THE SOCIAL SPIRIT 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON 
 
 ntOFKMOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN TUB UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
 1904
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1897 
 BY FLOOD AND VINCENT 
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQOI 
 BY SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
 
 BOB*. O. I.AV CO. 
 LNTKHa AND BIHDBB* 
 CHICAGO
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY Oi C'. 
 
 SAM'A BAKlUfiA 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In our land, as well as in others, there is a rising 
 spirit of fellowship, patriotism and of service to man- 
 kind. Selfishness grows sick of its narrowness and 
 miserliness, weary of its treadmill; while benevolence 
 offers its labors with radiant countenance, and gazes, 
 like the redeemed Faust, upon a region made fertile 
 and fruitful by its cheerful toils. 
 
 The educated world is learning that wisdom and 
 virtue become a personal possession only by practice 
 and habit; that roused emotion can be transformed 
 into stable and noble character only by well directed 
 and steadfast occupation. The sermon wastes its 
 energy, like escaping steam, unless it guides the 
 hearer into rational and useful labors. Exhortations 
 to goodness produce cynicism unless they lead to 
 social ministries. Piety becomes rant and hypocrisy 
 unless it immediately takes shape and body in deeds 
 of love to "the brother whom we have seen." 
 
 Women's clubs all over our country are dissatisfied 
 with programmes which look only to self-culture and 
 ignore the deprivation of the unfortunate. Those 
 who have become interested in social science are im- 
 patient of explanation, description and theory which 
 do not lead to conduct. All interest in theo- 
 retical science has begun in some practical desire to 
 attain some end to better man's estate. 
 
 This book, now passing into its second edition, 
 itself a product of the spirit it describes, has already 
 
 served in its modest place among the many forces 
 
 in
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 which make for helpfulness and justice, as letters 
 from many states testify. It is sent forth on another 
 voyage with the sincere hope that it may aid other 
 students and workers as an introduction to the 
 thought and the toil of those who count life wasted 
 which is useless. 
 
 The concrete methods here described are not imag- 
 inative inventions of the author, but ways by which 
 earnest men and women have actually achieved suc- 
 cess. No attempt has been made to produce an 
 exhaustive encyclopaedia of social reforms, but only 
 to illustrate a tendency, and encourage individual 
 workers and associations. There are excellent gar- 
 deners and farmers who are not expert botanists and 
 chemists; and there are admirable philanthropists 
 who are not sociologists. Yet botany, chemistry and 
 sociology do throw light on the working world, and 
 the practical man may constantly improve his methods 
 by the study of his field by men of science. 
 
 Many people of generous and patriotic sympathies, 
 eager to advance goodness, truth and beauty, are 
 discouraged from undertaking large enterprises and 
 cosmic schemes by their vastness, remoteness and 
 complexity. Show them a way from their own door 
 which leads straight to a task which is not beyond 
 their resources of knowledge, time and money, and 
 they cheerfully follow it to a definite duty, and 
 return to their home with satisfaction of heart and 
 conscience. 
 
 Michael Angelo's famous saying is true of the art 
 of living as of the art of sculpture: " Perfection is 
 made up of trifles, but perfection is not a trifle." 
 Little deeds of multitudes of ordinary people make 
 up the happiness and glory of a splendid nation.
 
 Preface. v 
 
 "Over all the world," says Edward Everett Hale, 
 "many a man and woman who had been talking 
 prose all their lives, and doing very commonplace 
 things, began to learn the great lessons, that it is in 
 the long run much better to talk prose than to talk 
 poetry, and that he who does commonplace things 
 well may be mastering the world." May this volume 
 be a friendly guide to many who wish to be friends of 
 human kind. 
 
 CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON. 
 The University of Chicago, April, 1901.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter fuft 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 II. HOME-MAKING AS A SOCIAL ART ... 23 
 
 III. FRIENDLY CIRCLES OF WOMEN WAGE- 
 
 EARNERS 44 
 
 IV. BETTER HOUSES FOR THE PEOPLE ... 59 
 V. PUBLIC HEALTH 72 
 
 VI. GOOD ROADS AND COMMUNICATION . . 88 
 VII. THE FIRST FACTOR OF INDUSTRIAL RE- 
 FORM : THE SOCIALIZED CITIZEN . . 100 
 VIII. WHAT GOOD EMPLOYERS ARE DOING . 117 
 IX. ORGANIZATIONS OF WAGE-EARNERS . .13*7 
 X. ECONOMIC COOPERATION OF THE COM- 
 MUNITY 159 
 
 XI. POLITICAL REFORMS 174 
 
 XII. THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN THE STATE 
 
 SCHOOL SYSTEM 191 
 
 XIII. VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF EDU- 
 
 CATION 217 
 
 XIV. SOCIALIZED BEAUTY AXD RECREATION 240 
 XV. CHARITY AND CORRECTION 260 
 
 XVI. THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN CONFLICT WITH 
 
 ANTI-SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 280 
 
 XVII. THE INSTITUTIONS OF IDEALS : THE 
 
 ANCIENT CONFEDERACY OF VIRTUE . 304 
 
 APPENDIX 331 
 
 vii
 
 THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN AMERICA. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ' ' A POOR and cowardly spirit is every servant of 
 social science who does not labor in the service of Jo 
 promoting civic life," says master Schaffle, a leader 
 of the system-makers. His English peer, the cautious 
 advocate of individual enterprise, says in his last vol- 
 ume : "It may fairly be said that the study of sociology 
 is useless if, from an account of what has been, we can- 
 not infer what is to be that there is no such thing as a 
 science of society unless its generalizations concerning 
 past days yield enlightenment to our thoughts concern- 
 ing days to come, and consequent guidance to our 
 acts." The description and explanation of past condi- 
 tions, especially of the remote past, deal with simple 
 matters of fact. But enterprises of thought and effort 
 which look toward the future must ever have a large 
 element of personal belief and hope which cannot claim 
 so absolute a scientific justification. For us the world is 
 will before it is exact knowledge, for no one can ever 
 know what is possible until the untried is attempted 
 through faith. 
 
 Religious beliefs are social facts quite apart from our ReJ . . 
 personal acceptance of them. When they are our own beliefs. 
 we cannot conceal them. Honesty and humanity re- 
 quire us to express our best hopes if we really consider 
 them of value. Most of us regard this world, spite of 
 
 9
 
 IO The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 many apparent contradictions and enigmas, as the crea- 
 tion of that Father whose character and disposition are 
 most perfectly manifested in the deeds, words, and 
 m Holy spirit sacr ifices of Jesus Christ. There is much of wrong, 
 nnivri. cruelty, oppression, of unspeakable and inexplicable 
 wickedness, but the universe has not escaped from 
 infinite goodness. Nature and life show his creative, 
 indwelling energy. History interprets his purpose and 
 his moral order. Social evolution is the unfolding of 
 his mind and will. Evil itself will be found subordinate 
 and subservient to his holiness and love. All who are 
 working for goodness are cooperating with, not con- 
 tending against, almighty power. Goethe gives us a 
 charming parable : ' ' We hear of a singular custom in 
 the English marine service. All ropes of the royal 
 navy, from the strongest to the weakest, are woven in 
 such a manner that a red thread runs through the 
 whole, which no one can unwind without destroying all; 
 and thus the smallest part may be recognized as belong- 
 ing to the crown. ' ' So the charity of God runs through 
 all the works of human justice and kindness which we 
 here call ' ' the social spirit, ' ' a fruit of the Holy Spirit. 
 Such is our belief. This is not the place for any 
 
 Origin of , , , _,, , 
 
 beliefs. attempts at proof of such convictions. They have grown 
 
 up in each of us from inherited and instinctive impulses, 
 traditional teachings, social customs and sentiments, 
 laws, literature, parental influence, historical study, phi- 
 losophical reflection. Each person must win and test 
 his own view of the universe. Force is out of the ques- 
 tion. Bare argument has little weight. Religious be- 
 liefs are purified and strengthened by ethical living more 
 than by logical processes. "He that is willing to do 
 His will shall know." Obedience to the good we know 
 is the organ of deeper insight. In the mind of religious
 
 Introduction. 1 1 
 
 men the "social spirit" is a stream from the divine 
 fountain of all being. 
 
