, “Here am I.” But the prophet revealed to him that it
was the voice of God.
The mother is the high priest who can enter the holy of
holies and gently make these revelations.
The songs sung out of emotion and a full heart have a mar-
velous power to develop even when there is no revelation. You
may sing to a child and fill it full of melody, but it may remain
indifferent and cold. When it begins itself to sing, the enthusi-
asm and fire comes.
Our best educators have long since abandoned the stuffing
theory. It has become a trite saying that to educate means to
lead out. But why have we not applied this to music? If the
soul of a child is a bundle of closed hands that have not been
taught to open and reach out, the hand of music can, in most
children, be taught the first of all. In fact, we know that long
before the other powers have developed there is often the ability
of correct musical expression.
Mr. Tomlins, of Chicago, began to teach the children of the
VALUE OF MUSIC IN DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER. 87
slums to sing. The result revealed to him an unexpected truth.
These rough and selfish children became less rough and less self-
ish. Boys that had neglected their sisters began to wait for
them; some who had fought for the best seats asked to tend
door; others who had been absorbed in their own appearance
organized an old clothes club, to gather and distribute for those
less fortunate even than themselves.
In their singing these children became conscious of them-
selves. Not only were they revealed to themselves as individuals,
but a new and better self was revealed to them, of which they
had before been ignorant.
Then they began to sing back to their teacher this aroused,
discovered, and better self. Each one said in effect as he sang,
“I now sing back to you that which you have given me—myself.”
In this teaching there had been nothing of what we call moral
instruction. The child had simply been given the opportunity
to express his best self through song. So he sung his best self
back to the one who had shown him the wonder of it. Further-
more, he began to do what he conceived his leader would do.
While he had not been told, the boy instinctively felt that Mr.
Tomlins would wait for his own sister if he had one there; he
was persuaded by the logic of intuition that Mr. Tomlins would
stand at the door and open it. Perhaps he had seen him, perhaps
he had seen the boys in the stores, and it now came to mind to
relieve him in his groping to express that better self. At any
rate, he was trying to live up to a new light, and that light had
shone through the window he had opened by his song.
There would seem to be but one other step necessary in the
development of those children, and that is to teach them, perhaps
through song itself, that the great Benefactor, the real Master
of souls and of music is God; that they might sing up and be-
yond any earthly leader to the source of all melody, saying “O
my Father, thou hast spoken to me, thou hast revealed myself
and thyself to me, thou hast called me from darkness to light,
from selfishness to love, and I sing myself back to the lover of
my soul.”
This subject is as broad as the ocean of tone, and there will
be in your minds many questions which I shall not touch.
88 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
If I could say but one word more it would be to remind you
that all development of character must depend largely upon the
activity of the child. There must be an intelligent forth-putting
of strength. It is pleasant to listen to good music, but it is growth
to make it. When we are told that it is more blessed to give
than to receive, we may not know that we are dealing with a
scientific formula that holds good in every realm. But we are.
It is more blessed because it not only helps the recipient, but
the giver becomes a better man by the act.
So whether the child sings or plays, it should be taught from
the beginning that what it sings and what it plays it gives to
its fellows and to God. The child simply takes what has been
given to it, and gives the same to some one else. One may
become as Sordid and miserly with music as with gold. Both
are blessings if rightly used, but either may become a curse.
Prof. Blodgett, of Smith College, has written a beautiful
article on the influence of music in the religious life. In it he
criticises Du Maurier’s portrayal of Svengali as inconsistent.
He claims that no one of Svengali’s low, base character could be
a true artist. That is an immensely important point. To be an
artist in the true sense one must be in sympathy with the source
of art. But one of the worst men I ever knew was a beautiful
singer, and was more susceptible to music than most musicians.
So the devil is a good student of Scripture.
A white robe can be dragged in the dust, and an angel can
fall from glory. It will never be safe for a mother to assume
that because a child is musical or is making advances in music
that it is being brought to God. With the music there must be
the thought of God, and the fact that pleasure is being given
should make the child forget that it is performing.
I once condemned before an audience of musicians from
Chicago and the State of Illinois the habit of many teachers of
prohibiting their pupils from playing or singing even before
their parents. I claimed that it was the quackery of the pro-
fession. To my surprise the sentiment was applauded, and was
afterward commended by the president of the association, an
eminent teacher. I mention the fact as important because it
shows that these men are with us in the idea of true develop-
VALUE OF MUSIC IN DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER. 89
ment. In my opinion, the child should begin to play its first
lesson for its father. Not that the worthy sire will derive much
enjoyment from the performance, except as it means to him
an advance step for his child.
On the other hand, the selfishness of music is hardly more
deplorable than the conceit cultivated by the “showing-off”
process. In his later life Liszt sat for his portrait before the
famous artist Ary Schaffer. His face assumed an artificial ex-
pression often seen when he was before the public. Schaffer
said very quietly, “Oh, not like that, my friend; such things
do not impress me.” To which Liszt replied with confusion,
“Forgive, dear master, but you do not know how it spoils one
to have been an infant prodigy.” Our children may not be
infant prodigies, but they may be reduced to a lower level still
through imbibing the idea that they are.
They must forget themselves; they must be led into the
realm of the beautiful; the intelligence must keep pace with the
voice or the fingers.
And where is the best music—in the voice or the fingers?
I answer unhesitatingly, in the voice. You may ask, “The best
for whom?” and I answer for the one developed.
In itself music is indefinite. The same Nocturne of Chopin's
may excite different emotions in two persons. One may be in-
cited to passion, the other to praise. There are, to be sure, noble
compositions that almost certainly speak lofty things to all.
Handel’s Largo and Schubert's Symphony in B Minor are ex-
amples. But even these must have an awakened spirit to greet
them. The true artist can reproduce, in his own soul at least,
the very emotions which filled the composer. But unless we
know the circumstances of the composition, we are largely in the
dark as to the meaning.
A song is music and a definite statement. It is an idea float-
ing on melody. He who listens gets more, because she who
sings gives more. When the Swedish Nightingale first came
to this country, she wept when she sang I know that my Re-
deemer liveth. So did her audience. The melody played or
given by the human voice without words would not have had
the same effect. It was the tender and yet triumphant utter-
90 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ance of a glorious fact. Instrumental music will only do that
when some association of ideas sets words to it in the minds of
an occasional hearer. The song always has words. Put a sweet
and holy song into the mouth of your child. Never mind if the
voice be imperfect; that is a matter of small consideration com-
pared to the good that may come to the child.
And what is song after all? An eminent authority has told
us that song is not the correct voicing of correct melodies. Song,
true song, is the utterance of self. That may be on a monotone.
I have always been troubled with a sensitive ear, yet I can recall
voices that would be called harsh that filled me with more de-
light than some of the smoothest singing I ever heard. Simply
because the harsher tone was vibrant with soul. The cracked
prism gave a less perfect figure than the one unbroken. But
through the perfect glass there came only a candle beam, while
through the other shone the sun. Song, then, is the means of
exalted communion. Most of Watt’s hymns are the rhythmic
climaxes of sermons. Song is the soul’s flight when walking is
too slow. Song is prayer.
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed;
The motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.
That was the way Handel felt when, after his conversion at
fifty-five, he wrote the Messiah. “I did think I saw all heaven
before me and the great God himself,” was his account of his
experience as he wrote the Hallelujah Chorus. That is the way
you feel as you 'hear it; but who can describe what you feel as
you sing it? “You have entertained us,” said a patronizing
nobleman to Handel after the first performance. “I hope I
have made you better,” replied the composer, who had an ex-
alted estimate of his art. How sweet are Haydn’s symphonies,
how delicate his quartettes for strings, but how majestic is the
Creation! “I was never so pious,” said Haydn, “as when com-
posing the Creation. I knelt down every day and prayed God to
strengthen me for my work. I know that God has bestowed a
talent upon me, and I thank him for it. I think I have done
my duty, and have been of use in my generation by my works.
Let others do the same.” “Not mine! not mine!” he exclaimed
VALUE OF MUSIC IN DELELOPMENT OF CHARACTER. 91
when for the last time he heard the chorus Let there be Light;
“it all came to me from above.” This is art, this is music taken
from God’s hand with thankfulness, and given back again
through men’s hearts for the glory of him who first gave. How
exquisite the thought that music written thus reverently comes
back to soothe the maker of it, as when Mendelssohn, upon
hearing his own chorus sing his own music to the Forty-second
Psalm, put down his head on his hands and cried, thinking of
his mother who had gone home to perfect melodies.
It is a more exalted thought to consider how such men and
many more have taught so many men to pray. “As the hart
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee,
O God!”
Here, then, mother, is a gracious means for you to use in
this perplexing process of soul building. Set the soul a-singing.
Make it sing to you and then to God.
I have heard children sing Father, we thank Thee when I
could tell there was no thankfulness in their hearts. A few
words about the Father, and what he is to the children, would
produce a different hymn, because it would become fervent-
voiced with conscious praise.
Praise is to be the final utterance of the heart; not petition,
but thanksgiving. We always ask more than we thank. Only
one out of ten healed came back to acknowledge the restoration.
We are crying, “Have mercy on us!” and we have reason to.
But if we could change that minor dirge to the major anthem,
Thanks be unto God, there would be less to forgive and less
occasion to cry “Mercy!”
Every home needs the sunshine of thankfulness. Every
child should be a sunbeam in that home. For we are in a dusty
world, and we greatly need, as you know, the Swift fanning of
the little angel’s wings. We are in a dark world, and we greatly
need, as you know, that kindly light amid the encircling gloom
to lead us on. We are in a world full of the cries of pain and dis-
cordant tones of anger, and we greatly need, as you know, some
one who can make out of them all a melody of heaven. There
were children who were blessed by divine hands, and there were
children who were set in the midst to illustrate the kingdom.
92 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Those children were not forgetful. And when One came riding
to the Temple, in the last agonizing week of his life, no great
choirs of Levites greeted him; the only music was the songs the
children made. So you, mothers, after laying hands of blessing
on the child, after leading him into the midst of the group whose
chief is the Master, will find in after years, when you feel that
the last day for you draws nigh, that the old cradle hymn you
Sung so lovingly, so tremblingly, will come back to you in the
hour when you are dumb, sung by the child you taught to sing:
All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, ,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by and by.
There is a German song which tells how an angel brought
a babe from heaven to earth, and as it bore it through space
upon its bosom laid the angel sang a song in the ear of the child
—a song that was never forgotten on earth, and helped it gain
heaven at last.
Methinks some of us can testify that a sweet-faced, heaven-
voiced angel Sang to us while we were carried on a tender bosom,
so long ago, so long ago, and in the moments of weariness or dis-
couragement that old mother song comes to us. It has kept us
from yielding to dark sins, it has guarded, as with a flaming song,
the boy at college and the girl away from home. O mothers,
sing the old sweet song to the children, for on that hymn they
may be borne one day to God!
THURSDAY MORNING, 10:30 O'CLOCK.
DEVOTIONAL.
. MOTHERS TO THE MOTHERLESS.
By MRs. MAUD BALLINGTON BOOTH,
New York City.
SHALL we commence by singing two verses—the first and the
third verses—of Nearer, my God, to Thee? Surely no hearts
can more need reliance upon the great, tender, diviné heart than
the hearts of mothers and women who are facing the problems
which they can solve perhaps better than any others.
[The verses were sung, and Mrs. Booth resumed as follows:
I will read just a few verses. Let us lift our hearts, with our
hands, unto God in the heavens: A
“Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high,
“Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in
the earth !” *
“Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.”
“I stretch forth my hands unto thee:
“. . . Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down
into the pit.
“Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I
trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk: for I lift up my
soul unto thee.”
“Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise
thee.
“Thus will I bless thee while I live.”
“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.”
It seems to me that to the many hearts here gathered, in the
early morning hours of such a convention as this, it is a great
93
94 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
comfort and a great strength to feel that in all which is done
and said, in all the plans and propositions brought forth, in all
the efforts of poor human minds and weak woman’s hands, we
have the right to turn and claim the great strong hand of Jeho-
vah; that we have the right to turn and cast our little hearts
upon the great heart that is like an ocean of love; and that
through him we can have not only the giving forth to the world
of our many propositions, not only the giving forth throughout
the nation of fresh inspiration to other mother hearts, but that
we ourselves may go forth with a new touch of love and inspira-
tion to carry out in our lives, and through the sweet influence of
lives attached and consecrated to his service, the greatest, high-
est possibilities of our nature. I have come into your meeting
unprepared. I have not attended the other meetings, nor have
I read that which has been said by others here. I had to fly in
here from my work this morning, and shall have to catch the
next train back to New York, so that I feel that, in the few
moments during which I may speak to you, I may perhaps bring
thoughts to you which are not in line with the thoughts of
others who are present, and which, already discussed, are near
to your hearts. But, it seems to me, there is one thought that
should run through everything and be our great inspiration,
and make us go out into our life work with fresh courage—the
thought that the God who put the mother instinct into the
woman’s heart can so develop it and so fill that heart with his
own true Spirit as to make it deep and broad and wide and strong
to go forth and help carry the burdens of the many downtrodden
ones, and not only bring fresh inspiration and fresh hope to the
little lives we live, but go forth with the broader thought of a
motherhood that embraces the unloved and unmothered ones of
others.
I suppose there is no sweeter thing on earth than mother love.
As we look back to the days when our heads were pillowed on
our mothers’ breasts, the time when fears were stilled and tears
wiped away by the tender hand, the hand which no other hand
could ever be like—the mother hand—we know the thrill it
brought to us, and as we have to look back to it, some of us over
a grave, and know that that dear one has gone forever into the
MOTHERS TO THE MOTHERLESS. 95
other world, we can see that there has never been to us another
love like mother love. So it seems to me that those of us who
stand to-day in the position of mothers, and who in our turn
look down upon the sweet baby eyes and kiss the baby lips, must
think again of how our mothers comforted us, and feel the pre-
ciousness of the new love God has brought into our lives.
But those of us who love the world, and love to see dark
homes brightened, can surely realize that mother love is some-
thing great, and akin to the divine love. We realize that God
can so kindle our hearts that he can send us out into the world
to be mothers to the unmothered, and to bring just what is
needed to the many hearts to-day blighted and ruined and
empty and hopeless for want of that which we can give them.
I think that perhaps, as a young mother here, if I were to speak
on the topics others will speak on—education, etc.—I would be
beyond the sea. I do not come simply as a mother whom God
has blessed with two darling children of my own, but I feel that
my mother love must extend itself to the many boys who are
motherless, and whom the Lord has brought to me in the line
of my work. He has sent me behind prison bolts and bars, and
to-day I have learned to love nearly as dearly the boys there,
whose blighted lives have wrecked many homes, some of them
the sons of praying mothers, and who turn to me when I talk
to them and pray for them and weep over them, and say to me,
“I feel that you are the answer to my mother’s prayers, who has
gone on beyond.” And there I go with a mother heart, even if
not with great experience within my own little home, and I feel
from what God has taught me, and from what has come to me
as the touch of his own divine hand, that mother love is not
what the world would deem it, but that the mother heart can be
the heart of every woman, whether she has ever cradled a baby
or not. I believe that womanhood can be developed into mother-
hood, whether in the heart of a young girl or the heart of one
who has half a dozen children in her own home. Woman’s heart
is a great, wonderful, tender possibility. Alas, that some women
should have cramped and narrowed their precious hearts, that
could have been developed to great possibilities, even as our
Chinese sisters cramp their feet! You will find the woman with
96 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
the narrow heart and soul, who cares only for her little circle,
and is not touched with the sympathy of the sorrowing world;
but I believe that when the heart comes into touch with divine
love, when the inspiration of God comes into the soul, his dear
hand points out to the sorrow and darkness and evil and
misery of the world, and when, the woman’s eyes see clearly,
when the narrow limit of her selfish interest has been extended
(perhaps it was due to faulty education or to some faults inherent
in her own disposition), she may come to see the great crying
need of leaving that narrow life; and I believe that her second
impulse should be to throw herself into the great strong arms
of God to develop the great strong soul, that it may go on and
take upon itself the burdens of others; and each burden she
seeks to carry will make her stronger, so that her influence" will
be one, whether on the platform, in the pulpit, in the school,
or only in the home and among her own friends, that will help
and strengthen and bless other hearts.
Sometimes when talking to those who say, “I love the work
you are doing, and to see women consecrating their lives to the
good of others,” I do not feel that I do love them. I look into
my own heart and soul, and do not feel the impulse. I know I
have my duties, and am going to try faithfully to perform them,
but it is often very hard to perform them. I believe that duties
can become matters of choice; I believe that the life touched
with the true inspiration can become a life of joyful service, and
no more will you hear of duties, burdens, or responsibilities that
must be carried because they are necessities, but you will hear
of springing forth and doing the work; and when one is asked,
“Is it not a cross?” the smiling answer will be, “No, it is a
joy.”
Away out in India, on the lakes in the jungles of that coun-
try, grows the sacred lotus flower, and I am told by those who
have traveled there that those flowers on cloudy days are closely
shut, so that the passer-by, seeing neither the flower nor its
peculiar buds, would not know that they were there; but when
the sunlight comes the petals open, revealing the beauty of the
flowers, whose sweet scent is wafted toward him, even while he
is yet far off, and he knows that the lotus is there. And so it
MOTHERS TO THE MOTHERLESS. 97
seems to me is it with the hearts that have been closed and have
kept their sweetness just for their own, their gifts safely locked
up, shut away, and do not know why it is so difficult for them
to benefit other lives, bringing a sweet, blessed influence to their
hearts. It is perhaps because the divine touch from the Son of
Righteousness has not yet come to them; but when it comes the
heart opens, and, as it opens to its God, he will send to it perhaps
storms and suffering, perhaps sweet breezes of blessing, and as
they pass over that heart they shall take hither and thither to
other hearts the precious message—the most precious message
that can come to any human being—the message of love and
sympathy, and hither and thither it will go, doing its own sweet,
glad work and bringing back its own reward.
In my own work, as the leader of the Volunteers of America,
and as a visitor to the boys in prison, I have felt that the great
secret of woman’s power is the power of love. God has used
woman in these days further than ever before in educational
lines. Her lips in oratory are opened to influence thousands as
a mighty power, and the nation is waking up to feel that she is
a power not only in rocking the cradle and influencing her own
baby, but also in bringing back the other babies who have gone
away; and she is bringing very many of them back to the path
they should have trodden long ago. But with all of our other
influences we can put into the scale one which will outweigh
the others, and that is the influence of love. In my work I have
seen, as I have looked into the hearts and lives of those who
have been ruined and spoiled and broken, how wonderful that
is, for I have seen in many hardened hearts the traces of the
mother influence, the mother love.
Only the other day, in the State Prison at Sing Sing, N. Y.,
an incident occurred that greatly shocked the public. A young
man had for some twelve or fourteen days been shut in his cell,
because through cruel legislative action work has been taken
from the hands of those men—a law which is a blot upon our
State, and which, I believe, will mean insanity to scores of men,
and death perhaps to hundreds. This young man was known
to me. I have his letters now in my office, and I may say here
that I have from my boys in prison something like three hundred
98 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
letters a week, so that you may understand what family cares I
have. I tell some of my big sons that when they have come
through the terms of their sentences, and are restored to the
world full grown, I must put on older airs, or before they come
home none of them will believe that I am his mother. This boy
was never a criminal at heart. He was wild and went astray,
and committed one rash act that landed him in prison, and for
twelve or fourteen days had brooded in his cell, until one morn-
ing he sprang from the gallery and took his life, crushing it out.
What was this? It was the act of a maddened brain. But what
was back of that? It was an aching, breaking heart, because
he longed for one word from his mother, one letter. He had
pleaded for one word of forgiveness from that mother, but no
message of love came, and he brooded upon this until his reason
was dethroned. And when she saw his body, she said: “I have
wept all the tears I could weep. I would have written him and
tried to comfort him, but his father prevented me from doing
so, and I shall never forgive myself.”
I thought, “Aye, if the mothers would always remember
how the mother love is treasured by the boys, even by those who
have gone astray and wandered far, and how the thought of the
prayers they have heard and said in their childhood, and of the
tender touch, the mother’s sympathy, comes back to them when
they have time to think, mothers would not be discouraged even
when it seems to them that the young feet have wandered far
from the true path, and they would never stop loving their boys
and letting that love be known.” -
There are stories on the other side that I might tell you:
Only a short time ago I went to California, and there one day
a message was sent me to the effect that a lady and her daughter
wished to see me. I had held two meetings already that day,
and another was coming on, and I could see no one, and had to
say so. But the message came back, “It is George Jones's
mother ” (I give the name because it is not a secret); and that
entirely altered the case, and I went in to see her. I found
a dear old lady in widow’s weeds, with a beautiful girl by her
side, evidently well-to-do people. And coming up to me, the
mother took my hands in hers, tears coursing down her cheeks,
MOTTIERS TO THE MOTHERLESS. 99
and said: “I felt I must see you, and for that I have come forty
miles. I was ill yesterday, and my daughter said I should not
go, but I told them, ‘I will die if I do not see her, because she
has seen my boy.’”
Of course she wanted answers to the hundred and one ques-
tions that only a mother could ask, and she made me tell her how
he was doing; and I had the joy of saying that, "though he had
been astray—gone wrong—he had finally given his heart to
God, and was then living, within prison walls, a sublimely beau-
tiful life, and was coming back to be her stay and comfort and
support. And then, when she had given me all her tender mes-
sages, and told me how to care for him and to send him back to
her, she kissed me and said: “Oh, you have lifted such a burden
from my heart. I can not tell you how heavy it has been.”
When I told the boy about it, I could see how her precious
influence and prayers and tears had followed him, and how his
first thought when he met his God was to rise up and make him-
self a man worthy of that mother, so that he could go back to
be her stay and comfort in her last days. And I feel that this
touch of sympathy, whether we be mothers or have no little
ones of our own, is a touch that will bring back again and again
and again joy to our own hearts and strength to our own lives.
What about those little darlings in our homes? I glory
in the fact that the woman who carries a share of the burdens
of the world, who goes out on the platform, or speaks from the
pulpit, or goes to the bar, or stands out for those things she
thinks right and true, can be a truer, better mother in her own
home than any other woman. I believe any woman who deserted
her baby for the public would be a woman who would in the
future find that her work was not good; but I believe that we
can hold our darlings with a tighter grasp, that they are safer,
and that they shall be greatly blessed by the fact that we take
also into our hearts the motherless, unloved ones whom we can
help and comfort; and it must be remembered that in some
lives there has been no mother’s influences.
One of my boys has written me a letter—I am the only one
he has ever called “mother ”—in which he says: “Oh, that you
were my own mother! She died when I was two years old, and
100 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
I have never known a mother's love or comfort.” Ah, if we
could bring to such hearts the touch that would kindle the holy
inspiration, to help draw them away from mean things to those
which are higher and worthier and nobler!
Surely the heart that loves most truly loves where it is the
most needed. I remember when my darling baby was quite a
little mite, just-able to creep, I gave her a rag doll, her first toy.
I thought it was wise to purchase a rag doll, because there was
already a son in the family, and other dolls have ways of getting
broken more easily than rag dolls. I wondered whether she
would recognize what it was. Well, the very moment I gave it
to her the baby arms went out, and she clasped it to her breast
and kissed it, and showed me the strength of mother love in the
baby heart. From that moment she was inseparable from her
rag doll—it was all rags, except its eyes. Soon one eye fell in,
and I was told that that was the work of my son. But my baby
was oblivious to it, and thought just as much of her rag doll as
ever. It was just as much her “dear doddy.” Shortly after,
the other eye fell in, and with its empty sockets she loved it just
the same, and kissed the poor lips just as fondly. Then went
part of the clothes, and then one arm, and then one leg, and
then all the clothes, until there was nothing left but the old
stump stuffed with straw, one leg, and one arm gone; and still it
was just as much her own “doddy,” only that in petting it she
had the good sense to add the word “poor *—“poor, dear
doddy.” It became disreputable, but she would never part with
it, and by and by, when nothing was left but the old stump with
one leg attached to it, and when no one else would have thought
it was a “ doddy” at all, she loved and comforted it more than
ever, and I would see her in bed, lying with her pink, flushed
face against the rag and her arm around it—her “poor, dear
doddy.” I brought her a beautiful doll in its stead, with hair
and movable eyes and fine clothes; but she just dropped it, and
would not call it even a doll, and stretched her little arms out
for the rag. And as I looked at my baby I reached up higher,
and said, “Dear Lord, is not that a picture of the mother love
you would put in the soul?”
The mother does not love only that which can repay her.
DIETETICS. 101
If you were to go to the mother bending lovingly over the
crippled child, or the one spoiled by some disease, or one not
having the strength of others, and say: “I am surprised at you.
Here are your other sons and daughters, who will make marks
in the world, and you are most attached to this one,” she would
rise in the indignation of her motherhood and say: “I am its
mother. This is my child, the one that needs me most, and shall
have me most.” And so, it seems to me, when looking out upon
the world and seeing, as I do, the blighted, wrecked lives, the
fallen women and the outcast men, the besotted drunkard and
the poor boy, branded in the State prison, and the world says,
“I don’t see anything to redeem or love in that one *; and when
I come to think of the great Father heart, who loves the outcast
one, who turns to the one who needs him most, it seems to me
that it is just that love that he can put into every woman’s heart
here, and send her out to love where her love is most needed,
and that love shall help to redeem the world and raise it up into
the arms of the great God who can save it.
DIETETICS.*
By MRs. LOUISE. E. HOGAN,
Germantown, Pa.
OUR well-known Commissioner of Education, Dr. Harris, tells
us, in his preface to Emile, that Rousseau, who was the great
pioneer in the work of studying human character as it develops
in childhood, has made educators recognize the sacredness of
childhood.
Rousseau says in this work that, in order to love the peace-
ful life of the home, it must be known, and to this end domestic
education is recommended.
The study of dietetics, as applied to the nursery and the
period of childhood, is constantly brought to our notice as an
important phase of domestic education.
* Copyright, 1897, by Louise E. Hogan. All rights reserved by author.
102 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Dr. Jacobi very wisely remarks that to understand only a
small part of what is known on the vast topic of the development
of infant life the mother must consult not one little volume, but
many big books.
The first step we should take as mothers in regard to the
careful feeding of our children should be to convince ourselves
thoroughly of its necessity.
Many mothers may say: “But I don’t need any dietetic rules
for my baby of eighteen months or two years. He eats every-
thing, and is quite well.” Dr. L. Emmett Holt, of the Babies’
Hospital of New York, says he has had quite a large experience
with those children who “ate everything ” and seemed to relish
it, and has followed a number of them to their graves as the
ultimate result of such unreasonable and inconsiderate practice.
Dr. Rotch, Professor of Children’s Diseases at Harvard, says
it is worse than folly for mothers to attempt at an early age, as
is frequently done, to accustom their children to the use of
everything and anything from the table.
Prof. Fonssagrives, of Paris, says the number of cases of dis-
ease which can be arrested in children by instituting a preven-
tive diet is almost incredible. Rousseau dwells strongly upon
the facts that a weak body in a child enfeebles the soul; that the
education of man begins at his birth; that simplicity in diet is
an absolute necessity for sound physical growth; and that the
most dangerous period in human life is the interval between
birth and the age of twelve. He also says, in speaking of mental
growth, that the soul must have leisure to perfect its powers
before it is called upon to use them. This is equally true of
physical growth. We are working for future resistance, not for
immediate results only, when we consider the dietetic and hygi-
enic needs of our children, and we must not forget that there
is a lifetime for mental development, and only part of one during
which the physical building-up process can be regulated. If we
will but keep in mind Rousseau's suggestive statement that the
most important, the most useful rule in all education is not to
gain time, but to lose it, we will move slowly but carefully in
our work of building up a sound mind in a sound body. Just
as at first in mental education we endeavor to shield a child
DIETETICS. 103
from evil and error, instead of directly teaching virtue and truth,
so in physical education prevention, instead of cure, should be
our watchword.
Froebel, to whom we owe the kindergarten, says, “The child,
the boy—the man, indeed—should know no other endeavor but
to be at every stage of development wholly what this stage calls
for.”
He says the earlier stage of human development and cultiva-
tion is always the more important. In its place and time each
stage is equally important, but of the first (upon which future
normal physical and mental growth depends so largely) there can
be no question as to its importance; hence upon us, as mothers,
rests the responsibility for the first step, for we have the first
opportunity. In connection with this early period of childhood,
he says the child’s food is a matter of very great importance not
only at the time (for the child may by its food be made indolent
or active, sluggish or mobile, dull or bright, inert or vigorous),
but, indeed, for its entire life. He says parents and nurses should
ever remember, as underlying every precept in this direction,
the general principles that simplicity and frugality in food and
in other physical needs during the years of childhood enhance
man’s power of attaining happiness and vigor—true creativeness
in every respect. He says that if parents would consider that not
only much individual and personal happiness, but even much
domestic happiness and general prosperity depend on this, how
very differently they would act; but here the foolish mother,
there the childish father is to blame. We see them give their
children all kinds of poison in every form, coarse and fine. That
this is true, even to-day—fifty years later—shows how little ad-
vance has been made in general in the direction of dietary
reform. Incredible as it may seem, I have seen a child of four
drink beer—from habit—and I was looked upon in the light of
a faddist for protesting where I was not properly introduced.
Another instance of this kind I noted while awaiting my
turn one day in the office of a prominent New York physician
for children, when I saw a mother with a child apparently two
years old leave the house for a few moments to get something,
as I heard her say, “to quiet the child,” who was crying. As she
104 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
went out she said to the servant at the door that she had brought
the child to the physician because he wasn’t well, and wouldn’t
eat. She returned in a few minutes, and it was eating a so-called
ripe banana. The skin was green, and I felt impelled to send
word to the physician to forewarn him, as the mother's turn pre-
ceded mine, but I did not do it, nor can I tell why. I think I
was prevented by the apparent hopelessness of convincing such
a mother that she was doing harm, and both the child and
physician had my sympathy for various reasons.
Froebel goes on to say in this connection: “It is by far easier
than we think to promote and establish the happiness and wel-
fare of mankind. All the means are simple and at hand, yet
we see them not; we see them, perhaps, but do not notice
them. In their simplicity, naturalness, availability, and nearness,
they seem too insignificant, and we despise them. We seek help
from afar, although help is only in and through ourselves.” He
tells us that it is easy to avoid the wrong and find the right, that
we should always let the food be simply for nourishment, never
more, never less; that food should never be taken for its own
sake, but only for the sake of promoting bodily and mental
activity.
Still less should the peculiarities of the food, its taste, or
delicacy ever become an object in themselves, but only a means
to make it good, pure, wholesome nourishment, else in both
cases the food destroys health. He concludes his remarks on this
phase of a child’s development in these words: “Let the food
of the child, then, be as simple as the circumstances in which the
child lives can afford, and let it be given in quantities propor-
tioned to his bodily and mental activity.” Quotations are not
needed to prove that the weight of authority is upon the side
of the necessity for exercising the greatest amount of care in sup-
plying the proper food required under the various conditions
in the life of the same child. We have our duty clearly laid out
before us by statements such as these and by those made by
men like Dr. Adams, President of the Pediatric Society and of
the Children’s Hospital here in Washington, Dr. Rotch, of Har-
vard, and Dr. Jacobi, of New York—men whose authority upon
this subject is accepted everywhere without question.
DIETETICS. 105
Dr. Adams says that it is impossible to estimate even ap-
proximately the number of sick children in every community,
but that a large percentage are ill during every year is self-evi-
dent from the appalling mortality among them, and that many
more infants would be saved if more attention were paid to their
management during their first years; but that if parents are per-
mitted to use their own judgment or permit themselves to be
influenced by the whims of some motherly neighbor who scoffs
at the present scientific dietary, and boasts that she has reared
a family of twelve children, and “fed them from the table *
when they were babies, then the physician might as well pursue
the “let-alone plan,” with almost a guarantee that his services
will soon be required to pacify nature offended by a supper of
bacon and cabbage.
He says decidedly that the food of young children is re-
sponsible for the high death rate among them; that the yellow-
ish-white, creamy milk that is so sedictive that the housewife
accepts it with phenomenal confidence in her dairyman, might
by an occasional examination show that it contained dirt, bac-
teria, and other deleterious ingredients.
Dr. Rotch says it is a proper or an improper nutriment which
makes or mars the perfection of coming generations, and that
the science of feeding depends largely upon the knowledge of
what elements of food are required by growing tissues.
Dr. Jacobi tells us that a child’s digestive organs require
permanent attention, that their physiology must be carefully
studied in both the healthy and morbid conditions, and that what
the child eats is of but little consequence compared with what
it digests.
Dr. Preyer, of Germany, author of Infant Mind—a book for
mothers—and whose observations of children are known all over
the world, thinks that mothers may do much if they know
enough, and if they will not leave their children so much in the
hands of ignorant persons.
I have quite recently received several letters from him in
connection with some research that I have been making in die-
tetics and individual child study, and he states positively in these
letters that the controlling supervision of the physical develop-
106 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ment in her child is the most important task of the young
mother, because upon this development the child’s whole future
intellectual and moral life will depend. We can multiply authori-
ties, if we will, but the above are sufficient to indicate the abso-
lute necessity for study in this direction. Once convinced of
this necessity, we must, as mothers, make strong effort to apply
theory to individual needs in a practical manner, and ever keep
in mind the fact that the rearing of a child carries with it a great
responsibility which it is criminal to avoid. It is too frequently
our custom, I fear, to think that the food we provide for our-
selves may be given with impunity to our children. We forget
that the food an adult can receive and digest does harm to
the tender organs of a child—organs that depend very largely
for their development upon a proper selection and administration
of assimilable food.
Carelessness and ignorance at this period are quickly fol-
lowed by evil results. Take, for instance, a child’s surreptitious
eating of salt, which frequently happens when a dietary is poorly
regulated.
This calls directly for reform in the method of feeding, and in-
vestigation will show that the food has been too concentrated, and
that foods supplying inorganic salts, such as fruits and vegeta-
bles, properly prepared, have not been given in sufficient quan-
tity, probably not given at all. This mistake is frequently made
when a child’s dietary is being changed from milk to mixed
foods. The relations of the different salts to one another in the
nourishment of a child are of the greatest importance, and it is
a well-known rule in dietetics to supply them with great care.
A farmer’s wife follows this principle when she gives young
chickens the mineral salts they need in the form of oyster and
egg shells, but she may not notice that her child, from the lack
of these same salts in its diet, is developing rickets—a disease
which is one of the most preventable, yet most common, appear-
ing among rich and poor as a result of a poorly balanced dietary.
The usual haphazard method of feeding children is founded in
ignorance. Investigation has shown that, except in very excep-
tional instances, mothers do not err from lack of feeling, but
from a want of knowledge as to ways and means of guidance as
_er
DIETETICS. sº 107
to how they should seek the information required. Conditions
requiring a special knowledge of dietetics are met with in infants
as well as in older children, and it is true that the importance
of receiving a physician’s advice upon the question of food is
not always duly estimated by mothers. On the other hand,
physicians, as a rule, in their preoccupied and busy lives, are
too much inclined to think that a mother knows what seems
simple to them; hence, unless they are directly asked for in-
formation, they are likely to trust to the mother’s judgment for
carrying out small details. In one instance brought to my notice
a physician was hurriedly called ten miles away at midnight to
See an infant that was apparently very ill. He suggested giving
the child some water to drink, which was done. The child slept,
and there was no further difficulty. The mother said her physi-
cian had never told her of the necessity for giving the infant
water to drink. He no doubt took it for granted that the moth-
er’s common sense would suggest the use of water from the very
beginning of the child’s life, and, on the other hand, the mother
waited for specific directions in every detail.
One very hot day when passing through New York I sat
beside a mother with a crying baby that was fifteen days old.
The child had on a veil, a woolen cap, a woolen coat, and what
must have been an unbearable amount of other clothing upon
its poor little body. I said to the mother that the child was
crying because it was too warm. She looked surprised, said she
feared it would catch cold, but took off the veil and relieved the
child, who was quiet at once. I then asked the woman if she
gave the baby water to drink. She said no. I told her a few
simple things for baby’s comfort, when she said, “That is good
to know,” and thanked me very gratefully as she left the car.
That same day I saw on the train as I was going to New York
a mother and a grandmother with a very ill child, for whom
they seemed unable to do anything. They had come from the
West. At intervals they offered to the baby a bottle of uninvit-
ing-looking milk, that must have been cold and most probably
was sour, and, to add to these evils, it had as a tip the mercantile
abomination with a long tube, which it is impossible to keep
clean, and which is forbidden by law in France, where the laws
108 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTEHERS.
show more regard than ours do for the welfare of children. It
was pitiful to hear the weak, fretful crying of the child. The
mother, in her helplessness, appealed to me, and I did what I
could; but it proved itself only one more of the many instances
I am constantly finding of a woeful lack of knowledge in this
direction. The letters alone that I receive from women whom
I have never met and of whom I have never even heard are
convincing proof of this fact. At the time of the occurrence
alluded to above I was especially interested in the attitude of
the average woman toward dietetic reform and kindred subjects,
as I was then writing my little diet manual, and I became more
than ever convinced that many mothers would do better if
directions were made more simple and accessible for them, that
they might understand more readily, without the mental effort
to which many are unaccustomed, and without the painstaking
study required, for which few women have leisure or inclina-
tion. Haphazard infant feeding, must be entirely done away
with. We must learn that we are ordinarily in no position to
decide for ourselves upon so important a question, and we should
gladly follow the lead of physicians who are making constant
effort to place these matters upon a safe and scientific basis. If
we can ever be brought to understand how little we know of the
subject, a great step in advance will be made in infant feeding,
for then not only will the safest methods be discovered by in-
vestigators, but they will be carefully followed by us as mothers,
which is not the case in general as matters stand to-day. Chil-
dren, especially infants, are fed in the most careless manner,
unless perhaps in some exceptional instances, where a careful
mother may rely upon the opinion of one who knows instead of
presuming to know it all herself. Too much stress can not be
laid upon the necessity in infant feeding for consulting physi-
cians in regard to substitute feeding and all important changes
to be made in a growing child’s diet, and equally upon a strict
following to the letter of all directions given, without relying
too implicitly upon others for supervision where personal atten-
tion is necessary. If this will be done, the physicians will be
aided, not hindered, as they now so frequently are, in their
efforts to reduce infant mortality and increase the strength of
DIETETICS. 109
those who survive. The test of a child’s condition does not
always reveal itself upon casual observation. The true test is
shown in its resistance to the various forms of disease so gen-
erally supposed to be children’s necessary ailments. Many of
them result from carelessness, and are only called children's
diseases because at this period of slight resistance the greatest
amount of ignorance and carelessness is usually displayed, with
consequent disaster to the little ones. As the knowledge of
hygiene and dietetics in the nursery becomes more general the
infant’s chances of life will outweigh those of death. It is at
this early period of a child’s life that those in charge of children
frequently rely upon the mercantile infant foods, in defiance
of authoritative medical opinion as to their inefficiency and even
danger. Their continued use frequently gives rise to serious dis-
ease through failure to supply adequate nutrition. These foods
are entirely unnecessary when cow’s milk and cereals may, with
requisite knowledge, be prepared at home.
Dr. Rotch says in connection with this subject: “It would
seem hardly necessary to suggest that the proper authority for
establishing rules for substitute feeding should emanate from
the medical professions, and not from non-medical capitalists.
Yet, when we study the history of artificial feeding as it is repre-
sented all over the world, the position which the family physi-
cian occupies, in comparison with that of the venders of the
numberless and proprietary artificial foods administered by the
nurses, is a humiliating one, and should no longer be tolerated.
“If we are abreast of the times, if we but recognize and do
justice to the work which has lately been done by our own pro-
fession, we surely will not hesitate to relegate to oblivion the
statements of the food proprietors, which on box and can, on
bottle and printed circular, attempt to stem the slow but in-
evitably progressing wave of scientific investigation.”
He goes on to say: “My own opinion in regard to patent
foods, as a whole, is that they must necessarily be unreliable.
They are thrown on a market where the competition is extreme,
and when once they have been advertised into public notice I
can not but feel that irregularities and changes, slight, perhaps,
in the eyes of the makers, may unintentionally creep in and
8
110 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
carry their composition still further from that of the standard
human milk.
“Analyses show that there is a lack of uniformity in these
foods from year to year, and that original claims are apparently
forgotten or are allowed to give way to cheaper production.