 It is true that a social history could be written which 
 did not assume the truth of this belief. History alone 
 does not prove that infinite righteousness is at the heart 
 of life. Sociology is not theology. Social science may 
 treat religious convictions as social forces, just as it 
 treats hunger, love, or aesthetic taste, as causes actu- 
 ally at work. It is for theology and philosophy to 
 construct arguments about the reality of God's exist- 
 ence, while sociology finds the belief in divine goodness 
 a phenomenon in life and shows how it acts. Religious 
 belief, however, resembles aesthetic and moral senti- 
 ments in this, that it is most adequately appreciated by 
 those who have inward experience of its quality. One 
 born deaf could not be expected to write an edifying 
 treatise on sound, nor one born blind on colors. Ex- 
 ternal effects may be observed by any impartial student, 
 but inner quality and tension can be estimated only by 
 those who live the life. 
 
 Enthusiasm for humanity, hope of progress, con- 
 fidence in man may not profess to be religious, but they 
 really assume and imply a divine foundation of happi- 
 ness through morality. This is precisely the essence of 
 the religious view. 
 
 While our moral and religious beliefs are highly 
 personal they are by no means mere private affairs. 
 They must be tested by nature and life. If beliefs do 
 not help welfare, if they weaken human beings in body 
 or mind, if they unfit us for struggle with hunger, cold, 
 and want, they must disappear with the people who 
 cling to them. Hence the very struggle for existence 
 which presses upon us is an external test, independent 
 of our private notions and choices. A false faith can
 
 12 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 no more survive than an inferior plow or an antiquated 
 engine, after competition has had a chance to sift and 
 test. 
 
 We cannot here follow the long history of the enlarge- 
 moti"v e c nts ' ment of thought and the refinement of sentiments. 
 The moral forces are progressive and change with the 
 entire life of man. They are relatively less occupied 
 with mere escape from misery and fear; they are in- 
 creasingly directed to heightening happiness, delight, 
 service, knowledge. We are passing from a ' ' pain 
 economy " to a " pleasure economy. ' ' By reflection 
 on our own conduct and by observing the actions of 
 our fellow-men we discover the feelings which lead 
 people to produce social institutions. 
 
 The world is first moved by hunger and love. Many 
 human beings go little beyond this. Hunger and love 
 conduct men to marriage, hold parents and children in 
 the family, induce men to till and travel, to organize 
 banks, railroad companies, and all commercial enter- 
 prises. 
 
 But in all ages and lands other motives have always 
 imelts f acted upon conduct. There is delight in amusement, 
 ornament, and decoration. The play instincts unite 
 with the aesthetic. Many ancient men painted their 
 bodies before they wore clothes. Even in our enlight- 
 ened times we know of fine barbarians, lingering late in 
 civilized surroundings, who expend their income on 
 ostrich feathers while they shiver without woolen under- 
 wear. Rude hunters drew pictures on their weapons 
 and tents, and modern merchants will pay a fortune for 
 a Meissonier or a Bouguereau. The wealth of a king- 
 dom goes into a city art museum. Diamonds are 
 sought at frightful hazard and cost, although a million 
 of them would not feed one beggar. Beauty befits
 
 Introduction . 1 3 
 
 holiness, and so churches are made splendid with fine 
 architecture to please the taste as well as to honor the 
 Creator. 
 
 The eager questions of lisping children, the boy's 
 
 , J Scientific 
 
 curious search for cocoons, shells, and beetles, the long curiosity. 
 and costly experiments of Palissy and Faraday, the 
 astronomical and exploring expeditions, the erection of 
 colleges and universities, the publication of books and 
 papers, are all witnesses to the deep and universal and 
 increasing desire of man to discover, to know. Nature, 
 human beings, and the Source of life are objects of 
 intellectual interest, and many men have laid down their 
 lives as the martyrs of science. 
 
 How eager we are to be in company ! Without any 
 
 J Fellowship. 
 
 definite purpose human beings drift into fellowships and 
 enjoy the simple delights of sociability. Isolation, if it 
 is prolonged, is torture to all healthy persons ; the 
 insane are sometimes improved merely by giving them 
 companions ; and even criminals beg to sit down, if 
 only in silence, with persons of their kind. 
 
 Then there is conscience, the profound and inex- 
 tinguishable sense of the right and the just. To what 
 noble deeds does this moral feeling give birth. How 
 essential it is to social security. What institutions of 
 custom and law and instruction it creates. 
 
 Crowning all is the belief in God, the spring of trust, . 
 hope, and benevolence. Religion seems to be universal 
 and instinctive. It often takes strange and monstrous 
 forms. It may be made hurtful when it is uninstructed, 
 ignorant, and perverted by selfish men. But it is a 
 primary social force, capable of being made a mighty 
 lever of human welfare. 
 
 "Self-interest," the cynic asserts, is the sole motive 
 of human action. But what is this "self" whose
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Self-interest. 
 
 The social 
 spirit creates 
 institutions. 
 
 interest is so powerful? No two sells are alike or of 
 equal grade. One finds delight in cruelty and low 
 pleasures. Another secures satisfaction in useful serv- 
 ice, in heroic enterprise, in noble sacrifices. Such 
 forms of higher self-interest look remarkably like sym- 
 pathy, love, altruism. A self is a social product, and 
 our interests are in our children, our friends, our neigh- 
 borhood, our country, our church. It is just as well to 
 call these larger and more generous impulses by higher 
 titles. It does not assist clearness of thought to ascribe 
 selfishness to the patriotic soldier who dies with his eyes 
 turned toward his flag. 
 
 ' ' Soul is form and doth the body make. ' ' We begin 
 life, without our own selection, in the first institution 
 of history, the. family, and for a long time we are con- 
 tent without further alliances. Food, protection, com- 
 panionship, answers to questions of curiosity, play, 
 work, prayer are all found in this little world. But 
 as he travels further the boy discovers, perhaps with 
 pain, the necessity of going to school. Father and 
 mother are too busy to give their time to teaching, and 
 one learns more rapidly with trained teachers and in the 
 rivalry of a class. At school or on the street the child 
 makes acquaintances and is invited to a party. Life 
 offers fresh attractions and novelties to surprise and 
 please the voyager new to earth and sky. At length 
 the boy, urged by example and necessity, conscious of 
 growing wants, becomes himself a farmer, a manu- 
 facturer, or a merchant, or earns his living by industrial 
 service for wages. 
 
 The policeman, brilliant with brass buttons, monarch 
 of his beat, attracts attention to the dignities and 
 terrors of government and law. The office of a jus- 
 tice, the grim walls and grated windows of a jail, the
 
 Introduction. 15 
 
 solemn forms of a court, are outward signs of the state. 
 
 Once in seven days the doors of shops are closed, the 
 doors of churches are open, the bells are rung, the 
 dress is changed, the organ calls the people to sacred 
 song. The same people who yesterday were drudges, 
 toiling with grimy hands, are now worshipers. Their 
 beliefs have made a church and a Sunday, just as 
 hunger made a flour-mill or a slaughter-house. Institu- 
 tions are social clothes which grow upon us so as to fit 
 our movements and wants. 
 
 If we could trace these institutions backward, as we . 
 
 Institutions 
 
 might follow a river to its source, we should find them grow, 
 changing and growing. And if we have knowledge and 
 insight we can detect order, law, method in this growth. 
 We soon find that population grows but that the earth 
 does not stretch. There are more people in the same 
 space than formerly, and they are all hungry, they wear 
 out clothes and houses, and are always wanting better 
 things and have an ambition to get on. This condition 
 leads to foresight, invention, greater industry, more in- 
 tensive cultivation of the soil, and self-control. The 
 men of science talk of a " struggle for existence. ' ' The 
 retail shop-keeper, who is growing gray and bald with 
 worry over competition, knows what that struggle 
 means. Every one on a salary fears that some other 
 person may get his place. This word ' ' competition ' ' 
 expresses a very real and terrible fact. Dislike it as we 
 may when it pinches unusually hard, it can show some struggle. 
 good results. It makes people industrious. It helps to 
 transform savages into barbarians and barbarians into 
 civilized men. 
 
 It has been said that every man is as lazy as he 
 dares to be. One of the fathers thought that laziness 
 was the original sin, it is so common. But as nature
 
 i6 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Competition. 
 
 Customs. 
 
 sets an empty plate before the idler at life's ban- 
 quet, and gives more to the energetic and efficient 
 worker, the tendency of competition is to starve out the 
 feeble, the slow, the indolent, and to give the world and 
 its soil to the healthy, the vigorous, the cunning, the 
 inventive. Some go up as others go down, but the 
 race moves on to finer achievements. Competition 
 itself is softened and sweetened by the sympathies which 
 began in the family, extended to the family stock, and 
 finally expanded into the feeling of humanity, universal 
 philanthropy. There is a struggle for others as well 
 as for self, and our century is very rich in examples of 
 this ' ' social spirit. " As we proceed we shall come 
 upon many forms of this broad and powerful force of 
 human benevolence. " All things proceed out of this 
 same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, 
 temperance, in its different applications, just as the 
 ocean receives different names on the several shores 
 which it washes " (Emerson). 
 
 Social beliefs and feelings tend to produce customs 
 and criticism. If many people dislike a disagreeable or 
 injurious habit they are likely to show it, either by soft 
 missiles of words or hard projectiles and blows. Often 
 the blow comes first. Society has an instinct of reaction 
 against anything which hurts. Customs are very 
 strong, as we see in the case of fashions. It is very 
 painful to wear a hat or dress of last year' s style. Some 
 men suffer less from a shoe that pinches or has not been 
 paid for than from one which has a peculiar shape. 
 People look at tailors' plates of Paris modes to discover 
 how they can be happy. Yet fashion never appeals to 
 courts and jails. Custom is a governing agency stronger 
 than law. 
 
 Special sciences have grown out of the intellectual
 
 Introduction. 17 
 
 efforts of men to comprehend social life in its various 
 aspects. Industries, trades, banks, taxation, have been 
 studied together because they all have to do with those 
 goods and services which minister on the material side 
 to human wants. Carlyle speaks of the ' ' preliminary 
 item ' ' of wealth which makes high thoughts and fine 
 arts possible. The systematized knowledge of the gen- 
 eral laws of this field is called economics, or political 
 economy. The study of the forms and methods of 
 governments of townships, cities, counties, states, and 
 nations is the field of the political sciences, of which 
 there are many branches. The systematic study of the 
 church and school has produced a special literature. 
 Sociology has attempted to organize the general results 
 of these special investigations into such a complete and 
 harmonious view that the relative place and value of 
 each may be determined. 
 
 The foregoing paragraphs introduce the particular 
 subject of this book. The word "reform" is often of the social 
 applied to this subject, but it is not wide enough for our 
 purpose and it has suggestions of a different method of 
 regarding the facts. We are to study movements of 
 life and products natural to human society as grass is 
 natural in meadows. In all progressive communities 
 we find people trying to correct abuses and to increase 
 the sum of human happiness. Associated efforts of 
 this kind, if they are destructive of evil, are usually 
 called reforms. But the title "social movements" 
 seems to be m6re appropriate for the more positive 
 endeavors to augment the means of welfare. Both are 
 ways of doing good. 
 
 There are three fairly distinct types of voluntary or- 
 ganizations which embody this progressive and creative
 
 1 8 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 activity of the spirit of human kinship. Sometimes we 
 Typs. fi nc i groups of persons united by common interests, as 
 
 desire to secure material wealth, or insurance against 
 loss, or some high forms of aesthetic and recreative satis- 
 faction ; and these we call mutual benefit societies. 
 There is a second class of associations whose purpose of 
 good extends beyond their own membership to the 
 entire community ; and these are societies of public 
 spirit. The third class of societies is called charitable, 
 and they are composed of persons strong and willing to 
 bear the burdens of the weak. They devote strength 
 and help to the defective, the unfortunate, the criminal. 
 Inventions of machinery or of social schemes are 
 HOW improve- rarely the work of a single mind. Slight changes are 
 introduced unobserved by obscure persons, the im- 
 provements are copied by others, and the additions 
 grow insensibly. In other instances a seer, a person of 
 genius, discovers a social need and invents a method of 
 betterment. These men, if they are well disciplined, 
 test their discoveries by careful observation and cautious 
 experiment. They make proselytes and secure adju- 
 tants ; they inspire propagandists ; they form societies, 
 start newspapers, publish tracts, articles, and books ; 
 they encourage each other by meetings, conferences, 
 and conventions. It is a fine help if they can induce 
 some unwary enemy to egg or stone them or to put them 
 in jail. They educate the public and make the cause 
 popular, if it have vitality and worth ; and finally dema- 
 gogues and politicians of all colors trample the heels of 
 each other to secure the honor of carrying their banner. 
 Imitators beg permission to whitewash the martyrs' 
 tombs and renew the fading names of the eponyms on 
 the monuments. Thus Howard, Pestalozzi, Wichern, 
 Channing, Garrison, and other leaders of men gain
 
 Introduction. 19 
 
 ground and plant their flags on conquered territory. 
 The chief functions of voluntary associations in such 
 fonvard movements are : to investigate the subject of 
 social need, and to discover the pain and loss ; to study Functions of 
 
 J voluntary 
 
 all that has hitherto been attempted in the right direc- associations, 
 tion, and lay the experience of mankind under tribute ; 
 to encourage the pioneers ; to inform the workers ; to 
 develop plans and secure means ; to agitate and create 
 public opinion ; to send lobbies to councils and legisla- 
 tures ; to watch the administration of their measures 
 and see to it that they are not mutilated and defeated by 
 ignorance or selfishness ; to improve and guide the work 
 until it has been assimilated in the life of the community; 
 and to undertake any work not suitable for the state or 
 other stable form of society. 
 