In fact, as my experience in the feeding of infants increases,
and as I examine year by year the effects of the different foods
on infants, I am strongly impressed with the belief that, with
our present physiological, chemical, and clinical knowledge, all
the patent foods are entirely unnecessary. The claims made
for them are not supported by intelligent and unprejudiced in-
vestigation. Those who manufacture them are not in a position
to judge correctly concerning them. The merit at times of their
apparent success does not belong to them, but to accompanying
circumstances. They do great harm, by impressing upon the
public the false idea that a cheap, easily prepared food is for
the good of the infant, and is better than anything that can
be procured elsewhere. They vary too greatly in their analyses
to keep even with the acknowledged varying limits of human
milk. It is therefore high time for physicians to appreciate
exactly how inefficient in themselves and how misleading in
their claims are these artificial foods, and also in what a false
position, as the protector and adviser to the public, our profes-
sion is placed whenever it lends itself to even a toleration of their
use. I speak of them here simply because there is no doubt that
they are kept in the market by the physician rather than the
manufacturer. The latter is only doing what any capitalist
interested in a business venture would do. The former, it seems
to me, is, perhaps unintentionally, aiding the business interests
of others at the expense of his own future reputation as a scien-
tist. It makes little difference to physicians as to what is claimed
for these foods when they are placed in the market. It makes
a great difference what the mixture contains when given by the
mother to the infant according to the directions on the label.
For instance, a food may show by its published and certified analy-
sis a fair percentage of fat or sugar, and yet this same food when
diluted for the infant’s feeding may have these constituents re-
duced far below the reasonable limits of nutrition.”
DIETETICS. g 111
Medical science has made important and rapid progress in
this direction, as is evidenced, in one instance, by the work done
by the establishment of laboratories, where a child’s food may
be called for by prescription, and be prepared with the same care
as is ordinarily supposed to be necessary for medicines only.
It takes but few facts to show to the educated and thoughtful
woman why the study of dietetics should be spread until its in-
fluence is felt in a marked degree upon the health of the children
of the poor in large cities, who now have to struggle as best
they can against sour milk, heat, dust, tenement life, and all the
evils and discomforts that attend the very poor, absence of clean-
liness being generally the greatest evil.
Those engaged in visiting the poor in cities where ignorance
reigns supreme reveal pitiful cases of poverty, carelessness, and
ignorance. Baby’s milk is left uncovered all day long in the
stifling atmosphere of one living room, or is placed with other
foods in a sink, which becomes the refrigerator for those who
can not afford ice, and here absorbs germs by the million.
Dr. Rouchard, President of the Society for the Protection
of Children in France, says that out of two hundred and fifty
thousand infants dying annually a hundred thousand might be
saved by careful nursing.
Dr. Jacobi says a good food for a baby does not mean one
which simply does not kill; it is one which permits a child to
grow up healthy and strong. If we will fully appreciate our
whole duty to our children, we will avoid all uncertain methods
and consider carefully, and estimate at its full importance, every
point relating to the feeding of a child from infancy to adoles-
cence. Taking it for granted that the principles of dietetics are
thoroughly comprehended, there is still a great deal of study
required for the selection of wholesome combinations of foods;
hence dietaries that may be relied upon as absolutely safe should
be consulted.
Children’s diet is usually too one-sided, containing too much
fat, starch, and sugar, and too small a proportion of proteids,
such as beef, eggs, and milk. Demme says that starchy food
taken in too great quantity causes the white blood corpuscles
to predominate over the red. This may serve to show to some
112 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
mothers why their children are pale-faced and anaemic. If we
want our children to be strong, we must use animal food as an
important part of their diet, in the form of milk, eggs, and meat
for younger children, and in that of eggs, fresh meats, and simi-
lar foods for those who are older.
A cursory glance at some of the points to consider in prac-
tical dietetics may be of interest; for instance, cereals for grow-
ing children are a very necessary food, promoting fine muscular
development. Being chiefly starch, it is important to know how
they must be cooked to be made digestible. The use of whole-
meal bread should be encouraged for children, because they are
restricted in a meat diet, and this bread contains the laxative
fatty matter upon which great dependence is placed when ar-
ranging a dietary for children. Fat plays an important part in
nursery diet, but it must not be served floating upon poorly made
Soups.
Attention should be given to making meals appetizing for
children who have reached an age that, to say the least, is some-
what discriminating, even if it does involve some extra labor.
A little wholesome neglect as to a child’s dress, and as strict
adherence as is possible to method in sleeping and feeding, will
help to ease the mother’s way, and prove wonderfully important
factors in making the work less laborious when several children
are to be cared for by but one pair of hands.
Another way to lighten labor is to pay attention to details
that at first may seem trifling, but by which a child may be
trained to sleep uninterruptedly from seven to seven, and at
regular hours during the day when well, which habit will be
certain to prove one of the greatest blessings a mother can possi-
bly confer upon her child as well as herself. Dainty serving
is another important adjunct in nursery feeding. If the fancy
of a child is pleased, he will, in all probability, loiter long enough
over his meal to eat very heartily. A cool-looking dining room
in summer, shaded to rest the eyes, with spotless linen and pretty
table appointments and flowers is inseparable from comfortable
summer life. What could be more inviting to the eye as well
as to the appetite of a fretful child, who has probably been awak-
ened too early by the heat or who has passed a restless night
I)IETETICS. 113
for the same reason, than the sight of a prettily arranged break-
fast table, flowers, fruits, and some little surprise at his plate
to charm away his languor?
A dish of cold snow-pudding, for instance, which contains
ingredients that are all nutritious and suitable for a child, will
work like a charm.
It requires very little forethought to select menus that will
give children what they like, yet at the same time what they
require. It is a mistake to suppose that they desire during their
earliest years a great variety of food at every meal, nor do they
need it. A little observation of their manner of receiving the
announcement of a new dish, as compared with the shout of
delight upon the appearance of an old favorite that has prob-
ably not been seen for several days, will demonstrate to any
mother the truth of this assertion.
It has often surprised me to see how my own boy will wel-
come a boiled egg at dinner, instead of his usual supply of meat.
A point not beneath our consideration is the boiling of an egg.
Every woman thinks she can do this, no matter how unskillful
she may be in other branches of cooking, yet it is perhaps the
least understood of all processes of making food digestible by
proper treatment. A mother need not actually cook the food
required for her child’s well-being, as some of my statements
might imply, but she should be thoroughly able to direct just
how it should be done. She should also know what to select
under certain conditions, and be able to note by results that her
directions have been carried out. With well-trained servants and
a clear understanding of cause and effect in cooking, it will be
found that it is not always necessary to give personal supervision
to the preparation of a child’s food, yet, if it prove necessary, the
mother should be willing to do this and even more, for when
judiciously applied this supervision will frequently prevent dif-
ficulties that are likely to occur as a result of carelessness.
A mother must also be able to detect immediate needs in
indiyidual cases of feeding, as on account of proximity she is
generally the only one who notices the daily variations in con-
ditions requiring daily modifications of diet. She must under-
stand the changes needed in health, illness, and intermediary
114 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
stages, and how to supply as nearly as possible the same materials
that the body is regularly losing, as, for instance, in Summer,
when her child loses much water by perspiration, she should
See to it personally that sufficient water be given.
If food is not such as the digestion can master, or if the
waste caused by constant action and change going on in the
organs is not fully counterbalanced, suffering and illness will
certainly result, and lack of proper nourishment will give en-
couragement to inherited tendencies to various diseases. Nature
resents carelessness, and is relentless in her punishments.
What the doctor calls cholera infantum, rickets, or maras-
mus, and the mother is often inclined to consider a dispensation
of Providence, is very often a direct result of violations of the
most common laws of domestic science. The whole study of
nursery dietetics appears to be a vast one, yet it resolves itself
into a few simple and generally acknowledged facts.
For an infant, whatever is given as a substitute must resem-
ble its natural food as closely as possible, which can be done, as
has been shown by expert analyses.
Following infancy comes the more difficult period of child-
hood, although not usually considered so. It frequently hap-
pens that a plump, vigorous-looking infant develops into a thin,
unhealthy-looking child. No amount of general knowledge will
be of service at this period; special study is required.
Following the period of childhood comes the time for the
study of estimating correct quantities and proper selections of
food to be used in regulating the diet suited to the individual
needs of girls and boys in school and approaching maturity, the
excesses to be avoided by those of sedentary habit, and questions
of similar import.
Fonssagrives says that impetuous development in youth is
never devoid of danger. The period of school life is a most crit-
ical and important time in the lives of children as regards
adequate nutrition. Continuous growth and development of
mental activity demands a complete and liberal dietary based
upon sound principles, in order that we may supply by feeding
the wear and tear made by incessant demands, that are frequently
too great for the strength that is called upon. This fact is often
10IETETICS. 115
overlooked, and the foundation is either laid for future disease
or else strength is undermined that should be held in reserve
for later life.
The custom of sending children to school upon a light break-
fast or none at all, with a cold luncheon for the noon meal
and a hot dinner at night, is reprehensible to the last degree; or,
if a hot dinner is provided at noon, the habit of rushing home
in a limited time to consume eagerly and rapidly the food which
should be eaten leisurely and enjoyed, has a strong influence
upon the integrity of the child’s health, and it should not be
allowed under any circumstances. If school laws are rigid,
remember that parental authority should be absolute, and insist
upon different hours; or, if nothing better can be done, keep
the child away for the time required, irrespective of late marks,
etc. Such action, if concerted, would speedily bring authorities
to the point of meeting existing needs in this direction.
Dr. W. Gilman Thompson says many children inherit feeble
constitutions, such as the scrofulous, rachitic, and gouty, which
must be combated through the whole period of childhood. He
says such children are better at home, where they can be under
constant observation and proper dietetic treatment, or country
schools can be found for them where such matters are made the
subject of special consideration.
I think it was Shirley Dare who said that the day will come
when many forms of illness will be considered a discredit to
those involved. As the knowledge of causes increases there will
certainly come a less ready willingness to credit everything to a
hitherto much-abused Providence. The patience of physicians
in dealing with this class of disease is a constantly growing
marvel.
The demands of rapid growth must be met by proper nutri-
tion, or serious subsequent impairments of vitality will result.
Very delicate children, whose appetites are poor and who do
not do justice to their regular meals, should be given an extra
allowance of hot broth, or hot milk, or an occasional cup of
chocolate with bread and butter, or rusk, between meals. Do
not listen when told that a delicate child needs but three meals
a day.
116 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Individual cases must be controlled by tact, circumstance,
and judgment as to special needs.
Since no mental work should be done directly after eating,
it might be wise to regulate school hours so that manual train-
ing and lighter work than is usual should follow luncheon.
This is possibly a Utopian idea, but as the first hours after any
meal should be kept for moderate effort, preferably play or some
restful occupation, the attention of school boards might wisely
be directed to this phase of physical development for the regu-
lation of which they are directly responsible.
Dr. Thompson says the hours for study should be so arranged
as to allow time for preparation for going to table to meals with-
out hurry, and to allow an interval of half an hour or more after-
ward for recreation, in order that digestion may be well under
way before any mental exertion is required.
Relative to this whole subject, Sir Henry Thompson, a noted
English physician, and an authority upon dietetics, says: “I
have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease
which embitters the middle and latter half of life is due to
avoidable errors in diet (to which might be added ‘ more par-
ticularly in early years'), . . . and that more mischief in the
form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life
accrues to civilized man . . . from erroneous habits of eating
than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I
know that evil to be.”
General knowledge is of very little use in this study beyond
directing attention to the need existing for special knowledge.
What appears to be one of the most practical phases of this many-
sided subject is that this special knowledge must be supplied to
mothers by Scientists, by physicians, and by those among the
laity who are sufficiently interested in the subject to assist by
giving data secured through personal experience. The science
of household affairs must be understood if reform is to be looked
for. Endowments must be made to enable scientists to make
researches of the highest order. Simplified results may then be
given to the public in such a manner that they will be assimilable
and readily comprehended by the average intellect. Schools,
public and private, should not overlook the importance of this
MOTHER'S RELATION TO CHILD'S DEVELOPMENT. 117
study, and the press, on account of its ability to reach the people,
must realize the opportunity of supplying the need felt every-
where for practical instruction. Then all mothers and home-
makers in the land, those indirect nation-makers, will easily come
to understand the underlying principles involved, and will apply
this knowledge in such a way as to benefit all who are dependent
upon their efforts. Herbert Spencer says: “Perhaps nothing
will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both
be adequately cared for as a diffusion of the belief that the
preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there
is such a thing as physical morality. Men’s habitual words and
acts imply that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they
please. The fact is, all breaches of the law of health are phys-
ical sins. When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till
then, will the physical training of the young receive all the at-
tention it deserves.”
MOTHER'S RELATION TO THE SOUND PETYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT OF EDER CEIILD.
By MRs. A. JENNESSE MILLER,
Washington, D. C.
I BELIEVE that since the foundation of the world there have
been good mothers and bad mothers, and so it will be to the end.
While my heartiest sympathies are with this movement for the
education of mothers to the highest standard of motherhood,
I believe each individual woman has got to think and work out
for herself the great problem of how to do her duty to her child.
The suggestions given here will bring forth good or bad fruit
according to the mother. Motherhood is a sacred and beautiful
relation exactly in proportion to the intelligence and common
sense which the individual mother puts into preparing her child
to go forth into life to meet its obligations, responsibilities, and
temptations. A mother should seek to well equip her children,
morally and intellectually, and in every sense of the word. So
118 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
the duty of the mother becomes, first of all, in my judgment, the
duty of the organizer. Now I am not very good at theories. I
have always been an exceedingly practical woman, and never
have done anything well that I have first spun out in the form
of long-drawn and high-sounding theories. The practical side
of this question begins in so organizing the child physically that
it may be able to meet the trials of life and resist them. The
first duty of the mother begins with developing the body with
properly feeding and properly caring for it in such a way that
the child, as to its nerves, brains, tissues, and blood, shall be
supplied with vitality. Then the mother should care for it in
other ways, so that the child may have such a well-poised and
well-balanced nature that it shall not come under temptation
easily. This begins at home. I do not believe we shall ever
Solve the problem of how to organize our children morally until
we have done away with the family kitchen, which is responsible
for half the dyspeptic stomachs in the world, for half the ill
tempers, and for two thirds of the family discord, divorces, and
other things that follow naturally. And so I am in favor, first
and foremost, of Scientific eating—of feeding men into heaven
and children into morality. I have looked into the subject a
good deal on two sides of the water. I was privileged a few
years ago to see the launching of the great English warship the
Blenheim, and Mr. Hills, the man who had built the ship, was
a vegetarian. I am not; but am always willing to study various
subjects which may help human beings to become better. When
I met the electrician of that great ship, and he held his hand out
firmly enough for his three-year-old boy to stand on it, I said,
“That man is splendidly organized.” Now this man, as I
learned, had been eating from the vegetarian standpoint. For
four years he, in common with other workmen at the Thames
Iron Works, had been studying the question of how to organize
their bodies properly to get rid of the appetite for stimulants.
I was told that all the workmen employed in building the ship
had been fond of their beer, going out for it at noon every day
in years past, but since the change in their diet to cereals, whole-
wheat bread, and fruit, they no longer wanted beer. And I said
to myself, “There is an idea!” It was not original with me, but
MOTHER'S RELATION TO CHILD'S DEVELOPMENT. 119
it was suggestive to me. Then I began to look into the question,
and said, “Here is a vast field for the temperance worker.”
And I began to ask questions among the men whom I knew
socially, who drink wine as a social matter, but never get intoxi-
cated—men who drink wine, without caring much for it, as a
convivial, social matter—I asked these men, in various parts of
the country, “Would you care if you never saw wine again?”
and I had so many answers, so much testimony, to the effect that
wine meant practically nothing to them, that the problem of
how to cure the drink habit was solved to my thinking. Where
men are well fed there will be little craving for stimulants. It
seemed to be exceedingly rare to find men craving liquors who
enjoyed thoroughly nutritious foods, and all of the men in high
social life live well naturally. Then I took a lower social grade—
one in which the food is less well prepared—and there I found
that desire for drink was in proportion to the lack of nutriment
in food. These were moderate drinkers. Then I went among
the humblest and most degraded homes, and found poor wretches
who never had had a square meal in their lives spending all the
money they could get for drink, and I said, “The first duty of
the reformer is to teach mothers who have the care of families
how to make the dishes that will nourish muscles, nerves, brains,
and tissues of the body. This, I believe, is the first great ques-
tion with which the mother has to deal. I do not know whether
it is presuming or not to suggest it, but I do suggest that every
mothers’ club should, as its very first work, take up the study
of how to prepare foods chemically, and become so expert that
every dish put upon the family table shall have some definite
purpose in supplying nutritive food to the bodies of children to
do away with inherent evil and gross appetites.
Then I would suggest that money should be raised to secure
scientific cooks to go to the lowest classes in our cities and towns,
teaching the women who are unfortunate enough to have drink-
ing husbands, and perhaps the temptation themselves to drink,
how to prepare inexpensive, nutritious foods. This is the first
practical work to do, according to my thinking, to improve
public morals. I know that I am an infinitely better Christian
when I am well fed. I have listened to many and many a dys-
120 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
peptic sermon from the pulpit, where everything was colored by
the minister’s dyspepsia. This is of vital interest to all think-
ing people.
Again, mothers should study anatomy. You will ask,
“Why?” Because if you do not understand anatomy you do
not understand the relationships of the various parts of the
body. Then physiology must receive attention, so that we may
understand the harmonious workings of all the various parts
of the body. Then sanitary science, hygiene, and physical de-
velopment follow naturally—how to develop children in every
part so that each part will be in harmony with every other part.
I shall not inflict upon you to-day, as no doubt you expect, the
matter of dress improvement. But, my dear friends, if we begin
right, with the knowledge of the human structure and all of
its various relationships, the knowledge of how it is organized
as to muscles, joints, nerves, tissues, and brain, so that all work
together for good or for evil—if we bring our intelligence to
bear not only upon prenatal conditions, in order that children
may be well born, but from the moment of their coming into
life look to proper feeding, nourishment, and development, we
can insure beyond a question of doubt vital, splendid manhood
and womanhood. There is no good reason why our nation
should not be the strongest the world has ever seen. I believe
the time is coming when it will be considered a crime to say,
“I am ill.” I believe the time is coming when women will be
positively ashamed, as some of us are now, to call upon our
friends retailing a long list of our physical ailments. I believe
the time will come when disobedience to God’s laws, as shown in
this wonderful and complicated human structure, will be con-
sidered a greater crime than neglect of municipal and other laws.
From the hands of the divine Creator we have an exquisite
structure, the most perfect in the world, every part organized for
infinite harmonies, but with the possibilities of endless discords.
It rests with the individual whether this instrument shall re-
spond exquisitely or do the opposite. It is the mother who has
first and foremost to see that her children are properly organ-
ized. I have stood for ten years on the lecture platform, all the
time talking to women. But I have come to sympathize a good
MOTHER'S RELATION TO CHILD'S DEVELOPMENT. 121
deal with downtrodden man. I have come to think that, after
all, men are not half so bad as they are painted. In fact, it does
seem to me that often when women talk about men’s habits
they need to look at home. Our boys (I haven’t any of my own,
but I speak for the race) are for years and years in the hands of
mothers. If the father has the germs of evil in his organiza-
tion, it must be admitted that he is likely to entail some of them
upon his boy. Upon the other hand, if the mother has abused
her organism until she has backache and headache and organic
disease, she is just as responsible as is her husband for abnormal
traits and immorality in her boy, and she must share equally
with the father the responsibility. No amount of women’s meet-
ing together and patting each other on the back, and saying,
“Oh, if the men would only behave!” is going to change facts.
Correction begins at home.
If we begin by intelligently learning how to eat, and then
develop physically as we should develop, and dress properly,
there is no reason in the world why we should not eradicate the
germs of evil. Disease is crime. Every criminal should be
treated as a diseased person. I do not believe in punishment,
but in correction. See the stupidity of our laws. We allow the
diseased, criminal, and irresponsible classes among us to marry
and propagate. We say it is interfering with individual rights
to deny them marriage and the privilege of bringing children
into the world. We spend a great deal too much time in think-
ing of individual rights. The greatest good to the greatest num-
ber should always be the watchword in our laws. Every man
and woman in the country who wishes to marry should be made
to pass a physical examination at least as thorough as the one
which the insurance companies demand for a five-hundred-dollar
policy before license is granted. There would be some common
sense in demanding that the man who is going to marry should
make at least the guarantee afforded by good health to the State
that his children will not, as criminals, idiots, and irresponsibles
generally, come upon the public for support. All criminals
should be treated as diseased persons. They should be given the
means for physical cleanliness, development, and proper food.
I believe two thirds of the criminals could be fed into decency.
122 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
We take these men from the slums, put them in prison for years,
and feed them as badly as possible. Who calls that common
sense? A Mothers’ Congress ought to go into the lowest ranks
of every city and into every prison and enforce a good diet, so
that men should, after serving a term, come out with better
moral tendencies. When a man with a family on his hands is
put into prison, he should be given work and permitted to earn
his living, and the extra money earned by his daily toil should
be sent to his family for their support, instead of his children
being thrown upon the streets. You all know how we highly
virtuous people go around with an electric search light seeking
for deviltry. And when we find anything that looks bad, we say
that it ought to be eradicated, exterminated, that it is wrong,
wicked. But how rarely we apply the corrective to the source
of the evil. It seems to me that if, instead of hunting for wick-
edness only to rail against it and leave it to take care of itself—
unless an absolute offense against the law has been committed—
we were to search in a kindly, gentle, Christian spirit for the
good in human nature, and then with tender, motherly motives
separate the wheat from the chaff and seek to eradicate evil, we
should do better. When a man is sent to a prison or to a re-
formatory, we should not only treat him by the latest scientific
means for moral correction, but hunt out his family, not to give
them charity (we have too much of that already), but to help
them to help themselves. We want the man and his people to
become self-respecting and self-helpful. We find diseased tis-
sues, abnormal tendencies, disorganized mentality, much that
leads to criminality in the children of criminals generally. We
should take the wives and children of such men and see that
they have better food and learn better methods of life, in order
that we may commence at the fountain head to improve human-
ity. The women here to-day from all over the country, who
are anxious to do the best they can for their children, do not
represent the people who need the most help from a Mothers’
Congress. There are people who do need such help, and you
ought to go to them, study them, and get hold of the best means
you can for helping those lower down in the social strata than
yourselves. Work must begin at the bottom. We need not
REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW. 123
only to work in the individual home and with individual chil-
dren, but with all who are denied the blessings of a Serene, pure,
and helpful home influence and teaching.
I hope that the practical means which have been suggested—
study of sanitary science, physical development, proper dress for
both mother and child, and reorganization of our daily bill of
fare—will be among the things that the mothers of this Congress
will take up. Scientific cooking, the chemistry of food, and a
thorough understanding of our splendidly organized bodies will
enable us to properly develop and control not only our own
health and morals and our children’s, but to contribute indi-
vidually our quota by precept and example to the moral eleva-
tion of a common humanity.
REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW.
By MRs. ALICE LEE MOQUE,
Washington, D. C.
IN the past it has been the generally accepted theory that
parents were merely the unconscious instruments of the Divine
Spirit, for the working out of his will, and that the mental and
amoral attributes of their children, their temperament, health,
character, and sex were direct decrees of the Infinite, which it
was useless for the finite mind to try to comprehend or explain.
To-day we are wiser, and have learned that Nature is the
great exponent of sublime truth and natural law the Creator’s
text-book, by which he teaches his children the perfection of
the divine plan, and lifts them to a higher plane of responsi-
bility.
In Nature it is law, not chance. Effect is the natural se-
quence of cause. A child, if he puts his hand into the fire, will
be burned, not to punish him for having disobeyed the warning
of his parents, but to teach him that he has willfully broken an
immutable law.
124 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
The child profits by the lesson, and is saved from future pain;
but children of an older growth, adult men and women, are still
blind to the plain truth which natural law strives to impress
upon them, and, while constantly confronted with the just ful-
fillment of the Omnipotent fiat, “Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap,” continue to walk with closed eyes, and
speak of a “visitation from God” when their progeny are un-
healthy, malformed, and imbecile, without a realization that a
crime against the child has been committed, and by them—
ignorantly, we will admit, but “ignorance of the law excuseth
no one.”
“One of the most fruitful causes of the popular indifference
to this most important and sublime subject, the science of crea-
tion,” says William Winser, the anthropologist, “is the prevail-
ing belief that the excellence or inferiority of offspring is the
result of Divine Providence, which arbitrarily decrees that one
child shall be approximately perfect, while another shall be deaf,
dumb, crippled, and idiotic. Of course, if this is the case, all
scientific effort is useless, all investigation futile, all knowledge
a burden, and we should simply bow to the inevitable. But we
respectfully submit that such is not the case; and, moreover, that
charging such enormities upon Divine Providence, ‘who doeth
all things well,’ is a monstrous error, a blasphemy against the
justice of the Most High, and a cowardly shirking of the real
responsibility.”
Then, if there are known laws governing reproduction, just
as divinely ordained and enforced as the laws of gravity, of space,
and of motion, every man and woman, rich or poor, high or low,
every reasoning creature, has a right to know them, for the truth
belongs not to individuals, but to all humanity.
If a child can be well born by simply following certain under-
stood laws of Nature, if the mental, moral, and physical condi-
tion of the child at birth and for its entire existence is dependent
upon absolute law, as immutable as the motions, diurnal and
annual, of the earth itself, or the phases of the moon and the
rise and fall of the tides, then the parents who bring into the
world an imperfect creature are just so far culpable, inasmuch
as they have failed to do their whole duty.
REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW. 125
This may sound severe, almost heartless and cruel, to parents
with afflicted children, but we must say it, for it is the truth,
that the fathers and mothers of the present may profit by the
solemn lesson taught by the past, and, being shown their re-
sponsibility as parents, may fulfill to the uttermost, so far as
lies in their power, their obligations to their own children and
to the generations yet to come.
John Stuart Mill says, “The fact itself of causing the exist-
ence of a human being is one of the most responsible actions
in the range of human life.” To undertake this responsibility,
to bestow a life which may be either a blessing or a curse, unless
the being on whom it is bestowed shall have at least the ordinary
chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being.
To bring a child into the world without a prospect of being
able to provide food and clothes for its body, or instruction
and training for its mind, is not only a crime against the un-
fortunate offspring, but a crime against Society itself.
It is an incontrovertible fact that ninety-nine men out of
a hundred let no serious thoughts of their future responsibility
as fathers trouble them when making their selection of a mate.
Too often, indeed, “trifles light as air ' influence their choice—
a pretty face, a becoming gown, a winning smile are sufficient
to turn a man’s fickle fancy from one maid to another, and often,
yielding to the impulse of a moment, words of wooing are spoken
that make or mar not only the lives of the plighted twain, who
“lightly turn to thoughts of love,” but decide that most mo-
mentous question of the future—the status of their progeny.
It is not the maiden who will make the best mother, nor,
alas! even the girl who will be the best wife, who is sought,
but too often merely the physical attractions for the time of the
woman who pleases his eye for a moment whom Dame Chance
has thrown in his path while he is in an impressible and sus-
ceptible mood.
If, then, men are thoughtless, and without prudent fore-
thought for the well-being of their descendants, it devolves upon
the maid, before accepting a mate, to weigh well the conse-
quences, and for us, who are wives and mothers, to seek for a
reasonable answer to the question, “How shall we, as women,
9
126 . NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
fulfill our obligations to ourselves, our husbands, and pos-
terity?”
“When love comes, reason dies,” the old maxim says, so
therefore it behooves the maiden to ascertain the mental, moral,
and physical status of her admirers before she goes to the length
of giving one of them her heart. While it may not be possible
before marriage to learn the faults and failings of the beloved
one, only too plainly visible after the waning of the honeymoon,
still it is surely practicable to learn something of the man’s
moral nature, to know whether his life is right, his soul unde-
filed, and his family, like the incoming ship, has a “clean bill
of health.” Often maids and mothers most diligently inquire
as to what the man has, but neglect that much more important
question of what the man is.
We believe that in this enlightened era no one has a right
to marry into a family where there is known insanity, or even
partial imbecility, and the kindred evils that follow out to the
letter the inexorable law, “The sins of the father shall be visited
upon the children.” Like begets like, the laws of heredity are
inflexible, and the child is but the composite picture of what
its parents are and their progenitors have been.
Years ago, when I was a little girl and living in Philadel-
phia, I had a school-teacher whose life story I learned later.
She was a sternly just, sad-eyed woman—a “scrawny old maid,”
as the older girls often described her—who had left her home
in one of the New England States to earn her living among
strangers. Her heart had been given in her early youth to her
first cousin, and he had asked her to marry him; but, knowing
the Scrofulous taint in his blood, and having, moreover, reli-
gious scruples against marrying one so near of kin, she refused,
although she knew that by so doing she gave up forever the
hope of happiness, of love, and of marriage. At the stern verdict
of reason and conscience her love rebelled, and fearing she might
not have strength to live on near her lover, who continued to
implore her to change her decision, she left her home and her
loved ones (the man soon contenting himself by marrying an-
other), and true to her conscience, her love, and herself, she lived
and died among strangers, an “old maid.”
REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW. 127
To-day, while we proclaim the honor due maternity, let us
not forget our noble unmarried sisters. Let us, while applauding
mothers, ask a blessing upon those worthy women whose lives
are beautiful, whose hearts beat for humanity, whose hands
are busy with the world’s work. All honor and praise to the
so-called “old maids’ who are true to their convictions, true
to the virtue which scorns the material, unloved marriage, true
to their own ideals, to the sanctity of wedlock, to posterity, and,
in the highest, most sublime sense, true to themselves as women!
Can we not also, as mothers, learn from some of them the bound-
less depths of the maternal instinct, as evidenced in their works
of love for the downtrodden, oppressed waifs of the human
family, a love so broad, so high, so noble, that all children are
to them their own?
We have learned woman’s moral obligation to herself, and
now let us speak briefly of her duty to her husband—a duty as
sacred as the solemn vows taken at the altar can make it—“To
have and to hold, to love and to honor.” This must mean to
retain by every art and power the love and admiration of her
mate, thereby promoting that perfect union of souls which mar-
riage implies, and insuring not only the happiness of the home
and the mated pair, but the well-being of the little ones who
may come to bless them.
If I were asked the great requisite for marital happiness, I
should unhesitatingly reply, health. By a wise and persistent
observance of the simple laws relating to exercise, diet, dress,
ventilated dwellings, and other sanitary conditions, we may all
hope to obtain this priceless blessing, from which so many others
flow.
The woman with a good constitution, even if she be not either
young or handsome, if she has the bright eye, the clear mind,
vivacity, and buoyant spirits which only a woman physically
sound may know, has an attractiveness of her own that will not
only increase her comfort and happiness, but will be an impor-
tant factor in aiding her to fulfill her whole duty as woman,
wife, and mother. *
Balzac, the great French writer, declares in his Physiologie
du mariage, Méditation onze, “A woman who has received a
128 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
‘ masculine education possesses the most fertile and brilliant
qualities with which to secure the happiness of her husband and
herself.”
We all understand what a significant term a “masculine
education ” is; that it means not only the training of the mind,
but the equally necessary training of the body. To-day while
rejoicing that the entrance to the college is open to women,
we still more exult in the fact that the door to the gymnasium
is unlocked and the gate to the campus unbarred. Woman’s real
emancipation must be from the doctor, for her growth, develop-
ment, her status in the business world, and her highest ambi-
tions as maid, wife, and mother are and must always be depend-
ent not only upon her mental attainments, but upon her phys-
ical condition. Health is a necessity; woman’s perfect realiza-
tion of her rights will be when she accepts the plain truth that
she must not only have a sound mind, but a sound body.
Our duty is clear. We must recognize our responsibility not
alone to ourselves and the present, but to posterity and the
future. No woman has the right to be selfish, and least of all
will the tender, loving, maternal heart forget that every sob,
every tear, every sigh, every fear, is a crime committed against
her own unborn child, and from which it will suffer throughout
its whole life. Before birth is the time to prove the strength
and power of mother love, not afterward, when it is too late to
undo the grievous mistake, the fatal wrong our folly has com-
mitted. The devotion of a lifetime, alas! will not atone to the
child for antecedent neglect.
The day will come when the rights of the child to be well
born will be recognized and respected. In that day the “de-
fective ’’ will demand the reason for its puny limbs, impaired
mind, misshapen spine, pain-racked body—a life of suffering
with blasted hopes—and the world will not condone or palliate
the cruelty and crime committed against the unfortunate child,
deprived of its birthright, on the old plea of ignorance or the
pretense that God willed a defective should be born—a pre-
tense that is contradicted by every law, human and divine.
Every woman, I believe, must settle with her own conscience
the question of fulfilling the obligations of maternity; but once
REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW. 129
conscious of the sublime task she has undertaken, once cognizant
that the soul and being of a little human atom has been given into
her keeping, she is bound by every mandate of honor, of love,
and of duty to go bravely, proudly forward, forgetting self, and
conforming not only her life, but her body and mind, toward
the highest, noblest ideals, every thought, every purpose, every
desire being held conservant to the future well-being of her
child.
We know that under the natural laws of reproduction the
health and happiness of both mother and child are prompted
by prudence, by right living and thinking, just as Surely as the
ill humor, discontent, and sighs of the mother not only jeop-
ardize her own health, but counteract upon her offspring, in-
delibly marring its disposition for life.
We know that the beautiful before our eyes and in our minds
is personified in the face and form of our child. We see the
beauty which is all around us, and we know that God’s world
is glorious, his work well done, and that all the perfection of
complete creation he seeks to perpetuate by natural law. From
the beginning of the world men have gathered not grapes of
thorns or figs of thistles, but “even so 'every good tree bringeth
forth good fruit,” and shall, until the end of law and of time.
Grant Allen declares for the male ethicists, of whom he is
one, that they “will not rest content until they have vindicated
the claim of all children to a sound father and a sound mother.”
It will be the object of these thinkers “to combat vile vices
that bring about impaired vitality, and to put the relation of
the sexes and the production of children on a sound and whole-
Some basis, moral, physical, and emotional; to insist on the
rights of the unborn and yet unbegotten generations.”
To the reasoning mind an unwilling, forced maternity is
no more honorable than is the compulsory enlistment of the
conscript. Let those mothers bear the palm who, knowing all
the responsibilities and duties of maternity, all the pains and
suffering of childbirth, become willing mothers. With them
it will not be a matter of chance, a condition of shame, a period
of tears, fears, or lamentations, but rather a season of strength,
a faithful performance of known and recognized laws, a time of
130 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTEIERS.
patient, hopeful, loving preparation, and a joyful waiting for a
Sublime consummation that may indeed cause “joy among the
angels”—an intelligent realization of the divine plan of repro-
duction, a perfect, purposed maternity.
THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN
HEREDITY.
By MRs. HELEN H. GARDENER,
Boston, Mass.
IT has always been thought a charming trait in woman that
she so easily “conforms,” that she thinks and believes anything
that her father, brother, lover, or husband thinks and believes—
or wants her to suppose that he does. And in thinking of this
fact, I am always reminded of a dear little Japanese maid I had
some years ago, and you will pardon me for telling the little
story, for my topic—when I come to it—is somber enough for
this bit of light to come before it.
The second Sunday she was with me she asked me suddenly
if she should go to Sunday school. I had never before had a
Japanese servant who was not a pagan—a Shinto—so I asked
her in some surprise, “Are you a Christian, Haru?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with that quaint little scandalized look
on her face which indicated that not to be a Christian would be
quite without her mental horizon. “Wasn't Miki a Christian?”
she asked, referring to her predecessor in my service.
“No,” I said, “Miki was a Shinto; but that is all right. If
you want to go to Sunday school, you shall. I shall arrange it
for you. What kind of a Christian are you, Haru?”
The sharp, little black eyes glued themselves to my face, and
the sleeves of the komona spread themselves like wings as she
shifted nervously from one foot to the other. At last she said:
“One time I was a Methodist—one time Baptis'—an’ one
time Prest—Presb–”
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 131
“Presbyterian?” I asked.
“Yes, that,” she responded.
It appeared that while learning English in her own coun-
try she had lived in three different missionary families. .
“Well, Haru,” said I, “which kind are you now? I want
to arrange for you to go to Sunday School, and 55
“Which kind are you?” she asked gravely, quite ready to
conform the outward semblance of her faith to fit my pattern
as part of her loyal service, but with her stanch little pagan
soul not in the least disturbed in its ancestor worship.
When it finally developed to her consciousness that I did
not look upon it as a part of her duty to me for her to go to
Sunday school, she said, “You don’t care if I don’t go?”
“No,” I said; “surely not.” #
“Then I don’t want to go"; and she did not while she lived
with me.
And it is not until woman comes out from under cover of
conventional usage and says, “I don’t want to do this ’’ and
“I don’t believe in that,” of her own volition and thought—
not until then will she be fit or strong enough to create and mold
characters that shall grow into free men—men who shall be the
victims of neither their enemies nor themselves, because of their
feeble or their vicious inheritance.
I am far more accustomed to talk upon the topic that has
been allotted to me to scientific bodies, or to practical students
of heredity, anthropology, biology, and kindred subjects, and
therefore I may possibly say things that will sound dogmatic
from the point of view of those who have not made a special
study of the subject. I shall not mean anything I may say to
seem either dogmatic or harsh, only earnest, and perhaps a short
cut to facts we are to face.
I fear that I shall strike a less pleasant note than those
who have preceded me, who have so generally dealt with ideal
motherhood, who have sung the praise side of the song. My
theme is scientific. It deals with demonstrable facts, and it goes
back of even the kindergarten, of the benefits of which we have
all been so thoroughly convinced in the past two days, if never
before. If, therefore, I shall say some things that seem harsh
132 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
or cruel, remember that the surgeon’s knife cuts only because
it hopes to strike the root of the disorder. Remember that sci-
entific facts are not always pleasant, but, for all that, I hold that
it is wise for us to know them.
There have been a good many kinds of congresses of women
in the past few years, since it has been granted that women have
a right to meet and discuss any topics whatever, and since it has
been recognized that they have the capacity to think for them-
selves, and the dignity and poise to express their thoughts in
public, without finding it necessary either to take refuge behind
their male relatives or to become masculine themselves in the
process.
But in all previous congresses, although it has been freely
admitted by men and women alike that there is still much for
women to learn from each other through mutual effort and con-
Sultation upon any and all other subjects, so far as I am able
to discover, it has been taken for granted that, since the begin-
ning of the world, all women have known enough to be mothers,
and that it was, therefore, wholly superfluous for the mothers
of the race to convene as such, and confer with each other about
those topics which are of the first and most vital importance to
humanity—that is to say, about their functions, duties, and
moral responsibilities as both the creators and the cradlers of
mankind. Neither dense ignorance, deformity of body or mind,
ill health, nor criminality could disqualify woman for the one
“sphere * which all men joined in asserting was hers by divine
right, and in calling holy and lofty. Think of the absurdity
of the proposition! Think of the sacrilege! Think of the un-
conscious indignity!
Poets, statesmen, novelists, and artists have for ages untold
striven to eclipse each other in the eulogies of motherhood. On
the stage nothing is so sure of rapturous applause as is some
touching bit of sacrifice which has reached its climax in a moth-
er’s love wherein she has yielded all to shield, to protect, or to
better the condition of husband or child. From the crude senti-
mental songs which advise the son to “Stick to your mother when
her hair turns gray,” through the various phases of maternal
love and devotion or Sacrifice, and on up to the loftiest touches
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 133
in art and literature, there is alike the effort to celebrate the
power, the potentiality, and the beauty of motherhood, and to
stimulate the sentiments of gratitude and love and admiration
for and emulation of the ideal depicted. But through it all, in
the building and maturing of this ideal, there runs ever and
always the one thread of thought that self-sacrifice, self-abnega-
tion, self-effacement are the grandest attributes of maternity;
that in order to be a perfect, an ideal wife and mother, the woman
must be sunk, the individual immolated, the ego subjugated. To
a degree and in a sense that is, of course, true. For the willing-
ness to go down to the gates of death, to face its possibility
for long weary months, to know that suffering and to fear that
death stands as a sure and inevitable host at the end of a long
journey—to know this, and to be willing to face it for the sake
of others, is a heroism, a bravery, a self-abnegation so infinitely
above and beyond the small heroism of camp or battlefield that
comparison is almost sacrifice.
The condemned man upon whom the death watch has been
Set, who can not hope for executive clemency, who is helpless in
the hands of absolute power, still knows that, although death
may be sure, physical suffering is unlikely, or at the worst will
be but brief; but he alone stands in the position to know—even
to a degree—the nervous strain, the mental anguish, the un-
thinking but uncontrollable panics of flesh and blood and nerve
which woman faces at the behests of love and maternity, and,
alas! that it can be true, at the behests of sex power and of
financial dependence!