 It is common to speak of "problems," and the word 
 expresses a fact. Where an innovation has become 
 
 ,. . Debatable 
 
 general and customary there is no dispute, there is no questions, 
 problem. Where all agree no one asks a social ques- 
 tion. The sociologist then simply describes and explains 
 a system of industry, government, or recreation as a bi- 
 ologist might describe and explain the structure and life 
 of a crab. But when a minority of the community 
 become satisfied that the majority are moving in a 
 wrong path or are moving too slowly in the right direc- 
 tion, then arises a burning social question. The aboli- 
 tion of slavery may be taken as an illustration. The 
 great majority of our people before the Civil War had 
 come to think of slavery as the " peculiar institution " 
 which properly belonged to the South, natural and suit- 
 able there as the wage system was natural and suitable 
 to the North. But a large number of earnest and gifted 
 persons felt that this system tended to poverty, to spirit- 
 ual degradation, and to injustice. These persons sought
 
 20 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Our purpose 
 an'd limits. 
 
 Nature of 
 civilization. 
 
 Variety of 
 service. 
 
 to make their view dominate the thought, the feeling, 
 and the conduct of the nation. They came into collision 
 with the interests and beliefs of the majority. This led 
 to dispute and finally to war. In the ensuing struggle 
 the views of the minority prevailed and the fittest sur- 
 vived. Slavery was no longer a problem. 
 
 These pages may be read by the electric light of 
 a city parlor or under the shaded lamp of a farmer' s iso- 
 lated home. City and farm are organic parts of a com- 
 mon country. In some places there is a surplus of 
 wants, and in others there is a surplus of resources. 
 Here let us study how to bring wants and resources to- 
 gether. One may find little here upon the duties of the 
 great. The author does not pretend to dictate policies 
 to experts in business and statecraft. And yet the 
 things here discussed are the supreme interests of 
 millions of our fellows. The national happiness depends 
 on many small satisfactions which senators at Washing- 
 ton seldom think worthy of notice. The real terminus 
 of every great railroad is a threshold. Empires find 
 their reason for being in the family circle. 
 
 Lord Russell, lord chief justice of England, said in 
 1896, before the American Bar Association : 
 
 Civilization is not a veneer ; it must penetrate to the very 
 heart and core of societies of men. Its true signs are thoughts 
 for the poor and suffering, chivalrous regard and respect for 
 woman, the frank recognition of human brotherhood, irrespect- 
 ive of race, or color, or nation, or religion, the narrowing of the 
 domain of mere force as a governing factor in the world, the 
 love of ordered freedom, abhorrence of what is mean and cruel 
 and vile, ceaseless devotion to the claims of justice. 
 
 Many ways of doing good are brought to light. The 
 reader must select from the menu the dish which agrees 
 with his taste and constitution. It is not expected that
 
 Introduction. 21 
 
 each dish will suit all. It is not probable that any 
 of these schemes will be copied exactly. But we are 
 at least dealing with facts and actual works more than 
 with castles in the air. The example of a real work 
 of goodness is a candle which casts its beams far over 
 the troubled waves of life. 
 
 It is a day of specialization and the tendency to take 
 up and develop particular branches of social service is as Specialization 
 
 .... . . in philanthropy. 
 
 necessary in philanthropy as it is in science or in busi- 
 ness. Some provision is made for this in the references 
 to special treatises which may be found in the appendix. 
 But there is also need for integration and unification. 
 Before there can be unity, harmony, and good-will 
 in philanthropy there must be a general understanding 
 of the system of special parts which make up the whole. 
 Each worker should seek to discover the relations of his 
 own little fragment with the separate fragments con- 
 nected with the life of the same community. Dr. Hale 
 says that philanthropists hate each other. It is too true, 
 but it is not necessary. The cavalry, the artillery, and 
 the infantry support each other in the evolutions of an 
 army and in the conduct of battle. So in the peaceful 
 enterprises of justice and goodness the various societies 
 are related and complementary. Such a survey as is 
 here attempted may assist active workers in limited 
 fields to appreciate the kindred labors of others ; may 
 increase the feeling of fellowship ; may lead to rational Members of 
 cooperation ; may enable those who are prone to regard 
 with suspicion if not contempt the efforts of neighbors 
 to hold them in honor and esteem. The most con- 
 spicuous sociologist among the Germans has placed on 
 the title page of both editions of his great work a quo- 
 tation from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, twelfth 
 chapter : ' ' Now there are diversities of gifts, but the
 
 22 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 same Spirit. . . The body is one and has many mem- 
 bers. ' ' This figure drawn from human physiology had 
 been used in a critical period of Roman history and is 
 employed by Shakespeare. In the New Testament 
 passage the biological analogies of diversity and unity 
 members ^ eac ^ onwar d to the sublime Psalm of Charity which fol- 
 
 lows. In the one chapter all gifts are recognized, in the 
 other all virtues and duties are traced to one root. The 
 analogy suggests an explanation and serves as an argu- 
 ment. By this better understanding wasteful methods 
 may be brought under the regulative control of enlight- 
 ened public opinion. The mob may become an army. 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfills himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
 
 Comfort thyself ; what comfort is in me ? 
 
 I have lived my life, and that which I have done 
 
 May He within himself make pure. 
 
 Tennyson.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOME-MAKING AS A SOCIAL ART. 
 
 A FAMILY in our time and land means a group of 
 persons united by the bond of near relationship. A member - 
 larger word is household, since this may include not 
 only parents and children, but also aged relatives, 
 dependent friends in the house, domestic servants, 
 boarders, and even guests. The word home means the 
 family and its residence, with a thousand objects and 
 memories which surround the word with sentiments 
 beautiful and tender. 
 
 Society grows in bulk from the additions by births to Social 
 each home. The married couple becomes a group. function8 - 
 The children must be nourished and brought up to 
 maturity by the toils and fostering care of the parents. 
 If for any reason parental duty remains neglected then 
 the neighborhood, the church, the state must supply 
 the defect ; and that means that certain persons, per- 
 haps in addition to their own duties, must carry part of 
 the duty of others. Thus we see that all society is 
 interested in the conduct and welfare of each family. If 
 the children are poorly fed and scantily clothed in 
 winter, or set to exhausting labor too early ; or if the 
 house is unhealthy ; if cleanliness is a lost art ; if food 
 gives dyspepsia instead of strength ; if fuel fails when 
 frost bites hard then society finds upon its hands a 
 heavier tax for cripples, insane, feeble-minded, and 
 paupers. 
 
 It is in the home that children learn the national
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Forms and 
 development. 
 
 Social interests 
 at stake. 
 
 language, receive their first and most enduring impres- 
 sions about industry, nature, morality, religion, their 
 country. It is in the family, if anywhere, that all 
 citizens learn the first lessons of obedience, thrift, use- 
 fulness, order, self-sacrifice, cooperation, which are 
 essential virtues in the general life of mankind, and the 
 essential preparation for the society of the heavenly 
 world. 
 
 The household has passed through many forms in the 
 past ages. Savages and barbarians have been accus- 
 tomed to modes of existence which would be intolerable 
 and immoral with us. Almost every possible experi- 
 ment has been tried with this institution in the course of 
 history polyandry, promiscuous intercourse without 
 regular marriage, polygamy, monogamy. Many of the 
 lauded recommendations of professed reformers in our 
 age are merely proposals to go back to obsolete and 
 rejected customs of lower stages of civilization. Many 
 changes may be expected in the domestic relations, but 
 the claim of the Christian form of marriage to be per- 
 manent and universal has been vindicated by the sad 
 results of all departures from that type and by the 
 consensus of the moral judgments of the most advanced 
 peoples. All modern states have sought to mold, by 
 custom, sentiment, and legislation, the form of the 
 family to correspond to the demands of the general 
 welfare. For marriage is not a mere private affair to 
 be left to individual caprice, to lawless passion, to selfish 
 individualism. There is an immense social interest at 
 stake and the community is obliged to regulate this 
 relation so as to promote the common welfare. Thus 
 the state has taken away from the father his ancient right 
 to put his son to death, from the husband his right to 
 whip his wife into obedience, and from both parents the
 
 Home- Making as a Social Art. 25 
 
 right to dispose of their property without regard to the 
 happiness of dependent members. 
 
 Each community has a rule by which it judges what is 
 conducive to the common happiness, and it insists, j?onduct ds f 
 by force if necessary, upon the observance of that rule. 
 If parents or children choose to act contrary to the 
 ordinary belief they will soon feel the stinging shafts of 
 hostile criticism ; they may be suspected, detested, 
 shunned. If they go too far in their defiance of pub- 
 lic opinion they are liable to arrest and punishment. 
 The social standard is expressed not only in state laws, 
 but also in church discipline, in maxims, and customs. 
 In communities where the Christian creed is dominant 
 the usual standard requires that every marriage should 
 be free and voluntary, without force or constraint ; that 
 no one marry under a suitable age ; that very near rela- 
 tives shall not marry ; that a man shall have but one Christian law - 
 living wife, and a wife but one living husband ; that 
 life-long fidelity shall be kept sacred ; and that divorce 
 shall be granted only for urgent and serious reasons and 
 after mature deliberation. Our usages and laws require 
 parents to fulfill the duties of support and education for 
 citizenship ; demand that children care for parents in 
 the helplessness of old age ; and exacts purity, modesty, 
 and chastity of all. These rules are by no means ex- 
 actly alike in all Christian states, and they are only too 
 frequently violated ; but the ideal of conduct is held 
 aloft, is constantly made more pure, and is enforced 
 with greater care. The present apparent relaxation of 
 morals is only an eddy in the great current of history 
 and by no means represents the spirit of the age at its 
 best. 
 
 If we seek to apply these criteria to actual conditions Defect$ 
 we discover many pathetic consequences of the lawless-
 
 a6 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 ness or the misfortunes which represent a departure 
 from the ideals. In some homes we merely notice a 
 stagnation or inferior level of refinement, intelligence, or 
 
 Domestic spiritual life ; in other instances there is positive misery. 
 
 Only those %\ho have surveyed and explored the habita- 
 tions of the poor in great cities, and who have studied 
 the oriental barbarism of luxurious vice in many fashion- 
 able circles, can conceive the misery and the cruelty, the 
 baseness and the pain, the tragic issues and the dis- 
 couraging products of family life where the finer nature 
 is corrupted by external circumstances or from inward 
 depravity. Follow the city missionary, charity visitor, 
 or sanitary policeman into the crowded flats of any large 
 city. There is insufficient breathing space ; people are 
 crowded so closely that the danger of collision and dis- 
 pute is ever present ; the entire horde may be huddled 
 together in one room men, women, children, and 
 boarders where modesty must be a stranger. Ventila- 
 tion is so defective that the lungs are ever full of noxious 
 exhalations. Many of the interior rooms are never once 
 brightened with a direct ray of light. When the last 
 basket of coal is gone the cold rushes in to give the 
 mortal stroke to human patience and hope. In the 
 summer those v, ho have toiled all day in a sweat-shop 
 lie gasping for air on the roofs or curb, or in alleys. 
 
 Think of the inadequate cooking apparatus of the 
 poor ; of the burnt and spoiled food, bought in markets 
 where no one buys unless his money is low, where 
 
 Moral meaning deception is rife, where adulteration is unchecked. Is it 
 Jre ' any great wonder that men take to alcoholic drinks 
 when such meals leave them with indefinable cravings 
 and demonic gnawings ? What furniture ! The very 
 look of it makes the soul ugly. The books, the papers, 
 are poison to the spirit. Instruments of music are un-
 
 Home-Making as a Social Art. 27 
 
 known. We are speaking of extreme cases, but the 
 pity is that there are multitudes of extreme cases in this 
 rich land. The wages of the father do not always sup- 
 port the family even when he is employed, ?nd tne pos- LOW wages, 
 sibility of being out of work hovers over him always. 
 He may be a vagabond or drunkard, but he may have 
 become all that through the vicissitudes of trade and 
 manufactures which trained him to reason like a gambler 
 and often left him in despair. It is no answer to this 
 plea that the average of wages shows prosperity. Long 
 ago Charles Dickens exposed in "Hard Times" the 
 fallacy of soothing consciences by studying tables of 
 averages. No one who has not become familiar with 
 the concrete facts of life has a right to a judgment. 
 
 Look at some of the fruits of such home life, under 
 such accursed conditions. Study the reports of factory Results of 
 
 J . . J defects in the 
 
 inspectors and labor bureaus, or visit great department dwelling. 
 stores and shops where child-labor can be used and 
 where rigid law has not counteracted the merciless 
 progress of machine industry, and you will be dis- 
 tressed to find that many children who ought ic be in 
 school are fixed in the unpitying mills of manufacture 
 and trade. Their pittance of earnings is necessary to 
 sustain the family. One may often find a child tend- 
 ing a machine while his father is seeking in vain for 
 occupation the babe the successful competitor for a 
 place against his natural supporter. That is cheap labor 
 at war with the home. Such homes turn out thieves, 
 tramps, and abandoned girls. They fill insane asylums 
 and prisons. The coroner's list of suicides is full of 
 horrors, and reveals the tragedies of our imperfect 
 industrial arrangements. 
 
 And what happens to the home when the mother is 
 compelled to work in a modern, fectory ten hours, par-
 
 28 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Mothers in 
 factories. 
 
 Temptations 
 of youth. 
 
 haps a long distance from home ? There is less of this 
 evil in America than abroad, but there is too much. 
 Most of us think that a mother needs all her time and 
 strength for young children, even when she has cook, 
 nurse, and governess. But try to imagine a mother 
 walking a mile to the shop, toiling the long day at a 
 machine speeded to the American rate, a machine that 
 never feels nerves and never shows pity. Think of her 
 coming back after dark to her children, weary, jaded, 
 fretful, desperate. Tidiness, cleanliness, happiness are 
 impossible. Existence is on the animal plane. The 
 husband has no chance to cultivate a human quality and 
 the saloon seems to him a paradise. Such men move in 
 a fatal circle : their drink habits impoverish the homes, 
 and the squalor and suffering of the home drive them to 
 the saloon. 
 
 When girls brought up in such homes seek employ- 
 ment as cooks, housemaids, nurses of children, they are 
 often found to be coarse, rude, insolent, incompetent, 
 vexatious. Why should we be surprised at this? Is it 
 not entirely natural ? The splendid mansion is made 
 miserable because it has neglected the education of the 
 poor. Society is a body whose nerves of sensation form 
 a single system, and when one member suffers all suffer 
 together. If, says one, the tooth is aching, the rest of 
 the body must stay awake all night to keep it company. 
 