But when we study anthropology and heredity, we come to
realize the indisputable facts that her love, her physical hero-
ism, and her bravery, linked with her politically and financially
subject status, have cast a physical blight, a moral shadow, and
a mental threat upon the world. Then we cease to clap quite
so vigorously at the theater, and our tears or smiles are mingled
with mental reservations and a sigh for a loftier ideal of the
meaning and purpose of maternity than the merely physical one
that has been depicted as material sacrifice to the child and self-
abnegation and subjection. We begin to wonder if much of the
vice, the crime, the wrong, the insanity, the disease, the incom-
134 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
petence, and the woe of the world is not the direct lineal de-
scendant of this very self-debasement of the individual character
of woman in maternity. We begin to wonder if an unwilling, a
forced, or a supinely yielding (and therefore not self-controlled)
—a subject motherhood, in short—is not responsible to the race
for the weak, the deformed, the depraved, the double-dealing,
pretense-soaked natures which curse the world with failures,
with disease, with war, with insanity, and with crime. We
begin to wonder if the awful power with which Nature clothes
maternity in heredity does not strike blindly back at the race
for the artificial and cruel requirements at the hands of the
producers of the race. We begin to wonder if mothers do not
owe a higher duty to their offspring than that of the mere nurse.
We begin to wonder if she has the moral right to give to her
children the inheritance that accident and subserviency stamped
upon body and mind. We begin to wonder how she dares face
her child and know that she did not fit herself by self-develop-
ment and by direct, sincere, firm, and thorough qualifications
for maternity before she dared to assume its responsibilities.
We begin to wonder that man has been so slow in learning to
read the message that Nature has telegraphed to him in letters
of fire, and photographed with a terrible persistency upon the
distorted, diseased bodies and minds of his children and upon
the moral imbeciles she has set before him as an answer to his
message of sex domination. Do you know that there is an army
of seven hundred thousand defectives in this country? Don’t
you know that this means something to every mother in the
world? $even hundred thousand forced into life without their
birthright! Seven hundred thousand imbecile, insane, deaf,
dumb, blind, and criminal victims of maternal and paternal
ignorance! Stop and think of it. There are but three cities in
America which have seven hundred thousand inhabitants. Our
standing army is only about twenty-five thousand men—these
for our protection; our defective army, seven hundred thousand
—these for our destruction.
Self-abnegation, Subserviency to man, whether he be father,
lover, or husband, is the most dangerous theory that can be
taught to or forced upon her whose character shall mold the
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 135
next generation. She has no right to transmit a nature and a
character that is subservient, subject, inefficient, undeveloped—
in short, a slavish character, which is either blindly obedient or
blindly rebellious, and is therefore, in either case, set, as is a
time lock, to prey or be preyed upon by society in the future.
If woman is not brave enough personally to command and to
obtain absolute personal liberty of action, equality of status,
and entire control of her great and race-endowing function of
maternity, she has no right to dare to stamp upon a child and
to curse a race with the descendants of such a servile, a dwarfed,
a time- and master-serving nature.
We have been taught that it is an awful thing to commit
murder, to take a human life, and so of course it is. Do you
know that there are students of anthropology and heredity who
think that it may be even a more awful thing to thrust unasked
upon a human being a life that is handicapped before he gets it?
That it may be a more solemn responsibility to give than to take
a human life? In the one case, you invade personal liberty,
and put a stop to an existence more or less valuable and happy,
but at least all pain is over for that invaded personality. In the
other case, in giving life, you invade the liberty of infinite ob-
livion, and thrust into an inhospitable world another human
entity to struggle, to sink, to swim, to suffer, or to enjoy. Wheth-
er the one or the other, no mortal knows, but he surely knows
it must contend not only with its environment, but with its
heredity—with itself. For we all follow the line of least resist-
ance. No man is bad simply from choice. If you are good and
true and lofty, it is because, all things considered, that is to you
the line of least resistance. The parents of the race must make
it easier to be good, easy to be true, hard to be ignoble or crim-
inal not by rewards and punishments—those methods have been
weighed and found wanting—but by the very blood pulsations
that are transmitted from both parents to the children to whom
they take the tremendous responsibility of giving life.
It is the fashion to repeat, “The hand that rocks the cradle
rules the world.” Every one knows that this is not true in the
sense in which it has always been used. It is true, alas! in a
sense never dreamed of by politician or publican.
136 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
It is true that the subject status of maternity has ruled
and does rule the world, in that it has been, and is to-day, the
most potent power to keep the race from lofty achievement.
Subject mothers never did, and subject mothers never will, pro-
duce a race of free, well-poised, liberty-loving, justice-practicing
children. Maternity is an awful power. It blindly strikes back at
injustice with a force that is a fearful menace to mankind. And
the race which is born of mothers who are harassed, bullied, sub-
ordinated, or made the victims of blind passion or power, or of
mothers who are simply too pretty and self-debased to feel their
subject status, can not fail to continue to give the horrible spec-
tacles we have always had of war, of crime, of vice, of trickery,
of double-dealing, of pretense, of lying, of arrogance, of sub-
Serviency, of incompetence, of brutality, and, alas! of insanity,
idiocy, and disease added to a fearful and unnecessary mor-
tality.
To a student of anthropology and heredity, it requires no
great brain power to trace these results to perfectly legitimate
causes. We need only remember that the mental as well as the
physical conditions, capacities, and potentialities are inherited
to understand how the dead level of hopeless mediocrity must be
preserved as the rule of the race so long as the potentialities of
that race must be filtered always through and take its impetus
from a mere annex to man’s power, ambition, desires, and opin-
ions. We can not hope to have a moral race until we have a
mentally and physically sound and Sane race. All immorality is
a lapse from sound physical and mental health. No man is
other than his heredity and environment make him. The very
basic laws of evolution teach us that. One may take a bundle
of facts from anthropology, from the study of evolution or of
heredity, and lay them out before you like an assorted row of
lifeless sticks. They may be neatly arranged and orderly, but
they will no more than attract your passing attention. A genius
will take this same row of dead sticks and make of it a flaming
torch to set your brain on fire.
Not long ago a great man who is successful beyond most
human units, who is wealthy, socially to be envied, who enjoys
almost ideal family relations, who is in all respects a man of
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 137
broad intellect, of large heart, and who is beloved, successful,
and powerful, a famous lawyer—not long ago this man said to
me, while talking of life and its chances, its joys and its burdens
and wrong:
“Well, the more I think of it all, the more I know, the more
I delve into philosophy and science, the more I understand life
as it is and as it must be for long years to come, if not forever,
the more I wonder at the sturdy bravery of those who are less
fortunate than I. Does it pay me to live? Would I choose to
be born again? Were I to-day unborn, and could I be asked
for my vote, knowing all that I know of life, would I vote to
come into this world? Taking life at its best estate, are we not
assuming a tremendous risk to thrust it unasked upon those who
are at least safe from its pitfalls? I ask myself these questions
very often.” And then, hesitatingly, he said: “I sometimes
think it pays, after all. Of course, since I am here I am bound
to make the best of it, but for all that I am not sure how I would
vote on my birth if I had the chance to try it—not quite sure.”
“If you are so impressed with life yourself—you, who are
a fortunate, healthy, wealthy, happily married, successful man,”
said I, “don’t you think it is a pretty serious thing to assume
the right to cast that vote recklessly for another human pawn,
who could hardly conceivably stand your chances in the world?”
“Serious, indeed!” he exclaimed. “With the world’s con-
ditions what they are to-day, with the physical, moral, and mental
chances to run, with woman, the character-forming producer
of the race, a half-educated subordinate to masculine domina-
tion, it is little short of madness, it is not far from a crime. It
is a crime unless the mother is a physically healthy, a mentally
developed and comprehending, morally clear, strong, vigorous
entity, who knows her personal responsibility in maternity, and,
knowing, dares maintain it.”
It has been the fashion to hold that the mothers of mankind
should not be the thinkers of the race. Indeed, in commenting
upon the Congress of Representative Women in Chicago at the
World’s Fair, the most widely read newspaper on this continent
said editorially:
“There is to be a great series of Women’s Congresses held
138 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
at Chicago during the Fair. The purpose is to illustrate and
celebrate the progress of women. Accordingly, there will be
sessions to discuss the achievements of women in art, author-
ship, business, science, histrionic endeavor, law, medicine, and
a variety of other activities.
“But, so far as the published programmes enable us to judge,
not one thing is to be done to show the progress of women as
women. There will be no showing made of an increased capacity
on their part to make homes happier, to make their husbands
stronger for their work in the world, to encourage high endeav-
ors, to maintain the best standards of honor and duty, to stimu-
late, encourage, uplift, which from the beginning of civilization
has been the Supreme feminine function. Nothing, it appears,
is to be done at the congresses to show that a higher education
and a larger intellectual advancement has enabled women to bear
healthier children or to bring them up in a manner more surely
tending to make this a better world to live in, the noblest of
all work that can be done by women.
“We need no congress to show us that women are more thor-
oughly educated than they once were, or that they can success-
fully do things once forbidden to them. But have wider culture
and wider opportunities made them better wives and mothers?
A congress which should show that would make all men advo-
cates of still larger endeavors for woman’s advancement. A
congress, on the other hand, which assumes that the only thing
to be celebrated is an increased capacity to win fame or money
will teach a disastrously false and dangerous lesson to our grow-
ing girls.”
This fatal blunder as to the value of woman’s development
as woman, quite aside from her home relations, which the editor
confuses with it, has retarded the real civilization, and caused
to be transmitted (unnecessarily transmitted) the characteristics
which have gone far to make insanity, disease, and deformity
of mind and body, the heritage of well-nigh every family in the
land.
A great medical expert said to me not long ago:
“There is not more than one family in ten who can show
a clean bill of health, mental and physical—aye, and moral—
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 139
from hereditary taints that are serious in threat and almost cer-
tain of development in one form or another. *
“Now, if a man with an infectious disease enters a com-
munity, he is quarantined for the benefit of his fellows, who
might take it if he were not restrained and isolated. But if
a man with a hereditary or transmittible disorder, which is cer-
tain, enters a community, he is allowed to marry and transmit
the taint to the helpless unborn, to establish a line of posterity
who are far more directly his victims than would be those who
were exposed to a cholera infection by a lack of quarantine. So-
cial, educational, and economic conditions have all conspired
to keep mothers ignorant of all the facts of life of which mothers
should know everything; and so it has come about that the race
is the victim of the narrow and dangerous doctrine of sex domi-
nation and sex restriction, and of selfish, reckless indulgence and
ignorant maternity.”
If not one family in ten can show a clean bill of heredity, is
it not more than time that the mothers learn why, where, and
in what way they are responsible, and that they cease to “close
the doors of mercy on mankind’?
Maternity, its duties, needs, and responsibilities, has been
exploited in all ages and climes, in all phases and spheres, from
one point of view only—the point of view of the male owner.
If you think that this statement is extreme, I beg of you to
read The Evolution of Marriage, by Letourneau. Read it all.
Read it with care. It is the production of a man of profound
learning and research, a man who sees the light of the future
dawning, although even he sometimes lapses from the universal
language of humanity into hereditary forms of speech, hedged in
by sex bias.
But in all the past arguments maternity, with its duties to
itself, maternity with its duties to the race, has never been more
than merely touched upon, and even then it has been chiefly
from the side of the present, and not with the tremendous search-
light of heredity and of future generations turned upon it. It
has been ever and always in its relations to the desires, opinions,
and prejudices of the present man power which controls it.
Some time ago a famous doctor in New York took up the
140 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
cudgel against higher education for women, and, under the
heading of Education and Maternity, Woman’s Proper Sphere,
The Dangers which threaten Intellectual and Society Women,
wrote in favor of ignorant wives and a larger number of chil-
dren. A great journal published his articles without protest,
thus giving added prestige to the opinions expressed; this, too,
in spite of the fact that at that very time the same journal was
appealing for alms, for free nurses, for volunteer doctors, and for
a fresh-air fund to enable the ignorant mothers of the crime-
infected, disease-polluted, overpopulated tenements of the city
to get even a breath of fresh air by the sea, which is only two
miles from its doors. In spite of the fact, too, that Lombroso,
Ricardo, Mendel, Spitzka, MacDonald, and other famous anthro-
pologists and experts have pointed out so plainly in their statis-
tics of criminal, insane, imbecile, and mortuary the all-prevailing
evils of rapid, ill-advised, irresponsible parentage.
It has been the fashion in the recent past to select the ablest
girls in the family to send to college or to develop for a career
or a profession. Of the others it was said, “Well, Julia and
Maud do not seem to care to learn much. They will no doubt
marry and make good mothers, but the other girls will have a
career.” Think of the insult to motherhood this accepted theory
is, and it is well-nigh universal. Think of how slight a grasp
upon the realities of life such theories show!
In this connection I want to say that I was asked not so very
long ago to give a few minutes' talk on the subject of Women
in the Professions.
There chanced to be present at the time a lady who instantly
said, “Don’t forget our profession, the new profession for
women, in which they are beginning to make so much money.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Designing,” said she.
“Well,” said I, “this astonishes me. I supposed from all
I had heard and read all my life long that there could be noth-
ing new in the line of being a designing woman. What is new
in your branch of the profession?”
She gazed at me quite seriously, and replied that in the past
women were taught but the husk. Their designs would not
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 141
work, could not be applied. The weavers or stampers found them
pretty to look at, but impossible of application. They were
the work of those who did not understand the general plan and
scope of the finished product. Their designs would not bear the
test of practical application at press or loom. Somehow it came
into my mind then, as it does to-day, that this was exactly the
difference between the general attitude of womanhood to the
world now and in the past. Their pretty and often very con-
scientiously wrought designs, made from the Superficial outlook
of the days that are behind us, will not weave into the texture
and woof of the practical life of the womanhood of the future;
and so, no matter what she is to be or do, no matter what is to
be her profession or her career, no matter whether it is to be
outside or inside of the ideal homes which we all, men and
women alike, long for, it is imperative that her training proceed
henceforth upon that solid, practical, and applied basis which
takes into account the fact that she and her work are hence-
forth to be a part of both the warp and the woof of the
fabric of which the human race and its best interests are to be
WOWeI).
Whatever her work is, she must be thorough in her prepara-
tion for it, and know absolutely where each line she draws is to
lead to and where it started from. Patchwork in life, like patch-
work with the needle, has been superseded.
A woman can not make a good doctor, a good lawyer, a good
journalist, a good preacher, a good novelist, a good artist, or a
great musician unless she knows and can weigh in a rational
manner the meanings of life, unless behind her science, her art,
her labor, or her philosophy there is a comprehension born of a
solid grasp upon the real meanings of life, its relations, its pro-
portions.
Knowledge is indeed power, and ignorance is ever and always
the twin brother of vice. Therefore, no matter what profession
falls to the lot of or is chosen by a woman, the first, the most
important, the absolutely vital need for her is a broad, solid,
true, and comprehensive grasp upon the facts of life as life is
to-day and as it has been in the past. This alone will enable
her to lay a firm foundation for the future.
10
142 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
I think this statement will be accepted as almost a truism
when it is applied to what are generally called the professions.
But, strange to say, there is one profession for which it is always
claimed that a true and firm and comprehensive sense of the
proportions in life is not at all necessary to fit the applicant for a
diploma—the profession of motherhood. And yet it is true—
and it is easy of proof if one has the least knowledge of biology or
heredity—that there is no occupation, no art, no profession on
the earth in which ignorance of the true relations of things' can
and does work such lasting and such terrible disaster to the race
as has been done and is constantly being done right there.
Ignorant and undeveloped motherhood has been and is a
terrible curse to the race. An incompetent artist is merely a
pathetic failure. A superficial woman lawyer simply goes client-
less. A trivial woman doctor may get a chance to kill one or
two patients, but her career of harm will be brief. A shallow
or lazy woman journalist will be crowded out and back by the
bright and industrious fellows who are her competitors. But
a superficial, shallow, incompetent, trivial mother has left a
heritage to the world which can and does poison the stream of
life as it flows on and on in an eternally widening circle of pain
or disease or insanity or crime.
In every other profession which woman has entered she has
been better fitted for her work before she took her degree than
for the one which is held to be her especial province. Why?
Simply because up to the present time it has been maintained
that a pretty and childish ignorance of the real and true values
and relations of life, combined with a fine pair of eyes and a
compliant manner, entitled any woman to a diploma in her
“sphere * of maternity, while if she undertook to fit herself for
any other career she has had to measure her life not with a
painted-toy mentality, but with the logically trained intellect
which must compete with her brothers, the established workers
of the world, or else she must go to the wall where she is thrust
by her incompetence.
It would be well for the sake of the race if she could be
subject to such competition in maternity. And did it ever occur
to you that her children are subject to it, and that the vast
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 143
spread of incompetence in the world, the universality of incom-
petence to cope with conditions, has a legitimate basis?
No woman is fit to bring up the administrators of a repub-
lic who is not herself familiar with the fundamental principles
upon which that republic is based; for it is a well-known fact,
exceptions and geniuses being allowed for, that the trend, the
bias, the color of the mentality of a man is fixed upon him in
his earliest years, in the years when his mother is his nearest
and most influential teacher. His sense of justice and of fair-
ness is warped or developed then. His possibilities are born of
her capacity, and his development depends largely upon her
training.
What profession in the world, then, needs so wide an out-
look, so perfect a poise, so fine an individual development, such
breadth and scope, such depth of comprehension, such fullness
of philosophy as does the lightly considered profession of mother-
hood?—lightly considered, I mean, in the sense that it has been
and is held by so many that it does no especial harm to have
the mothers of the race distinctly lower in development, in men-
tality, in individuality, in poise, in grasp, in education than any
other class of men or women.
And so, as I said before, when I was told not long ago at a
public meeting that I was expected to speak on Women in the
Professions, I thought I would make a departure and talk most
fully, in the few minutes I was to have, of the need of her higher
education for and because of the one profession which was not
thought of at all in its vast necessities, not only in the develop-
ment of a higher womanhood, but for the race which is to have
the solving of the tremendous problems of the future. I thought
I would suggest the needs of those voiceless ones, rather than
speak much of or for those exceptional women who have ap-
peared and are, in ever-increasing numbers, gaining firm and
established foothold in the other professions, because of which
they are being trained, or are training themselves, for what they
and all recognize to be a sharp and severe competition, where
capacity and willingness to do well what is undertaken is the
inevitable price of the position itself, and I shall take the liberty
to repeat here what I said then. It was this:
**
144 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
“It is getting to be pretty generally looked upon as the
special province of the less highly endowed or the less thoroughly
trained residuum to become the progenitors of the coming gen-
erations. If you have a daughter who is too silly or weak-minded
or unambitious to become a unit in the march of progress and
civilization—if she is incompetent to be sent through a solid
training of school or college and fit herself for some possible
or probable career as minister, doctor, designer, lawyer, journal-
ist, or what not—marry her to somebody, and let him carry the
load of her unaspiring presence while he lives, and let the race
bear the burden of her infirmities and ignorance unto the third
and fourth generation of them that loved her.
“The fact is, as over against that theory, that if you have
a daughter who is finer and truer, more capable and noble, more
intellectual and able than the rest, she is the one whose educa-
tion and development as an individual should be carried to its
highest reach, not simply because she is to be a writer or speaker
or teacher, for which she may be primarily fitting herself as her
trend may be, but because in the ultimate analysis it may also
be her pleasure and province to be the wife and mother in a real
and true and inspiring home life, where her ever-new and stimu-
lating comradeship for husband and children makes of her mind
a beacon light and of her poised and self-disciplined disposition
a guide and an inspiration; where she will be loved and revered
not only because she is loving and good, because she is
also wise and able and broad enough to lead, instead of
being blind to the very pitfalls in the pathway of her sons and
daughters.
“When our republic has such mothers as that the question
of women in the other professions will have adjusted itself.
When woman is developed and free to choose, capacity will find
its level and its outlet. Ignorance will cease to be looked
upon as beautiful in either sex, and men and women will for the
first time clasp hands and try conclusions with a frankness and
a generosity and a comradeship which will be a real inspiration
and joy to both. e
“There is a Japanese legend which says that when Japan
was first created a man and a woman were placed upon the island ©
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 145
and told that they must travel in silence and in opposite direc-
tions around the entire country, thinking what was best and
wisest and truest in life until they should meet again at the
same place. They did so, and when they met the man looked
up, and in great joy spoke first; but, as the quaint legend puts
it, “There was an impediment, and they could not marry,” but
were told to make the same journey again and think more
deeply. They did so, and this time the woman saw him first,
and cried out with pleasure after the long silence. “But there
was still an impediment,’ and a third time they made the long
journey, and when they met each looked up with solemn and
radiant joy, and spoke together, and from that time there was
“nothing between their lives, but they were truly mated for-
ever.”
“That exquisite little legend from the far East holds within
it a quaint and true bit of philosophy, a bit of philosophy to
which our Western world is but just now awakening, a bit of
philosophy which is back of all questions of Woman (or of man)
in the Professions—or out of them.”
And I say here again to this Mothers’ Congress that if Ellen
and Katherine study law, or medicine, or art, and compete in
the world for a place, they can harm but few other than them-
selves if they fail or are incompetent in their chosen careers.
But an incompetent, inane, ill-trained, or frivolous mother is a
curse unto the third and, fourth generations of those who
love her.
If you have a brilliant girl, one who has fine poise, splendid
endowments, great promise, it is she who should be developed
to the full, with the knowledge that if she has done her best in
all things she is still only able to be a tolerably good mother;
she lacks still much of wisdom, much of all the judgment, ten-
derness, and scope that shall enable her to be an ideal mother
of ideal children, who shall be healthy in body and in mind,
honest, earnest, truth-loving, and justice-practicing human
beings—a credit to her and to the race as it shall one day be.
But so long as motherhood is kept ignorant, dependent, and
subject in status, just that long will heredity avenge the outrage
upon her womanhood, upon her personality, upon her individual
146 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
right to a dignified, personal, equal human status by striking
telling blows upon the race.
It seems to me that in discussing no other question in life
is there so little logical reasoning and so much arbitrary dog-
matism as in the questions which are usually embraced under
“woman’s sphere.” In the first place, it is assumed that because
women are mothers they are nothing else, that because this is
her sphere she can have—should have—no other.
Men are fathers. That is their sphere; therefore they should
not be mentally developed, legally and politically emancipated,
socially civilized, or economically independent. This would
appear to most men doubtless as a somewhat absurd proposition.
It appears so to me, but it is not one whit less absurd when
applied to women. Yet this is constantly done. Because women
are mothers is the very reason why they should be developed
mentally and physically to their highest possible capacity. The
old theory that a teacher was good enough for a primary class
if she knew the “A B C's,” and little else, has long since been
exploded. A high degree of intellectual capacity and a broad
mental grasp are more important in those who have the training
and molding of small children than if the children were older.
The younger the mind, the less capable is it to guide itself intel-
ligently, and therefore the more important it is that the guide be
both wise and well informed. In a college, if the professor is
only a little wiser than his class, it does not make so much dif-
ference. In a post-graduate course it makes even less difference,
for here all are supposed to be somewhat mature. Each has
within himself an intelligent guide, a reasoner, a questioner, and
one to answer questions.
With little children, the one who has them in charge most
closely must be all this and more. She must understand the
proportions and relations of things, and wherein they touch the
bearing and trend of mental and physical phenomena. She
must furnish self-poise to the nervous child and stimulus to the
phlegmatic one. She must be able to read signs and interpret
indications in the mental and moral, as well as in the physical
being of those within her care. All this she must be able to
do readily and with apparent unconsciousness if she is best fitted
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN IN HEREDITY. 147
to deal with and develop small children. More than this, she
must not only be able to detect wants, but must have the wisdom
to guide, to stimulate, to restrain, to develop the plastic creature
in her keeping. If she had the wisdom of the fabled gods and the
self-poise of the Milo, she would not be too well equipped for
bearing and educating the race within her keeping.
But more than this the ideal mother should know and be.
She must have love too loyal and sense of obligation too profound
to recklessly bring into the world children she can not properly
endow or care for. Every mentally, morally, or physically de-
fective child has a right to demand of its mother how she dared
equip him so badly for the life into which she has taken the
liberty to bring him, to demand of her how she dared equip her-
self so ill for her self-imposed task of creator of a human soul.
Up to the present time woman’s moral responsibility in hered-
ity has been below the point of zero, for the simple reason that
she has had no voice in her own control nor in that of her
children.
But with the present knowledge of heredity, with woman’s
enlarged opportunity and broadened education, she who per-
mits herself to become a mother without having first demanded
and obtained her own freedom from sex domination and fair
and free conditions of development for herself and child will
commit a crime against herself, against her child, and against
mankind. &
Mothers, you have it in your power to make it true in a lofty
sense that “the hand that rocks the cradle shall rule the world.”
It is for you to say whether it shall be ruled for good or for ill
in the days that are to come.
148 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, 9.30 O'CLOCK.
THE MOTHER'S GREATEST NEEDS.
By Miss FRANCES NEWTON,
Chicago, Ill.
I THINK I know the thought which is uppermost in every
one’s mind here to-day. You are all thinking that a mother
might better have been chosen to discuss this subject than an
unmarried woman. Ever since I came to Washington two
weeks ago people have been asking, with somewhat of sarcasm,
“What do you know about motherhood and its needs?” My
answer always is: “I make the study my profession.”
I feel that I can speak with authority on this subject, be-
cause for several years I have been trying to supply in my little
“kindergarten home * those things which the children ought
to have in their own homes, those things which every child has
a right to demand of his father and mother, but which he does
not receive from them very often. In many cases the fathers
and mothers bring the children to me without realizing why
they have brought them, except that nowadays it is the proper
thing to have one’s child in the kindergarten. And so, in work-
ing for these little people and with the mothers, in talking with
them—sometimes when their hearts are almost breaking—I have
come to realize what some of the mother’s needs are, and I bring
them to you briefly and very simply to-day.
It seems to me that the first thing for the mother to realize
is what home should mean to her child. I think she needs to
realize this fully before her child comes and while she is making
for him the little garments, and getting ready for him in all
the loving ways that loving mothers do; she needs to realize
that while doing this she, at the same time, should be making
the right home atmosphere, the right thought atmosphere for
him, a home for mind and soul as well as for body. What sort
of servants does she have in the house? Are they in sympa-
THE MOTHER'S GREATEST NEEDS. 149
thetic touch with her? If there are relatives in the family, are
they one with her at this time? Is she seeing to it that every day
the home life is being made more harmonious, more united in
the expectation and the preparation for this little one?
Then I find that one great need of many women is the need
of an organized home, life. I do not mean by this the organiza-
tion that we see in a machine, where everything is perfect and
runs smoothly, yet with a great deal of buzz and noise, and with
no inner life principle of its own; but rather the organization
which we find in a plant where the father and mother elements
are, where the leaves and blossoms gradually unfold one after
the other, and where every part is essential to the whole. It
seems to me that home life should be every month, every year
in the life of the family one of development; that father and
mother and children should keep on growing, and not going
over and over again in the same old groove, but that every year
as it rolls by should find them on a higher plane and as a more
perfect whole. I do not think that we can overestimate the value
of an organized home life, where every one’s duties fit into every
other one’s duties, where every one’s pleasures fit into every
other one’s pleasures, and where there is some underlying
plan.
In the kindergarten we do not go on from week to week and
month to month without an organized plan, and I believe that
many mothers would find it far easier if they had a plan under-
lying their life with the child. I do not mean by this some-
thing like a pattern to which they must fit their child, but rather
something which they can fit to him as he grows as they fit his
clothes to him. The mother, living so closely with her child,
can see what sort of atmosphere he needs, mentally and morally,
as well as physically, and she should plan to have it.
Another thing which I think a mother needs almost more
than anything else is the sympathetic co-operation of her hus-
band. I have said this before, and women have asked, “ FIow
are you going to get it? If your husband does not sympathize
with you, doesn’t care for the children, nor for what you are
trying to do, how are you going to help it?” I frankly confess
that I do not know, but I believe this, that a woman never yet
150 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
set out to get something which she wanted and was determined
to have and failed to get it. And I believe this, also, that if a
man loves his wife when he marries her, and does not sympa-
thize with her, or is not just as interested in the children when
they come, and in their education and all that belongs to them,
it is largely her fault. I have had no experience in the matter
of husbands, but I have had a father, I have a brother, and I do
know, from experience in homes where the women have tact
and love and patience, that the men can be made interested in
anything in which the women are vitally interested. I do not
believe that a mother can do all that a mother should do, or
that should be done for the child, without the co-operation of
her husband.
I recall a story: A mother eagle had broken her wing, but
one day, when danger came to her little ones, she, forgetting
her pain and inability, bravely struggled to rescue them, to fly
away with them on her back, but she found that she could not
do it; she needed both wings. The family life is like the eagle,
one wing representing the father and the other wing represent-
ing the mother; it takes both wings with which to fly.
Another thing which the mothers need, and this need I have
met oftener than with any other. It is the need to live sympa-
thetically with the children. A great many mothers live for
the children. They boast that they have lived for their chil-
dren, when perhaps they have never lived one day with them.
In my experiences in my little kindergarten I have learned
that the more I can enter into the life of the child—live through
his experiences with him, feel just as he feels about the things
which come to him—the more successful I have been, the better
I have understood him, and the more quickly has he responded
to my thought. The mothers of to-day, many of them, estrange
their children; they are too busy or are too dignified to sit on
the floor and play with their children. I heard of a mother
the other day who sent word to the kindergarten that she did
not wish her child to sit on the floor, for she would then be apt
to grow up undignified, and she did not wish so dreadful a
calamity to befall her. I wish that mother was obliged to go to
a kindergarten for a whole year; I think she would learn to sit
THE MOTHER'S GREATEST NEEDS. 151
on the floor, to do it gracefully, to enjoy it, and to be a better
woman for it.
I miss so much this sense of “togetherness” in the homes
that I know, and I often meet with the sense of condescension
on the part of the adult members of the family.
It is one of the mother’s greatest needs to live with her child,
not only for the sake of the child, but perhaps even more for
her own sake, because she can not live with him without becom-
ing like a little child; and you know what He said—that we can
not enter into heaven until we become like a little child. Heaven
does not necessarily mean a place afar off or a time far away, but
here and now—any place where harmony exists and love abides.
There is no way—there is actually no way—of becoming like a
little child except by living with him.
I have also noticed that mothers need very much the love
that frees in place of that love which binds and kills. I know,
and you know, more than one young man or young woman—or,
perhaps, a man or woman no longer young—who is still bound,
still a slave to the father or mother, or to the weakness, the
dependence which the father or mother cultivated in the name of
love. They seem to have no self-reliance, no power of decision,
no readiness to make a choice; whenever and wherever they can
do so they lean; they have not been made free; they have not
been allowed to choose. Children respond quickly to the right
if they have freedom of choice. Not long ago a little boy came
to the kindergarten one morning who, ever since last fall, each
morning that he came, had cried because his mother would not
stay with him. She had brought him faithfully every day, and
every day he had cried when she left. Every day it had been
my duty as soon as he arrived to take him into my lap and com-
fort him until the mother was out of sight, when he would be-
come quiet and happy. On this particular morning to which I
refer it seemed to me that the old custom had gone on long
enough. I met him on the stairs where he stood crying at the
top of his voice; instead of trying to comfort and hush him, I
said: “My dear, do you wish to cry this morning? If you do,
we will stop our work until you have finished; we will neither
sing, nor talk, nor tell stories until you get all through. Now,
152 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
dear, if you wish to cry, you may.” And I sat down and folded
my hands, and all the children waited. He felt perfectly free
to cry and to make us all uncomfortable, but he did not seem to
want to; he suddenly ceased, and he never has cried in kinder-
garten since.
I have another little boy who is fortunate—or unfortunate,
it seems to me in this case—in being an only son and the young-
est child. He has several older sisters, most of them grown to
young womanhood. He is a beautiful child, and the idol in his
family. They never speak to him without calling him by some
pet name, but never since his birth has he been held a free spirit.
He was feeble-looking. At first I could not understand his de-
bilitated condition. It seemed to be a case of “arrested develop-
ment,” and sometimes I was afraid that he would never be in
normal condition. I began to know the family better, and then
to realize what the trouble was; we took special pains to make him
feel perfectly free in the kindergarten, free to do exactly that
which he chose to do, unless he was interfering with the com-
fort and happiness of somebody else, free to choose to go out of
the room or to cease whatever he was doing. Sometimes he
would choose to stay, sometimes to go out, but he felt perfectly
free, and our reward has come at last after two years of devoted
work with him. During the past few weeks he has been a joy
and a delight to us. He has rapidly and sweetly unfolded; all
his work, as well as his living, now expresses freedom and con-
trol. When his mother or an elder sister comes into the kinder-
garten, however, we notice the difference; he is not himself at
all. He still has that sense of being bound by them, by their
thought of him as being a pet and plaything instead of an indi-
vidual with rights of his own.
Dr. Henry James said, in one of his memorable talks, it is
great to be the imitable thing. Mothers may try to do the imita-
ble thing; the mother may prayerfully hold herself to some lofty
ideal; but if she be not the imitable thing, some day she will
forget, and when she is not thinking she will do the thing she
would rather the child would not do, and that is the very thing
he will be apt to imitate. So the only safe thing is for the mother
to know that which she wishes her child to be and do. If it is
THE MOTHER'S GREATEST NEEDS. 153
perfection, then must she strive to be perfect—to have that inner
spiritual perfection which is the only safeguard against mistakes.
Her child will feel it, he will imitate it no matter what she says
to him. You know what Emerson says: “Do not talk to me.
What you are thunders so loudly in my ears that I can not hear
what you say.” The children feel what you are, and will copy
that which you do.
I wish just for a moment to speak of one other need. It was
touched upon so beautifully this morning by Mrs. Booth. It is
of that love about which she talked, which is the philosophy of
all things—the love which she expressed in her own face and
attitude and words to us, until this place seemed radiant with
it. Do you remember that she said the truest way in which we
can help our children is to love the children that belong to other
people? Perhaps they are the children in the back alley, the
children down in the slums, but they should be loved for them-
selves and with our own boys and girls. The only way to do
this, I am sure, is just to think (I know how almost impossible
this must be for a mother, yet I do believe that it is something
every mother must strive for) of her child not as her own, belong-
ing solely to her, but as belonging to the world. They all belong
to us—they all belong to me. We have a right to ask and a
duty to assist each child to be all that a good man should be.
We should earnestly ask and expect this thing of each other; we
should hold ourselves up to the high ideal that we belong to
each other. Your children belong to me, to the neighbors, to
everybody else, to every one with whom they come in touch.
You can not keep them to yourself; you can not keep them
within the narrow home circle—they belong to the world, and
they should be so taught. They are only lent to you to care for,
to help, until they can stand on their own feet and live their
own lives independently of you. That sense of ownership which
so many mothers seem to express, and for which we can not
altogether blame them, is deplorable; it must not be excused
because it does not give to the children that larger sense of be-
longing to the world.
That sense of ownership which will say to a child, “Well, I
am your mother, and therefore you must do this thing; I am your
154 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
mother, and therefore I have a right to ask this thing of you,” is
just as wrong in the sight of God as any other sort of slavery.
Obedience is not true obedience, service is not true service unless
there is back of it the sense of freedom and the guided will.
We have no right to ask another human being, no matter how
young, to do a thing which is solely our personal wish or desire,
and does not lead to that universal sense of obligation to the
whole.
Every child can be taught right relationships before he
leaves the nursery. I presume that in every home represented
here to-day there is at least one servant. The child gets his first
lesson in the social questions of the day in the nursery. He is
unconsciously asking himself: “What is my mother’s relation to
that woman? Is she her friend? Is she kind to her, or is she
imperious or commanding?” Of course, whatever she is that
he will be. He draws conclusions also. “That woman belongs to
another grade of life. She is different from me. I do not need
to treat her as I do mother’s friends.”
These are only a few of a mother’s needs, but they are those
with which I have come in contact perhaps more than any others,
and they are vital. But we know, if we feel a great lack, where
to go. There is not a Christian woman here who does not know
where to go. There is not a Christian woman here who pre-
sumably did not have a mother who prayed for her and with
her, who can not remember the Sunday afternoons when the
mother would gather her little ones about her in the stately,
old-fashioned parlor and have the little prayer time together. I
feel (if I may be personal just for a moment) that nothing—
nothing—can ever be to me what the memory of those Sunday
afternoons is. But then, after all, dear friends, we know that
ideally we have no need, because we are “complete in Him.”
PLAYGROUNDS IN CITIES. 155
PLAY GROUNDS IN CITIES.
By MISS CONSTANCE MACKENZIE,
Philadelphia, Pa.
IN order to understand a movement, to estimate its results,
its tendencies, and its possibilities, it is necessary to know its
history.
I purpose in to-day’s paper to sketch briefly the growth of
the summer playground in the United States, its origin, the
work it has thus far done, and, in the light of its past, the good
it may be expected to accomplish in the day—now, I believe, not
so remote—when the playground will be considered as vital
a necessity in a city as the kindergarten is regarded at the pres-
ent day.
The short annals of the playground in the United States
record the names of four pioneer cities: Boston opened play-
grounds in 1886; New York, in 1891; Providence, in 1894;
Philadelphia, in 1895.
The first summer playground in the United States of which
I can find any note was opened in Boston in the summer of
1886. It and its two contemporaries were literally builded upon
sand, for they began from a suggestion made by Dr. Marie
Zarzewska about sand-heaps for children. Opened first in the
yards of mission schools, later in the public school yards, they
were located only in the congested parts of the city and in yards
whose adjacent buildings afforded shade. They are under the
charge of the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Commit-
tee, and immediately in the care of the Committee on Play-
grounds, whose chairman, Miss Ella M. Tower, has been the
active power in association with the direction of the yards from
the beginning.
In June, 1891, the Park Commissioners put under the charge
of this association the Charlesbank Women's Gymnasium and
Children’s Playground, under the chairmanship of Mrs. Kate
Gannett Wells. Boston’s playgrounds are therefore sustained
156 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
partly by private enterprise and partly by public moneys, al-
though the direction of all of them is in the hands of an associ-
ation of citizens.
“In New York public playgrounds have been in desultory
operation to a most limited extent four or five years,” writes
Mr. Jacob A. Riis, whose valuable article on Playgrounds for
City Schools, which appeared in volume lxviii of Harper's Maga-
zine, had undoubtedly an important part to play in drawing at-
tention to the moral as well as physical necessity of room for
school children for their periods of recreation. “School play-
grounds (outdoor) were ordered for all new schools by the Legis-
lature of 1895, which also directed that all small parks hereafter
laid out shall have children’s playgrounds attached. The Park
Department has this year consented to try the “sandhill’ plan
in some of our smaller parks.”
The Public Playground Society—chairman, Hon. Abram S.
Hewitt—has charge of one playground in some vacant lots.
Several yards were maintained for awhile and then given up.
Last year one was kept open successfully by Miss Grace H. Dodge
and some of her friends. The East Side House Settlement has
also a flourishing playground in operation.
New York playgrounds, it will thus be seen, are in part under
public, in part under private auspices.
The work in Providence began in the summer of 1894. It
is under the management of the Joint Committee of the Union
for Practical Progress and the Providence Free Kindergarten
Association on Summer Playgrounds, and is thus entirely a pri-
vate enterprise. By a city ordinance, voted in 1895, seven public
schoolyards, and a rooms in each of the seven corresponding
school buildings, were granted the committee for the purpose of
playgrounds and for storing material, the playground committee
holding itself responsible for all damage of public property thus
loaned. Three other playgrounds were opened upon property
other than that controlled by the Board of Education.
The movement in Philadelphia began to stir as early as 1888,
although the first playgrounds were not established until 1895.
In 1888 Mrs. J. P. Lundy became interested in the work of
the City Parks Association. A series of newspaper articles fol-
PLAYGIROUNDS IN CITIES. 157
lowed by Dr. J. M. Anders, the second of which was entitled
Summer Playgrounds for our Boys and Girls.
In 1893 city councils passed the League Island Playground
Ordinance. In 1894 the Civic Club was organized, a club of
women whose object is “to promote by education and active
co-operation a higher public spirit and a better social order.”
For the better execution of its object, the club was divided into
four departments—municipal, education, social science, and art.
One of the declared purposes of the Department of Art was “to
encourage the art interests of the city with a view to increasing
the beauty of our parks and public places.” There seemed the
occasion for the Committee on Playgrounds, which was at once
formed, with Mrs. J. P. Lundy chairman. The recognition of
the playgrounds as broadly educational suggested the fitness of
a representation upon the committee of a member from the
Department of Education. Before the summer was upon us
the representation of the committee before city councils resulted
in a grant of one thousand dollars, which, in 1896, was increased
to three thousand dollars. This appropriation was placed in the
hands of the Board of Public Education. A Committee on Play-
grounds was there formed, with Mr. Paul Kavanagh as chairman.
The subsequent connection of the Civic Club with the move-
ment was and is an important one. Through its representative
from the Department of Education it recommended directors for
appointment to the Board of Education; received and collated
the full reports of the directors, with additional matter in the
way of suggestion or recommendation; visited the yards sys-
tematically; appointed visiting committees from the club, whose
reports upon individual yards were valuable; and in every way
worked in cordial co-operation with the committee from the
Board of Education.
The Philadelphia playgrounds are the only ones of which
I know supported by public funds. The resignation of all
broadly educational institutions into the hands of the public
should, I think, be the end toward which all such movements,
begun privately, should press. The private associations have
an important office in starting measures, sustaining them in the
beginning, and demonstrating their value. When this has been
11
158 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
done, public spirit should demand the right to place the advan-
tages of a good measure within the reach of all who need it.
The public park, the public library, the public kindergarten,
the public playground represent a few of these educational in-
fluences which no city can afford to be without.
Whether the cities in which playgrounds have thus far been
established have passed the torch from hand to hand, or whether
the idea in each place started a flame through spontaneous com-
bustion, as ideas in harmony with the time spirit have a fashion
of doing, I have not been able to find out. Be that as it may,
the reports from the several directions, while individual and
different in many ways, all record organizations similar to each
other in important particulars. It is upon these likenesses—
proved of value by experience—that other cities may broadly
build. And therefore I outline them here.
First. I find no exception to the plan pursued by each city
of placing the playgrounds under constant, friendly guardian-
ship. Free they are, it is true. But free under law. All classes
and conditions of children crowd together in these delectable
places. But they do not at first know how to use them. The
little children need protection, guidance, suggestion; the older
boys and girls need to have stirred within them the sense of law
and order, of respect for the weak, a sense of honor in play;
younger and older need a constant, intelligent presentation of
the ideal. For this purpose is oversight imperative. Moreover,
oversight is wise only through experience. And hence follows
the second note, that every city with a playground history back
of it reaches out for the kindergartner, the woman who knows
children sympathetically. And when it finds her it makes her
the caretaker. It is true that all of these cities have not done
this to the same degree. Boston appoints kindergartners as her
matrons in the playgrounds; the assistants are kindergartners,
if such can be secured. Excepting the cases of playgrounds for
boys only—of which a word later—the leaders in the Providence
yards must be kindergartners. The superintendent of the play-
ground under the auspices of the Working Girl’s Club, New
York, is a kindergartner. Philadelphia appoints as caretakers
only kindergartners of approved experience.
* PLAYGIROUNDS IN CITIES. 159
TJpon this care exercised in the appointment of the young
women in charge of the playgrounds I feel that too much stress
can not be laid. The appointment of the right matron to a yard
means the extension of an influence unestimated unless person-
ally observed, an influence reaching over into the homes, by its
civilizing, encouraging, and enlightening effect upon the mothers
and fathers.
A third feature common to all city playgrounds represented
in my report is the opportunity afforded for additional means
of development to that represented in play. The work habit
finds an encouragement it sorely needs through the introduction
of pleasant forms of employment, such as sewing, modeling,
weaving, toy-making. The literary sense receives probably its
first stimulus through the stories told and the good books and
magazines that are placed in the hands of the boys and girls.
The aesthetic and uplifting influence of good music is extended
through the songs that are taught. These agencies serve as
worthy associates of the free games and plays.
Fourth. Every city has recognized the importance of open-
ing the playgrounds all day six times in the weeks for two months
in the year. Some have done more than this. The Charlesbank
Playground, Boston, is open, under supervision, on Sundays and
other days, from June 1st to November 1st. The New York
yard at Thirty-seventh Street was open in the mornings in the
spring; in July and August, morning, afternoon, and night; and
winter will find it still in operation. I shall return to this play-
ground presently to note more fully its varied ways of making
itself useful.
The record of times of opening is as follows: Boston: Open
all day under paid matrons. New York: Thirty-seventh Street
yard, open morning, afternoon, and night. Providence: Partial
trial, late in the season, of all-day yards. Philadelphia: Open
mornings under directors, open in the afternoon with janitor in
charge.
In connection with the points of similarity above enumerated,
it may prove of importance to examine also the features peculiar
to individual localities with a view to their adoption by a broader
circle when possible and desirable.
160 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
In going over reports and letters the following seemed to me
valuable suggestions for adoption by every city introducing
Summer playgrounds:
. Gymnastic apparatus, baths, etc.
. Sunday playgrounds.
. Boys’ playgrounds.
. Rainy-day refuges.
5. The broadest usefulness for every yard.
:
4
The New York ground at Thirty-seventh Street, one in
Providence, one in Philadelphia, and one in Boston have been
provided, to different extent, with swings, bars, etc. But the
Boston Charlesbank Women's Gymnasium and Children’s Play-
ground is especially complete in its equipment for physical exer-
cise in the open air. This is under careful supervision, and is
very successful. Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells writes: “We have
sand-heaps, a large playground of green grass and shrubbery,
baths, and an open-air gymnasium. The place and its success
is a joy.”
This playground is the only one, so far as I can learn, which
has yet recognized the vital importance of providing an attractive
Sunday refuge for these children of the streets. Upon that day,
as upon others, the ground is open, although the gymnasium
is closed. “On Sunday,” says Mrs. Wells, “the children have
sat on the grass and listened to endless stories.”
As a rule, boys' games, such as football, baseball, tennis,
racing, require a wider field for perfect freedom than is afforded
in the playgrounds. Even when the yards are large enough,
the danger to the other children present is too great to make
such plays desirable. Yet boys need their games for the lessons
of “honor, fairness, and self-control ’’ which they teach, as well
as for the making of “strong and sturdy young men out of our
boys,” as the Providence reports put it. Says Froebel, who
seems to have studied sympathetically every requirement of the
growing human being: “Every town should have its own com-
mon playground for the boys. Glorious results would come
from this for the entire community. For at this period games,
whenever it is feasible, are common, and thus develop the feeling
PLAYGROUNDS IN CITIES. 161
and desire for community and the laws and requirements of com-
munity.
“The boy tries to see himself in his companions, to feel him-
self in them, to weigh and measure himself by them, and to find
himself by their help. Thus the games directly influence and
educate the boy for life, awaken and cultivate many civil and
moral virtues.”
Thus says Froebel out of the depths of his knowledge of
boy nature. And thus, in essence, the report of the Providence
Committee on Playgrounds repeats. “As heretofore the com-
mittee requires the leaders in the playgrounds to be kindergart-
ners, except the young men appointed for the boys' grounds.”
Two of the ten grounds opened were exclusively devoted to the
older boys. “Lincoln Field,” continues this report, “the use
of which was granted us through the kindness of the Brown
University Athletic Association, through the courtesy of Mr.
Charles McCarthy, who had it in charge, was one of the most
useful and interesting of the playgrounds. It drew boys from all
quarters of the city, but especially the business center. Newsboys
and bootblacks came in greatest numbers. Baseball and racing
were the chief occupations. And the lessons of honor, fairness,
and self-control which were incidentally taught so kindly but
firmly were of inestimable value to the boys.”
I have considered so far only out-of-door, fair-weather oppor-
tunities that may be provided for our boys and girls. But of all
days those are most demoralizing to the playground children
which keep them shut up in their close, hot rooms, with nothing
with which they may be healthfully occupied in mind and body.
It is true the rainy day is a factor which can not be eliminated.
But its effect may be wholly neutralized by the antidote of pleas-
ant employment, and the cheerful, sunny view of life which it
engenders. I quote again from Froebel. He says: “The sea-
Sons and surroundings do not always permit the boy, free from
the duties of home and school, to exercise and develop his powers
in the open air, and at no time should boys be unoccupied.
Therefore other kinds of external occupations and representa-
tions of indoor life constitute at this age an essential part of the
activity and guidance of boys, and are very important to them,
162 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
This is particularly the case with so-called mechanical pursuits,
such as paper and pasteboard work, modeling, etc.” Carried
out into action, and with this thought including, as it should,
the older girls and the little children, the Charlesbank play-
room (Boston) has robbed the rainy day of its dangers and dreari-
ness. “In the big playroom of the lodge,” says Mrs. Wells, “the
children have frolicked and read on rainy days.” Where, as is
the case in most cities, the playgrounds are the yards belonging
to public school buildings, the rainy-day adjunct of the play-
ground seems to open its own way for establishment at no ad-
ditional cost. In view of the fact that repeated experience of
the Committee on Playgrounds is that the sense of responsibility
and ownership is constantly increasing among those who use the
grounds and apparatus, and, as a result, that no destruction of
property has occurred, the possible plea that the rooms and their
furnishings may be spoiled would rest upon no valid foundation.
Why shall not our rooms and grounds be turned to every possible
good use? All summer most of them lie idle. Yet there they
are, ready to be of service every hour of every day, needed beyond
words, promising an inestimable return “to the worthiest and
most important of our citizens,” as one newspaper recently called
the children. At least one place of which I have learned in my
search through playground annals respects the law of all-round
development through use—namely, the New York playground,
under the management of Miss Dodge. Here are the services
that useful yard yields to humanity as represented in a little
corner of New York city.
Before vacation the ground was open in the afternoon. In
July and August it was open from eight to twelve and from one
to six, for the children big and little.
“A delightful feature of the ground,” writes Miss Dodge,
“ was the use of it each evening, between six and seven, by Fire
Department horses. A station was directly opposite, and the
captain asked the privilege of bringing in his horses, so that they
might play there. Eight or nine came in each evening, and each
had his regular corner to roll in, and afterward in turn they gal-
loped around the ground. It was remarkable that no harm fol-
lowed, and that the horses did not even kick any of the apparatus.”
PLAYGIROUNDS IN CITIES. 163
On four nights in the week it was rented out to boys’ clubs
and a girls’ club.
During certain holidays a group of young men used and
protected the ground.
From June 1st to November 1st this faithful yard was to
have stood the children’s friend. “But the boys have made
such a plea to have it open,” continues the report, “ that we
have not felt it right to close it. It is now too cold for the sand
heap to be used, except occasionally, but every afternoon and all
day Saturday there are from two hundred to two hundred and fifty
boys and girls who are enthusiastic over their play, and in the
morning hours a group of young men who are out of work are
allowed the use of the ground for athletic sports. It is surely
better for them to be so employed than to be hanging about
saloons, and they feel honored in being allowed to have the
ground free of supervision, and zealously protect it.
“The boys are looking forward to the winter sports, and
already planning for toboggan slides, Snow forts,” etc.
As one reads this report of the varied and generous useful-
ness of this playground, the giving up of itself hourly to the
nearest and best service it can render, a sense of respect for it,
as for some animate, conscious thing, Creeps over one, and possi-
bly a little sense of humility under the lesson it silently teaches.
I have tried to outline the essential elements in the history of
the playground movement in the United States, the factors in
its success, individual experiments which have proved valuable,
and to indicate through this brief sketch the superb possibilities
that thus open out before us through this young movement in
its influence upon the happiness of the children. The supreme
result of the opportunities the playground affords lies in its
lesson of freedom and self-government along the line of right
ideals. The child’s natural activity is encouraged to its utmost.
Exercised it must be. But where formerly the activity took the
lines of lawlessness and selfishness, it is now directed into chan-
nels that make for the welfare of the many, while subserving
also through this very discipline the best interest of the indi-
vidual. The children are doing what they want to do, and they
are learning to do it in a harmonious, happy fashion. Out of the
164: NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
hot, stuffy rooms, out of the streets and away from the lawless-
ness that street companionship usually engenders, the play-
grounds invite them in, provide them with material through
which they may express themselves, offer them plenty of space
for play, or pleasant, shady places in which they may rest with
quiet work, singing, listening to stories, minding the baby if
need be; surround them with a moral atmosphere whose very
breath helps the children to find themselves; extend to them
the hand of friendliness and sympathy. Nor does the blessing
of the playground stop with the children. “Numbers of mothers
came also for a quiet moment,” says the Philadelphia report,
“bringing the babies in the coaches, bringing also the Sewing
and the knitting that had to be done, listening to the stories,
joining in the singing, watching the games, and now and then
becoming as children, taking part in the play with a gusto that
was refreshing.”
I have no time to speak of the indirect, but no less potent,
effect of the playground and the directors upon the homes, soft-
ening and refining them; of the broadening of experience to the
directors, visitors, committees of which the reports speak; of the
effect upon the public spirit of the city itself through the object
lesson thus unfolded before the eyes of the citizens; of the invit-
ing example to other cities to secure the same measure of good to
its children. But go into one of these playgrounds on the first
opportunity that offers; make such opportunity if it does not
meet you halfway; take with you other men and women with
hearts and minds and wills, and with children of their own who
have no need of the public playground, and the result will be
committees forming everywhere in the interest of the playground,
experiment, conviction, and, finally, a public opinion so power-
ful in its appeal that it must be listened to and obeyed. You
have it absolutely in your own hands. The issue lies with you.
SOME PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. 165
SOME PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY.
By DR. G. STANLEY HALL,
Worcester, Mass.
MADAM PRESIDENT AND LADIES OF THE MOTHERS’ CON-
GRESS: My discourse is a plain, homely, and informal descrip-
tion of a new movement of large promise for both education and
science, which is largely American in its origin, and wholly so
in its spirit. Although so new, it is already represented by
several large State organizations, two journals devoted to it
alone, with departments in perhaps a score of others, several
summer schools, and hundreds of local organizations throughout
the country. It has a rapidly growing body of literature of all
degrees of merit from nothing up. There is hardly a progressive
teacher in the country young enough in years and mind to be
affected by new movements who is not in sympathetic, if not
active, relations to it. It is the chief movement of the closing
century in both education and psychology.
Comprehensive as is its external history, it is not this upon
which I wish to dwell. In the time at my disposal I can only
sample very briefly a few of its salient results.
I. Growth.-By measurements on thousands of children, it
appears that boys from fourteen to sixteen, and girls a trifle
earlier, grow more rapidly than at any other period of life both
in weight and height. These growing periods are, as a rule, the
most healthful parts of life, and if there is disease, arrest of
the normal growth is often the first symptom, sometimes ante-
dating by weeks and months every other symptom. During
these nascent periods there is great danger of overwork and,
especially, overstrain. Education should be given largely by
methods and movement; suggestion and excessive accuracy and,
above all, fatigue are chiefly to be avoided. Too much brain
work is certain to dwarf organs, limbs, or other parts of the
body, so that complete development is arrested. Children never
166 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
need to be left to follow their own interests, yet to be so care.
fully controlled and directed, as at this period.
Again, growth begins with the larger muscles and the joints,
and with the brain cells and fibers that control them, and much
later is focused upon the smaller muscles which move fingers,
features, vocal organs, etc., which are especially the muscles of
expression. Profs. Bryan and Hancock have shown by painstak-
ing researches how late, slow, and hard this evolution is, and
how easily it is arrested. These finer muscles do the accurate
work of the world, and excessive strain upon them causes symp-
toms of chorea and muscular inco-ordination. They are the
thought muscles, and especially in children must be active if
the mind works well. It is hardly possible to change them from
one idea to another without changing at least the tension of these
delicate muscles; hence to require children to sit still is to re-
quire mental inaction. If the fundamental muscles are like the
framework of a house, these latter accessory muscles are like
the paper and frescoing.
II. Health.--From many thousand tests it appears that the
eyes of school children deteriorate in rapid ratio up through
the course. Myopia is a common defect, but headaches, etc., are
frequently caused. We can not compare school children with
those who do not go to school in this regard, and hence it would
be rash to lay all the blame upon the school. There is no doubt,
however, but that the treadmill work of the eyes zigzagging
across the lines of the printed book is as unnatural as a tread-
mill is for the legs, and restricts its freer movements in Nature.
Headaches, defective palates, adenoid growths in the nose, and
especially defective hearing, which is so often wrongly inter-
preted by teachers as stupidity, also increase in School years.
Many schools in France and elsewhere now keep health books,
one for each child, wherein the parent, teacher, and the school
doctor make careful entries, where every disease the child has
had is described, diet, regimen advised, etc. Sometimes parents
and teachers meet monthly to discuss the children’s health, and
this is a most salutary bond between School and home. School
hygiene has become a large department of pedagogy, with its
own journals and experts, wherein matters often minute—like
SOME PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. 167
the bacteria in floor cracks or under the finger nails—are dis-
cussed. Just as a tenth of a mill makes a great difference in the
income of a university if levied on the taxation of a whole State,
so a slighter variation in favor of health counts up enormously
when millions of children are involved.
Again, many parents open a “life book” the day their child
is born, entering not only size and weight, but all incidents,
traits of character, etc., with frequent photographs, parental
anxieties, plans, hopes, etc. What a bond between parent and
child must such a book be when presented to each boy and girl
when they go out into the great world! What a treasure house
of self-knowledge, useful in choosing a career, and what a salu-
tary fund of memories of parental care these life books are going
to be!
Let us not forget that the word health means wholeness, and
is the 'same as holiness; that our first duty is to keep children
well and happy; that if the modern school, which captures the
child, shuts him away from Nature and free movement and play
in an unwholesome air, worried and nervous, is gradually bring-
ing about a sickly age upon the world, it is doing more harm
than all the knowledge that can possibly be instilled does good.
Are children healthier in school or for going to school and
learning lessons? Is the joy of living or euphoria more abun-
dant? If not, we must order a halt or make a radical change.
At Clark University for the last two years we have printed
at intervals about forty-five leaflet questionnaires, which we gladly
send to any parent or teacher who will attempt to send us an-
swers. The topics we study are, to sample a few, anger—com-
plete accounts of special cases of which we seek, in order that,
by combining, tabulating, and applying principles of psychology
and anthropology, we can see the different types of anger as
with a microscope, learn what it is and how to treat it. Other
topics are dolls—studied to learn the historical development of
the doll passion, which begins in very crude dolls, that leave
much to the imagination, culminates at eight or nine on the
average, and slowly wanishes in two dimensions in paper dolls.
Children’s fears—their causes, effects, cures; exceptional and
peculiar children of many kinds; imitation; toys, especially self-
168 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
made toys; the different modes of crying and laughing with
pleasure and pain; the many automatic movements children
make in fixing the attention, writing, etc.; folklore and supersti-
tion, plays and games; the peculiarity of only children; their
feelings for animate and inanimate Nature; their sense of self;
the gradual development of infants’ speech; religious senti-
ments; imagination; sense of certainty and forms of emphatic
assertion; affection and its manifestations among children. Such
studies mark the entrance of evolution in the study of the soul;
they show us traces of a remote past, and are full of unconscious
reminiscences. Some twenty-five articles based upon these re-
turns are already published, and speak for themselves; the rest
are on the way. But the movement now is greatly retarded for
want of a salaried secretary to answer questions, direct new
Organizations, and especially mothers’ clubs, make addresses,
Supplying all kinds of information, computing tables, etc.
We have now begun to apply some of these results to the dif-
ferent School branches, and reading, number work, music, phys-
ical culture, and the kindergarten will, it is hoped, soon receive
Such light and practical suggestions as they can afford.
One of the most marvelous of the instruments of science is
the microscope. Nearly every one of these which has an expert
and trained eye behind it is now studying some of the phenomena
of growth, tracing that marvelous process by which the single
cell divides, those halves divide again, those again, etc., until we
See that the animal is to be at least one of the metazoa; as the
process goes on, we see it will be perhaps a vertebrate, then man.
Each one of us has recapitulated the whole history of life upon
this globe in the brief period since, a few months before birth,
our being was a single cell. The adult human body has about
one hundred and fifty so-called rudimentary organs which are
traces of our remote and humble origin, not a tissue in it which
we did not inherit from an animal ancestry. Children’s fears
of big eyes, big teeth, and often fur, suggest the time of animals’
formidable movements just as truly as the vermiform appendage,
the traces of gill slits in our necks, or the Darwinian tubercle
in the ear suggest the animal organs. Our body and soul are
full of these fossils; instinct and feeling strike their roots deep-
SOME PRACTICAL RESULTS OF CHILD STUDY. 169
est that they may grow highest. All children believe in fetishes,
and cherish pretty stones, sticks, toys; they see life in the
clouds, God’s face in the moon; hear voices in the wind and sea
and trees; find eyes and laughs of greeting in the stars and flow-
ers, and we must recognize these elements in education. The
tadpole never loses its tail, but it is, as it were, absorbed, and
makes legs; these dwindle if it is cut after it has attained its
full development, probably in order that the organs of land loco-
motion be fully developed and it rise to an amphibious instead
of aquatic life. Why will we not apply, the parable of the tad-
pole's tail to the soul? Children can not be good Christians
unless they have been good fetishists; they can not love science
unless they have believed in and loved Nature as animate. The
sin of the Church and school is in kicking over the ladder by
which we rose, and endeavoring to teach the religion and science
of adults to those who linger in the paradise of infancy.
Of course, some things must be eliminated; the parable of
the milk teeth does apply in some fields, but this method has
been greatly overemphasized in both secular and religious
training.
Perhaps the most important studies of childhood are those
of adolescence, when the soul, instead of being predominantly
selfish, becomes altruistic when love in the larger, deeper sense
can arise. The bodily changes here are great and numerous;
still more so those of the soul. The brain ceases to grow in size,
and focuses its growth upon function and differentiation. How
this most critical period is treated is the best philosophy of
history I know. Some races have appealed to its pugnacity,
others to its mysticism, others to its rivalry. It is a period of
ferment, which is not over for at least a decade; beside the doc-
trine of prolongation of infancy I place that of the prolongation
of adolescence. Most conversions in religion occur here. The
Greek, Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, and Episcopal children are
confirmed. It is the pedagogue's great opportunity; the edu-
cation extends up toward the university and down toward the
kindergarten as civilization increases, but always beginning here.
The study of this topic has a fundamental importance for clergy-
men as well as parents, and our regimen during these critical
170 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
years, when temptations are hottest, when the pressure is high-
est, when young people must have excitement or be dwarfed,
is the common problem of the Church, the home, and the School.
Quite apart from its results, the study of children is good
in itself. It enriches parenthood, brings the adult and the child
nearer together, reveals the great fact that the best parents are
as ignorant of the soul as of the anatomy of the body. Again,
it tends to the proper individualization of children at a time
when the school would uniformatize. Success in life depends
upon the cultivation of individual qualities, and school methods
systematically neglect these. Again, it is especially the woman’s
province of work; she brings out her peculiar quality when a
personal bond connects her with every child rather than when
she is running a man-made school machine. It is a new science
of the soul; it teaches how to apply heredity; how instruction
begins where heredity falters, and should supplement it.
Finally, there are a few immediate practical results that
must be applied without delay in education:
I. Excessively fine work, whether in writing or the kinder-
garten, should be avoided.
II. Drawing should precede writing, and should begin not
with the cube and cylinder, but free-hand with living things in
action.
III. Religious instruction begins in the Nature work; the
sigh of the forest and of the star, the beauty of the flower, etc.,
are its watchwords.
IV. Music must be taught by ear and by rote until quite a
répertoire of songs are acquired before musical characters are
introduced, otherwise we are teaching to read before the child
can speak. This analogy holds from the standpoint of brain
physiology.
W. Modern languages taught by the ear method have their
most favorable time from the ages of eight to twelve, and an-
cient from ten to fifteen.
VI. Literature teaching should begin with story-telling, one
of the noblest arts.
VII. Interests must be utilized, each at its own golden period;
it enables a vast amount of work to be done without fatigue;
READING COURSES FOR MOTHERS. 171
but, lastly, we must never drop the drill element for certain
things which must be memorized and mechanized without any
attempt at explanation. The brain is a wonderful organ, more
complex and unified than anything in Nature. It is the mouth-
piece of the infinite, and its unfoldment is confided to our care.
I know no better motto than this: Unity with Nature is the
glory of childhood, and unity with Nature and with childhood is
the glory of motherhood. Where if not in a Congress of Mothers
should such a movement find its ardent support and its warmest
home? May the mother element dominate this new, potent, and
most healthful organization! -
THURSDAY EVENING, 8 O'CLOCK.
READING COURSES FOR MOTHERS.
By MRS, MARGARET E. SANGSTER,
New York City.
THE thought of a course of reading is rather formidable
when presented to the mind of a busy woman whose time is
already occupied with the care of the house, the management
of her children, and the various social duties which crowd upon
time in our complex modern civilization. Many women find
their reading necessarily very limited; others have a sort of un-
spoken feeling that to read in the daytime, even if time is af-
forded, is a sort of wasteful idleness. Margaret Ogilvy, you
remember, thought it hardly respectable to read in the morning.
I remember the pithy saying of one friend whose babies were
crowded in the nursery like birds in the nest, “I have aban-
doned all thought or hope of reading anything except the Bible
and the cookery book.”
Still, reading according to method is not so formidable a
thing as it seems. Everything in life which we can arrange
172 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
according to system will fall into line and serve us if our wills
are strong enough and our purposes sufficiently steady. The
mother with little children around her naturally desires to read
those books which will help her in the training of the little ones
whose development, both physical and intellectual, is so rapid
as to amaze and perplex those of us who advance by the slower
process of maturity. Nothing in all the world seems so like a
miracle as the way in which a little child unfolds mentally, as
the flower to the sun, between the ages of two and five years,
and, of course, the earlier development between birth and two
years is as wonderful and strange.
Many questions perplex the mother as she guides the baby
and the little child. The best book which I have seen for the
mother of very small children is one by Elizabeth Scoville, en-
titled The Care of Children. Nothing which has to do with
their physical life in the earliest stages is neglected or lightly
passed over in this admirable little manual. Cradle and Nursery,
by Christine Terhune Herrick, is equally suggestive. A book
entitled Nursery Ethics, by Florence Hall Winterburn, may
properly follow this in its course, and I would recommend also
Mothers in Council, by Arthur Gilman, a book full of suggestion
and profit. Our Children, by Mrs. Auretta R. Alrich, is an
admirably sympathetic little manual prepared for mothers and
teachers by a kindergartner of great experience and much in-
tuitive and acquired knowledge of children and their wants.
Another book which I greatly esteem, and which I would like to
include in this course and place, if I could, on the reading table
of every mother in America, is entitled Gentle Measures in the
Management of the Young, and was written long ago by that
prince of educators, Jacob Abbott. \
May I say a word here for the immortal Rollo books, dear
to the heart of children of an older day? These stories are so
simple, so natural, so replete with pleasant suggestion and indi-
rect counsel, that they are as valuable to mothers as they are to
children. I would be more than glad if I could see the modern
child absorbed in the Rollo books as children were forty years
ago. They are wholesome, breezy, and full of interest, and no
mother can fail to read them with profit.
READING COURSES FOR MOTHERS. 173
As children grow older and attend school they come to the
mother with constant questions which she finds it hard to answer.
They are interested in all sorts of things: one child has a passion
for natural history, another is fascinated by astronomy, still an-
other cares for adventure and the marvels of discovery, and
many delight in history and in military exploits. The mother's
reading should be sufficiently catholic to enable her to assist her
eager questioners at every turn. She may well familiarize her-
self with their school text-books, which, in passing, I may say
are likely to be condensed epitomes of the larger works for which
the ordinary reader has no time. If the child loves flowers, let
the mother read the best work on botany which she can get.
Mrs. Creevey's Recreations in Botany or Mr. Gibson’s Sharp
Eyes will be wonderfully helpful to her. Any of the books of
Thoreau, of Olive Thorne Miller, of John Burrows, of Bradford
Torrey, or of any other nice observer of birds and flowers and
trees will be helpful to the mother whose boys and girls are
anywhere between eight and twelve years old.
She will find great help from reading the stories of Kate
Douglas Wiggin, Mary Mapes Dodge, and the ever-lamented
Johanna Ewing. These are books which she may read with her
children, and also with her boys she may take up The Century
Book for Young Americans and the Century Book of Famous
Authors. Probably her boys are familiar with the works of
Rirk Monroe, which weave in in the course of the story a great
many very delightful bits of information, and which carry an
excellent moral all through the narrative, though a moral is
never tacked on.
But I would plead with mothers for something broader than
mere utilitarianism in their study and reading. As Mrs. Brown-
ing has said, we get no good by being ungenerous even to a book.
It is when we lose ourselves in a book, not caring for the prac-
tical good it will do so much as for the pleasure and fascination
of the book itself that it enters into our blood and becomes part
of our very life. I advise as a family investment that every
household should possess that remarkable biography, Boswell’s
Life of Johnson, a work so replete with educational suggestions,
with humor, with the sort of common sense which can never
12
174: NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
wear out, that it fits into every mood, pleases every taste, and
becomes a possession and an heirloom.
It was glorious old Sam Johnson who said, “While you are
hesitating which book your boy shall read, and balancing the
merits of the two books, another boy will have read them both.”
The whole field of biography affords excellent scope for the study
of mothers, and among later books in this line I can think of
nothing more suggestive than a book so large that probably few
women will wish to buy it, although it might easily become the
property of a book club or reading circle, and such clubs and
circles ought to be found in every village and town. I refer to
The Story of my Life, by Augustus Hare. Mr. Hare has written
many books, none of them surpassing in interest the biography
of which I speak.
As a very small child he was surrendered by his own parents
to a relative who wished to adopt a child, his mother sending
the message that if there were others in the family who wished
to relieve them of care they had several other children who
might be given away. The poor little child was taken into the
family of a widowed aunt, between whom and himself there came
to be in later years a bond seldom equaled, even in the relation-
ship of an own mother and child. But mistaken views of child
training and an entirely peculiar set of circumstances gave this
sensitive little being a most unhappy childhood. Everybody
thwarted him, everybody felt called upon to reprove him. It
was enough for him to have a wish and express it to have it in-
stantly denied, and the story of his childhood from beginning
to end is one which all mothers would do well to read by way
of warning, and in order that they may see how strongly injus-
tice and oppression may make their marks upon the childish
memory.
Among other admirably suggestive volumes for mothers are
The Memoirs of the Baroness Bunsen, The Story of Two Noble
Lives, The Gurneys of Earlham, The Life of Maria Edgeworth,
and Mr. Shorter’s Life of Charlotte Bronté. Another book thou-
sands have lately read with pleasure is Margaret Ogilvy, by J. M.
Barrie, A Son’s Tribute to his Mother. We who have read that
book feel that we have been admitted to a sanctuary, and the
READING COURSES FOR MOTHERS. 175
l
small Scottish home will forever seem to us holy ground. So
should mothers impress sons; so should sons reverence and love
mothers. Let me again mention The Gurneys of Earlham, which
is a story of a very large and prosperous Quaker family in Eng-
land—a family so large in its ramifications that it reminds us of
Miss Yonge's Daisy Chain and Heir of Redcliffe—in which there
seem to be no end to the children. This is a book which mothers
would find very helpful and suggestive; especially the story of
the mother-sister and the way in which she managed and con-
trolled and influenced her flock, and the diary of the brilliant
little Louise, as frank as anything to be found in literature, will
be useful to every mother into whose hands the book may fall.
Such a book might be taken as a center around which an intelli-
gent woman would group her studies into the life of the period,
the history of the king then on the throne, the wars and the
rumors of wars which were going on about the world, the fash-
ions in dress, the fashions in politics, and the general aspect of
the world at the time would naturally fall into such a course.
The intelligent mother would find out which were the noted
authors of that day, which the noted generals who were making
history at the time, what was the state of society, what inven-
tions and discoveries had then been made, and the whole family
might easily find entertainment and instruction for a winter
in following out such a course as this.
The mother’s course of reading should never be a wholly
selfish one. It should have in view the profit and pleasure of
her family, and groups of mothers meeting together and follow-
ing out a course of reading intelligently marked out might easily
affect and uplift the social life of a community.
Nor should the mother fail to read good novels wherever
she finds them. Sentimental Tommy, Beside the Bonnie Brier
Bush, The Lilac Sunbonnet, and books of similar character will
enter into the life of a household as positive sources of blessing.
At the close of Mrs. Sangster's address there was a call from
the audience for her to recite one of her poems, and she gave the
following:
176 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
OUR OWN.
If I had known in the morning
How wearily all the day
The words unkind
Would trouble my mind
I said when you went away,
I had been more careful, darling,
Nor given you needless pain;
But we vex our own
With look and tone
We may never take back again.
For though in the quiet evening
You may give me the kiss of peace,
Yet it might be
That never for me
The pain of the heart should cease.
How many go forth in the morning
That never come home at night;
And hearts have broken
For harsh words spoken,
That sorrow can ne'er set right.
We have careful thoughts for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But Oft for “our own ''
The bitter tone,
Though we love “our own’” the best.
Ah, lips with the curve impatient, .
Ah, brow with that look of scorn,
"Twere a cruel fate
Were the night too late
To undo the work of morn.
GUARD OUR YOUTH AGAINST BAD LITERATURE. 177
HOW TO GUARD OUR YOUTH AGAINST BAD
LITERATURE.
By ANTHONY COMSTOCK,
New York City.
MR. ANTHONY CoMSTOCK followed, making a beautiful
tribute to Mrs. Sangster, who, he claimed, had already answered
the very question he had come to answer. However, from his
carefully prepared statistics he showed what great good he had
been able to accomplish during the past twenty-five years in Sup-
pressing degrading literature.
BHe said, in addition: I wish, dear friends, that I could take
you to some lofty mountain, and that upon a widespreading
plain beneath it I could mass from the schools, the colleges, and
the other institutions of learning, and from the homes of this
great land, the millions of boys and girls who are in the training
school of life, and let them pass before you in a magnificent
parade, so that you could comprehend their numbers and char-
acter. One half of the population of this nation would march
before you, made up of these boys and girls who are in the plastic
state, their character in process of molding, formation, and de-
velopment. They are at the time of life when in the heart the
chamber of imagery is being decorated and the commissary of
the soul is receiving supplies to be given out in future life. How
many of you mothers have ever stopped to think that you are
the artists divinely appointed to decorate the walls of the cham-
ber of imagery in the hearts of your children, that you are the
ones that shall first carry in there sweet influences to repel even
the approach of evil?
I wish I had the time to say what it is in my heart to say
of the ladies who have conceived this beautiful Congress, who
have poured out their love and their affection and their means
to make it so magnificent a success. You have lighted all over
this land camp fires that will burn brighter and brighter in the
interest of virtue and truth.
178 . NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
But, my dear friends, I must speak to you of the environ-
ment of the children in our nation. I know something as to
what that environment is, and, although it is true that we have
before us a magnificent parade of young people marching on-
ward with irresistible tread from infancy to youth, from youth
to manhood and womanhood, and thence on to eternity, yet it
must be borne in mind that their ranks are surrounded by very
real dangers—the evils that assail the imagination.
Dear friends, you are here as mothers, dealing with the vital
interests of your children. In order to show you that what I
speak of is not a mythical evil, I will ask your attention to a few
figures, and shall then detain you but a moment longer.
Up to this time our society has made 2,146 arrests, and fol-
lowing these there have been penalties imposed amounting in
aggregate terms of imprisonment to 396 years and in fines to
$147,665. We have seized 63,149 pounds of books and sheets,
27,424 pounds of stereotype plates for printing books, and 700
pounds of lead molds for making articles designed for immoral
uses, the total weight of these items alone being 91,273 pounds,
or more than 45% tons. We have gathered up 874,593 photo-
graphs and pictures, and have taken and destroyed 5,912 photo-
graphic negatives, 384 engraved steel and copper plates, 857
woodcuts and electroplates, and 58 lithographic stones, all of
which had been used or were intended to be used in the produc-
tion of obscene prints. We have seized also 2,396 obscene fig-
ures, 96,680 articles intended for immoral use, 1,582,718 cir-
culars, songs, etc., 124,394 letters, and 1,335,392 names and ad-
dresses found in the possession of men and women whom we
have arrested. These letters are criminally sold as matter of
merchandise, in order that one dealer may send out his circulars
and then may pass on to other dealers the names of those to
whom he sends them, and this will account for the corruption
of many and many a child who has written in reply to an ad-
vertisement perfectly legitimate in appearance, and yet has re-
ceived back most immoral matter through the mail.
Now when you remember that the mails of the United States
are the great arteries of communication, that they start from
our large cities and go to the uttermost parts of our fair land,
GUARD OUR YOUTH AGAINST BAD LITERATURE. 179
entering every home, every institution of learning, every village,
and every hamlet, then you may know something of the power
of this agency for disseminating the grossest matter and placing
it, unknown to parent and teacher, in the hands of our innocent
children.
However well we may guard our children, there are dangers
of a fearful character surrounding them. Evil exists every-
where; it meets children on the public street, for the very bill-
boards and posters on the walls of our buildings are made finger
boards that point out to them the pathway to destruction; and
every news stand furnishes material that is photographed upon
the eye of the child, the negatives being carried to the chamber
of imagery, where the spirit of evil may either hold them in abey-
ance or constantly reproduce from them pictures for the injuri-
ous entertainment of the child’s mind. Then comes the degrad-
ing literature sold in the form of “blood-and-thunder ’’ story
papers and novels.
Last January, in preparing and tabulating some statements
for our annual meeting, I adopted the method of collecting to-
gether the number of arrests made during a single month of boys
and girls under twenty-one years of age. This table I will read
(see page 180), and I wish to say that I believe that ninety-five
per cent of these reported cases were directly chargeable to the
sickening details of murders and loathsome crimes published in
our daily newspapers.
Now, dear friends, I know that these are painful matters,
but I also know that they are facts which you earnest Christian
mothers ought to know, and facts which all of us, as Christian
men and women, must resist, or the prospect of future genera-
tions will be greatly jeopardized.
Realizing the unwholesome truths of much which was pre-
sented by Mr. Comstock, the Committee on Resolutions adopted
into their recommendations to parents the sentiment against
literature, billboards, etc., which works evil on the inner de-
Veloping life of imagery, the standard of which must become
elevated when the parents’ care is exercised toward the subject.
TABULAR STATEMENT SHOWING NUMBER OF BOYS AND GIRLS ARRESTED DURING ONE MONTH,
AS REPORTED BY THE NEWSPAPERS, BETWEEN DECEMBER 15, 1896, AND JANUARY 15,
1897. (AGES OF ALL NOT KNOWN, BUT ALL UNDER TWENTY-ONE YEARS.)
BY BOYS AGED– § BY GIRLS AGED– §
'sh #.
Total. Crime committed. 3 3
10 11||12||13| 14|| 15 16|17|18 |19| 20 : 10| 11||12||13| 14|| 15 16|17|18 || 19 :
: :
7 Arson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1| 1 5
49 | Burglary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1| 4| 6 6|| 6 || 2 || 3: 3| 3| 4| 9
2 | Counterfeiting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1| || 1
6 | Felonious assault................. 1 1 2 1| 1
1 | Forgery.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
5 || Grand larceny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2| 1 1
16 || Highway robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1, 1] 1 1. 4. 2. 1 3
1 | Horse stealing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
12 Murder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2| 1 || 1 1| 1 || 2 | 1 1 1
9 || Attempted murder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2| 1 || 1 || 1 1| 1
2 | Perjury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
28 || Petty larceny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1| 2 || 2 4 6 1 4| 2 2| 1 1
4 | Train wrecking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 1
6 | Shoplifting.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 1| 1 || 1
8 | Suicide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 1
5 || Attempted Suicide... . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2| 1
7 | Drunkenness... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * 1| 1 || 1 || 1 1 1
163
g

FRIDAY MORNING, 10:30 O'CLOCK.
DEVOTIONAL.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY.
By MRs. H. A. STIMSON,
New York City.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee;
Holy, holy, holy 1 merciful and mighty 1
God over all, and blest eternally.
I WILL read from the one hundred and third Psalm two
verses that seem to have been meant for families, for mothers and
their children—the thirteenth and the fourteenth verses:
“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear
him.
“For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”
The Lord does not expect impossibilities from us. “He
remembereth that we are dust,” and since the foundation of
the world he has known how pitifully weak and incompetent
were to be the hands into which he was to place the great bless-
ing and the great responsibility of motherhood. We are soon
to leave this great meeting. This Congress of Mothers will soon
resolve itself into a multitude of units, and when, as individual
mothers, we turn our faces to our own homes, no longer parts
of a Congress, simply mothers, this thought will weigh heavily
upon us, Who is equal to the task of carrying out the great im-
pulses we have here acquired? The burden of the debt we owe
to humanity, science, and posterity seems too great to be borne.
181
182 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Let me try to give you one thought to place alongside that
of weary helplessness—Wherein lies our responsibility as moth-
ers? We are not responsible to the scientist, who with scalpel,
retort, and microscope is beginning, just beginning, to find out
the beautiful plans God has had in making this world so fair.