 Family life is disgraced and darkened by the inde- 
 scribable and unspeakable vices which enfeeble and cor- 
 rupt youth. These same evils of licentiousness are found 
 in villages and rural communities. Young boys and girls 
 are permitted to roam the streets after school and even 
 after dark, exposed to temptation and to the influence 
 of hardened offenders. We remember an evening in a 
 Swiss village when the church bell summoned all chil-
 
 Home-Making as a Social Art. 29 
 
 dren to their homes, their prayers, and their beds at 
 nightfall. There is some hope that the same civilizing 
 curfew bell, or some substitute for it, may be heard in 
 all this great land. Rebellious, disorderly, selfish, un- Bad boys from 
 
 * ' bad homes. 
 
 disciplined children grow up to be annoyances or pests 
 of society. The Sixteenth Year-Book of the New York 
 State Reformatory gives the antecedents of the prison- 
 ers. According to the returns 2,550, or 52.6 per cent, 
 of the inmates came from homes that were positively 
 bad, and only 373, or 7.6 per cent, came from homes 
 that were positively good. In England we discover sim- 
 ilar conditions. Out of 1,085 juveniles committed to 
 reformatory schools in 1892, only 425 were living under 
 the control of both parents. All the others had only 
 one parent, or had one or both parents in prison, or 
 had been deserted by their parents altogether. (Mor- 
 rison. ) 
 
 The family cannot be absolutely self-sufficing. Each 
 group of human beings must have help of the neighbor- element. 
 hood, the church, the school, the legal organization. 
 But all the elements of a complete and happy life should 
 be found in the domestic circle. Not only should the 
 physical wants be supplied, food, clothing, shelter, and 
 comfort, but the intellectual atmosphere should be 
 charged with high thoughts and inspiring interests, and 
 the mental growth should be assisted by papers, books, 
 maps, and other instruments of knowledge. The sense 
 of beauty should be satisfied and improved by pictures, 
 music, verse. The interchange of ideas and sentiments 
 should refine and stimulate the sociable impulses, while 
 the virtue of hospitality will constantly import into the 
 sacred circle fresh materials from without. A joyful 
 obedience to the principles of common welfare should 
 shape conduct, while the religious life of home becomes
 
 3o The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 the supreme element of joy, peace, good-will, and hope. 
 Especially is it necessary in the lonely and isolated coun- 
 try home, unfortunately too common in America, that 
 all the essential elements of a complete life should be 
 provided. Patriotic piety cannot render a higher serv- 
 ice than to devise ways of enriching and elevating the 
 existence of these primary social units. 
 
 Here is the point to notice the evils of alcoholism and 
 
 kindred vices. The fight against the saloon and its 
 
 The ravages of black allies is a contest on behalf of the home and all it 
 
 intemperance 
 
 in the family. represents for civilization. Perhaps Max Nordau 1 has 
 exaggerated the symptoms of degeneration and has mis- 
 directed some of his shafts of criticism of men, books, 
 and works of art ; but he may be regarded as an impar- 
 tial witness in respect to the perils of intemperance. 
 "Morel, the great investigator of degeneracy, traces 
 this chiefly to poisoning. A race which is regularly 
 addicted, even without excess, to narcotics and stimu- 
 lants, in any form (such as fermented alcoholic drinks, 
 tobacco, opium, hashish, arsenic), which partakes of 
 tainted foods (bread made of bad corn), which absorbs 
 organic poisons (marsh fever, syphilis, tuberculosis, goi- 
 tre), begets degenerate descendants who, if they remain 
 exposed to the same influences, rapidly descend to the 
 lowest degrees of degeneracy, to idiocy, to dwarfishness, 
 
 Other causes of , , _ , ., , . - . 
 
 degeneration, etc. Other causes contribute to the production of in- 
 ferior, feeble, idiotic, and insane persons : as the crowded 
 life of cities ; rapid movement of travel ; jars and noises ; 
 multiplication of impressions ; keen competition ; haste 
 to be rich ; uncertainty of employment ; hunger for sen- 
 sational pleasures. But the poisonous drinks and drugs 
 which are consumed by modern peoples destroy vitality, 
 arouse and stimulate the selfish passions, let loose the 
 
 i " Degeneration," page 34. Morel, " Trait6 des De'ge'nerescences."
 
 Home- Making as a Social Art. 31 
 
 dangerous beasts that make their lair in every human 
 being, and turn home into purgatory. 
 
 The culmination and publication of domestic failure is 
 divorce. It is the advertisement of family misery, and Divorc 
 lifts the curtain which hides individual wrong-doing. 
 There are acts worse than divorce itself, fearful as are its 
 social disgrace and consequences. Selfishness, unkind- 
 ness, impurity, and brutality are the deep disease of 
 which divorce is the symptom. Such evils exist where 
 divorce is almost unknown. We cannot judge abso- 
 lutely of the morality of a people by statistics of decrees 
 of separation. At a later point we shall notice the social 
 movement to counteract the tendency to divorce. But, 
 after all, the family must defend itself. All that makes 
 the homes of our country pure, happy, contented, relig- 
 ious, is a preventive measure against divorce. The 
 best remedies are prophylactic, those which keep the 
 peril not only at arm's length, but entirely out of sight, 
 hearing, and thought. 
 
 Our quest for ways of doing good begins where life 
 
 Amelioration. 
 
 and charity begin at home. Each human being starts 
 out in life with hungry cries for nourishment. We may 
 set down in our survey improved methods of housekeep- 
 ing. Since most of the income of the family usually 
 comes from social service of bread-winners we may 
 defer the discussion of better wages to a subsequent 
 chapter. The original meaning of economics was the 
 law of the house, and we here return to that primitive 
 idea. In the country it is possible to produce upon the 
 premises much of the food and fuel for home consump- 
 tion. In cities almost nothing is produced, save articles 
 of household use for immediate consumption. Spinning, 
 weaving, tanning skins, manufacture of clothing, prep- 
 aration of flour, building of houses, making of harness
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Household 
 accounts. 
 
 Instruction 
 in cooking. 
 
 and vehicles, of implements and utensils, are carried on 
 in great factories provided with powerful and efficient 
 machinery. 
 
 When once the goods are ready for consumption the 
 economic activity of the household begins. In many 
 parts of Germany thrifty housewives have long had the 
 laudable custom of keeping accounts of receipts and 
 expenditures. There are many advantages in this cus- 
 tom. It fosters thrift, makes possible a wiser distribu- 
 tion of resources, enables social students to make 
 accurate statistical calculations as to real wages, the 
 cost of living, and the actual effects of our industrial 
 system on the people. The Le Play societies in France 
 have been collecting such information for many years 
 and such studies should be prosecuted in this country. 
 (See appendix.) 
 
 Bread is the staff of life, and bread sustains us all the 
 better if it is well cooked and is accompanied by other 
 foods and condiments. A newsboy in a mission meeting 
 joined in the Lord's Prayer until they came to the peti- 
 tion, "Give us this day our daily bread," and then 
 broke in with the irreverent gloss, ' ' and butter on it. ' ' 
 Only a very poor boy would have thought of adding 
 that phrase, even in mirth, since most of us take our 
 dainties as a matter of course. Cooking is a fine art 
 where the food is fine. Ignorance does much damage 
 in the kitchen and in the stomach. Where the mother 
 is an artist she can instruct her daughters. Church 
 sewing circles and ordinary visiting calls are schools of 
 housekeepers. Talk about recipes for nice dishes is not 
 gossip ; it is professional discussion. We may speak of 
 household art and science as a branch of education when 
 we come to consider improvements of our schools. 
 
 The great industry is crowding out the small industry.
 