Nor is our responsibility to humanity, which with its needs
presses upon us not only from the “submerged ” world, where
straight, fair souls oftentimes dwell in crooked bodies, but also
from the privileged world, where too often, alas! the crooked soul
finds a home in the fair, straight body. Nor is our responsibility
even to posterity—that great word which is apt to be lovingly
narrowed by the mother to mean the little ones clustering about
her knees. Our responsibility is to none of these, but it is to
God, and that is the thought which I would like to leave with
you, that you may take it away—the thought that this responsi-
bility which we have as mothers, whether we be mothers in fact,
or whether it is just the mother love within our woman hearts
that enables us to mother all children, is always to God, and
that the eternal God is our refuge, and that underneath us, as
we carry this burden, are his everlasting arms.
We had St. Valentine’s Day at our house less than a week
ago, and when I went to my room in the evening, there on
my pillow was a little white envelope addressed to “Mamma,
New York.” I opened it, and found a very crude little produc-
tion—a card with a border and a branch thrown across one
corner in a very Japanesque style, done with a paint brush, and on
it, very laboriously printed, was this legend, “To one I love.”
I did what every one of you would have done—I kissed it.
According to all recognized canons of criticism, it was not artis-
tic, but it was made for “To one I love *; and when the little
one came down in the morning, do you think I said to her, “I
don’t care for the valentine you made for me; I don’t care for
valentines unless they are pretty ones. Why didn’t you buy me
one?” No, you know that I did not say that. I said, “Thank
you, sweetheart, for your dear valentine.”
Now is the God, who is Love, less loving to us than we are
to our children? Is he, whose love is greater than all the mother
love that has been from the time when the first mother smiled
OUR RESPONSIBILITY. 183
into the eyes of the first baby down to our own time, less loving
to us, his children, than we are to ours? And when we bring to
him our work with our children, although it may be clumsy and
crude, or may be done very imperfectly, if it is stamped with
the legend “To one I love,” and is done for him, will he not
accept it, and will he not make our imperfections perfect, as
we would like to make those of our children had we his power?
“Can a woman forget her child that she should not have com-
passion on him? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget
thee, saith the Lord.” Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we thank thee that thou hast taught us to call
thee Father; we thank thee for the good gifts that fatherly love
bestows—strength for our weakness, wisdom for our ignorance,
courage for our fear. We thank thee for the privilege of mother-
hood; we thank thee for the mother love throughout the world,
whether in parents, teachers, or friends. Now we wait for thy
blessing. Bless each home here represented; may parents and
children together be filled with a holy reverence for things
holy, and a deep love for all things dear to thee. Bless our
country; bless the President of these United States; bless our
lawmakers—give them true hearts and wise brains to make our
laws. Bless the beautiful, gracious mother whose presence adorns
the White House, and who is soon to step from the garish light
of public life into a beautiful private home. Pour out thy rich-
est blessing upon her and upon her children. Bless those whose
great hearts, wise brains, and tireless hands have made this
gathering possible; may their reward be abundant. And, dear
Lord, support us through the long day of this troublous life
until its shadows shall lengthen, the evening comes, the busy
world be hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work done.
Then in thy mercy grant us a holy rest and peace at the last,
in the name of him who has taught us to pray, saying:
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as
we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory, forever. Amen.
184 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
HEREDITY.
By MRs. W. H. FELTON,
Cartersville, Ga.
THE bearing, nursing, and training of the children who
must take up the burdens of human life after we have passed
away, and carry on the work which falls unfinished from our
lifeless hands, are perforce the subjects of first importance to
intelligent and patriotic mothers.
So long as mothers are a necessity for the human race these
subjects must retain vital interest, for whatever one may lack
in this earthly career, certain it is we have all been granted a
mother. Aye, more; every human being ushered into the world
has been impressed in character, health, and tendency by the
belongings of the mother—her health, features, and disposition
—to a greater or less degree. -
This connection is manifestly close and intimate. If every
human life is lifted up or lowered down by the home that it is
born into, we hazard nothing when we affirm that the happiness
and morals of a child are more immediately affected by the happi-
ness and morals of the parents than by any other influence to
which infancy and childhood are subjected.
We are told that the hand which “rocks the cradle rules
the world.” I have lived in this world for a half century, but
I find no evidence of rulership in cradle rocking. If it had been
recorded that the hand which rocks the cradle bears the burdens
of the world, the connection between the truth and the poetry
would have been self-evident to all of us.
Mothers are emphatically burden bearers. Mother love walks
hand in hand with anxiety and care. This companionship be-
tween mother love and apprehension begins at the cradle, and
lingers at the grave of the offspring, always solicitous and
anxious.
We also know that whatever of privation, self-denial, grief,
poverty, or shame is allotted to the household, the mother is
HEREDITY. 185
certain to take to herself the lion’s share of it. When her child
suffers in health or character, no one feels it more keenly than
herself, and when the law condemns its victim to a violent death,
her poor knees are always bent before the executive for the
pardon.
Remembering the universality of this rule of suffering, the
value of information, of intelligence, of keen insight into causes,
of the proper understanding—especially of hereditary tendencies
and evils—must ever remain a subject of vital interest to moth-
ers so long as children are what they are—namely, a part and
parcel of the mother’s own existence.
In this Congress of Mothers, as an organization designed
for instruction, rises to its full scope and liberty, the door for
investigation into hereditary taints and evils will be opened
wide at every session, and the world will take a fresh start for
usefulness, from the standpoint of motherhood, in relation to
its holiest duties and most exalted privileges. I made choice
of the present subject not because I could approach heredity
with the skill and learning of the physician, nor because I could
make plain to your minds the process by which “like produces
like ’’ in transmission from parent to child, nor because I could
promise you a remedy for hereditary evils or propensities in
your children or in my own, but I come only to emphasize the
importance of the subject, and to encourage you to make a seri-
ous study of these problems of human life which have been
molding the lives and characters of your ancestry, and which
will impress in equal and perhaps even stronger degree the ex-
istence and happiness of those to come after you, reaching into
the cycles of eternity.
The time for enlargement and development has reached the
mother question. Human life in all its phases has felt the touch
of progress on lines of mechanical skill and intellectual effort,
and the public mind is aroused to the fact that training and
experience are essential to every endeavor in these modern
days. The professions have raised a high standard of excel-
lence, the workshops clamor for skill and expert methods,
but mothers have been blundering along all these years in
narrow paths and with restricted information concerning mat-
186 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
ters of Supreme importance to themselves as well as to their
offspring.
The paternal side of the argument has been “on tap * for
some centuries, good in its way, but one-sided and decidedly
topheavy with egotism. Women have been advised to “ask their
husbands” whenever there has been a disposition to know some-
thing more of politics or religion. But with due reverence for
high authority, I believe the world has reached a place where
a little variety in argument and reasoning processes will be wel-
comed from the women of the country by all sensible husbands
and fathers. It is becoming an established and recognized fact
that children of the same parents are not elevated or degraded
in intellect by the accident of sex, and, as the stream never rises
higher than its source, the male mind can never lay successful
claim to innate Superiority so long as its gifts and excellencies
are an inheritance from the mother. Whatever of virtue or
intellect or physical strength she was able to part with she be-
stowed upon the offspring, and the creature dares not to despise
the capacity of the creator.
But ignorance on such points has been the rule in woman’s
sphere, and enlightenment the exception. I had been a mother
for a quarter of a century before my mind was fully aroused to
the dangers that lie in wait for the innocent and the unborn.
It so happened that I became interested in the statistics of
drunkenness and general inebriety. I found an evil which gen-
erated murderers, lawbreakers, suicides, lunatics, and idiots.
I could trace the hereditary taint in families. I found a “pesti-
lence that walked in darkness and destruction that wasted at
noonday,” and which had destroyed more of the children of
women than war, the plague, or famine. This is not the place
to record the extent of this hereditary evil of intemperance, but
I instance my own ignorance of the subject during a long period
of my life merely to emphasize this awakening of mothers to
these conditions in the nineteenth century. Because of the
known existence of such secret, hidden, intangible, and insidious
influences, affecting the homes and happiness of women and
their children, generally unknown to the victims or sufferers, I
venture into the discussion and Sound a note of entreaty and
HEREDITY. 187
warning. It is simply astonishing to see the scrupulous care
that is taken to examine into musty titles to real estate, while
people rush into matrimony without a thought for the past or
the future very often. The contract for “better or worse * is a
literal one so far as provision or protection for the helpless is
concerned.
It is likewise astonishing that people move into new settle-
ments or communities mostly for pecuniary betterment, and yet
the fact remains that children will mate or mismate in a major-
ity of instances with those with whom they are thus thrown.
We will engage the best legal talent to defend us in litigation
when property is endangered, but the children oftentimes rush
into matrimony without any investigation or consideration what-
ever as to past history or entailed disorders on either side.
Such scant outlook for the past and the future in nine cases
out of ten brings in undesirable alliances, to be followed by rapid
divorce proceedings. “On what feeble causes do our destinies
hinge!” Stock breeders take no risk with unknown pedigrees.
The successful florist is careful to have pure seed, or fertiliza-
tion is thrown away. The fruit grower never expects perfect
fruit unless under known conditions with good stock to engraft
into his trees. But American girls in many cases are flung out
to capture money or position, no matter if the craft is a prey
to barnacles of the most destructive character.
To my mind there is nothing so pleasing in Nature or art
as the young mother’s smile for her first born. When the little
one returns the smile, there is a holy light in her eyes that is
not found on land or sea.
Yet that young mother may carry disease in her own phys-
ical system, or the father of the child may have infected the
child before its birth with enough of hereditary evil to disease
it for life or make its existence a misery to others.
It is a fearful responsibility to become a parent! Man is fear-
fully and wonderfully made, but among the dangers and the
wonders none are so great as the transmission of hereditary traits
and propensities from parent to child.
The curse that follows to the third and fourth generation
must perforce be an inherited curse. Thanks be to God! he
188 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
has promised to show mercy unto thousands who live upright and
keep his commandments!
One of the most effective paintings I ever saw was on exhibi-
tion at the Philadelphia Centennial. Perhaps you all remember
it. Rizpah standing on the rock, keeping watch over her dead
sons, hanged by the Gibeonites because they were also the sons
of King Saul. That picture of hopeless, fierce mother love fas-
tened itself upon my memory. It is a fearful thing to know that
innocence and helplessness must suffer because of the sins of
the fathers—and, yes, of the mothers likewise.
I measure my words in the sight of Heaven when I say that
every child born into this unfriendly world should have a clean
home to be born into, with clear blood in its veins, or that help-
less innocent should not come here at all. It comes without its
own consent. It has no “say so * in this forced existence. The
vices that germinate in unbridled passion, unholy living, and
filthy appetite are surely transmitted to the unborn. “Woe unto .
them by whom offenses come!”
And it is rank injustice to pure mother love, which goes
down into the valley of the shadow of death to give life to an
immortal being, that this child of her devotion and self-sacrifice
should be loaded down to the gunwales with ancestral failings
before its eyes open to the light of day. When that poor mother
finds the agony greater than she can bear, and her soul floats
out into the unknown, what a mercy it is when the little one
goes with her before it takes up the unequal burdens of life,
bereft of its mother’s love and her watchful care!
Therefore the protection of motherhood becomes the high-
est obligation of mankind to the human race. There should be
a living; ever-active sense of responsibility. The courts should
shield this high and holy estate of motherhood as they protect
no other party or principle. The pulpit should thunder in the
ears of indifferent and careless citizens, and husbands and fathers
should resolve that whatever else may need protection, the
mother and the infant deserve first mention and most extraor-
dinary care.
When we remember that every sudden shock, excited nerve,
painful thought, cruel treatment, or harsh word is felt and im-
HEREDITY. 189
pressed upon an innocent life, that the mother would almost die
to save from evil and disease, the magnitude of this obligation
in regard to childbearing assumes its proper proportions.
Excessive mental strain is known to produce nervous dis-
eases in the offspring. Neurotic children become victims to
convulsions, epilepsy, and idiocy. When nerve cells are once
destroyed, they are never developed again. There may be dis-
eases not, strictly speaking, inherited, but if the child has an
“irritable, unstable, inadequately developed, and badly nour-
ished system, the tendency to disease may be inherited.” Among
inherited diseases we find consumption, cancer, scrofula, goitre,
and kindred ailments. These are handed down to posterity more
surely than gold or lands. It would be a most unwelcome revela-
tion to see what sort of possessions are inherited not set down
in the financial inventory when wills and “last testaments’ are
recorded in court.
I believe the time must come when the nation in self-defense
will place a limit upon the propagation of diseased men and
women, because of expense to the state. When diseased phys-
ical and moral beings are crowded into confined quarters, their
offspring are the output of a hotbed of sin and physical decay.
Local restrictions already prevail concerning consanguinity.
Already your property is assessed to provide education for the
ignorant as a protection to the state against crime and the dis-
eases that attend debased life. “An ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure.” When the state pays for care, why not
pay for prevention?
Motherhood, after it obtains insight, after investigation into
inherited sins and diseases, shrinks with horror from such entail-
ment upon its children. I can discover no remedy but a rooting
out of exciting causes. It is the common-sense remedy that
holds good in all places, in public or private business. We need
constant reminders of the dangers that assail us in this direc-
tion. We must as patriots and philanthropists take a broader
view of the duty we owe to the wretched and unfortunate. Poul-
ticing and plasters are good as palliatives, but the world needs a
revival of interest in true woman’s work, and every energy of
the best minds and most prudent judgments will find occupa-
13
190 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
tion in removing the propagating germs of sin, disease, and crime
from the mother and her offspring in every locality.
No well-informed or fair-minded person can look upon the
human wrecks that are strewn upon a storm-swept shore without
asking the question, What would I have been if my forefathers
and foremothers had flung sobriety and decent living to the
winds, and brought me into a world of sin and error loaded
down with hereditary evils and unhappy environment? There-
fore my mother heart grows tender to the frail, soiled dove in
last night’s station house. Therefore my soul sympathizes with
the poor sin-soaked boy in the penitentiary. If one half the
energy and zeal which is displayed in convicting and punishing
criminals had been expended in removing temptation and the
sink holes of perdition from their vicinity, my word for it we
would find ourselves in more satisfactory business and with
marked decrease in crime and misery. I am not able to draw
a dividing line between the evil inclinations which were inocu-
lated and those of their own devices. How will we account for
the epidemic of suicides which is devastating our own country
if we do not give full weight to the influence of these hopeless
and inexorable “curses’ that “follow to the third and fourth
generation ** The fathers ate sour grapes and the children’s
teeth are on edge! &
I believe the Almighty Father is too wise to err–" too good
to be unkind ’—but among the rewards and punishments that
will be finally meted out I am satisfied blame will fall in many
places, and mercy will comfort their many victims, where least
was promised to mortal vision, because the latter class were more
sinned against than sinning.
There can be no more valuable information vouchsafed to
human minds than a proper understanding of the influences that
attend the problems of heredity. As mothers, we have been dis-
inclined to take our own children into our confidence in these
important matters. There must be a proper way to interest even
a little child in the history of its own life without detriment to
innocence or embarrassment to the parent. There is nothing
offensive in purity. There can be nothing vulgar in innocence.
If the young maidens of our land could understand the duties
HEREDITY. 191
and obligations of married life before, as well as afterward, there
would be less haste in matrimony and fewer unhappy marriages.
The prevalence of divorces is largely owing to ignorance of the
duties and obligations of married life before the contract is
entered into. I know of nothing more loveworthy than a pure-
hearted maiden, nor anything more pitiable than her unhappi-
ness when she finds her idol only common clay, an instrument
of torture to her life of disappointment and despair, to be re-
flected in the lives and habits of her own offspring forever-
IſlOI’é.
Children would most like be interested in precautions against
ill-mated unions before the tide of youthful passion rises high
in their own affections. Experience proves they will risk any-
thing afterward. Marriage is called a lottery. That the children
of loving mothers must throw dice for the uncertain prize is a
sad commentary upon either our own intelligence or general
indifference to their own fate.
We owe it to ourselves as well as those who come after us to
make diligent search for these hereditary tendencies to evil and
disease. Once found, there should be no hesitation in warring
against them, turning every energy toward a remedy and relief.
I hold the opinion that an organization of mothers will evince
more of resolution and endeavor on this line than any other
class. While the influence of a good mother in her home is
beneficent and uplifting, an organization or union of mothers
will add force to inquiry and strength to aid and influence public
opinion. Fifty years from now the country will look back upon
a generation which raised revenues from the debauchery of its
citizens with disgust and contempt. In less time pure-hearted
mothers will wonder why a little ten-year-old girl in Georgia
was considered able to protect her virtue from the libertine in
the eyes of the law of the sovereign State. To those who tell
me that fathers and husbands are fully competent to protect such
children from the public, licensed dramshop and the wiles of evil
men, I can only reply that with ample opportunity, within more
than one hundred years of free government, to make changes
and promote the happiness and protect the lives and character
of these victims (all of whom had once a mother), yet these
192 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
enormities in legislation still remain in force upon the statute
books. *
Mothers, we know, are held responsible in large measure for
the characters and conduct of their offspring. It would seem
foolish to remain silent or inactive any longer with such responsi-
bility pressing upon mind and heart. Organization and union
offer an opportunity for better influences, and in behalf of these
effective agencies I welcome free discussion of the duties and
obligations of motherhood as a class touching Such vital questions
as these. *
It is not likely we will ever be wiser in regard to the subtle
force which transmits hereditary tendencies to the unborn child.
I find a tiny spark of green on the wall during these bright
spring days. Directly I find a perfect leaf and tiny flower.
Last year the same phenomenon occurred. Perhaps the same
will occur so long as the wall will last. Each year the new seed
plant is a copy of the one that perished under wintry gales and
snow. I know nothing of the transmission of life Save the annual
reappearance, followed by decay, but I know it to be the same in
purpose.
I simply know there is reproduction in plant life and in
animal life. I know “like produces like.” I also know there
can be no more important affairs in the lives of women than a
study of their own existence as related to the future of their
children. Reaching as it does to the beginning of the race in
one direction, it extends to the cycles of eternity in the other.
It would appear to be a subject that even the angels would de-
sire to look into. Mothers have every right to investigation, to
inquiry. You have doubtless seen the motto, “She is only half
a mother who does not see her own child in every child, her
own child’s grief in every pain which makes another child weep.”
PHYSICAL CULTURE. 193
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
By MISs JULIA KING,
Of the Faculty of the Emerson College of Oratory, Boston, Mass.
A REQUEST was sent to the Emerson College of Oratory in
Boston for some one to present before this National Congress of
Mothers some thoughts on proper physical culture. In the
absence of President Emerson, whose duties in connection with
this very large institution were too numerous to permit of his
being present to-day, it is my great privilege and honor, as a
member of the faculty of that college, to speak for Dr. Emerson,
and to reveal as I may some of the truths which that philoso-
pher, scholar, and teacher is daily giving to the world.
The special subject under consideration is The Relation of
Proper Physical Culture to the Health and Morals of the Home,
or perhaps I would better say, The Relation of Proper Physical
Culture to Character. The thoughts which I shall present are not
theories born of my mind; they are universal laws, which Dr.
Emerson has applied to the study of physical culture. These laws,
which underlie the Emerson system, have been practiced for
more than twenty years not only by the originator himself, but
by thousands of students who have gone forth from the Emer-
son College of Oratory to preach and teach the gospel of personal
development; and it is because of the marvelous results in
health, in intellectual attainment, and in moral and spiritual
enlightenment that I feel a pleasure in announcing on this occa-
sion some of these principles.
There is now in progress a great reformation in respect to
the study of physical culture. The idea that the body is to be
educated is sweeping over the country like a tidal wave. When
I read in Scripture, “We wait, namely, for the redemption of
our bodies,” which was uttered by the great Apostle, I wonder
if it was a prophecy-of this day? Was the waiting that of wait-
ing for a higher realization of Christianity in its effect upon the
194 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
human body? Physical culture is one of the helps in realizing
in the conduct of life the teaching of Christianity. We will con-
sider some tests which may be applied to whatever any one has
named physical culture, and present as a fundamental proposi-
tion that a true system of physical culture properly taught aids
in building up ideal character.
I. Through its effect upon the health, for in the nature of
things health affects character. It was once thought that health
was not favorable to spirituality, but times have been slowly
changing. Light is breaking as the morning of civilization and
general culture advances. We are beginning to see things in a
new way, that illness comes as a natural consequence of a viola-
tion of the laws of God, and not as a special dispensation of
Providence.
Let us notice some of the ways in which health tends to
moral conduct.
a. In the first place, health gives self-reliance to its pos-
sessor, and thereby frees her from many temptations which beset
the weak. Illness subjects one to temptation. It is said that as
soon as the human body is devitalized to a certain degree there
is a manifest presence of microbes, which produce no end of dis-
ease and misery. It is certainly true that as soon as the physical
system is devitalized to a certain extent innumerable temptations
enter, to which one is in great danger of submitting and thus
losing the life of character.
Mr. Beecher once said: “A man in health can resist tempta-
tion much easier than a man who is ill. He can fling it off; it
attacks him, but his vitality resists it. You drop some water on
a stove that is neither hot nor cold, and it sizzles and fries and
sizzles and fries. Let the stove be red hot and drop some water
on it, and it bounds away with a snort.” Health resists tempta-
tion. Self-reliance is a sustainer of moral rectitude. A person
who lacks it, being conscious of weakness, begins to look around
for means of sustaining self through other than personal effort.
It deprives one of generosity; it develops envy. A person who
has been sick a great while is ever asking others to do for him.
He can not help it. Weakness always begs; strength always
gives.
PHYSICAL CULTURE. 195
b. Again, health of body leads to equanimity of mind. We
are hardly aware of how much the state of our nerves affects
our minds. You say such a person is a very uncomfortable
person to live with, she is very fretful and very irritable; but if
you could, with something keener than the microscopic eye, look
at the nerves of that fretful, irritable individual, you would
discover that the cause of that irritability is in the condition of
the nervous system and not in the disposition. John Wesley
said, “A great many people pass for possessing a very bad temper
when their tempers are really very good, but their nervous sys-
tems are very irritable, and therefore their evil tempers are to
be attributed to physical disease rather than to moral disorder.”
Oh, who has not felt the truth and justice of this remark in her
own life and experience?
c. Again, health tends to promote normal propensities. Ab-
normal propensities are often developed from disease.
II. Proper physical culture gives a moral direction to the
intellectual activities by interesting the mind in the study of
Nature’s laws. All the exhibitions of Nature are governed by
law, absolute, universal, and intelligible. The most inspiring
knowledge of Nature’s laws, and that which creates the impulse
of obedience to them, is to be derived from a proper study of
physical culture. Nature’s laws are above all mortal authorities,
and they deal with people in accordance with their obedience.
They are as omnipotent in regard to health as they are in regard
to chemistry. It is the cultivation of the intellect that enables
one to perceive these laws. This leads us to notice that the study
of physical culture opens a wide field for intellectual develop-
ment, and such study promotes character. The truths of Na-
ture lead, as the poet said long ago, to Nature's God.
III. Again, the study of physical culture leads to character
through establishing in the mind proper ideals of beauty. It is
a practical way of studying the science of aesthetics. The laws
of aesthetics applied to the human body and the laws of health
are proved beyond all question to be one. Let us apply the laws
of aesthetics to dress. You say a young lady is beautifully dressed.
From what criteria do you measure when you say this? From
the criteria of the principles of aesthetics or from the criteria of
196 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
the fashions of the season? Fashions change four times a year,
if not oftener, but the principles of aesthetics never change.
There are certain laws of beauty, the violation of which offends
the highest sensibilities of the soul. One must study the ideal
in human form, and avoid as far as possible violating this ideal
in dress.
IV. Again, there is a direct relation of a proper system of
physical culture to character. The fundamental principle in a
perfect system is this, that the body is the servant of the soul,
and was made, with its complex structure, to obey its mandates,
and that system of physical culture which does not teach this is
not a proper system. Some people call every kind of artificial
exercise physical culture. Now all forms of exercise are not exer-
cises in physical culture. Nothing can be said to be true physical
culture which does not recognize, theoretically and practically,
this principle, that the body is the servant of the soul; and
therefore, if one would know the proper uses of the body and
how it should be educated, she must know the purposes of the
soul. Physical culture leads to the study of morals; to the study
of man as a spiritual being; to the study of the possibilities of
the soul; and the proper study of the soul leads to this conclu-
sion, that the chief end of every one in this world is to influence
others by precept and by example toward higher states of being.
A study of physical culture which does not recognize the high
mission of man to man and the high relation of man to God is
not a proper system of physical culture.
Some say that all physical culture should aim to exercise
the body as it is exercised in manual labor. In your study in
English is it not for the ideal rather than the common that you
study? Would you call that study culture that studies merely
for the actual? No! Culture aims at the expression of the high-
est perceptions and ideals of the mind when that mind is en-
lightened. There is a great difference between physical culture
and athletic exercises, such as jumping, leaping, lifting, walk-
ing on one’s hands, when it is natural for one to walk on his
feet. Such exercises do not train the body to express the soul,
consequently they should not be called culture. The soul loves,
and the body should express it; the Soul is benevolent, and the
PHYSICAL CULTURE. 197
body should express it; the soul is noble, and the body should
express it. The body should be taught to express the complete
mastery of the appetites and passions by the moral sense. See
how the proper conduct of life is introduced in true physical
culture.
Man in his nature gravitates two ways; while his body gravi-
tates toward the center of the earth his soul gravitates toward the
throne of God. A proper system of physical culture should grow
out of the necessities of man as a spiritual being, and not the
necessities of man as a drudge or a warrior. Some of the modern
ideas of physical culture originated in the thought of training
of soldiers that they might better endure the fatigues of war.
General culture calls for higher ideas which shall meet the needs
of civil life. The exercises that were introduced for the train-
ing of soldiers were made for a contentious world, for a fighting
world, for a bloodshedding world; and now when the various
nations of the earth are considering Arbitration vs. War, which
if it succeeds will do away with war, where will be the physical-
culture systems that have been inaugurated for the purpose of
making soldiers? Man lives not to kill his brother, but to help
him to live. Slowly the wheel of reformation rolls on, and as
it turns there is hurled from it many scintillations and much
dust of past ages.
V. Then we may ask at this point, What are believed to be
Some, at least, of the higher states of mind which the body should
express? The first state of mind the body should express is
Reverence. The fundamental principle that is involved in the
word “expression ” is pressing out what is within. Therefore,
if I am to express reverence, I must experience this state of mind
or I can not express it.
The second state of mind which the body should express
is Benevolence. The body was made to express, by deed and
by manner, this captain of all the faculties, propensities, pas-
sions, and sentiments of the human soul. Selfishness is not
the natural captain of all the faculties, though it sometimes
mutinously resists the captain; but by and by, when the ship
rights herself, and the gale that bent it low is past and she again
rides the crest, the true captain commands.
198 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
VI. A proper system of physical culture should train the
body to express freedom through obedience to divinity. No one
is free until the will, guided by reason and inspired by love for
all conscious being, governs life. A proper system of physical
culture, then, calls for intellectual, moral, and spiritual develop-
ment, for it does not recognize the body as a separate entity, but
as the expressive agent of being. It fits man to be a worthy citi-
Zen; it educates him to be a member of a family, and nothing
is higher than this. Nothing in the world is higher than that
to which the word “home * points. Our hymns sometimes sug-
gest this by saying Heaven is my Home. Those who do not aim to
make their homes “heaven’’ are not fit for any heaven, and will
never find one until they improve. The Church is a holy place,
but the Church is the servant of the home, and in the ratio it is
a Christian Church it is such a servant, because it tends to make
men and women fit to live together in homes.
Some object to women seeking higher education on the
ground that their place is at home with husband and children.
If I should meet a robin in its wanderings, and say to her,
“Robin, why are you not in your nest?” the reply would be,
“I have come out for that with which I may benefit my nest.”
The question of domesticity is not this: Is one always in that spot
called home? The question is, What is she when there, and
when she is away of what is she in pursuit to carry to that home?
She should fill the home with the atmosphere of health and spir-
itual beauty, and all the breadth and richness of character which
are developed from a real culture of her whole being as woman.
When I speak of home I feel I am standing upon holy ground,
and it almost stops my speech, because I feel that no words which
I can say are fitting with which to represent the mission of º
to the race. In the nature of things it is destined to be the high-
est school possible to human beings, but that it may be so those
who help to make that home must approach the ideal in char-
acter. They must carry health to that home, and not groaning
sickness. They should be able to make health glow in that
home, and not darken it by a shadow of disease. They should
carry hope, high moral sentiment, and beneficence, which sweet-
ens the very atmosphere. Oh, think not merely of whether your
PEIYSICAL CULTURE. 199
sons and daughters are to teach physical culture as a profession!
This may follow as an incident, but think of something higher.
What will it do for them as inmates of the home? Some say,
“My daughter shall learn to play the piano.” That is right,
that is beautiful; it makes home more pleasant, as the birds
do when they sing. It is a good thing, although I am sorry to
say that nine tenths neglect it as soon as they have a home of
their own. Father, perhaps, as a part of the dower, gives a fine
new piano to grace the home, but the piano is silent forever-
more. Other music takes the place, sweeter in some respects, if
not as harmonious.
Now those who make the new music need health, intelli-
gence, refinement. They need the presence of a mother whose
every movement is grace, whose every point of bearing is dignity.
The presence of such a mother, though she be silent in words,
is a liberal education, for a great man or a great woman, a true
man or a true woman does more for the elevation of children
and the race by presence than they can do by words or mere
acts. As Emerson says, “What you are so roars and thunders
above your head I can not hear you speak.” “Put off thy
shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is
holy ground.” In autumn I never see a bush burning with fire
that does not consume but I feel, “This is holy ground.” If
a bush burning with the colors and the splendors with which
autumn can paint it, or with which a miracle can surround it, is
a holy thing, how much more so is the place hallowed by the
presence of the soul which is the tabernacle of God? If a bush
can express divinity by its colors of fire, how much more can
the presence of the souls of men and women concerning which
the inspired writer heard a great voice out of heaven saying,
“The tabernacle of God is with men’? What can be more holy
than the human body in which dwells the Spirit of God, and
therefore, according to Scripture, is the temple of the Holy
Spirit, for the inspired writer says, “Know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” A proper system of
physical culture leads directly to the development of divinity in
human beings, fitting the body to be the temple of the Most
High.
200 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
CHARACTER BUILDING IN EDUCATION.
By MRs. ELLEN A. RICHARDSON,
Boston, Mass.
MADAM PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN: In coming
before you with the subject Character Building in Education, I
can only sum up all the methods which have been presented in
lights and shades by the previous speakers; I stand here simply
to point to the arching sky overhead, and to Iead your minds
to place properly the facts brought before you in a picture
which the members of this Congress will hang on memory’s
chambers. Of all these facts each of you, of course, will select
for the foreground of your memory picture those which stand
out the strongest to you from this sincere conference. I will
not linger over the details of the composition, but rather seek
to lift your thoughts to the overarching heavens, and if I suc-
ceed in impressing upon you that you are building this arch
daily, I shall have succeeded in some measure in speaking to a
purpose upon Character Building in Education.
Note that I say character in education, instead of character
as apart from education. Dr. Buchanan, a pioneer reformer in
education, says, “Education is the training of the soul and body
to act together harmoniously, obeying all the interrelative laws.”
Dr. Emerson, President of the College of Oratory in Boston,
defines character to be “ quantity of being.” We can find no
higher authority to-day than these two men, each being in his
personality the fulfilling of the definitions given by both. In
Dr. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, we
have also an eminently wise leader in all educational interests,
who works for character in education and to increase the moral
force of every intelligent being. In many cities the schools
for manual training and the kindergartens—bless them!—are
doing so much for the harmonious unfoldment and development
CHARACTER BUIIIDING IN EDUCATION. 201
of character that we see the dawn of brighter days, when think-
ers shall take the places of puppets, and originators shall take
the place of imitators. How much the next generation will owe
to such women as Mrs. Quincy Shaw, of Boston, the late Mrs.
Cooper, of San Francisco, Mrs. Phebe Hearst, of Washington,
and all others who are aiding in work which increases the powers
of being, in the mental and moral weight, by the character build-
ing in kindergarten training.
The spirit which prompted the call for this Congress of
Mothers is along the same line of progress. As I understand its
motive, it is to study life development. What for? That we
shall grow bodies abounding in health and physical strength?
Yes, for this, since the temple of the soul must furnish
proper physical conditions, and for more, much more; it is that
dying we may by quantity and quality of being
... leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time,
which shall contribute to the whole sum of a growth upward
to the highest possible character of the one grand man and the
great future.
If we could only realize and be more mindful of the subtle
influences which ripple from our lives on the sea of time, ever
widening beyond human ken, even as a stone dropped into the
lake and lost to sight in a moment leaves the influence of its
passing on the surface in the beautiful circles, displacing gently
each particle of water into wider and widening circumferences.
This is a common comparison, but none better describes the
absolute and delicate effect of the character of the individual
upon all life, and emphasizes more the responsibility of parents
and teachers as character builders.
We hear a great deal about the sacredness and the responsi-
bilities of motherhood. I wish we might say more about the
sacredness and responsibility of the high office of teacher, recog-
nizing the profession to be the highest of all professions, exact-
ing a high standard in teachers, and then appreciating the full
dignity of their great mission, make teaching a grateful task.
I am sorry to say the social recognition of the teacher in
202 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
America and the remunerative recognition are not what they
should be when we consider the noble and imperative work to
be done. Statistics show that the cleverest members of the pro-
fession have little more than enough for the mere necessities of
life. Without much leisure to grow ahead of their students, with-
out the money to purchase higher advantages, what wonder that
teachers become too often and too soon mere guide boards to
text-books, until, first from necessity and then from will, teach-
ers under these circumstances consent to routine and system,
and soon lack freshness and inspiration, while education be-
comes a deadened and deadening process, lacking all vitalizing
power to awaken the slumbering character which lies in every
human being! *
The wonderful kindergarten, with teachers who have been
trained to think and Originate, rests upon eternal foundations;
its work is all directed to the unfoldment of soul powers; its
objective and subjective teaching makes it a grand power in the
opening years of a child’s life. If we can have no more, thank
Heaven for this! But we must have more! When the child
leaves the kindergarten for that which is termed the higher
grades, at about the age of seven, we feel the loss of this soul-
developing method, and I question if the grade of teaching may
be called higher which takes away reality and deals only with
hard rules and signs instead of things. Signs everywhere are
put up between the child and things. If mathematics is the
task, he deals with figures; if music is the study, he has notes
instead of tones, which are the things; if reading is the exercise,
he is more concerned with the pronunciation of his words, as
h-o-r-s-e, horse, than in holding in mind the character of the
animal itself, which makes you feel the go of the animal. It is
the activity of the mind and heart which educates and determines
character. In proportion to which the activity of the mind is
vitalized by emotional life is the mind unfolded and developed,
and quantity of being is added thereby.
Live study and live teaching beget love of study, and love
is the fructifying principle of growth; it is the activity of the
emotions that keeps the Soul alive.
I do not believe an education which excludes emotion makes
CHARACTER BUILDING IN EDUCATION. 203
a being of power, or, in other words, increases the quantity of
being.
Education should be full of feeling. It takes sunlight to
draw out the fragrance of the violet and the perfume of the rose.
The human soul is no exception to the rule. Love is the Sun-
light which develops the powers of the soul.
We are told that to educate means to draw out, and yet we go
on cramming in every kind of study. Whether the student loves
the particular study or not, we gag him with nauseas as we would
with castor oil, telling him that what he does not like is good
discipline for him. The result is the emotions are strangled,
duties become irksome, and the soul drops into darkness, thus
killing the process of original development, while character be-
comes stultified, automatic, and imitative. I tell you to be a
good thinker one must be a good feeler first, and education must
teach to feel from cradle to grave, or the soul’s power can not
be awakened; only the memories can be trained.
I would like to consider at length the equal necessity of de-
veloping the social factors, considering them the objective and
subjective side of education. This manner of training the sub-
jective and objective of the soul makes the quantity of being
which Dr. Emerson defines as character.
It makes men and women who can not fail of success in life,
and success is what we are all looking for. Not mere money suc-
cess, though even so there is an ethics in business which can
only be reached through the training of the moral powers such
as I have described in the cultivation of feeling first, thinking
and acting from feeling guided by both. Oh, do not choke back
the emotional life in the child, mothers, teachers! Hold it in
everything; it is the Soul of things, without which success is
but a flashlight of a meteor; losing it, the consequences set forth
in the Scriptural text, “For he that hath, to him shall be given;
and he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that
which he hath,” illustrates the absence of quantity of being and
the loss of emotional life.
We are all familiar from our old copy books with the sentence,
“Knowledge is power.” Following the text, we have struggled
for the knowledge of the intellect, apart from the cultivation of
204. NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
the heart. Let us substitute for the word “knowledge” the
word “character,” and say, “ Character is power,” and we shall
have a new goal and modify our methods. External conditions
and circumstances over which we may have control rule the
measure of our character, and decide the “quantity of being ”
each individual may appropriate to himself. To do this, first
of all we should find out in what direction lie the abilities of
each child. Its particular love of special occupations will be a
good index to this. We are all conscious that we have powers
within us which we can command easily; they seem to be wait-
ing to be called out. This is the mission of education; it is in-
troducing human beings to their native powers; it is teaching
them the use of those powers as tools with which to build their
lives and character.
To call forth, to draw out, then, the given abilities in such
a way that each individual may find his or her right place in the
world, and become of use to themselves, a comfort to others as
well as to themselves. Adding thus to the harmony of the world
would be the result of such an educating process, creating a
heaven on earth, and a condition which does not leave the ques-
tion debatable as to whether the training of character morally
or the training of his intellectual life alone is of the greatest
value.
A man may be smart with an intellectual education, but he
can never be great without soul culture.
Well it is for our future prospects that such excellent strides
have been made by the kindergartens, the kitchen gardens, the
manual-training schools, and all the industrial schools which
are at the base of true education. But the car of progress
must run on the double track of theory and practice. After
teaching the soul to use its own powers, to think boldly, clearly,
grandly, and beneficially for its own welfare, it must be led to
think of its value in the divine economy of all life; it must
think, work, and live for the welfare of all mankind, or there
will be no expansion of character. There can be no “quantity
of being ” if there is no proper use of the powers of the being—
no proper exercise of the functions of the mind and life in out-
ward forms. Without it there can be no development of the
CHARACTER BUILDING IN EDUCATION. 205
spiritual being, any more than there is development of muscle in
the arm which never moves itself.
As we claim that the first step in the development of the
powers of life is in educating the soul to think and act for itself,
so we claim that the second step, to insure an ever-increasing
influx of powers, is in the use of those powers for others and for
human progress. Such exercise will bring bright thoughts which
have never been thought before; thoughts which will glitter as
new coin from the treasury of heaven; thoughts according to the
demands of the age and existing conditions, by which great mys-
teries shall be illuminated, and the problems of science, govern-
ment, and sociology shall be solved.
When we have an education universal, such as is dawning in
centers where kindergartens are planted, and where we make
the Science of anthropology an element in education, then, and
not until then, will we have the originality and the appreciation
of originality which come to lead us, like the pillar of fire by
night, toward a land of plenty.
When we have an education which means the development of
the creative intellect and the moral obligations of life combined,
we shall know what Dr. Emerson means in defining character as
“ quantity of being,” and what Dr. Buchanan conveys in defining
“ education as the training of body and soul to act together har-
moniously, obeying all of the interrelative laws of existence.”
It is well for our future prospects that the greatest thinkers
in Germany, in France, in England, and in America are turning
their splendid powers toward the thought of education. We
have heard a great deal about the German thought, that it is
the advance light of a higher civilization. Have you ever
thought what it is? Have you ever dreamed what it is? To be
sure, the Germans have made discoveries in science; they have
great powers of observation; they arrive at splendid deductions;
they give us fine works on science; they have a profound turn of
mind: Very will; all this is very good, but it is not the real
German thought. The German thought is the thought that has
led men for years toward principles for developing the powers
of the human mind. It is directed toward the birth of man.
Man is not yet born, and the leading thought of the day is carry-
14
206 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTEIERS.
ing the light toward the new birth of man. Plato said, “The
teacher assists at the birth of the soul”; and we say, in the light
of that thought, quoting Browning, “Man is not man as yet.”
He is to be born. He is to be assisted in the birth of his own
powers, of his own activities, through education, at whose portals
only we stand, not having yet crossed the threshold.
The new education will appeal to the soul powers of the man
not as a fractional man, but to him as a whole man, not merely
a physical being with creature comforts to be supplied which
appeal to his will, but it will appeal to him in his higher wisdom,
so that he will be able while on the earth to look into the heavens,
and all around him, comparing things, getting at their just
values and relations, selecting the divine in all systems of edu-
cation, judging everything by the end toward which it brings
man. Does it lead him away from his lower desires, his meaner
sensibilities? Does it lead him into higher purposes? If thus
it does, then it is the right education. That which does not do
this, but only gives the ability to do a particular thing, educates
only certain faculties; it does not educate the whole man. Where
is he? Slumbering in the depths!
The bee has a certain faculty beyond the faculty of man;
so has the beaver in building his dam. He has transmitted tend-
encies that give him faculty. But has he a great soul? There
are men who think they are getting an education because they
develop faculties and make specialists of themselves. They build
dams and go into them; I am not talking about that kind of an
education. I am talking about that which elevates faculty into
an outgrowth of manhood; that which takes a farmer and makes
a poet of him, yet holds the farmer still. We want no education
which takes man away from practical things, which takes a
farmer's boy and educates him so that he can not go back to
the farm. We want an education such as will educate the powers
of the young farmer, the mechanic, or the artist, so that he can
go back to the farm, the shop, and the studio to develop each
the better.
Education should turn to practical ends, but while training
men to practical things it should be done with a divine impulse,
Soul and body taking the training for harmonious action. Love
CELARACTER BUILDING IN EDUCATION. 207
and wisdom creating the being whose force for good shall make
the character strong. Then would business become moral and
the world better.
In closing, let me use the eloquence of Dr. Emerson, to whom
I have often referred, as, indeed, having had the felicitous joy
of sitting at his feet to listen to his great teachings, I must
acknowledge his inspiration in every word I have given you. In
reading the signs of the times, he says there are to-day men and
women divided into two classes—one class facing the East and
the other facing the West. Those who face the West mistake
the evening star for the morning star, and look backward into
the darkness and the night; while those who are looking to the
East see, with faith and hope, the morning star that ushers in
what is to be.
We have noble leaders in education, but they find it slow
work to turn the masses toward the morning star. There are
people in all walks of life who are bowing low the knee to the
something which is setting never to rise again, turning their
backs on the morning star which is traveling in the way of
progress.
Let it not be said that the National Congress of Mothers is
unmindful of the morning star, but may it become a luminary
itself in education, so building its own character that its light
shall guide and bless, leading ever on and upward in the divine
mission of character building intrusted to mothers and teachers.
208 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
A NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN.
By MRs. SALLIE S. COTTEN,
Falkland, N. C.
PHILOSOPHY teaches that facts are established by universal
testimony, and universal testimony declares that there never
has been and never will be anything
... on earth
That has a feather's weight of worth
Without a woman in it.
As the crowning miracle of creation, as the sweetest mystery
of Nature, as an erring mortal, and as the chosen link between
divinity and humanity, woman has been the subject of criticism,
both kind and unkind. Often a fascinating but false glamour
has been thrown around her by the enthusiast; often undeserved
sneers have been hurled at her by the cynic; often her real value
has been invisible to the unappreciative, yet she remains God’s
benediction upon accomplished creation and man’s incentive
to action. No period of time, no phase of life is free from her
influence, and her relation to all the conditions of the present
era are being seriously considered, and her opportunities are
being enlarged to meet the requirements of her rapid develop-
ment.
Her relation to the Government is not a new subject for con-
sideration, but it is one which continually presents new aspects.
Woman’s eligibility to the privileges of citizenship has many
champions, and in time she will doubtless add the ballot to her
other responsibilities; yet the ballot will turn to ashes in her
grasp unless she realizes that the casting of a vote is less impor-
tant than the training of a voter.
The crown of womanhood is motherhood, and the glory and
pride and hope of a nation all concentrate in its mothers. Napo-
A NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN. 209
leon realized this when he told Madame de Staël, to the
disappointment of her vanity, that the greatest woman in
France was she who was the mother of the largest number of
children. -
Woman’s pre-eminence and value as an individual must be
estimated from personal standpoints, and must result in a vari-
ety of conclusions, but her greatest value to a nation must ever
be in the capacity of a mother. Otherwise nations would cease,
and their glories fade by reason of the decrease in population.
Her beauty may enslave the senses, her subtle intuitions may
guide the minds of the wisest men, her altruism may develop
higher standards, yet if all these gifts perish with her material
body, of what permanent value has she been to her race or to
the nation? Nor does her duty cease with the Supply of popula-
tion and the perpetuation of her own gifts. Even beyond this
duty it is her most imperative and a higher duty to make this
population of the highest possible type. Thus it becomes evident
that the unceasing improvement of its women is of vital im-
portance to a government, and should receive serious considera-
tion.
Man’s mission on earth is the subjection, domination, and
utilization of the forces of Nature for the benefit of mankind,
and governments are formed for the more successful accomplish-
ment of this mission. On the earth there will never be any
creature higher than man, but he may become a higher type, and
the needs of the future will demand a higher type. The earth,
more highly developed by man’s energy and scientific research,
will need a more perfect man to dominate it. Higher and more
complex conditions will require higher adaptability to meet those
conditions, and it is woman’s mission to develop this higher
adaptability in man.
A noted scientist asserts that “the great motive of organic
Nature was to produce human mothers.”
That fact accomplished, Nature has never made anything
since. The work of perfecting the human race was delegated
to woman, the obligations of maternity were made eternal, and
her soul was filled with insatiate longings for something higher
and better, so that through these aspirations she should herself
210 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
be led, and should lead man, onward and upward toward their
joint heritage of immortality.
In the Building of Anthropology at the Columbian Exposi-
tion Prof. Putnam illustrated the life of primitive woman in
such a way as to show conclusively that she was the first potter,
tanner, and tailor, and from the necessities of her environment
the originator of almost all the industrial arts.
As civilization advanced she employed her time in making
ornaments for the adornment of man, who was at that era the
ornamental part of creation. After she had originated a way
to do these things, man gallantly assumed the labor, and ended
by making her the ornamental part of creation. Both having
thus served as ornaments until developed into higher utility, now
another advance becomes necessary, and again she must take
the first step. Now she must devise a way to invest him with
the mental and moral adornments of a nobler manhood, thus
repeating on a higher plane the history of primitive experience.
These general principles apply to all mankind, but our spe-
cial solicitude is in regard to the higher development of our own
people.
Herbert Spencer says that “Americans may reasonably look
forward to a time when they will have produced a civilization
grander than any the world has ever known "; and all the signifi-
cant portents point to America as the field of the activities of the
next century of progress, and to the Anglo-Saxon as the domi-
nant spirit of that progress. This high destiny involves the
responsibility of preparing for its fulfillment.
Progress means higher conditions, more complex problems
associated with diverse humanity, and to meet those higher
conditions and to solve those more intricate problems will neces-
sitate a higher caliber in man. Hence we may well ask, Is
American manhood in the highest possible state of development?
Are we, as a people, already endowed with adaptability to meet
all future development, or is there a higher state to which we
may attain and which we may stimulate other races to attain?
It is specially true of Americans that they demand the best
of everything, and shall they not themselves become the highest
types of men and women? Have we attained the limit of phys-
A NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN. 211
ical, mental, and moral perfection? The blind, the dumb, the
deformed, the undersized, the uneducated, the imbecile, the
drunkard, the thief, the murderer, the diseased, the sinful, and
the suffering all forbid us to harbor such a thought.
How, then, may a higher condition of humanity be reached?
How may American men and women be prepared for the high
destiny of the future? These are momentous questions whose
perfect accomplishing is yet afar off, but still possible, and, like
all great achievements, must begin with an effort.
Effects in the natural world do not come as supernatural
benefactions; they come through natural channels, and as the
results of great and continued effort. &
The necessary effort on this line should be the cultivation
by women of a scientific motherhood, which shall in time cor-
rect the errors of the past and redeem the future by penetrating
the mysteries of heredity and learning to control its possibilities.
The Scientist and the learned physician know something of these
hidden mysteries, but their knowledge avails but little to the
human race so long as woman, the laboratory in which the won-
ders and errors of heredity are brought to form, remains herself
in ignorance of her power to assist in controlling it. Woman
should know her wonderful self, and realize the measure of her
responsibility to the future. By the light of scientific knowl-
edge she should climb the steeps to scientific motherhood, for it
is through her that the Great Alchemist will transmute the dross
of the human animal called man into the gold of a nobler crea-
ture, made indeed “in the image of God.”
Scientific motherhood means more than a casual thought
can grasp. It means a grander, nobler race, an altruistic human-
ity which shall fit the earth for the Saviour’s advent. It means
the reformation of the drunkard, the redemption of the criminal,
the repentance of the murderer, the abolition of asylums for the
blind, dumb, and insane. It means the elimination of selfish-
ness, the death of oppression, the birth of brotherly love, the
uplifting of mankind through true spiritual Christianity, and
the control of hereditary weakness of mind and of body all by
prenatal influences.
"These blessed results will come not to-day, not next week—
212 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTEIERS.
perhaps not in a century—but in time, and the sooner the first
effort is made toward them the sooner will their full accom-
plishment be reached. Oliver Wendell Holmes said truly that
the time to begin to train a child is one hundred years before
it is born, and now is not too soon to begin to conquer the evils
which fill the earth.
It is claimed that education and culture will accomplish
much of this, but we wait in vain for the realization of this
claim. Has culture eradicated drunkenness among the cultured?
Alas, its thrall still darkens the brains of many most cultured
men! Has education eliminated dishonesty? The educated and
cultured defaulter from the best social circles and the common
thief by contrast prove that culture only teaches dishonesty
better methods and larger results. Has culture eradicated heredi-
tary diseases, or remedied physical defects, or corrected mental
weaknesses which pass from one generation to another? Does
‘culture overcome the love of self and the greed for gold? No;
for just as higher culture demands more costly gratifications,
which only gold can supply, so this higher necessity intensifies
the thirst for money which removes from the fortunate the
temptations which beset and destroy the less cultured.
Evidences of cultured dishonesty, of educated depravity
abound, and we are forced to admit that culture can not accom-
plish these desired results, and we must look elsewhere for help.
We turn hopefully to woman as the key to the sad situation, for
universal scientific motherhood, though difficult of attainment,
is luminous with possibilities for the uplifting of the human
I’àCé.
It is then evident that woman’s most imperative duty to the
government under which she lives is to supply a population
composed of the highest types of men and women, and it is
equally evident that scientific motherhood is necessary to the
proper performance of this duty.
But all duty is reciprocal, and it is the duty of the Govern-
ment, which seeks the welfare of its people, to offer to its women
an opportunity for the attainment of this scientific motherhood
which will be fraught with so much good.
The measure of a nation’s greatness is the elevation of its
A NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN. 213
women, and any increase of national greatness is dependent upon
the mothers of the nation. Nowhere on earth does woman hold
a more honored position than in these United States, and it is
to be hoped that this Government will lead the world in offering
to its women the opportunity for acquiring the scientific train-
ing necessary to the performance of the high duties of woman’s
sphere.
It is true that the masses of our women are not prepared to
master the intricacies and fulfill the requirements of a scientific
motherhood at once. The urgent material demands of the pres-
ent are too pressing, and the present will not yield to the future.
But slow growth is an unfailing accompaniment of grand results,
and growth on this line, once quickened by the sunlight of oppor-
tunity, will soon produce a harvest of results.
Woman must first be enabled to conquer the urgencies of
the material present, so as to have time to study the higher mys-
teries of womanhood, and to contemplate herself as the responsi-
ble medium of the transmission of good and of evil. The press-
ing needs of the material present may be overcome by industrial
knowledge on scientific lines, which will enable her to overcome
with ease the practical details of life. This done, the higher
fields of scientific thought will become inviting to her, and
should be made attainable.
Yet scientific motherhood will gain no marked impetus while
restricted to a fortunate few. It must be made a national possi-
bility in order to become a national benefit. Like all our na-
tional blessings, it should be “by the people, for the people,”
and it is the duty of the Government to give us an opportunity
to acquire this scientific knowledge.
It can be done through the establishing by the Government
of a national training school for women, where the women of
the nation shall be trained in the sciences of domesticity and
peace, just as at West Point and Annapolis the men are trained
in the science of war.
In this school woman should be taught the highest domes-
tic science in all its diversities. She should be taught applied
chemistry, because the nutrition of the nation is her charge.
She should be taught architecture, because she makes the homes,
214 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
and should know what architectural conditions are most con-
ducive to health and comfort.
She should be taught sanitation, disinfection, and the pre-
vention and cure of diseases, because it is to her arms all the
nation returns in sickness and death, and she should be familiar
with the foes of health and how to combat with them.
She should be taught the care of infants and their foods, for
upon her knowledge and care the sons of men are dependent for
strength in manhood to make the nation great.
She should be taught the application of science to all de-
partments of household labor, with a view to lightening that
labor, in order to give more time to scientific thought and study.
She should be taught the mysteries and possibilities of hered-
ity, and impressed with her duty to improve and develop her
race for the benefit of mankind and for the government which
provides such opportunities for woman.
There will be no need to teach patriotism in such a school.
Patriotism will be spontaneous when woman is thus recognized
by her country.
This national training school should receive its quota of
pupils from each State, just as do the other national schools,
and its curriculum should embrace a higher course of study
than is pursued at the industrial colleges of the various States.
These State institutions form the first step by which woman
may ascend to a more perfect womanhood, and this national
training school will be the second step in that ascent. One will
develop her practically; the other will develop her scientifically.
The first will give her skillful hands to obey practical minds, and
the second will give her deeper scientific knowledge and teach
her how to apply it.
The test of civilization is said to be the distribution of jus-
tice, and certainly justice demands that woman should receive
some share in the distribution of national benefits. “Equal
benfits to all, special privileges to none *—we hear it so often,
it has a sweet Sound to a free people; but it becomes a hollow
sound when taught as a precept, and not followed by consistent
action.
Woman has not been exempt from the duties exacted of
A NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN. 215
other citizens, yet she has been overlooked in the distribution of
educational benefits. She has paid taxes; she has observed the
law (and incidentally furnished the lawmaker); she has con-
tributed in many ways to the welfare of the nation; and she
should receive some share of reciprocal benefits.
The boys of the nation—the Indian, the negro—have all
received educational opportunities; the arts and Sciences have
been promoted, but woman and her natural colleague, domestic
science, have been apparently forgotten. The schools at West
Point and Annapolis for the training of the boys df the nation,
the schools for the training of the Indian and the negro, the
schools for the advancement of agriculture and mechanic arts
are all proper and useful, but are they all-sufficient?
The necessity for proper training in order to secure best re-
sults is recognized in every line of endeavor, and the making of
homes and the training of children are not exceptions. Is not
the making of homes as important as the making of an army
and navy? We may sometime need the army and navy, but we
always need the purest, best homes in which to train our citizens.
Does not neglected domestic science ambush as dangerous
enemies within as threaten the nation’s life from without? Is
it not as necessary to train women to scientific warfare against
the foes of health, nutrition, and development as it is to train
men to scientific warfare against each other? Is it not a doubt-
ful benefit to foster agriculture, and yet leave woman untrained
to utilize increased production and to minimize waste?
The elevation of domestic science to its proper place among
the other sciences will do much to dispel the poverty, drudgery,
and disease, which are the results of ignorance, and which in so
many homes rob woman’s heart of happiness and life of its
brightness.
Thrift will dispel poverty, but thrift is born of knowledge
and training. Drudgery encourages stupidity, and drudgery
can be lightened only by the application of science to domestic
labor, while disease feeds on the ignorance of woman, despite
the doctor’s learning.
The national Government says to foreign contagion, “Thus
far shalt thou come and no farther,” but contagion of local and
216 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
internal origin continues to destroy our population. The care
of the public health annually absorbs large amounts of money
in our cities without much diminution of disease, because, alas!
the homekeeper is too often ignorant of the origin and preven-
tion of the most ordinary diseases, and ignorance in one home
can cause a harvest of disease which will mock at the physician’s
skill and learning.
Then would it not be well to recognize woman as the real
guardian of the public health, and teach her whatever is neces-
sary to the proper and safe performance of these duties?
It is true that there are schools in some of our cities where
such things are taught, but they do not reach far enough nor
multiply results fast enough. It must be a national opportunity
to produce national benefits. To reach and benefit the people it
must be broad and extensive, and should be done for the people
by the Government, with the people’s money. This would assure
its permanency on a scale commensurate with the importance
of the subject.
Year after year the Government appropriates money for the
improvement of harbors, rivers, and obscure Creeks. Is not
woman’s improvement as vital to the nation as that of any har-
bor? If the application of scientific knowledge to an obscure
creek improves commerce and promotes the temporal welfare of
that section, will not the application of scientific knowledge im-
prove the obscure mother, and promote the eternal welfare of
the people of that section? Is an obscure creek of more value
than an obscure mother?
Streams neglected by Nature have been stocked with fish
by the Government, while the minds of its women have remained
in the darkness of ignorance. We have experimented to bring
down rain from the sky to make the desert bloom. Can not we
experiment to test the effects of the light of science on the
mother’s of our race?
We have sent camels to Arizona and reindeer to Alaska in
an effort to improve natural conditions; we have investigated the
diseases of swine, and recognized the necessity for a bureau of
bacteriology, while the masses of our people have walked amid
unseen dangers, and the Sons of men have placed their chances
A NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN. 217
of life on “the survival of the fittest * because love, even holy
mother love, is no safeguard against ignorance and hereditary
disease. Yº
Then who will say that aught but good can come of teach-
ing woman to perform scientifically all the duties to which her
instincts naturally lead?
Woman needs no eulogy to emphasize her importance to a
Government which rests on the tripod of “life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness,” for to all of these she is indispensable.
As the life giver, she is God’s proxy on earth; liberty loses its
charm, and happiness becomes a myth without her, and while
given full liberty in the “pursuit of happiness,” yet she is often-
est found by man’s side, stimulating his energies, training his
children to worthy citizenship, and leading all to higher effort.
A government which recognizes the majesty of a free people
should seriously consider all means which tend to benefit that
people, either in body, mind, or morals, and the cultivation of
a scientific motherhood combines in one this threefold benefit.
Hence this national training school which shall lead our women
on toward a scientific motherhood becomes a desirable necessity
and a duty of the Government.
The importance of environment to development is acknowl-
edged, and as a question of environment alone the subject of
home making assumes an importance to a nation which can not
be overestimated, and should receive national aid and recogni-
tion.
It is not suggested that the Government make the homes.
It is only proposed that it teach the home makers how best to
do it, and emphasize the importance of their relation to pros-
perity.
When the duties of home life are invested with the dignity
of Government recognition, woman herself will feel more im-
pressed with their value. When the grand meaning and hidden
power of her ordained sphere dawn upon her in their full force
through scientific study, then she will not sigh because Nature
has assigned her special duties which man has deemed safe to be
trusted to her instincts, yet which in reality need for their per-
formance the highest scientific knowledge. When she realizes
218 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
that motherhood is the lever in God’s hands for the uplifting of
the earth, rather than the curse for disobedience; when she
takes into her inmost heart the fact that Christ, when other
modes of incarnation were possible, chose to be born of a woman
to teach the world her value; when she studies the development
of the human race and her own intimate relation thereto, then
she will respond to her altruistic instincts, and by adding science
to sentiment renew her efforts at lifting the burden of woe from
a sad world.
This is not a chimerical dream. Scientists have had it in
their thoughts, and advanced thinkers have cherished hope for
such a thing.
Now let thought begin to assume shape, and let theory
through test become reality.
The realization of these possibilities is for the future, but
the present is the gate to the future, and we are responsible for
the conditions which that future shall present to posterity.
Let us then lay the foundations upon which that future shall
rest. Let the women of these United States seek from the Gov-
ernment this educational recognition in the establishing of a
national training school, where industrial knowledge shall be
gained, which will enable women to overcome shiftlessness and
drudgery, and lead to thrift, which is synonymous with pros-
perity. Then will follow scientific domesticity among the masses,
which will give better, happier homes, and lead on toward that
universal scientific motherhood which will develop the race into
perfect standards.
Woman is the flower of the tree of life, holding in her mys-
terious life-giving power the fate of the future, and the voice of
the future is calling to her now—calling to her to unfold that
fate. There are many ominous portents around us. What
means this universal restlessness among women of all classes and
countries?
What means this universal joining of hands by women
through international organization? What means this demand
by women for wider fields of thought, for greater scope of
action?
What means this bursting of conventional bonds, this adapta-
A NATIONAL TRALNING SCEIOOL FOR WOMEN. 219
tion to the arbitrary dictates of progress, even to the annihilation
of time-honored customs?
What means this reaching out by women to help women?
What means this effort toward physical development and the
gaining of superior health and strength?
It is the Spirit of God moving upon the deeps of woman’s
Soul, arousing her from a long lethargy and impelling her to
prepare for her high destiny as a factor in the continued and
higher evolution of the human race.
What grander offering can we add to the grandeurs of the
twentieth century than an effort to improve our race? What
richer bequest can we give to posterity than this accomplished
result? Every true woman will feel her heart leap with joy at
the thought of assisting in perfecting her race and in conferring
a permanent blessing on the earth.
In this work American women are called to lead, because
America is destined to be the scene of the evolutionary activities
of the near future, and she must take her place as a factor in
that evolution.
O grand work, to lead the movement for a higher humanity!
and O wise and proud Government which shall stir this impulse
into action, and open wide the gate of opportunity for the fru-
ition of its possibilities!
When the Government assures this opportunity to American
women—which it will do if they ask for it—then will this be-
come in truth our country, and woman will teach her sons and
daughters to revere and bless more gratefully our flag, which
shall float not only over brave and free men, but also over happy,
scientific mothers, who will not shrink from the duty of giving
to a Government which recognizes them such men and such
women as shall make the nation greater and stronger, and who
shall produce in America “a civilization grander than any the
world has ever known.”
220 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
FRIDAY AFTER NOON, 9:30 O'CLOCK.
NATURE STUDIES IN THE HOME.
By MIss ANNA. A. SCHRYWER,
Ann Arbor, Mich.
IT is a great mistake to think of Nature study as a new thing.
The study of Nature is as old as man. Nature has ever found a
lover in the poet and a subject in the artist. She has been the
medium of inspiration to the prophet and the source of law to
the truth seeker. It has ever been “through Nature up to Na-
ture’s God.”
Our greatest teachers have always recognized the importance
of the study of the whole universe. Even the growth of a mus-
tard seed was worthy the attention of Jesus. Aristotle wrote the
first natural history. He was led to believe in a complete grada-
tion in Nature, a progressive development corresponding with
the progressive life of the soul. Comenius asked, “Why in place
of dead books should we not open the living book of Nature?”
Rosseau gave us Emile; Spencer stopped to write Education.
It is not a thing which can be isolated. It is simply man’s
first steps toward finding out the unity and relation in this great
whole of which he is a part. It is the A B C of man’s course in
living. Man is both soul and body. He must ever seek all the
manifestations of spirit as developed in himself, as expressed in
literature, as evolved in history, and as found in Nature. Sooner
or later he will discover the source of all truth and gain a reason
for the faith which is within him.
Who shall study Nature? Everybody.
What shall we study? The whole.
How shall we study it? Reverently.
Where shall we study? Everywhere.
When shall we study? Now.
NATURE STUDIES IN THE HOME. 221
No eye can be too sound
To observe a world so wast;
No patience too profound
To sort what’s here amassed.
How man may here best live no care too great to explore.
“The earth and the fullness thereof.” are ours. Let us take
full possession.
Earth’s crammed with heaven.
And every common bush's afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Even the plain road has its lesson. Now for us the Sun
shines, the wind blows, the rain falls, the birds sing, the crickets
chirp, the brook murmurs, the flowers bloom, the grass grows,
the trees clap their hands, and the children shout, “I’m glad I’m
alive! ”
The study of Nature has played no mean part in the grand
achievements of the nineteenth century. Faradays have experi-
mented and discovered. Darwins have observed and reflected.
Pasteurs have patiently labored and conquered. Tyndalls have
lectured. Kingsleys preached. Huxleys discussed. Agassizs
taught. Our civilization is affected, our thought is changed.
Steadily the interest in Nature has grown. We have science on
every hand, in every form. There is no end of science magazines,
science columns in our papers, science sermons from the pulpit,
science books of all kinds, technical and popular, some written
by authorities, some made for money.
Universities and colleges have changed from seats of learning
to laboratories of investigation, where one comes face to face
with truth. Even our high schools hold their breath long
enough in their Latin race to take fourteen weeks’ courses in
text-book sciences.
Back in ’71 Dr. Harris discussed the need of natural science
in all schools, and outlined a course of instruction for the first
eight grades. This science wave has reached even the infant
workbench of to-day—the kindergarten. What are we doing
with that dear little play-world, that child garden which Froebel
gave us? Prof. Cattell, in September Science, writes: “As a
15
222 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
psychologist interested in the development of the child, its senses
and movements, I wish to urge that scientific education begin
with the kindergarten. There are but few things more pathetic
than the ignorant zeal of the average kindergarten teacher. I
have recently examined a catalogue of materials, and find it sim-
ply abominable. Nearly everything seems especially devised
to injure the eyesight and the nervous system of the child.
“The young child should be taught to concentrate the atten-
tion, to observe accurately, and to make easy movements not
requiring nice adjustments. The best thing he can do is to learn
to classify things by their resemblances, to watch plants grow,
to take care of animals, to learn the geography of the school-
house, to use tools, to weigh and measure on a large scale. These
are the beginnings of science, and are the best subjects for the
kindergarten.”
Prof. Jackson has said: “Nature study in all its phases is
the first necessity and inalienable right of the child. By the
shimmering light, through the tremulous air, and to his inquisi-
tive touch Nature speaks to the child while even his mother
strives vainly to be understood. Education begins with these
initial touches, and, as contact with Nature widens and intensi-
fies, the senses quicken, the judgment strengthens, the rational
imagination grows, and the thoughts which come into the mind
as it contemplates the mutual adaptations of the different parts
and their relations to the whole are, in their suggestions of
infinite law, the loftiest that can possess the human soul.
“Natural science affords the earliest and the only direct
means of introducing the child to his earthly habitation. The
life, health, and happiness of the individual is dependent upon
the knowledge and upon the understanding that he has of their
relations to each other and to himself.”
Mr. Halleck, in his recent little book, Education of the Cen-
tral System, shows how important early training is, and how
dependent the development of the faculties of the child is upon
his contact with Nature. The faculties must be trained in child-
hood, as the plastic stage or growing time of the brain is limited
to the first few years of life.
I fear that the Barefoot Boys are nearly as rare as the Whit-
NATURE STUDIES IN THE HOME. 223
tiers. Ah! but Whittiers are born—yes, but still they must be
developed, not stunted.
Where is the environment of the child?
How is interest continued?
Who gives his first lesson?
The child, a little helpless stranger, is ushered into a new
world. Much effort is put forth in his behalf. He becomes the
object of affection, the one ever to be considered, and in some
cases a veritable little potentate. Father goes forth with the
Song:
Gold! gold ! ever more gold !
Bright red gold for deariel
and mother sings:
Lovel love! nothing but lovel
Mother's love for deariel
After all the great expenditure of time, effort, and affection,
are the results the best?
Should man be grieved “to see what man has made of man?”
Do we “waste our powers in getting and spending?”
Is the wealth of the rising generation in sound bodies, the
servants of sound minds?
Have we taken possession of our inheritance—the earth, this
place not made with hands—or do we live in rooms filled with
stuff and nonsense?
Through contemplation of the whole universe have we felt
the insignificance of man and through the discovery of law and
unity have we confidence that everything is for the best?
Such questions concerning man, his environment, and his
living arise at every turn. Thus the attention is centered upon
man and the great question of what is his best good.
This problem has its origin in the greatest of institutions—
the family—and its consideration is first of all the duty of
parents.
The mother school is the most important training institu-
tion of the land. The home is a little world; everything is
related. Everything is worthy of attention, each is necessary
to the whole. The home typifies the greater world in which the
224 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
child must some day live. It is full of real, natural things. Even
the horse, cow, dog, and cat are friends. The backyard becomes
a garden and laboratory as well as a playground. There is a pile
of sand for the little ones, a heap of stones which will soon have
one of every kind in the vicinity, a row of trees along the road,
a flower bed all around the house. In it we find all our old
favorites: ferns and Jack-in-the-pulpits on the north side, violets
on the east, golden-rod and weeds on the west, corn and onions,
peas and beans, and other types on the south. The nursery has
seedlings in the windows, spiders’ webs undisturbed on the sash,
fish, Snails, and tadpoles living in a glass dish with water weeds,
and turtle, crayfish, and mussels living in a pan filled with sand
and water. In the corner are shelves covered with minerals,
rocks, weeds, and seeds. Large winter bouquets of twigs, dried
plants, and stuffed birds decorate the top.
Pets are entertained, and they say that in the spring a hive
of ‘bees will be placed in one of the windows and an anthill
brought in and placed under glass. The mother daily receives
presents gathered from marsh and wood or taken from garret
and cellar. Surely she needs courage to say, “I don’t know.”
On the bookshelves are reports from Washington contain-
ing information on weather, soils, trees, insects, edible mush-
rooms, and almost everything; old readers rescued from the past
for present use. There are also many new books. We recognize
Jane Newell’s helpful little volumes, Willis's Practical Flora,
Needham's Zoëlogy, Murche’s Object Lessons, Gibson’s Sharp
Eyes, Thompson's Animal Life, and Morley’s Song of Life.
There are pictures everywhere, even in a scrapbook. Yes, we
need them all. Through the poet or the artist we may be led
to his point of view.
The work should correlate with the appreciative living of
the day.
One moment now may give us more
Than fifty years of reason,
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.
Degin with the sun.
The Sun is the source of light and heat.
NATURE STUDIES IN THE HOME. 225
The sun is a worker.
Heat and light are his agents.
Air, water, and earth are his tools.
As one has said: “Our fathers, the children of Nature, wor-
shiped the sun. No wonder! To them, even in their simple
ignorance, it meant more than the cubic miles of fire, more than
so many tons of matter. They pictured it not incorrectly as the
great divine source of their every good.”
The mother and her children find the sun to be the source
of heat and light. They note the change of season, record the
weather daily, map out the courses of the winds. All these they
discover as causes for changes in plant and animal life. They
walk out together and drink in the fresh air, feel the beauty
of the whole landscape, water, earth, and air, see the clouds and
sunset, trace the horizon, picking out the familiar objects, notice
the harmony of color, and try to express all.
It is not enough to feel, to see, to hear; we must make all a
part of ourselves through expression. Emerson says, “Man is
only half himself; the other half is his expression.” Draw,
model, tell, write.
In selecting the plants or animals for study, let them be
common and typical of important groups.
Take the child to the type in its habitat and note the pecul-
iarities of the individual and its environment. Study all this
in a relational whole. Collect wholes or the largest parts prac-
ticable for future work in the home. Take great pains not to
injure the plants or animals. Always collect in such a sparing
way that the species will not be exterminated. Attempt to have
the best specimens live and thrive indoors. Study the type as
a living being, whether it be plant or animal. Observe relation
to environment. Discover interdependence, and, I need not add,
note the practical use to man.
Observe growth, change, function, and trace each to its cause
and associate with organ. Patiently gain the whole life history
as fully as possible. In so far as you master the type you are
able to interpret all other members of the same group.
State no facts until each child has discovered all that he
can. Be untiring in careful observation, slow to generalize,
226 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTEIERS.
ready to relate causes and effects, willing to recognize the limits
of human knowledge, and at last fit each in its niche in the
temple of the world.
When biological law is discovered, apply it to all known
types, especially to the highest, man; of all moral teaching, this
is the most effective. The study of human physiology can be
little more than verbal memory of facts from unquestioned
authority unless it be made a part of comparative biology. The
fuller the appreciation of all life and its necessary conditions,
the more intelligently can we care for the temple of the soul.
This is the best temperance instruction. Better than drawing
serpents in cups, relating stories of the boy who became a drunk-
ard, or adding stimulant and narcotic paragraphs at the end of
every chapter.
When animals and plants can not be procured, soil, minerals,
and rocks can be carefully studied. Prof. Winchell, in that valu-
able little inductive manual Geological Excursions, says, “Such
lifelong ignorance of geology is quite as unnecessary as deplor-
able.” The elements of the science are not a body of principles
difficult to master, nor encumbered with a greater number of
scientific terms than the science of botany. The data of geology
lie all about us, and are the most obtrusive and noticeable of all
the objects which we daily encounter. Stones and rocks never
fail to awaken the curiosity of the boy or girl, and there are few
children who have not made collections of stones, distinguishing
their varieties by precisely the same characters as the most expert
student. Usually it seems a dictate of educational philosophy
to take a hint from these childish predispositions and aptitudes,
and shape the child’s education with some regard to what he
seems peculiarly fitted to study.
The ignorance of the mother may be urged as an excuse for
the absence of Nature study. Is it not the greatest argument for
it? President Jordan remarks, “A growing man incites, but
not even mold will grow on a fossil.” Dr. Hall has said, “Those
who have capacities for growth feel miracles, and later know
Nature.” Spencer says: “To pursue the true course is simply
to guide the intellect to its appropriate food, and to habituate
the mind from the beginning to that practice of self-help which
NATURE STUDIES IN THE HOME. 227
it must ultimately follow. . . . Children should be led to make
their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible
and induced to discover as much as possible.” Of course, the
better a general knows the country the better he can lead his
army. But if he knows not the country, still the army must
be led.
Emerson has said: “The sun illuminates only the eye of the
man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The
lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still
truly adjusted to each other, who has retained the spirit of in- .
fancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with
heaven and earth become part of his daily food.”
Agassiz wrote: “Children marvel at the phenomena of Na-
ture, while grown people often think themselves too wise to
wonder, and yet they know little more than the children. But
the thoughtful student recognizes the truth of the child’s feel-
ing, and with his knowledge of Nature his wonder does but grow
more and more.”
We must “become as little children.”
Let all the family begin by making one-of-a-kind collection.
In Securing fossils be sure to get enough of the bed rock to tell
the whole story, mold as well as cast. Note locality and posi-
tion, and label the specimens, stating all you know. Some day
you will need it. Try to find the earth’s crust exposed in your
Section. Make excursions to all the railroad cuts, new cellars,
and wells. Perhaps your river banks can give you the key to
the formation. “Nature will be reported; all things are en-
gaged in writing its history,” says Hugh Miller.
Select a tree near by which must be passed every day. Watch
it carefully. Record its changes. Read the record on its bark.
It is a living, growing, working being. It is affected by its
surroundings. It adapts itself and develops into the best indi-
vidual possible. How instructive are the chapters in its life
history, of development, maturity, reproduction, decline, and
death!
Study the effect of running water on the surface. Every
heavy rain will show you how Nature carries and sorts materials.
Study water in all its forms: the steam and vapor from your
228 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
teakettle and the pan of water left standing in the sun; the fog,
cloud, rain, and hail; the frost on the window pane; hoar frost
and snow; the scum of ice, ice floating in the glass pitcher, the
bottle of water corked and left outdoors to freeze, the patches of
ice on the walks, and the outside window sills.
Every day is full of natural phenomena, and we should never
cease asking, Why? jº
Reading is good in its place, but it alone can do little for any
of us, and much less for the child. Reading can not make us
lovers and interpreters of Nature any more than it can make
a musician or an artist. What we need is to have Nature out of
doors, Nature indoors. Make discoveries for yourselves, live
your discoveries, teach your discoveries.
Many say that “we have no time.” It is because our stay
here is so short and living so important that we must economize
time and energy by selecting the most beneficial and eliminating,
not only the bad, but everything which is not the best.
How many live here and never know what a paradise this
earth is!
Observation and reflection which result in an attitude of in-
terest and sympathy toward all phenomena in our environment
enlarge the horizon, and cause the growth of the individual in
the most natural and best way.
Our concept of Nature should be more than something green.
Nature study should be more than collecting things and finding
out with what names some one has laden them. Nature study
is the attempt to understand everything around us in its causal
relations.
There comes to me that picture of Watts, sitting before the
open fire, covering the nose of the teakettle while his mother
is busy at the cupboard nearby, and another of Newton watching
an apple fall to the ground. One whose mind in the first recep-
tive years has been filled with pleasant images and clear con-
cepts of the beautiful and the true in his surroundings has a
storehouse for future use which will serve him in whatever he
does and wherever he goes. It will open up to him the literature
and art of all time. Through thorough possession of the types
within his reach he gains insight into this mysterious world of
YOUTH IN TOUCH WITH GREAT LITERATURE. 229
relations. He need never be alone, never idle. Each morning
the waking thought is one of wonder and ambition to see and do.
Nature study helps to develop the individual, and to give
such an attitude of mind that he becomes an independent, appre-
ciative liver.
Education is more than ways of doing things. It is more
than making a machine of one’s self that bread and butter may
not be wanting. It is the formation of such a habit of living
as results in the growth of the spirit toward perfection. It
begins in the cradle, and ends—we know not where!
Mothers and teachers, let us live that there be fewer “dely-
ing, eyeless moles.” Train the child to be a machine only when
he must be. Develop a sound body, the servant of a sound mind.
Work to create an atmosphere that shall lead to a habit of joy-
ous, humble, reverent living. Strive to send children forth with
the Song:
This world’s no blot for us,
Nor blank—it means intensely, and means good.
To find its meaning is my
Meat and drink.
TEIE IMPORTANCE OF BRINGING YOUTH IN
TOUCH WITH GREAT LITERATURE.
By HAMILTON W. MABIE,”
New York City.
No greater good fortune can befall a child than to be born
into a home where the best books are read, the best music inter-
preted, and the best talk enjoyed, for in these privileges the rich-
est educational opportunities are supplied. Many things are said
* Owing to a misunderstanding in the final arrangements of the pro-
gramme, Mr. Mabie was unable to be present as announced. By special re-
quest, he has most kindly written and presented to the Congress the above
paper, to be printed with the report of the meetings,
230 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
to which he lacks the key; but the atmosphere of such a home
envelops him in the most receptive years; his imagination is
arrested by pictures, sounds, images, facts, which fall into it like
seeds into a quick soil; his memory is stored without conscious
effort. It is his greatest privilege that a life so large and rich
receives him with unstinted hospitality, and offers him all he
can receive.
Now nothing could rob a child so circumstanced so griev-
ously as to attempt to bring such a home life down to his com-
prehension instead of leaving him free to grow into it and up
in such a home which the child does not fully understand; there
is music which is far beyond his intelligence; there are books
to it. The boy who hears the talk of cultivated men and women
at table about current affairs and subjects of permanent inter-
est has the very finest of educational opportunities; the boy who
listens to talk which is intentionally brought down to the level
of his intelligence is by that act robbed of his opportunities.
Parents make no more serious mistake than taking the tone of
the family life from the children instead of giving that life,
clearly and pervasively, the tone of their own ideals, convictions,
and intelligence. Nature does not present one aspect to chil-
dren, another to mature persons, and a third to the aged; she
presents the same phenomena to all, and each age takes that
which appeals to it, dimly discerning, at the same time, the
larger aspects which are to disclose themselves later on. The
child loves Nature for certain obvious and beautiful things
which it readily finds; but Nature is all the time enriching the
imagination of the child beyond its care and consciousness.
And the method of Nature must be our model.
If we could arrange Nature for children by selecting a few
pretty flowers, a few colored stones, a few fleecy clouds, and sepa-
rating them from the sweep and majesty of the universe, we
should make the same blunder which we are constantly making
by excluding children from the influence and power of great
books and condemning them to the companionship of books
written to fit different stages of development, as shoes are manu-
factured to fit feet of different sizes. The attempt to create
reading matter for children, based on their ability to receive
YOUTH IN TOUCH WITH GREAT LITERATURE. 231
and understand at a given age, shows lamentable ignorance of
the child mind and lamentable ignorance of the stuff of which
great books are made. The mind is not, like the feet, accurately
measurable at a given moment; it presents, at given moments,
certain definite limits of expression, but it never discloses its
capacity for reception. And it is an open secret that it can
receive, brood over, and find delight in ideas which it only dimly
understands; more than this, such ideas are often the most
nutritious food of the growing mind.
There are a great many so-called children’s books which are
wholesome, entertaining, and educative in a high degree; but
they possess these high qualities not because they are children's
books, but because they are genuine, Veracious, vital, and human;
because, in a word, they disclose in their measure the same quali-
ties which make the literary masterpieces what they are. It is
a peculiarity of such books that they are quite as interesting to
mature as to young readers. Of the great mass of books written
specifically for children it is not too much to say that it is a sin
to put them in the hands of those who have no standards and
are dependent upon the judgment and taste of their elders; a
sin against the child’s intelligence, growth, and character. Some
of these books are innocuous save as wasters of time; many more
are sentimental, untrue, and cheap; some are vulgar.