 Home- Making as a Social Art. 33 
 
 Consolidation has so many advantages that it is adopted 
 everywhere. Little shoe shops yield to huge factories. 
 Small stores succumb to vast department magazines. 
 We must not think that the industry of housekeeping 
 will escape this universal tendency. In crowded cities 
 even millionaires seldom have a front yard. The mag- 
 nates of Fifth Avenue, New York, build their palaces up 
 to the sidewalk. The occupants of a solid block of flats 
 are numbered by the hundreds. Clothing and utensils 
 are already bought in the market. Food supplies are 
 not heaped up in the cellar, for there is no cellar to a 
 flat. And now the tendency is to form a partnership of Cooperative 
 
 ..... ... . . . housekeeping 
 
 families in a common kitchen, sometimes with a common >n cities, 
 table. Many families rent rooms and take their meals 
 at restaurants. But this is felt to be objectionable 
 because it disturbs family privacy and introduces alien 
 elements. It is not agreeable to chastise a youngster 
 before all the neighbors, and the youngster has the wit 
 to take advantake of parental reluctance. There are 
 good reasons for the movement to build a large number 
 of dwellings about a common kitchen, with a common 
 heating apparatus and janitor service, while the family 
 itself is able to retain its own living rooms separate from 
 all others. Experiments have been tried with this plan, 
 and the difficulty of securing and retaining competent 
 cooks has hastened the change. But the traditions and 
 sentiments of the ages are not easily and quickly 
 broken, and the advantages of privacy ought not to 
 be surrendered so long as it is possible to avoid the sac- 
 rifice. There is room for invention and experiment in 
 this field for architects as well as for associations and 
 corporations. 
 
 Next to food our clothing is a necessity of existence. 
 Suitable dress is a necessity of a beautiful life. Rich r
 
 34 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Care of the 
 domicile. 
 
 Homes of 
 luxury. 
 
 people may be able to afford waste, but hard-working 
 men ought not to be compelled to lose the results of toil 
 in expenditures on ill-fitting and shoddy garments. The 
 wife of a mechanic who has been taught in girlhood 
 to sew and mend and darn is able to multiply the pur- 
 chasing power of her husband's wages. Philanthropy 
 has found a field in the schools for teaching women how 
 to make the most of their materials of dress. 
 
 To the mother is intrusted the domicile. She needs 
 to be a sanitary engineer. She ought to be taught 
 what the microscope has revealed in the realm of bacte- 
 riology. She ought to know the mysteries of actinism, 
 the physiological value of oxygen, the significance of 
 smells, the perils of decay, the lurking dangers of pipes 
 and sewers. Every modern science contributes to the 
 health and happiness of home, but only those who have 
 eyes opened by instruction are able to see. In dark 
 and unclean homes diphtheria and typhus, scourges of 
 filth, often take their rise, and thence they spread to 
 afflict the refined and the rich and instruct us all in 
 social solidarity. Fevers begin where ignorance permits 
 accumulation of decaying matter, and strong workmen 
 are reduced to weakness, poverty, and despair. Milk 
 and water, necessaries of life, are the media of deadly 
 germs, unless science has made itself literally at home 
 with the housemother. And who shall teach the 
 mothers? We shall see. 
 
 It is a mistake to imagine that houses of poverty are 
 the only fields which require the inspiring, cleansing, 
 and renovating energies of the social spirit. Social 
 progress ought to begin with those who have the wealth 
 to command the finest privileges. Dr. Male's inventive 
 genius has suggested that we need a society for giving 
 occupation to the rich. We may add that many of the
 
 Home-Making as a Social Art. 35 
 
 busiest people are not busy with work that is socially 
 useful. Idleness, extravagance, waste, anti-social de- 
 struction of wealth, coarse and insolent parade, and 
 barbaric ostentation are sins of luxury. Under the 
 powerful law of social imitation these hurtful habits are 
 carried outward in widening circles and copied by those 
 whose narrow means make extravagance ruinous. Os- 
 tentation arouses envy, exasperates class feeling, in- 
 creases bitterness of contrasts, and imperils order. In 
 delightful contrast with the absurd and coarse conduct 
 of the new rich is the elegant simplicity of those who 
 have grown within as their wealth increased without ; 
 who know how to use their means under the severe laws 
 of refined taste, and how to socialize their expenditure 
 by providing public grounds, galleries, libraries, means 
 of recreation and culture. 
 
 We are not making a plea for a return to the simplic- 
 ity of the savage with his objectionable costume and his Meaning of 
 miserable hut. There is a wise and economical expendi- 
 ture which actually enriches the owner and helps him to 
 multiply the joys of others. If it cost a million dollars a 
 year to support a Shakespeare or a Beethoven it would 
 be a low price for the product. Unfortunately many of 
 the people who spend the most money on themselves do 
 not belong in the same rank with those worthies. Plain 
 living, high thinking, and generous recognition of the 
 democracy are natural companions. Money honestly 
 earned and carefully spent for real and wholesome satis- 
 factions is not wasted. Those who have the widest 
 range of rational pleasures are best fitted to diffuse light 
 and hope about them. 
 
 Octavia Hill, whose eminent services in a life devoted 
 
 Octavla Hill. 
 
 to the poor give her words the weight of gold, says : 
 Much has been written of late on the subject of sisterhoods
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Consecration of 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 The smile cure. 
 
 and of " homes," where those who wish to devote themselves to 
 the services of the poor can live together, consecrating their 
 whole life to the work. I must here express my conviction 
 that we want very much more influence that emanates not from 
 a "home," but from homes. One looks with reverence on the 
 devotion of those who, leaving domestic life, are ready to sac- 
 rifice all in the cause of the poor, and give up time, health, and 
 strength in the effort to diminish the great mass of sin and sor- 
 row that is in the world. I have seen faces shining like St. 
 Stephen's with sight of heaven beyond the pain and sin. I have 
 seen shoulders bent as St. Christopher's might have been 
 better in angels' sight than upright ones. I have seen hair 
 turned gray by sorrow shared with others. And before such 
 one bends with reverence. 
 
 But I am sure we ought to desire to have as workers joyful, 
 strong, many-sided natures ; and that the poor, tenderly as they 
 may cling to those who, as it were, cast in their lots amongst 
 them, are better for the bright visits of those who are strong, 
 happy, and sympathetic. 
 
 "Send me," said one day a poor woman, who did not even 
 know the visitor's name, "the lady with the sweet smile and 
 the bright golden hair." 
 
 The work among the poor is, in short, better done by those who 
 do less of it, or rather, who gain strength and brightness in other 
 ways. I hope for a return to the old fellowship between rich and 
 poor ; to a solemn sense of relationship; to quiet life side by side; 
 to men and women coming out from bright, good, simple homes, 
 to see, teach, and learn from the poor ; returning to gather fresh 
 strength from home-warmth and love, and seeing in their own 
 homes something of the spirit which should pervade all. 
 
 I believe that educated people would come forward if once 
 they saw how they could be really useful, and without neglect- 
 ing nearer claims. Let us reflect that hundreds of workers are 
 wanted ; that if they are to preserve their vigor they must not 
 be overworked ; and that each of us who might help, and holds 
 back, not only leaves work undone, but injures to a certain 
 extent the work of others. Let each of us not attempt too 
 much, but take some one little bit of work, and, doing it 
 simply, thoroughly, and lovingly, wait patiently for the gradual 
 spread of good, and leave professional workers to deal for the 
 present with the great mass of evil around.
 