The years which are given over to this artificially prepared
reading matter—for it is a profanation to call it literature—
are precisely the years when the mind is being most deeply
stirred; when the seeds of thought are dropping silently down
into the secret and hidden places of the nature. They are the
years which decide whether a man shall be creative or imitative;
whether he shall be an artist or an artisan. For such a plastic
and critical time nothing that can inspire, enrich, and liberate
is too good; indeed, the very highest use to which the finest
results of human living and doing and thinking and speaking
can be put is to feed the mind of childhood in those memorable
years when the spirit is finding itself and feeling the beauty of
the world. This is the moment when the race takes the child
by the hand, and, leaning over it in the silence of solitary hours,
whispers to it those secrets of beauty and power and knowledge
232 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
in the possession of which the mastery of life lies. This is the
time when the boy who is to write Kenilworth is learning, with
bated breath, the great stories and traditions of his race; when
the boy who is to write the lines on Tintern Abbey is feeling the
wonder of the world and the mystery of fate; when the boy who
is to write the Idylls of the King is playing at knighthood with
his brothers and sisters in the Lincolnshire fields, and the brave
group of noble boys and girls are weaving endless romances of
old adventure and chivalry. This is the time when, as a rule,
the intellectual fortunes of the child are settled for all time.
In these wonderful years of spiritual exploration and dis-
covery the child ought to have access not to cheap stories, arti-
ficially and mechanically manufactured to keep it out of mis-
chief, but to the records of the childhood of the race; his true ,
companion is this august but invisible playmate. That which
fed the race in its childhood ought to feed each child born into
its vast fellowship. The great storybook of mythology, with its
splendid figures, its endless shifting of scene, its crowding inci-
dent, its heroism and poetry, ought to be open to every child;
for mythology is the child’s view of the world—a view which
deals with obvious things often, but deals with them poetically
and with a feeling for their less obvious relations. The dream
of the world which those imaginative children who were the
fathers of the race dreamed was full of prophetic glimpses of
the future, of deep and beautiful visions, of large and splendid
achievement, and of that wholesome symbolism in which the
deeper meanings of Nature become plain. Out of this dim
period, when men first felt the wonder of the world, and felt
also the mysterious ties which bound them to Nature, issued
that great stream of story which has fed the art of the world
for so many centuries, and will feed it to the end of time. For
these stories were not manufactured; they grew, and in them is
registered the early growth of the race. They are not idle tales;
they are deep and rich renderings of the facts of life; they are
interpretations and explanations of life in that language of the
imagination which is as intelligible to children as to their elders;
they are rich in those elements of culture which are the very
stuff of which the deepest and widest education is made.
YOUTH IN TOUCH WITH GREAT LITERATURE. 233
Now this quality, which invests Ulysses, Perseus, Thor, Sieg-
fried, Arthur, and Parseval with such perennial interest, is
characteristic of the great books, into so many of which mythol-
ogy directly enters. The Odyssey is not only one of the great
reading books of the race; it is also one of the great text-books.
Shakespeare is not only a great story-teller; he is also an edu-
cator whose like has been seen only two or three times in the
history of the world. Teach a child facts without the illumina-
tion of the imagination, and you fill the memory; give these
facts dramatic sequence and impart to them that symbolic qual-
ity which all the arts share, and you stir the depths of a child’s
nature. The boys whose sole text-books were the Iliad and the
Odyssey, and who learned, therefore, all their history and sci-
ence in terms of the imagination, became the most original,
creative, and variously gifted men who have yet appeared in
history; they were drilled and disciplined, but they were also
liberated and inspired. A modern writer has happily described
Plutarch’s Lives as “the pasture of great souls”; the place, that
is, where such souls are nourished and fed. Now the great poets,
novelists, historians, supply the food which develops a strong,
clear, original life of the mind; which makes the imagination
active and creative; which feeds the young spirit with the deeds
and images of heroes; which sets the real in true relations to
the ideal.
These writers are quite as much at home with the young as
with the mature. Shakespeare is quite as interesting to a healthy
boy as any story-writer who strives to feed his appetite for action
and adventure; and Shakespeare is a great poet besides. He
entertains his young guest quite as acceptably as a hired come-
dian, and he makes a man of him as well. There is no need
of making concessions to what is often mistakenly supposed to
be the taste of children by giving them inferior things; let them
grow up in the presence of superior things, and they will take
to them as easily as they will take to cheaper things. Accustom
a child to good painting, and he will never be attracted by in-
ferior pictures; accustom him to good music, and the popular
jingle will disgust him; bring him up with Homer, Shakespeare,
Plutarch, Herodotus, Scott, Hawthorne, Irving, and it will be
234 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
unnecessary to warn him against the books which are piled up
at the news stands and sold in railway trains. The boy who
grows up in this society will rarely make friends with the vulgar
and the unclean; he will love health, honor, truth, intelligence,
and manliness. For reading is not only a matter of taste and
intelligence; it is a matter of character as well.
STORIES AND STORY_TELLING.
By DR, WALTER L. HERVEY,
New York City.
MY theme is one which naturally appeals to all lovers of chil-
dren, or perhaps I should say to all whom children love. It is
one which must appeal to all who would win the love of child-
hood, for a story is a key to the door of the heart of every child.
And it is my object, in a simple and homely way, to answer the
question, “What is a story?” In answering this we may find
that we have learned why it should be told, and why, when told,
wield such power, and how one can acquire the difficult art of
telling a story, and whence derive material for stories to tell.
And if there is one mother present who does not tell stories to
her children, or one whose children do not burden her with
requisitions for more stories than she does tell, to her in par-
ticular I speak.
Let me say before I go further that when I say “mother ” I
mean both parents, without distinction of sex. Every man ought
to mother his children once in awhile. There is altogether too
much maternal monopoly. It is bad enough that the mother is
allowed by a wise Providence to do so many things for the chil-
dren that the father can not possibly do. The list should not
be increased beyond need. The so-called head of the house, who
too often is only a figurehead, should be allowed not only to put
the children to bed at least once a week, but to get even with
the mother in the matter of exclusive privileges by doing some
STORIES AND STORY-TELLING. 235
things for the child that the mother is not allowed to do at all—
to have and to tell some stories on which he alone has the copy-
right. The man has handicap enough by reason of his nature.
I am here to stand up for the rights of man, and in particular
for his right to tell his children stories.
The earliest occupation of parents and teachers is to pro-
vide for their children suitable food. Nurture is the prime need,
and that not merely of body but of spirit. Of this nurture of
spirit there are three kinds. The first is found in the experiences
of the child himself, his personal touch with the world of persons
and things as it presents itself directly to his senses and his im-
agination—the world of his own little life. This is the core of
reality for him and the ultimate point to which all else is re-
ferred, by which all else is interpreted, and without which all
else is empty. But this is essentially narrow. A child shut up
in the round of his own personal experience is pitiable. Nature
helps him out somewhat by keeping alive the memories of the
past, so that the child may look at himself as upon something
external to himself, and so grow. But even this is too narrow
a diet for the soul. There must be something more than self
or there will not even be that.
The second source of nutriment is the example and parallel
afforded to the child by the lives of those who touch his own.
Into these he projects himself, putting himself in their place
with broadening sympathy and deepening insight, to the nour-
ishment of his spirit. But this, too, is narrow and narrowing,
for the child has to deal with such folk as you and me, and we,
alas! in our realization fall so far short of his potentiality, and
in our imperfection and pettiness of individuality fall so far
below the standard of his type, that sometimes it would be better
for him (to use a homely phrase) to have our room than our
company. A complete dietary demands something more and
something wider and freer and more ideal than personal experi-
ences or examples. This is found in the world of things and
relations not present to sense, the world that lies far beyond the
possibility of present personal experience; the world, it may be,
of childhood in distant lands, of days and festivals different
from known customs; the world of fancy and folklore, myths
236 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
and fables, peopled with fairies and giants and heroes, and the
mighty powers of good and of evil.
Danger there may be that this world of the imagination
shall crowd out the world of hard reality. But danger there
certainly is that the Gradgrind world will have more than its
proper share. The “God of Things as They Are?” will have his
innings soon enough and long enough. Childhood is the time
for pure service of the God of things as they might, could, would,
or should be. &
The story, then, is the child’s food. Without it he will
become rickety and anaemic.
The language of the story is the current coin of the child’s
world. The people of the story are the inhabitants of the child’s
world. The people in the present world the child often can not
understand. How many times the child gives up his father as
a hopeless case! He doesn’t understand his talk, he can not
be interested in his life, his goings and comings are without
reason, even if they have a certain rhythm, and his very attempts
at play are often bungling and beside the mark. But in the
child’s world everything is something, and everything is doing
something worth while, and everything is interesting to the child
because it speaks his own language. It behooves us to learn this
language. Robert Louis Stevenson knew it by heart. His Child’s
Garden of Verses is for the most part written in it (and a sweeter
and lowlier garden never grew!), and his example should en-
courage us.
But the story is also a picture of life at large. It may be
an elaborate canvas, it may be a thumbnail sketch, or a cartoon,
but it is always a picture. It has form, color, concreteness; it
appeals to the imagination, and through the imagination to the
power to imitate, to dramatize, and to take up into life. And
it is life that forms the theme of every story. It may be the
life of the child himself, what he was and what he did when he
was very little. A child of twenty months has gone on record
as being pleased with such reminiscence, and it has been re-
marked that many adults never outgrow this elementary stage
of wanting to hear stories of their own doings.
But to rest at this point is narrowing and selfish. The child
STORIES AND STORY_TELLING. 237
must get out of himself and away from himself. He must look
at life, the life of the world, the life of the world as shown in
stories, until he penetrates the disguise of everything strange
and foreign, and through the mask recognizes himself.
The whole world of stories lies open to us. What shall be the
principle of choice?
The answer is simple and sure. Every story should have
educative (I do not mean instructive) value, for life is too short
to tell stories that do not make for the evolution of spirit and
the building of character. Hence every story must contain the
universal and the ideal; the universal, or the child will not see
in the picture his larger self; the ideal, or the child will not
see in the picture his better self. Not that the story may not
contain the bad. But let the bad be shown so plainly that it
appears as bad. Do this, and you have presented the ideal. The
crime of our day against childhood is rather the placing before
it of the local, the petty, the commonplace, and the distorted.
There are publishers who each year place before an undiscrimi-
nating public attractive books for children, in which charming
pictures are unequally yoked with inane reading matter. Both
publishers and public should know better. Fine feathers ought to
mean fine birds. Either the feathers ought to be worse or the
birds better. I have not said that these stories are immoral.
They are not. They are pure, and often they treat of country
scenes. But they present no “view of life,” and are told in
language which has no literary merit, and which is often dis-
tinctly bad. Where there is so much that is universal and ideal,
there is no excuse for that which lacks both. And this is true
both of the made-up stories in books and the made-up stories we
make up ourselves out of whole cloth, or rather out of no cloth
at all.
For this reason an old story is likely to be a better story
than a new story, a folk story or a world story than one written
about an individual; and for young children an animal or a
plant story better than a human story, unless the human relations
be very simple and true.
The tale of Ulysses will charm a boy of four, when General
Grant would only confuse him. Himself he can put into the
16
238 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS,
place of Ulysses or of Telemachus, his mother he sees in Penel-
ope, and in Eurycleia his own nurse. There is nothing that
interferes with the boy’s projecting himself forward and being
a man like Ulysses, for in many ways Ulysses after all was only
a boy like him. Let it be the story of the raft, for example, that
is being told. The child will hang on the lips of his mother till
she is done, and will reward both the author and raconteur not
only by saying with fervor, “I tell you, that is a good story,” but
by making Ulysses over into himself. The story of Jacob and
Esau told about imaginary boys would lose the exquisite flavor
of reality; if told about real boys of one’s acquaintance, might
cause embarrassing complications. In stories of animals and
plants we have the basal ideas of food and clothing, of the sim-
ple relatedness of all things; we have the elemental passions,
and the epic of growth, reproduction, and decay. And in these
the child can find, and does sooner or later find, the picture
of his own being and becoming. There is no child whose knowl-
edge of himself is not enriched and quickened by hearing the
story of the Discontented Pine Tree, or the Constant Tin Sol-
dier, or the Ugly Duckling. While in the stories of the Heav-
enly Father as the source and creator of us all the child finds
the answer to the questions that first arise in his mind when
he looks at the world. “Where do these things come from?”
“What was before anything was?” “If God made everything,
who made God?” “Is there a last “count,” and if so, what is
it?” “What will be here after everything has gone? And
where shall I be then?” I know a child of four who demanded
the story of creation for many successive days. He would hold
up the wash cloth with the ejaculation, “Now I will make the
moon.” He would say, as one raised the curtain or turned on
the gas, “Let there be light,” and he himself set forth the rea-
son why it was necessary for God to make light first of all, in
order that he might see to make everything else. And this was
not irreverence. It was simply the natural impulse to put him-
self in the place of every actor in the story world, and thus to
widen his sympathies and himself, and to participate even with
the Creator in creative activity. º
But let no one suppose from this that we may attempt to
STORIES AND STORY_TELLING. 239
give a complete account of what stories do for the spirit of the
child. As well might you try to describe in set terms the effect
of the Maine woods upon your spirit or compute by psychological
measurements “the surge and thunder of the Odyssey.” What’s
done we partly may compute; the rest we must take on faith.
There is a type of story sometimes called the medicine story,
where a specific fault is sought to be uprooted by a specific story.
A discontented child is told the story of the little pine tree that
wished it had leaves, and came to grief through the granting
of successive wishes until it begged for its own dear needles again.
A disobedient child is shown his own character as in a mirror
through the story of the lamb that went disobediently forth from
its mother and found that everything had to obey, and obeying
was better after all. The child who is afraid of physical pain
will be braced up by the heroic example of the brave baby, and
the child who says “I can’t " and lacks self-control will appre-
ciate the psychological story of the fairy whose name is “I am
that which wills,” and whose abode is in the heart and mind
of every little child who is willing to receive her and be helped
by her. No one who has tried such stories can doubt their
efficacy, and the ability to tell them pertinently and yet with
delicacy and tact is an accomplishment well worth our emu-
lation.
But if there are specifics and medicine stories, there are also
stories that build up the general health and act rather as food
than as physic. And these we should not bring too strictly to
the bar of definite moral evaluation. If they breathe the spirit
of freedom, of sympathy, of helpfulness, if they are beautiful
and clothed in literary form, it matters not so much whether
we can see what they are good for or not. Their effect may be
more subtile than our organs of appreciation or analysis are able
to detect. If the child is interested in them and clings to them,
this is a good though not infallible sign. Only time and experi-
ence scientifically interpreted can decide some of these questions.
But my plea is for a spirit of breadth rather than the narrowness
to which we are often prone.
Finally, a good story is a work of art. Therefore seek origi-
nals rather than adaptations at secondhand. The latter are
240 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
suggestive and helpful, but often lack reality and tang. The
best adaptations for you are, or ought to be, those you make
yourself. To know a good story is to have literary taste; to tell
a good story is to be master of a noble art. The mother or the
kindergartner who holds a group of babies for a quarter of an
hour with the story of Siegfried in petto is as truly an artist as
the one who casts the spell of the real Siegfried over children
of larger growth. How may this art be acquired? First, I
think, by living in the world of stories, reading them again and
again, becoming filled with their swing and their rhythm and
their spirit. This spirit, swing, rhythm will first work in the
spinal cord, afterward in the cerebrum, and then in the latter
stage it will be time enough to think analytically about tech-
nique. The unconscious story-teller is surest at the start, but
later is unsafe, because undiscriminating and uncritical. The
order is vital. The story-teller is first unconscious because naïve.
This is the spinal cord stage. Then he becomes critical, appre-
ciative, and embarrassed. This is the stage of cerebral interfer-
ence and inhibition. Finally, he becomes unself-conscious again
through habit and mastery; cerebrum and ganglia, as master
and servants, are at peace. The first stage soon merges into the
second. It is not long before the thoughtful student of the
story-teller’s art feels, and then sees, that the rhythm which at
first was felt may be consciously reproduced; that the static of
description must be used less, the dynamic of action more; that
there is a vital difference between trying to arouse a feeling by
use of the language of the emotions and enabling one’s hearers
to manufacture the feeling for themselves by providing the
ground and substance of feeling; and, finally, that a story is a
little drama, that it has a setting, a background, an introduc-
tion, without which the tale is bare and lacks atmosphere; and
that in every story there is unity, proportion, and harmony, which
must be secured by a suppression of irrelevant details and by wise
self-restraint.
If a story is a picture, it must be seen; if it is a picture of
life, it may be lived. Seen and felt it must be by us first of all,
for if it has become so much a part of ourselves that we see it,
there need be no thought about tone and gesture and inflections
THE ART OF REARING CHILDREN. 241
in the telling, and no fear that the picture will not live in the
imagination of those to whom it is told.
Let no one be discouraged. The child’s taste meets us at
the point of our need. The young story-teller needs practice;
the child demands the same story again and again. The neo-
phyte in story-telling is unable to carry a long thread without
losing it, and the infant is equally limited. One of the most
successful and dramatic stories I ever heard of was told recently
in our kindergarten by one of the children. It consisted of
twenty-three words. Here it is: “I went away from home to my
auntie's. When I came back, what do you think I found? A
dear little baby brother.” That was all, but it was enough. It
held the audience spellbound. And who of us can not begin so?
I close, therefore, as I begin (which, by the way, is often a
good way in story-telling), with the hope that this half-hour’s
talk may be the means of giving to some little folk represented
here a richer childhood, and to some parent, father or mother,
a practical hint as to how we “may live with our children.”
FRIDAY EVENING, & O'CLOCK.
THE ART OF REARING CHILDREN.
By PROF. ELMER GATES,
Chevy Chase, Md.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It gives me the very greatest
pleasure to address so many of the mothers of America. I hope
that some years later I may address a national congress of both
mothers and fathers—an international or world’s congress of
parents. I am very glad that it is to the credit of Washington
that the first Congress of Mothers has assembled in our city, and
I feel especially indebted to the noble women who have this
enterprise in charge.
I wish that I might have time to more fully explain the ex-
242 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
perimental researches upon which I shall base the conclusions
of this address; I feel it a serious matter to attempt to speak
to you, and through you to other mothers, on this subject of such
vital importance—that of the begetting and rearing of children.
I will at once commence at the beginning of my subject by
explaining a few of those experiments which led to the conclu-
sions I am about to present to you. I wish, in the first place,
to assert distinctly that my experiments have been so far almost
entirely private, and, when once published and fully explained,
will have to be confirmed by other experimenters, and then cor-
related and co-ordinated with the entire body of the sciences.
And when that has once been done I believe that we may ex-
pect to have something like an art of rearing children—a science
of eugenics! What I have to say upon this subject I believe will
be fully corroborated in the near future by other investigators,
and the mothers of the civilized world will then be in possession
of the data that will enable them to scientifically regulate the
most sacred of all human functions by the light of biological
and psychological science. All hail to that time!
When I speak of heredity, I mean simply the well-known
fact that living organisms in reproducing their kind beget their
like, the progeny, however, always varying slightly in almost
every anatomical and psychological particular from their par-
ents. But heredity does not mean the transmission of charac-
teristics—anatomical or mental—which may have been acquired
by the parents during their lifetime and, of course, subsequent
to their own birth. It has even been strenuously denied that it
is possible to acquire any character which we have not inherited.
Eminent biologists have recently denied that we can transmit
to our offspring those qualities or traits of mind and body which
we have acquired during our lifetime—that no evidence has been
adduced that a father or mother can transmit to their children
characteristics which they (the parents) did not inherit. There
is thus a difference between hereditary transmission and the
transmission of acquired characters. It has been stated that
though for ages the Chinese women have had their feet arti-
ficially deformed, they have not been known to transmit these
defects to their children; that circumcision has not, though
THE ART OF REARING CEIILDREN. 243
practiced for generations, transmitted any defect; and that when
the tails of mice are cut off for a number of successive genera-
tions the progeny still inherit normal tails, there being no defi-
nite tendency to transmit mutilations. You will see later on in
my remarks that these experiments are inconclusive, because
mutilations do not create that kind of structural brain changes
which alone, as I have discovered, are the basis of the transmis-
sion of acquired characters. Now, in face of these diverse opin-
ions, I wanted to discover if parents could transmit acquired
characteristics, and how; and also how to prevent the transmis-
sion of hereditary or acquired immoral characteristics.
I desire to put myself on record as supporting the doctrine
that we can transmit acquired characteristics, and will ex-
plain some experiments which prove how we can acquire new
capacities which we did not inherit, and how we may avoid trans-
mitting undesirable traits.
The basis of these experiments on heredity are some experi-
ments on brain building which I made earlier in my life, and
about which I gave an account, four years ago, in a lecture at the
United States National Museum, under the auspices of two of
the scientific societies of Washington. In that lecture I stated
that I had succeeded in demonstrating to my own satisfaction
that conscious mental activities create in special parts of the
brain new chemical and anatomical structures which are the
embodiments of those conscious experiences, and that the re-
functioning of such structures are essential to the remembrance
of those experiences; and that by a systematic and taxonomic
regulation and repetition of these mental activities belonging
to some one definite mental faculty I had succeeded in giving
to certain animals more brain cells in that part of the brain
where that function is located, and that I gave them more
brains and also more mind! The method of doing this I have
elsewhere described, and I described it in that lecture. Briefly,
it consisted in giving dogs an unusual and extraordinary train-
ing in the use of some one mental faculty, such as the faculty for
the discrimination of colors, and in depriving other animals (col-
lie dogs) of the same age and species of the opportunity to use
that function (by keeping them, as in the above case, in a dark-
244 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTEIERS.
ened room), and then, after the first group had been trained
twelve months and the second group had been deprived of the
chance to use that function for an equal period of time, I killed
them and examined their brains, and found some startling re-
sults—namely, that mental activity of a definite kind creates in
a definite part of the brain a series of corresponding new struc-
tures. The dogs that had been kept in the darkness had less
than the usual number of brain cells in the seeing areas of the
brain, and the cells were smaller than normal; and the dogs that
had been trained to discriminate between pitches, hues, tints,
and shades of color many times per day for twelve months had
a far greater than the usual number of brain cells in the seeing
areas of the cerebral cortex—a greater number than any dog
of that age and species ever before had, and the cells were also
much larger and more complex in their internal structure, and
had more dendrites and collateral filaments, and so on. Mind
activity, therefore, creates organic structure, and organisms are
mind embodiments. But I gave these dogs not merely more
brain cells, but more mind than they had inherited—that is,
dogs can by brain building get acquired characteristics.
I said in the beginning of my lecture that my experiments
would have to be confirmed by others before they could become
part of the body of modern science. I am therefore happy to
say that one experimenter has done work since I made a public
statement of my conclusions which corroborates my basic con-
clusions. I refer to Prof. Aurelio Lui, of Stephano's laboratory,
in Italy, whose researches are described in Vol. XX, page 218, and
vol. xxii, page 27, of the Revista Sperimentale di Frenatria, etc.,
for 1894. I refer to the report in full, but will state that he
concludes that as animals more and more acquire the faculty
of walking, the corresponding parts of the brain acquire a greater
number of brain cells, and that these cells become more com-
plex, and so on. I have mentioned this in order to give you
more confidence in my conclusions regarding my experiments
on heredity and the transmission of acquired characters.
It fortunately occurred to me to apply this law of brain build-
ing to the successive descendants of a male and female Guinea
pig for five generations, and I found that the fifth generation
THE ART OF REARING CHILDREN. 245
sº
was born with a far greater number of brain cells than could be
found in animals not thus trained. I applied brain building to
the seeing areas of these Guinea pigs, and when I had given
them as many new brain cells representing as many color mem-
ories as I could, I then allowed them to propagate, and applied
the same brain-building process to two of their descendants, and
so on until the fifth generation. The Guinea pigs of this fifth
generation were killed as soon as they were born and their
brains examined. I found in the seeing areas of these brains a
far greater number of cells than I had ever been able to find
in the corresponding areas of Guinea pigs whose ancestors had
not thus been trained. These experiments prove that acquired
characters can be transmitted, and reveal the method for acquir-
ing character that has not been hereditarily transmitted. Other
experimenters will repeat my researches, and I am sure will
find similar results. The way to create a new character is to
cause the mental activities to create new brain structures, and
this law promises to lay the basis of a science of begetting
children.
It lies in our power to create by voluntary effort previous
to the begetting of a child such brain structures as we may
desire to transmit. Is this not a momentous opportunity and an
awe-inspiring responsibility?
This law is operative in the lowest known forms of life, sim-
ple cells, the physiological units, which are also the psychological
units of all higher forms of life on earth. If such cells are caused
to engage in some one definite mental activity over and over
again, generation after generation, new structures will be cre-
ated in the cells, and those structures will differ as the mental
activities differ. Cells feel stimuli, and this feeling is a mental
activity, and when it is caused to be systematically repeated, a
structure will arise which is the embodiment of that kind of
mental action. It is mind that distinguishes inanimate from
animate matter. By this process we do not kill off all those
cells which can not respond to the stimulus, which would be
the method of survival of the fittest; but we cause all of the cells,
without killing any of them, to engage in the excessive repeti-
tion of some one of their mental activities, and thus produce new
246 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
structures in the cells, which at the commencement of the ex-
periment the cells did not possess. This seems to prove con-
clusively that structures and mental characters can be acquired
other than- those hereditarily transmitted, and that all of the
structures and mental capacities created by the brain-building
process can be transmitted.
Another experiment of fundamental importance consists in
determining the chemical constituents of the human secretions
and excretions when the person is under the influence of differ-
ent emotions. The evil and painful emotions create in a very
few minutes poisonous chemical products in the fluids of the
body. Thus, anger produces a different poison than fear, and
sorrow a still different product, and all of the evil and the de-
pressing emotions produce katabolic and poisonous products
which lower the tide of life, while the good and pleasurable and
sublime emotions create in the blood and within the cellular
substances of the body a series of anabolic and nutritive products
which augment every physiologic and psychologic function. Now
it can be shown that these products of the evil emotions interfere
with the rate and completeness of cellular development by retarda-
tion and by the production of various abnormalities, while the
anabolic products promote normal cellular growth. Thus I
found that the rate of cellular multiplication in lower organisms
—that is, the frequency of cellular segmentation within a given
time—is lessened by these poisonous products. The application
is this: It is well known that the child during the nine months
of gestation grows from a single cell by cell multiplication to a
fully developed child, and that during this period at certain
times the several developments of certain organs commence;
thus at a given period the spinal cord commences to form, at
another period the liver, or the heart, or the brain, or a certain
part of the brain, and if at the time when an organ is just com-
mencing to form the mother throws into her blood, through
harboring some evil emotion, Some of these poisonous products,
she will feed the child with them, and thus arrest the normal
rate of cell multiplication, and that organ will fail to attain
normal growth in size and be otherwise vitiated. But if instead
of this all of the good emotions are dirigated into activity, then
THE ART OF REARING CHILDREN. 247
the child will get all of the normal nutritive products essential
to complete growth of all its parts.
But these emotive products affect also the sperm cell of the
male and the egg cell of the female; hence the parents should
for at least six months or a year before creating a child avoid
all evil emotions and dirigate all good emotions, so that the
germ and egg may carry to the conceptive process normal struc-
tural and chemical growth, so that none of the evil emotions
may have distorted the hereditary desirable qualities, and so
that all of the good emotions through their nutritive products
may have enabled these germ plasms to convey the desirable
qualities. During these fateful nine months of gestation the
child ontogenetically repeats the phylogenetic history of the
evolution of life on earth; it passes through all of the stages from
the lowest to the highest, and if the normal nutritive anabolic
products only feed the child all of these stages will be normally
completed, but every evil emotion will arrest or pervert some of
these stages by interfering with the rate and character of cell
development in the child. Bring into daily use all of the happy,
good, moral, aesthetic, altruistic, sublime, worshipful emotions
before and during gestation, avoiding absolutely all of the irasci-
ble, unhappy, painful, critical, immoral, and evil emotions, and
you will transmit the better characteristics to your child just
to the extent that you have builded their corresponding struc-
tures in your brain. Have plenty of normal exercise, plenty to
eat, and have plenty of rest and sleep.
Remember that only those characteristics of intellectual and
emotive activity which you have structurally builded in your
brain previous to the creation of the child can be transmitted
to your offspring; hence the parental training should, to pro-
duce best results, commence long before the creation of a child,
and even these results can be arrested during gestation by wrong
emotions. When you put into the brain new structures by men-
tal activity, these structures will be transmitted like all other of
your anatomical traits, but during gestation these traits may
be augmented by good or perverted by evil emotions. Conscious
activities must create memory structures in the brain before
the capacities represented by these conscious activities can be
248 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
transmitted. The experiment upon white mice, previously men-
tioned, in which their tails were cut off for a number of suc-
ceeding generations, failed to develop mice without tails, be-
cause cutting off tails was not a process of brain building. If you
train these mice to use their tails in a prehensile manner, so as
to develop in the brains of the mice a new series of more skillful
memory structures of muscular motions in their tails for several
generations, you will find the fourth generation will be born
with greater prehensile tail capacity. This experiment is of
fundamental importance in this subject. The mind activity
must initiate the change in the brain structures if you would
transmit an acquired character.
And now I would like to utter an appeal through you to all
mothers: The incoming generation looks to you to be well born.
It is seen to be a fearful responsibility to bring into the world
a human being when we realize that we have it in our power
to direct for weal or for woe the intellective and emotive char-
acter and moral disposition of the child yet unborn and uncre-
ated. Therefore it falls to the duty of parents to make ade-
quate preparation for the creation of a child; the whole ques-
tion of hereditary transmission and mind building and allied
subjects should be systematically and exhaustively studied in
biological and psychological laboratories, the data carefully veri-
fied, and the knowledge diffused in such shape that parents can
apply it.
America—the whole world—calls to us for better men and
women, and if we do our duty and take advantages of the op-
portunities offered by science, the next generation will have less
sorrow, war, crime, and disease, and the number of defectives
will be less.
I wish to reiterate that every conscious experience creates
in some part of the brain a definite structure, that every evil
emotion creates in you poisons and that good emotions create
nutritive products, and you can regulate these conditions at will.
Those emotive and intellective activities of your mind which
you have not systematically exercised so as to create structures
in your brain before the creation of a child will not be trans-
mitted to that child; and what is transmitted to the foetus at
THE ART OF REARING CHILDREN. 249
the beginning of gestation will be arrested or augmented ac-
cording to the kind of products thrown into the blood by the
mother’s emotions. A mother knowing this dare not harbor
in her heart any of the evil emotions, and knowing that happi-
ness, serenity, love, and all pleasurable emotions create nutritive
products, do you think she will neglect to bring into her mind
daily and systematically all of these conditions? She will go
by herself an hour or more each day, in quiet and silence and
away from all distracting influences, and call up each one of
the desirable emotional conditions to the fullest possible in-
tensity and joyousness and worshipful adoration; and oh, mother,
if it be your privilege to cultivate your good emotions one year
before the creation of the child, inhibiting all wrong and selfish
emotions, and if it be your further privilege to have had cre-
ated in your brain all kinds of intellectual structures from a
study of the sciences, you will then have a fair chance to create
a better child than you could otherwise have done. Our coun-
try demands and your mother love craves such a child, and I
believe that in bringing about such a state of things we must
łook most to the influence of the mothers. A wife’s love is
something for which a man will strive; therefore let the wife
give her creative love only when a man is worthy of it, only
when he has for some months at least been leading a noble,
courageous, and unselfish life. Oh, do not create a child during
the months of dark despondency and wrongdoing, if such there
be, but wait until life is cheerful and morally clear! A wife can
control this fountain of life; she can grant her privileges only
for worthy motives, and any man worthy of them will lead such
a life as to deserve them.
Produce great persons—great persons—and all other things
follow. To create great persons is the divine task of parentage—
to give to the world greater and better men and women. Ameri-
ca asks for such men and women, and in the words of the poet
she says:
Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains,
Men with empires in their purpose,
Men with eras in their brains.
250 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Bring me men to match my prairies,
Men to match my inland seas,
Men whose thought shall pave a highway
Up to ampler destinies.
Oh, the great and glorious task of parentage! It seems to
me that the most responsible position in which a man and woman
can be placed is that of begetting and rearing a child; it re-
quires the most preparation, the highest knowledge, the great-
est self-control, and the Supremest patience, self-sacrifice, and
love. It seems to me that the religion of the future will center
closely around the conjugal life and the cradle, and that science,
art, and philosophy will be content to bring their fairest 'gifts
to the hymeneal altar. The mother must not be enthroned
merely in our love, but she must sit enthroned over the weal
of the incoming generation; she has the making and training of
the fathers and mothers of the future.
I believe no possible training after the child is born can
equal in importance what can be done before birth.
Oh, mothers of America, my appeal is that you study the
laws of life and mind, the laws of transmission of character, and
learn enough about your own minds so that you may eliminate
all undesirable emotions and dirigate into activity the desirable
ones! I believe that only by experimental study can we arrive
at the knowledge of parentage we desire.
Can you conceive of a nobler undertaking than that of pre-
paring for the creation of a child? Can you think of anything
more beautiful than a mother going off alone into the quiet of
her own room, free from all interruptions, for an hour's daily
rest and inhibition of all unrestful and evil emotions, and for
the dirigation of all the highest aspirations and emotions, and
for the contemplation of the greatest subjects known to the
human mind? If you do this you will give a legacy to your
child better than gold and rank, and you will bring into your life
the greatest and the purest joy you can ever know in this world.
Let me repeat that mind activities build brain structures,
and according to the systematic character and emotive quality
of those activities will be the character of the structures which
you will transmit to your child; and after the creation of the
ORGANIZATION. 251
child the growth during the nine months will be promoted or
hindered according as the mother throws into her blood the
nutritive products of the good emotions and keeps out of her
blood the poisonous products of the evil emotions. According
to your skill in doing this will you convey to your child the best
and the noblest of all legacies—a capable and moral mind.
ORGANIZATION.
By MRs. ELLEN M. HENROTIN,
President of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, Chicago, Ill.
MADAM PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN: The subject
of the address which I have the honor of giving to you this
evening is Organization—that great principle, that strongest
power of the present century. It is voluntary organization.
Organization in some form has been well known for centuries—
organizations of force, organizations more or less official—but it
has been the nineteenth century that has developed the present
forms of voluntary organization. Any demand which voluntary
organization makes on the individual is totally different from
the demand made by organizations that are official or military.
In the past the church organizations demanded of the individual
that he should subordinate his life, give it up, as it were, live
a separate life; but the new voluntary organizations ask of the
individual a fuller individual life rather than a more restricted
one. The Organizations that are voluntary among men are
chiefly political, industrial, religious; those among women are
humanitarian and social. This trend toward organization is
not confined to our country. Its great power consists in that it
is a world power. Women are organizing quite as much in
Europe as they are in this country. In England, for instance,
the political organizations are much stronger than in America,
and they have carried on an agitation which in amount is equal
252 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
to the second reading of the bill for the parliamentary franchise
of England. In France women are organizing largely on humani-
tarian lines, not comprehending as yet the social trend which
organization has taken in this country. In Germany we find
the same phase—largely philanthropic is the aim of most wom-
en’s organizations. At a Congress, held last Summer in Berlin,
the German women had become so expert, so well trained by
their organizations, that they were able to express themselves
with dignity and with force on all subjects which pertain to
social, educational, and moral life.
One of the phases of organization in this country is largely
social. I am inclined to think that trades unions and industrial
organizations will never succeed in this country as they have
in England, from the fact that the social element is so strong
among us. No matter what the aim may be in an industrial
organization, you find that before it has been formed two or
three months the women have introduced some social element.
That great social force in organizations among women is des-
tined to do away with all the artificial barriers of convention-
ality, and ultimately it will sweep away even the barriers of
competitive industrial conditions. In this great power, first
recognized among women not more than thirty or forty years
ago, I think we may see that the lead was taken by the mission-
ary and church associations. Then followed the Sanitary Com-
mission; and after that came the great humanitarian associa-
tions such as we see to-day, which have done the magnificent
work of the Suffrage Associations, the National Council of
Women, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs; and I be-
lieve that the flower and crown of all associations among women
came to us in the Columbian Exposition in the Board of Lady
Managers, which was all-comprehensive, and in the great Con-
gress of the Columbian celebration; and to that movement is
attributable the fact that we are able to-day to hold a Congress
of Mothers in the United States.
Now a word as to what organization means. It means a
striving after unity. In other words, it is law, and law is God.
In all these great organizations specialization is ceasing, as it
is in the individual life, and we are able to say that we do
ORGANIZATION. 253
not contend with each other; we do not interfere with each
other; we all build up on certain lines to produce a great
harmonious whole, each organization bringing its own special
work, its own special point of view, until we have that har-
monious, general view on which a vast social life must be based,
and which is the crown and the aim of all civilization. It was
thought, I believe, ten or fifteen years ago, that different asso-
ciations interfered with each other more or less; but, in watch-
ing the race development, we see that that is not so; that we
must first specialize in order to reach the point, and finally
weave it all into a great whole to get the proper proportions.
Now think to-day what this Congress of ‘Mothers means. It
means that you are going to your own homes carrying to them
the thought that all in the universe tends to order, and you
express it by such an association, such a meeting as this. Think
of the home. What does the home mean? And believe me,
while I speak of it, that we make a mistake to say that any home
can be submerged. It never can be. Where you have father,
mother, and child, the trinity, you have the essentials of the
divine principle of love, and no social conditions can ever sub-
merge it. Take, for instance, the training of the child in the
home. We know now that it is the positive, the constructive
statement that is of value. And what does that shut out from
us? All arguments in the home, all strife, all contention. We
know that it is founded in unity. We know that it means only
order. Take, the individual lives which women used to lead
before they correlated their lives with the social life. It was
separate, therefore argumentative, alone; without expression,
without voice, and therefore it was depressed; it was with
an idea that they must live entirely for others. And now,
as I have said before, they have changed that little pronoun
“I” into “we,” and correlated their lives with the entire family
and social life. Women are destined in this country, as in all
countries, to keep alive ideality. Not long ago, in speaking
with a great foreign artist who was visiting this country, he said:
“When I see the tremendous civilization here, your men of
iron and steel, the great type of men which you are evolving,
the most powerful men in the world as a type, I almost despair.
17
254 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
But when I look into the faces of your women, and see the
courage of their convictions shining in their eyes, I know that
they are pledged to the spiritual side of life, and I know that
any cause to which the women are pledged will triumph.” And
it means that not only in our lives, but in our organizations, we
are reading that beautiful word, reciprocity. We are learning
to co-operate each with the other, to contribute the best which
we have for the good of the home; and in such a Congress as
this, which can call upon all the science, and all the wisdom not
only of this world but of the next, certainly the triumph of
motherhood is exemplified. But, above all, it means that women
are looking to and depending on themselves; that their own
dignity, their own convictions, and no false standard of the out-
side world shall for the future guide them. In the series of
resolutions which have been presented to-day, that one which
speaks of the unity of life, one cause correlated with another, is
exemplified in the phrase which I will leave with you, “The day
of days, the feast day of the human soul, is when the inward
eye first opens to the unity of life.”
APPEN DIX.
COMMENTARY ON THE CONGRESS.
THE first conference of the National Congress of Mothers
was called to order on Wednesday morning, February 17, 1897,
by Mrs. Phebe A. Hearst, First Vice-President of the Congress.
The audience joined in singing America. Prayer was offered
by Rev. William H. Millburn, chaplain of the United States
Senate, following which Mrs. Hearst presented Mrs. Theodore
W. Birney, the President of the Congress, who read the address
of welcome, to which Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson responded.
Mrs. Dickinson, as the President of the National Council of
Women, representing the largest organization of women in the
world, was most fittingly chosen to speak, not only for the seven
hundred thousand and more whom she represents, but for all
motherhood.
It is an interesting fact in connection with this meeting, as
well as with those which followed in the sessions of the Congress,
that the numbers responding to the call for this conference was
So great that no single hall or church in Washington could con-
tain them all.
Following the crush at the morning meeting in the banquet
hall of the Arlington Hotel came the reception to the mothers
at the White House, and Mrs. Cleveland, wife of the President
of the United States, graciously received the two thousand who
came in place of the expected two hundred.
The afternoon session and most of the subsequent ones were
held in the First Baptist Church; even the large audience
room of this church was not sufficient to accommodate the many
who crowded to attend the Congress. Overflow meetings were
255
256 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
held in the vestry and adjoining rooms, where the speakers kindly
appeared and delivered their addresses a second time to enthusi-
astic audiences.
The President of the Congress presided over the main meet-
ings; she was kindly assisted in the overflow meetings by vol-
unteer service rendered by those who had come as guests to
the conclave. Miss Frances E. Newton presided as chairman
of the conference work, which formed no small part in the value
of the sessions. She was assisted at the various meetings by dif-
ferent ladies, who were specially interested in the topics pre-
sented at these conferences for discussion.
The address which opened the regular sessions was entitled
Primitive Motherhood, and was most ably presented by Mr. F.
Hamilton Cushing, of the United States Bureau of Ethnology.
Not a moment was wasted during the three days’ Congress.
The programmes were fully and promptly carried out, with the
exception of but three speakers. Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, of
New York, and Mrs. W. H. Felton, of Georgia, could not be
present in person, but sent their papers, however, which appear
in this volume. Mrs. Carrie Stanton Blatch, of New York, was
detained by illness. Her address would have been extemporane-
ous, therefore her affliction was and is our loss. Owing to some
misunderstanding of time on the programme, the loss of Mr.
Mabie's presence on the platform is atoned for in part by his
earnest words given in our report of the Works and Words of the
First National Congress of Mothers.
Among the pleasant and impromptu affairs were the recep-
tions to the delegates and guests by the official board. These
were held in the parlors of the Arlington Hotel at the close of
each evening session. Mrs. T. W. Birney, the President, and
Mrs. Hearst, the First Vice-President, assisted by other members
of the board, were constant in their attendance from the early
morning opening to the last hour of each active day.
Some pleasant recitations by Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, of
New York, and by Miss Julia King, of Boston, were given upon
call from the audiences, Mrs. Sangster giving one of her own
poems; also a song was given upon call by Mrs. Cicely Claud, of
Chevy Chase, Md.
APPENDIX. 257
Resolutions of interest were offered to the Congress; there-
fore a committee was appointed to receive and regulate these
that in their presentation repetition might be avoided and time
saved. As soon as it was known that provision for the recep-
tion of resolutions had been made, the expressions and calls for
sympathy and indorsement on many good lines of work poured
in. The work of classification, assimilation, and condensation
had to be done in a very short time, in order to present the re-
sults to the Congress and delegates before adjournment. Many
of the resolutions offered were excellent. Some of them were
repetitions in thought, though differing in expression. The
committee were instructed that the resolutions must be con-
fined to the plan of the Congress work, which aims to deal simply
and directly with the relations of parent and child; therefore
they were obliged to eliminate much that was worthy, and which
is already successfully exploited by organizations working for
those special ends.
It is believed that the resolutions as adopted will be a help
in guiding the aims of the Congress in its simplicity of deter-
mination to deal with all questions of reform in embryo at the
hearthside.
The Board of Officers have been holding frequent meetings
since the close of the Congress sessions, under the wise guidance
of Mrs. Hearst as presiding officer, Mrs. Birney having been
called to the Pacific coast. As a partial result of the earnest
work done, they have prepared and adopted a “Declaration of
Principles,” which is now given, together with the promise
of a leaflet, which will be issued by the board in the autumn.
This leaflet will further define the plans and the character of the
work to be done, and will especially explain the status of dele-
gates. This circular will be sent on application, and to all hav-
ing ordered this report.
Any information concerning the work of the Congress may
be obtained by applying to the “Clerk of the National Congress
of Mothers,” Washington Loan and Trust Building, Washing-
ton, D. C., inclosing a stamped and addressed envelope for a
reply.
The success of the movement reported in this volume is due
258 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
to its friends, who contributed in many ways. Among these, Mrs.
Hearst's name stands foremost. Contributions were also re-
ceived from Mrs. George Westinghouse, Mr. I. W. Drummond,
and Mr. Edward B. Brown. Many gave freely of labors and in
personal expenses. The work of preparing the programme fell
unexpectedly upon the Corresponding Secretary, Miss Butler,
who, though assisted by friendly advice, must receive the full
credit for a good bit of work done in the remarkably short space
of six weeks’ time.
Throughout the land the press has been a power, disseminat-
ing the facts of our existence and promoting our cause. To one
and all, hearty thanks are extended and continued interest in-
vited.
The Board of Officers desires to learn of all work organized
on lines similar to that of the National Congress of Mothers,
and cordially invites co-operation.
The Committee on Literature have prepared a List of Books
which it is believed will be helpful to mothers’ clubs and to indi-
viduals. The list may be found on the last pages of the Ap-
pendix.
LIST OF DELEGATES.
NoTE.—If the name of any delegate is omitted, will such send word,
with the full address of delegate, to the clerk, Headquarters of National
Congress of Mothers, Washington Loan and Trust Building, Washington,
D. C.
Adams, Miss Sarah, care of Pine Tree Kindergarten Associa-
tion, Portland, Me.
Adams, Mrs. W. I. L., 249 Orange Road, Montclair, N. J.
Ager, Mrs. J. C., 98 South Eliot Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Alger, Mrs., care of Mrs. Fessenden, 171 Tremont Street, Boston,
Mass.
Allen, Dr. Mary Wood, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Allen, Miss Willette, Atlanta, Ga.
APPENDIX. 259
Allen, Mrs. C. E., International Kindergarten Union, Salt Lake
City, Utah.
Allen, Mrs. John A., 1520 Mississippi Avenue, St. Louis, Mo.
Ambler, Mrs. J. M. B., Chatham, N. Y.
Amies, Mrs. Olive Pond, 1438 Richfield Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Anthony, Mr. Herbert Mills, 1207 Market Street, San Fran-
cisco, Cal.
Appleton, Mrs. B. Ross, Public Library Association, Brooklyn,
N. Y.
Atwell, Mrs. Edwin, Mount Holyoke Alumnae, New York city.
Aus, Mrs. Elizabeth Lange, Box 9, Brookland, D. C.
Bailey, Mrs. Fannie J., Rectory, St. Peter’s Church, Albany,
N. Y.
Bailey, Mrs. I. D., care of Young Men’s Christian Association,
Washington, D. C.
Baldwin, Mrs. C. C., 11 Cedar Street, Worcester, Mass.
Ball, Mrs. Farland Q., 15 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill.
Barnes, Mrs. C. P., Louisville, Ky.
Barnes, Mrs. F. Schwedler, 16 East Sixtieth Street, New York
city.
Barnes, Mrs. J. W., 33 Kearney Street, Newark, N. J.
Bartlett, Mrs. Jane W., 247 North Twentieth Street, Philadel-
phia, Pa. f
Bartlett, Jr., Mrs. J. K., 2100 Mount Royal Terrace, Balti-
more, Md.
Bassett, Mrs. Ann, Ypsilanti, Mich.
Benedict, Mrs. J. K., 2100 Mount Royal Terrace, Baltimore, Md.
Berlé, Mrs. A. A., Brighton, Mass.
Berlin, Mrs. A. H., Wilmington, Del.
Beyer, Mrs. C. C., Box 224, Lansdowne, Pa.
Blankenburg, Mrs. L. L., 214 West Logan Square, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
Blunt, Miss Alice Key, Baltimore, Md.
Borton, Mrs. Edwin L., Salem, Woodstown, N. J.
Bostwick, Mrs. Mary R., 12 Cuba Street, Watertown, Mass.
Bourne, Mrs. Emma, The Temple, Chicago, Ill.
Boyd, Miss S. B., Knoxville, Tenn.
Brazza, Countess Cora di, 254 Madison Avenue, New York city.
260 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Brewer, Mrs. J. B., Rockville, Md.
Brock, Mrs. Horace, Lebanon, Pa.
Brown, Mrs. Arthur, International Kindergarten Union, Salt
Lake City, Utah.
Bruce, Mrs. B. K., 2010 R Street, Washington, D. C.
Burrows, Mrs. J. C., Kalamazoo, Mich.
Burt, Mrs. Mary Towne, 217 West 134th Street, New York city.
Byer, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Campbell, Mrs. E. L., Free Kindergarten, Wayne, Ind.
Carpenter, Rev. Marian, Detroit, Mich.
Carroll, Mrs. Frances A., care of Miss Willard, Castile, N. Y.
Carter, Mrs. John M., Mount Washington, Md.
Catchings, Mrs. Elizabeth H., 910 F Street, N. W., Washing-
ton, D. C.
Cathcart, Miss F. A., The Temple, Chicago, Ill.
Cawood, Mrs. Rose Mead, Maryville, Tenn.
Chamberlain, Mrs. H. A., 7 Winter Street, West Summerville,
Mass.
Chapin, Mrs. Grace L., care of Mrs. J. S. Bartlett, 509 B Street,
N. E., Washington, D. C.
Chilton, Mrs. Horace, Tyler, Tex.
Christie, Mrs. Louise Long, Springfield, Ohio.
Clark, Mrs. David, Baltimore, Md.
Clark, Mrs. J. W., 98 Congress Street, Newark, N. J.
Clendaniel, Mrs. George S., 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, S. E.,
Washington, D. C.
Cohen, Mrs. M. E., 1347 T Street, Washington, D. C.
Colby, Mrs. Clara B., Beatrice, Neb.
Conant, Mrs. E. H., Camden, N. Y.
Conklin, Mrs. Mabel L., Ann Arbor, Mich.
Conway, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Cornell, Mrs. I. Tucker, Salem, Mass.
Craigie, Mrs. C. O. H., Public Library Association, Brooklyn,
N. Y. d
Cross, Mrs. Rosetta O., Bellevue, Ky.
Cummings, Mrs. E. J., 424 West Biddle Street, Baltimore, Md.
Dammann, Mrs. J. F., 18 East Franklin Street, Baltimore, Md.
Daugherty, Miss Laura Goldy, Baltimore, Md.
APPENDIX. 261
Davidson, Mrs. Frederick H., 2102 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, Md.
Davidson, Mrs. G. M., Seattle, Wash.
Davis, Mrs. A. H., care of Mrs. Hotchkiss, 11 Kane Street, Brad-
ford, Pa.
Dingman, Mrs. F. E., 600 Penn Avenue, S. E., Washington, D. C.
Dinwoodie, Mrs. J. S., 1409 Hull Street, Baltimore, Md.
Douglass, Mrs. Charles K., 1936 Fourth Street, N. W., Wash-
ington, D. C.
Downs, Mrs. Norton, 215 West Walnut Lane, Germantown, Pa.
Drake, Mrs. Helen M., Sacramento, Cal.
Duffield, Mrs. E. A., Lincoln Memorial Women’s Christian Tem-
perance Union, Washington, D. C.
Eberhardt, Mrs. Ermonce V., 97 Congress Street, Newark, N. J.
Eggleston, Miss, 45 Wadsworth Street, Albany, N. Y.
Ellis, Mrs. W. S., 2125 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Farmer, Miss Sarah J., Eliot, Me.
Fernald, Mrs. J. C., West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y.
Findley, Mrs. Mary F., Akron, Ohio.
Finston, Mrs. M. P., Virginia.
Fitch, Miss Virginia, San Francisco, Cal.
Fitch, Mrs. G. K., Girls’ Training Home, San Francisco, Cal.
Ford, Mrs. F. F., Omaha Woman’s Club, Omaha, Neb.
Fout, Mrs. J. E., 1713 North Capitol Street, Washington, D. C.
Fowler, Mrs. J. W., Jamestown, N. Y.
Frame, Miss Katharine D., Flushing, L. I.
Frye, Mrs. William P., Lewiston, Me.
Garvin, Mrs. M. J., Training School for Nurses, New York city.
Gibson, Mrs., 215 South Broad Street, Knoxville, Tenn.
Gilbert, Mrs. James E., care of Rev. J. E. Gilbert, Washington,
D. C.
Gilmore, Mrs. Matthew, Richmond, Va.
Goodale, Mrs. F. A., New Century Club, Utica, N. Y.
Gray, Mrs. Arthur S., corner Sixth and Trumbull Streets, Wash-
ington, D. C.
Gulick, Mrs. Luther, Springfield, Mass.
Guyton, Mrs. Emma Platt, Hillsdale College, Grand Rapids,
Mich.
Habicht, Miss E., Lansdowne, Pa.
262 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Haggenbotham, Miss May, 3216 Chestnut Street, West Phila-
delphia, Pa. &
Hallowell, Mrs. Lydia S., 1300 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Hammer, Mrs. A. M., Forty-third and Chestnut Streets, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
Hanna, Mrs. Louise W., Peoria, Ill.
Hansford, Mrs. Smith, College Street Club, Harrodsburg, Ky.
Hapgood, Mrs. Melvin H., 142 Woodland Street, Hartford, Conn.
Harper, Mrs. F. E. W., 756 South Twenty-first Street, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
Haslup, Mrs. Mary, The Temple, Chicago, Ill.
Hathaway, Mrs. H. R., Brighton, Mass.
Hawkins, Mrs. L. E., care of Women’s Christian Temperance
Union, Washington, D. C.
Heatherington, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Heiges, Mrs. George W., St. John’s Parish House, York, Pa.
Hendrickson, Hannah H., Friends’ Society, Washington, D. C.
Hensley, Mrs. S. N. A., 8 West 102d Street, New York city.
Hershey, Mrs., Mount Washington, Md.
Hertzler, Mrs. M. A., Elizabethtown, Pa.
Hicks, Mrs. G. H., 2222 Fifteenth Street, Washington, D. C.
Higgins, Mrs. John J., Rockville, Md.
Hill, Mrs. Thomas, 18 East Franklin Street, Baltimore, Md.
, Hilton, Mrs. Jessie Brown, Evanston, Ill.
Hoge, Mrs. Howard, Virginia.
Holme, Mrs. Pauline W., 1140 Druid Hill Avenue, Baltimore,
Mol.
Holtzman, Mrs. William F., 1214 Twelfth Street, N. W., Wash-
ington, D. C.
Hughes, Miss Emma, Hutchinson, Kan. g
Hurley, Miss Minnie C., 190 Rutledge Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Hyde, Mrs. H. P., Waltham, Mass.
Immen, Mrs. Loraine, 35 North Lafayette Street, Grand Rapids,
Mich.
Ing, Mrs. William, 614 North Fulton Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Jackson, Mrs. Mary P., Ashton, Md.
James, Elizabeth, Fifteenth and Race Streets, Philadelphia, Pa.
James, Mrs. Cornelia E., 296 Rutger Street, Utica, N. Y.
APPENDIX. 263
Jaynes, Mrs. H. S., 1621 Emmett Street, Omaha, Neb.
Jennings, Dr. Ella, 208 West Forty-third Street, New York city.
Jones, Mrs. R. N., Virginia.
Jump, Mrs. C. J. A., 138 Hudson Ave., Albany, N. Y.
June, Mrs. C. S., 916 College Avenue, Burlington, Iowa.
Reener, Mrs. A. M. G., Selins Grove, Pa.
Kemp, M.D., Mrs. Agnes, 603 North Second Street, Harris-
burg, Pa.
Rennedy, Mrs. C., Lansdowne, Pa.
ICent, Mrs. Samuel, Lansdowne, Pa.
Rent, Mrs. Wimodaughsis, Washington, D. C.
Keyser, Mrs. W. W., Woman’s Club, Omaha, Neb.
Rincaid, Mrs. Mary W., 314 Montgomery Street, San Francisco,
Cal.
Ring, Mrs. William, 480 Courtland Avenue, Atlanta, Ga.
Kirby, M.D., Mrs. Mary H., 1736 North Nineteenth Street,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Kirk, Mrs. David, 220 Darrah Street, Pittsburg, Pa.
Rohut, Mrs. Rebekah, 709 Madison Avenue, New York city.
La Fetra, Mrs. Sarah D., Eleventh and G Streets, Washington,
D. C.
Lake, Mrs. James, The Temple, Chicago, Ill.
Lamb, Mrs. George M., 1109 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Langland, Mrs. H. M., Marshall, Lyon County, Minn.
Lathim, Miss Sarah A., Springfield, Mo.
Laws, Miss Annie, Mothers’ Kindergarten Association, Cincin-
nati, Ohio.
Lawson, Mrs. Jesse, University Park, Mo.
Leeds, Mrs. Deborah, Seal post office, Chester County, Pa.
Lewis, Mrs. N. W., North Bingham, Pa.
Longstreth, Mrs. Edward, 1301 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Loomis, Mrs. Laura, Redfield, S. Dakota.
Lothrop, Mrs. Daniel, Wayside, Concord, Mass.
Lyons, Mrs. James, 415 East Franklin Street, Richmond, Va.
Mackenzie, Miss Constance, 1301 Spruce Street, Philadelphia,
Pa.
McClary, Mrs. Joseph A., Rahway, N. J.
McClelland, Mrs. Sophia, Medico-Legal Society, New York city.
264 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
McCoy, Mrs. Jennie, Virginia.
McCue, Mrs., 215 South Broad Street, Knoxville, Tenn.
McCullough, Mrs. Laura V., 419 Tenth Street, N. W., Wash-
ington, D. C.
McEwen, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
McLean, Mrs. Jane, National Press Association, Washington,
D. C.
McMullen, Mrs. Kate Way, Woman’s Club, Evanston, Ill.
Mann, Mrs. C. H., Woman’s Club, Orange, N. J.
Marshall, Mrs. Leander, Lansdowne, Pa.
Martin, Mrs. E. D., Room 280, Washington Building, 1 Broad-
way, New York city.
Marye, Mrs. Robert, Roxobel, Mount Washington, Md.
Mather, Mrs. M. H. A., Wilmington, Del.
Matthews, Mrs. Charles T., 1925 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Matthews, Mrs. E. B., Young Men’s Christian Association, Wash-
ington, D. C.
Mead, Mrs. J. Calvin, 73 Bridge Street, Oswego, N. Y.
Mears, Mrs. D. O., 53 Ten Broeck Street, Albany, N. Y.
Merriwether, Mrs. M. L., Woman’s Committee of the Young
Men's Christian Association, Washington, D. C.
Miller, Mrs. Clara Booth, Front and Olive Streets, Media, Pa.
Miller, Mrs. Sarah J., Sandy Springs, Md.
Mitchell, Mrs. Norwood, Atlanta, Ga.
Moon, Caroline, Friends’ Society, Washington, D. C.
Moore, Miss Rosa, 219 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Moore, Mrs. Willis Lord, 510 First Avenue East, Hutchinson,
Kan.
Murray, Mrs. Anna J., 934 S Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
Needles, Miss Emma S., 1809 North Charles Street, Balti-
more, Md.
Newcomb, Mrs. W. W., Progressive 'Educational Club, Lans-
downe, Pa.
North, Mrs. Mary M., National Press Association, Washington,
D. C.
Noyes, Mrs. Charles H., Warren, Pa.
Orr, Mrs. Frank B., 4450 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
Osgood, Mrs. Etta H., Portland, Me.
APPENDIX. 265
Otey, Mrs. Peter, 415 East Franklin Street, Richmond, Va.
Parmalee, Mrs. Erskine M., Dansville, N. Y.
Parrarr, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Parsons, Mrs., care of Miss Litchfield, 203 Clinton Street, Brook-
lyn, N. Y.
Pearsall, Miss Antoinette, 1332 Pacific Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Peckham, Miss Katharine F., Worcester, Mass.
Peirce, Mrs. Henry D., Indianapolis, Ind.
Perkins, Mrs. S. M., 121 Adelbert Street, Cleveland, Ohio.
Pickler, Mrs. A. M. A., Faulkton, S. Dakota.
Pierce, Mrs. C. L., 3316 Powellton Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa.
Pierce, Susan W., Friends’ Society, Washington, D. C.
Platt, Mrs. M. B., 1009 North Capitol Street, Washington, D. C.
Pomeroy, Mrs. Byron, Box 224, Lansdowne, Pa.
Powell, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Pritchett, Miss E. A., Lansdowne, Pa.
Putnam, Mrs. Alice H., Kindergarten Club, Chicago, Ill.
Putnam, Mrs. Joseph R., 15 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill.
Bhodes, Mrs. E. G., Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
Rider, Mrs. Eunice, National Press Association, Washington,
D. C.
Ridgely, Miss Eliza, 825 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Ridgely, Miss Henrietta S., Baltimore, Md.
Roach, Mrs. Clara L., Home Missionary Society, Baltimore, Md.
Roberts, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Robinson, Mrs. Alice C., 1208 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Robinson, Mrs. Josie G., 801 Madison Street, Alexandria, Va.
Rousier, Mrs. Mary A., 128 Washington Avenue, Woodside,
Newark, N. J.
Russell, Mrs. J. L., Darby, Delaware County, Pa.
Saulsbury, Miss Emma G., Ridgely, Md.
Sawyer, Mrs. W. H., Free Kindergarten, Wayne, Ind.
Schoonmaker, Mrs. Jessie B., Bradford, Pa.
Sears, Mrs. R. W., Bucyrus, Ohio.
Shapleigh, Mrs. S. B., Allston, Mass.
Shattuck, Mrs. L. Brace, 4450 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
Shaw, Mrs. Charles P., Charlottesville, Va.
Shaw, Mrs. Robert, 98 South Eliot Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
266 INATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Shelton, Mrs. Emma F., 1918 Fifteenth Street, Washington,
D. C.
Shober, Jr., Mrs. I., 1422 Catharine Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Silsbee, Mrs. A. M., 43 Main Street, Watertown, Mass.
Simpson, Mrs. J. H., National Press Association, Washington,
D. C.
Sloan, Mrs. Anna T., care of Mrs. Hotchkiss, 11 Kane Street,
Bradford, Pa.
Smith, Miss Anna Tolman, 1335 Twelfth Street, Washington,
D. C.
Smith, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Smith, Mrs. Burton, Atlanta, Ga.
Smith, Mrs. Clinton, care of Women’s Christian Temperance
Union, Washington, D. C.
Smith, Mrs. Jennie, Hyattsville, Md.
Smith, Mrs. Sarah W., Medina, Ohio.
Smyth, Mrs. F. E., 520 T Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
Smythe, Miss Alice P., Wilmington, Del.
Stanwood, Mrs. Louise Brockway, Evanston, Ill.
Stephens, Mrs. Benjamin, 1284 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn,
N. Y.
Sterling, Mrs. Anna Biddle, 1846 Van Pelt Street, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
Stewart, Mrs. Agnes, The Temple, Chicago, Ill.
Stewart, Mrs. John Wood, Orange Road, Montclair, N. J.
Stimson, Mrs. H. A., 159 West Eighty-sixth Street, New York
city, N. Y.
Stone, Mrs. Lucinda, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Stute, Mrs., care of Sans Souci Club, Marion, Ind.
Swayne, Mrs., Lansdowne, Pa.
Sweezy, Miss J., 129 East Tenth Street, New York city.
Tapp, Miss M., Jacksonville, Ill.
Taylor, Miss Frances, Plymouth, Sheboygan County, Wis.
Taylor, Mrs. Eliza Jane, Baltimore, Md.
Taylor, Mrs. Emily P., Philadelphia, Pa.
Taylor, Mrs. Ronald, 316 Clifton Place, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Tealdo, Miss L., 129 East Tenth Street, New York city.
Temple, Miss Mary B., Knoxville, Tenn.
APPENDIX. 267
Terrell, Mrs. Mary Church, 1936 Fourth Street, N. W., Wash-
ington, D. C.
Thacher, Mrs. Ella M., Florence, Burlington County, N. J.
Therne, Miss Maria C., Friends’ Society, Washington, D. C.
Thomas, Mrs. Mary B., 1208 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Turnbull, Mrs. Lawrence, 18 East Franklin Street, Baltimore,
Md.
Turner, Mrs. Paul, Mount Washington, Md.
Tuttle, Mrs. Kate A., Charlottesville, Va.
Tyler, Mrs. W. Graham, 4420 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Vandergrift, Mrs. Lewis C., Wilmington, Del.
Walker, Miss Lucy C., 1208 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
Watling, Mrs. John A., Ypsilanti, Mich.
Weed, Mrs. S. R., 542 Putnam Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Weightman, Miss L. S., 1918 Fifteenth Street, Washington, D. C.
Wells, Mrs. Helen Raymond, Akron, Ohio.
Werth, Mrs. James R., 313 East Main Street, Richmond, Va.
West, Mrs. Max, Washington, D. C.
Westcott, Mrs. S. M., 918 Twenty-third Street, Washington, D. C.
White, Mrs. John J., Lansdowne, Pa.
Whitney, Mrs. Mary T., 381 Dorchester Street, Boston, Mass.
Wilbur, Miss, 1726 N Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
Wilkinson, Mrs. L. B., 214 First Street, S. E., Washington, D. C.
Willetts, Miss Mary, Sea Girt, N. J.
Williams, Mrs. Theresa A., The Temple, Chicago, Ill.
Willson, Mrs. John E., Rockville, Md.
Wilson, Mrs. Charles S., Wilmington, Del.
Wood, Mrs. Alfred, care of Young Women’s Christian Temper-
ance Union, Washington, D. C.
Wood, Mrs. C. H. W., 9 Bainbridge Street, Roxbury, Mass.
Woods, Mrs. W. H., care of 1438 Richfield Street, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
Wright, Miss E. D., Froebel Institute, Lansdowne, Pa.
Wright, Mrs. Phebe C., West 143d Street and Amsterdam
Avenue, New York city. *
268 NATIONAI1 CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
GREETINGS.
Alumnae Club, Louisville, Ky.
Cranford Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Cranford, N. J.
Chester Woman’s Suffrage League, Chester, Pa.
Detroit Woman’s Club, Detroit, Mich.
Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs, Atlanta, Ga.
Ladies' Aid Society, Presbyterian Church, Cranford, N. J.
Ladies’ History Club, Sioux Falls, S. Dak.
Mary F. Thomas Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Rich-
mond, Ind.
Mothers’ and Teachers’ Association, Arlington, Hudson County,
N. J.
Martha Ball Washington Monument Association.
Mothers’ Society, Afton, Iowa.
Norwegian Woman’s Society, Christiana, Norway.
Oswego Mothers’ Club, Oswego, N. Y.
Philadelphia Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Philadel-
phia, Pa. *
Riverside Culture Club, Cincinnati, Ohio.
State Council of Mothers, South Dakota.
South End Mother’s Club, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Star of Bethlehem Church, Sing Sing, N. Y.
St. Louis Central Women’s Christian Temperance Union, St.
Louis, Mo.
Sibley Mothers’ Club, St. Paul, Minn.
Wednesday Morning Club, Cranford, N. J.
Woman’s Club, Louisville, Ky.
Woman’s Republican League, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Woman’s Department Tennessee Centennial and International
Exposition. Miss Clara Conway, Chairman.
Charlotte L. Chrisfield, Washington, D. C.
Mrs. Louise H. Gambee, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Mrs. Katharine W. D. Herbert, New York city.
Mrs. Hardin W. Masters, Lewiston, Ill. gº
APPENDIX. 269.
H. D. Newson, New York city.
Mrs. Caroline Seymour Severance, Los Angeles, Cal.
Mrs. Mary Shepherd Singer, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mrs. Grace G. Watts, New Orleans, La.
COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS.
Mrs. ELLEN A. RICHARDSON, Boston, Chairman.
Mrs. ELLEN M. HENROTIN, Chicago. Mrs. BURTON SMITH, Atlanta.
Countess CoRA DI BRAzzA, New York. Mrs. JoHN T. GRAHAM, Little Rock,
Mrs. H. M. Cooper, Little Rock, Ark. Ark.
Miss JANET RICHARDs, Washington, Mrs. EDw1N ATwell, New York.
Mrs. AGNEs KEMP, Harrisburg, Pa. Mrs. H. A. STIMSox, New York,
RACHEL FostER AvLRY, Philadelphia.
* RESOLUTIONS AS AIDOPTED BY
THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS
AND DELEGATES.
Whereas, This is the first great National Congress of Women
ever gathered about the single idea of maternity and the improve-
ment of the relation of mother and child; and
Whereas, We desire that the influence of this meeting shall
be as far-reaching as possible; therefore
Resolved, That we indorse the work of the Universal Peace
Union, and, second, the suggestion made to the mothers, in-
structors, and citizens of America that lessons of peace must
first be taught by harmony at the hearth, and contained in the
following
• 18
270. NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
SEVEN RULES OF EIARMONY.
1. I hereby promise to make the sacred spirit of peace a
living power in my life, and to contribute all the time, thought,
and money that I can to its diffusion.
2. I promise never to listen without a protest to insinua-
tions, vituperations, or unjust accusations against the members
of my family or against my fellow-citizens.
3. I promise to seek to understand the spirit of the national
laws, to obey those that exist, and to interest myself fervently
in the modification of all those which tyrannize any class of
fellow-citizens.
4. I promise to dedicate my thought and influence to the
development of the national and patriotic spirit, and not to
criticise without purpose the administration of the family or of
the nation.
5. I promise to treat all birds and beasts and all existencies
of the animal and vegetable worlds with justness and gentle-
ness, and not to destroy, save for self-preservation and for the
protection of the weak. Instead, my object shall be to plant,
to nourish, and to propagate all that will lead to the moral and
physical amelioration of my family, my home, and my nation.
6. I promise to teach to my children and my dependents
everything with regard to justice and peace which I shall learn,
and to seek to develop within them the sentiments to which I
am hereby dedicating myself.
7. I promise to seek each day to utter some word or to per-
form some action which may promote the cause of peace, whether
at home or abroad.
Resolved, That the National Congress of Mothers heartily
approves the founding of a National Training School for Women,
that the women of America may be taught the methods of mak-
ing hygienic homes, and of becoming intelligent mothers; in a
word, that they may be taught the laws of health and heredity.
Resolved, That we use our influence to encourage legisla-
tion in our various States and Territories to secure kindergarten,
departments in our public Schools. Furthermore, it is recom-
mended that every woman’s organization in every State in our
APPENDIX. 271
Union be invited to co-operate in the establishment of adequate
training schools for kindergartners.
Resolved, That we will endeavor to exclude from our homes
those papers which do not educate or inspire to noble thought
and deed, and that our influence shall be used to so cultivate
the public taste that it will exact from the press and artists that
which educates and refines. We protest against all pictures and
displays which tend to degrade men and women or to corrupt
or deprave the minds of the young, and all advertisements which
offend decency.
Resolved, That we shall try to influence both Houses of Con-
gress to raise the age of protection for girls to eighteen years,
at least, in the District of Columbia and the Territories.
Resolved, That, as we have a National Executive Board, we
ask our officers to continue national headquarters at Washing-
ton, D. C., from which a Press Committee shall send out each
month, to all newspapers agreeing to publish them regularly,
articles germane to our objects and information relative to the
progress of our work; that circulars of information and leaflets,
setting forth the best methods of work, be prepared and furnished
at cost to those wishing to purchase them; and that, while we
deem State organization at present inadvisable, we recommend
that the members of this Congress carry home to the respective
organizations which sent them as full reports as possible of its
sessions, and strive to make it the inspiration toward the forma-
tion of Mothers’ or Home Sections in the local organizations
already formed, and of Mothers’ Clubs outside of already exist-
ing associations.
Resolved, That the Committee on Resolutions do hereby
recommend:
1. That the National Congress of Mothers hold annual meet-
ings.
2. That, in order to promote permanent organization and
preserve the national character of this movement, the National
Congress of Mothers meet every other year at the nation’s capi-
tal, Washington, D. C., the alternate or intermediate Congresses
to be held at such places as may be hereafter designated.
3. That the next National Congress of Mothers be held in
272 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Washington, D. C., in the year 1898, the date of meeting to be ,
decided upon by the National Executive Board.
Resolved, That the Mothers’ Congress has made manifest the
earnest desire and determination of the women of our land and
elsewhere to give the children committed to their care the ad-
vantages of pure thought and high endeavor; therefore, believ-
ing that law is -love and that love is the highest expression of
God, and hence the ruling power of the universe, and that its
perversion and prostitution is the sole source of evil, we exhort
all mothers to a closer walk with our Father and Mother God,
by whose nurture and admonition our children must be brought
up if life is ever to be worth living.
Resolved, That the members and delegates of the National
Congress of Mothers express their cordial appreciation of the
hospitality which has been extended to the Congress by the resi-
dents of the city of Washington, and return their sincere thanks
for the courtesies extended.
The National Congress of Mothers especially appreciates the
reception tendered it by Mrs. Grover Cleveland, who stands
before the country as a gracious and beautiful ideal of mother-
hood. We feel that in her life she has exemplified the princi-
ples for which this Congress stands.
In the lady to whose unbounded hospitality and far-sighted
wisdom is due the abundant success of the First National Con-
gress of Mothers we recognize not only the home mother, but
the world mother. t
To the presiding officer, Mrs. Birney, whose devotion for
all mothers brought her across the continent to serve their cause;
to the Vice-Presidents; to the Secretary, Miss Butler, who has so
faithfully performed the many duties which devolved upon
her in the absence of the President; to the speakers, who have
contributed from the wisdom of all science, research, philosophy,
and experience; to the press, which has so fully disseminated
the deliberations of this body; to the associations which have
sent delegates, and have thus multiplied the influence and ef-
ficiency of the National Congress; and to the great audiences
which, notwithstanding the disadvantages entailed upon all by
the unexpected numbers in attendance, have preserved the har-
APPENDIX. 273
mony of spirit and the graceful courtesy which have lightened
and brightened the labors of all—to each and all of these the
Committee on Resolutions beg to express for the Congress their
congratulations that the First National Congress of Mothers
adjourn to take into our homes the spirit of co-operation in the
cause suggested in the call for the Congress.
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES OF THE
NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
First. The name of this Association shall be the National
Congress of Mothers.
Second. The objects of this Association shall be to promote
conference on the part of parents concerning questions most vital
to the welfare of their children, the manifest interests of the
home, and in general the elevation of mankind.
Therefore annual meetings will be held, at which the best
thoughts may be presented upon all subjects bearing upon the
broader and higher physical and mental, as well as on the spirit-
ual, training of the young. This Association purposes to incul-
cate love of humanity and love of country, to encourage closer
relations between home influences and school life, to promote
kindergarten principles from cradle to college, to seek to create
in all those characteristics which shall elevate and ennoble—
in short, to work for life development from the standards of
knowledge, truth, peace, and harmony.
Third. To the annual meetings shall be invited all persons
interested in the objects and purposes of this Association, and
especially will all parents’ clubs and organizations having de-
partments devoted to the study of the family interests be invited
to send delegates, to the end that the thought of the nation may
be concentrated in this important national movement, which will
make for enlightened parenthood and for a race of full birth-
rights.
274 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Fourth. The officers of this Association shall consist of a
President, four Vice-Presidents, a Secretary, and a Treasurer,
who shall also be the Executive Committee, and who, with the
Chairmen of the Committees on Arrangements, Entertainment,
Finance, Literature, Press, - Resolutions, and Transportation,
shall constitute the Board of Managers.
Fifth. The Executive Committee shall consist of the officers
as above stated, the Resolutions Committee of seven, and the
Finance Committee of three persons. All other committees
shall consist of five persons. The officers shall serve for terms
of three years, and the chairmen of the committees for one
year. Their successors shall be selected by the Board of
Managers.
Sixth. The Association shall hold annual meetings, at least
one of which shall be held biennially in the city of Washington,
and the other places for holding such annual meetings shall be
selected and determined by the Executive Committee.
The Board of Managers shall hold monthly meetings in the
city of Washington for the conduct of the business pertaining
to the National Congress of Mothers. Five of such persons
shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of all business.
Any member of such Board when absent from the city of Wash-
ington at the time of such meeting may in writing constitute
any officer or member of her committee her proxy to act in her
behalf as such member of the Board of Managers for the time
being.
Seventh. The Board of Managers shall elect its successors by
ballot for one year (or until their successors are elected) at the
annual meeting of the Board, to be held within one week of the
last session of the Congress.
It shall have power to enact by-laws for the transaction of
business. Members of the committees shall be elected annually
by the Board, but only the chairmen shall be members of such
Board.
Eighth. Since the National Congress of Mothers is the medi-
um of communication for the exchange of thought for enlight-
ened parenthood and the betterment of child life, the Board
invites the co-operation of old workers and new students, that
APPENDIX. 275
we may harmonize their diverse interests and form an alliance
which will be an aid and inspiration to all.
A leaflet will be issued by the Board in the autumn further
defining the plans and character of the work, especially in re-
gard to the status of delegates, which will be sent to all ordering
the report of the first Congress; also upon application at the
office, Washington Loan and Trust Building.
LIST OF BOOKS.
In arranging a list of books for mothers' clubs or home read-
ing, there is no attempt to make it more than a suggestive list.
The realm of books is so great that one should enter it cau-
tiously and seek only the best. Believing that a few books well
chosen, carefully read, studied, and discussed are of moré real
value than a great library superficially treated, the following list
is sent out and divided into four sections. *
I. Books that are simple, practical, and suitable as pre-
liminary to No. II, which is somewhat more advanced, requiring
deeper research and more profound thought.
III. Consists of books helpful to mothers in the instruction
and entertainment of their children.
IV. Miscellaneous.
If the study of the books found. in these short lists leads to
the investigation of others helpful in the development of a better
motherhood and childhood, of which there are many, then the
object for which they are prepared will have been realized.
I.
A Study of Child Nature. Harrison. $1.
Beckonings from Little Hands. Du Bois. $1.25.
Bits of Talk about Home Matters. H. H. $1.
Children’s Rights. Wiggin. $1.
Children, their Models and Critics. Aldrich. 75 cents.
276 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS.
Home Occupations. Beebe. 75 cents.
Lectures to Kindergartners. Peabody.
Leonard and Gertrude. Pestalozzi. 90 cents.
Myths and Mother Plays. Wiltse. $1.
Pedagogics of the Kindergarten. Froebel. $1.50.
Picture Work for Mothers and Teachers. 30 cents.
The Kindergarten. Wiggin. $1.
The Place of the Story in Education. Wiltse. 50 cents.
II.
Apperception. Lange. $1.
Education of Man. Froebel. $1.50.
Essays on Books and Culture. Mabie. $1.25.
Froebel's Mother Play, Mottoes, and Commentaries. Blow.
$1.50.
Songs and Music of Froebel’s Mother Play. Blow. $1.50.
Symbolic Education. Blow. $1.50.
Froebel and Education through Self-activity. Bowen. $1.
Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers. Barnard. $3.50.
Mental Development of the Child. Preyer. $1.
Republic of Childhood. Wiggin-Smith.
Vol. I. Froebel Gifts. $1.
Vol. II. Froebel Occupation. $1.
Vol. III. Kindergarten Principles and Practice. $1.
Studies in Education. Dr. Earl Barnes. $1.
The First Three Years of Childhood. Perez. $1.
The Intellectual and Moral Development of the Child. Com-
payré. $1.50.
The Psychology of Childhood. Tracy. 90 cents.
Law of Childhood. Hailman.
III.
American History Stories. Vols. I, II, III, IV. Pratt. Each,
36 cents.
Buz: or Life and Adventures of a Honey Bee. Noel. $1.
Boys and Girls in Biology. Stevenson. $1.
Century Book for Young Americans. Brooks. $1.50.
APPENDIX. 277
&
Child’s Garden of Verses. Stevenson. $1.
Child Stories from the Masters. Menefee. $1.
Finger Plays for Kindergarten and Nursery. Poulsson. $1.25.
Five books by Jane Andrews. Each, 50 cents:
1. Seven Little Sisters.
2. Each and All.
3. Stories Mother Nature told her Children.
4. Ten Boys who Lived on the Road from Long Ago till Now.
5. Geographical Plays. tº
Greek Heroes. Kingsley. 50 cents.
Jn the Child’s World. Poulsson. $2.
In Story Land. Harrison. $1.
Little Knights and Ladies. Sangster. 75 cents.
Love Songs of Childhood. Field. $1.
Madam How and Lady Why. Kingsley. $1.
Plutarch’s Lives. Ginn. 60 cents.
Song of Life. Morley. $1.25.
Stories from Birdland. Chase. 30 cents.
Stories of Colonial Children. Pratt. 80 cents.
Stories of Great Men. 30 cents.
Stories of Great Inventors. 30 cents.
Stories of Industries. Wols. I and II. Each, 40 cents.
Stories of New York. 40 cents.
Stories of the Red Children. Brooks. 30 cents.
Story of Ulysses. 30 cents.
The Story of a Piece of Coal. Martin. 40 cents.
Four books of songs, with music.
1. Child’s Garden of Song, compiled by William L. Tom-
lins. $2.
2, 3. Songs for Little Children, by Eleanor Smith, assisted
by Mrs. Alice H. Putnam. Wols. I and II. Paper, each,
$1. Cloth, $1.25.
4. Song Stories for the Kindergarten, by Misses Mildred and
Patty Hill. $1.25.
278 NATIONAL CONGRESS OF MOTHERS. '
IV.
As a Matter of Course. Call.
Early Training of Children. Malleson.
Facts and Fiction. Gardener.
Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young.
Abbott. $1.25.
Hints on Child Training. Trumbull. $1.25.
How to know the Wild Flowers. Dana. $1.25.
How to organize Round Tables.* Jackman. 25 cents.
Marm Lisa. Wiggin. $1.
Methods of Mind Training. Aiken. $1.
Point of Contact in Teaching. Du Bois. 60 cents.
Power through Repose. Call. $1."
Prisoners of Poverty. Campbell.
Reminiscences of Froebel. Von Marenholtz-Bülow. $1.50.
Side Talks with Girls. Ashmore.
The Children of the Poor. Riis.
Books of biography, travel, and the standard poets are also sug-
gested.
* This book will be found helpful in suggesting topics with applied lit-
erature.