 Home-Making as a Social Art. 37 
 
 We make our houses and they turn upon us the 
 image of our own taste and permanently fix it in 4- sthetic 
 
 element in 
 
 our very nature. Our works and our surroundings the house, 
 corrupt or refine our souls. The dwelling, the walls, 
 the windows, the roof, the furniture, the pictures, the 
 ornaments, the dress, the fence or hedge all act con- 
 stantly upon the imagination and determine its contents. 
 If a family realizes this truth it will seek to beautify the 
 objects which are silently and unceasingly writing their 
 nature upon the man within the breast. When the 
 families of a community give no heed to this truth there 
 is missionary ground. 
 
 Let us imagine a progressive woman in a village 
 or town where the houses are bare, untidy, and ugly. 
 What can she do to communicate her higher ideals ? 
 First of all she can create about her, with the wisest 
 economy of available resources, a home which shall 
 serve as a model. Then she can invite some of her discussion*" 
 neighbors to sit with her occasionally while all discuss 
 the art of making beautiful homes. One such woman 
 saw in the homes of her acquaintance who had abundant 
 means but defective taste that many incongruous and 
 unsuitable objects were tolerated. Gaudy chromos dis- 
 figured the walls of rooms which were in other respects 
 well furnished. A cotton table cover came close to silk 
 plush. Unbearable flames of tissue paper flowers were 
 set in a fine vase. She was determined to remove them 
 without direct and offensive criticism. Thus a circle 
 was formed where each lady contributed a beautiful Ait^ociety % .' c 
 piece of work and all studied and discussed papers and 
 technical journals which taught the art of decorating 
 homes. An artistic tea closed the meetings. Many 
 homes were improved in appearance. 
 
 Every county fair might furnish a school of artistic
 
 38 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 arrangement of the household, from kitchen to parlor. 
 
 County fain,. Furniture dealers from cities would be willing to send 
 artists to present a model of desirable interiors. Archi- 
 tects would supply plans and views of charming homes. 
 But the managers must be very careful in selecting 
 the tradesmen who are to make the exhibit and the 
 judges who are to assign the awards. At this point it 
 would be wise to secure the advice of teachers of art in 
 responsible schools. 
 
 The domestic miseries which reach their climax in 
 
 The intellectual wrangling and divorce are often due to the narrow, 
 meager, starved, sterile mental life of the family. The 
 house is a mere place to sleep and eat. The attractions 
 of literature, history, and science are not an organic part 
 of the bond. Our subsequent studies will constitute 
 helpful suggestions, and here we may point out the 
 occasion for some method of turning the rich cur- 
 rents of the higher life in the direction of family 
 interests. Thousands of women spend much time 
 in the kitchen. Occasionally they can sit down to wait 
 or rest. Why should there not be at hand a little shelf 
 with a few good books, so that the domestic or the busy 
 mother might have just a minute with a poet or essayist, 
 and so fill the drudgery of the day with the breath 
 of a noble world ? 
 
 There are some things which only women ought 
 to say. Therefore on one aspect of home life we may 
 introduce a lady who will tell us about ' ' The Unsocial 
 Club of Women." 1 
 
 Did you ever hear of the Society of Unsocial Women ? In this 
 club a group of women who have tasted social life until it 
 has palled upon them have agreed to be glad they have a home 
 to stay in, and to stay there and be contented. The members 
 
 i By Louise Marltschefl'el, in The Ladies' Home Journal.
 
 Home-Making as a Social Art. 39 
 
 of the club believe that people can be friends and yet not 
 be perpetually together. They believe that man, the bread- 
 winner and wage-earner of the house (if he is), has rights, and 
 of these is the right to be comfortable, to have some things as 
 he wants them, some things cooked to his taste, a comfortable 
 lounge or chair in a favorite corner, his bed by the east 
 window, if he likes it thus, his coffee hot on winter morn- 
 ings, the house quiet when he is weary and worried and sleeps 
 lightly. This is one of the cardinal beliefs of the Club of Un- 
 social Women. The members do not often go visiting, and 
 actually enjoy their homes. Friend knows that friend is true, 
 so she is not fussy about such trifles as visits ; but sickness 
 or sorrow brings her promptly. 
 
 The members of the Unsocial Club used to have endless and 
 unwieldy calling lists. All of this living for the outside they burned, 
 now eschew as unworthy their time and strength. There was 
 once a fashionable woman who said she only kept up a lengthy 
 calling list so that she would be assured of a large funeral. 
 The women of the Unsocial Club don't care whether they have 
 large funerals or not ; in fact, they are so entirely well informed 
 and an fait that they know large funerals to be considered the 
 prerogative of genius or of the parvenu. Not that all of their 
 time is spent in the home, for they know they must get into the 
 world a little, lest they lose all sympathy with other than their 
 own immediate interests. 
 
 But going is not the emphasis. They read, keep themselves 
 apace with the movements of the world, are agreeable com- 
 panions to their husbands, by whom they are valued as treas- 
 ures most rare, and sometimes travel, visit art galleries and 
 libraries when opportunity offers, read to the sick, invent 
 amusement for the children, and enjoy other pleasures accord- 
 ing to their individual tastes. 
 
 The members of the Unsocial Club believe that heartsease 
 only comes when social ambitions have ceased, and they know Heartsease, 
 from experience and observation that the woman who has 
 social ambitions finds never peace on earth, by night or day ; 
 that she stoops to petty, unwomanly acts to achieve that which 
 she loathes when once attained. And so they voted all this 
 as unworthy. It is not necessary to add that the members 
 of the Unsocial Club forego the alleged pleasure of gossip. 
 
 Charming club. You would know the members were serene,
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 to see their faces. They know the right relations of things, and 
 every one of them believes that the art of homekeeping is pro- 
 fession enough, unless necessity casts woman out upon her own 
 industrial resources, in w'lich case they believe she must go 
 bravely forth. 
 
 The need for such an unsocial club is set forth by 
 Mrs. Grubb, another woman, Mrs. Wiggin, in her picture of Mrs. 
 Grubb. This lady, Mrs. Grubb, had a chart on her wall 
 to remind herself of her engagements with a long list of 
 societies, in which the society of three children left in her 
 charge was not included. Her expansive but somewhat 
 shallow mind spread over the subjects of temperance, 
 single tax, cremation, abolition of war, vegetarianism, 
 hypnotism, dress reform, social purity, theosophy, relig- 
 ious liberty, and emancipation of women. 
 
 Her residence appeared to be a perfect hot-bed of world- 
 saving ideas, and was surrounded by such a halo of spots that 
 it would have struck the unregenerate observer as an undesir- 
 able place in which to live, unless he wished to be broken daily 
 on the rack of social progress. Her family circle was not a 
 circle at all, it was a polygon. It was four ones, not one four. 
 The fertility of her mind was such that it put forth new expla- 
 nations of the universe every day, like a strawberry plant that 
 devotes itself so exclusively to runners that it has little vigor left 
 for producing fruits. She had soft brown eyes, eyes that never 
 saw practical duties straight in front of them liquid, star- 
 gazing, vison-seeing eyes, that could never be focused on any 
 near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove. Individuals 
 never interested her ; she cared for nothing but humanity. Her 
 body might occasionally be in her home, but her soul was 
 always in a hired hall. 
 
 There was, of course, no unanimity of belief running through 
 ciue W ' thOUta a " tnese dubs, classes, circles, societies, orders, leagues, chap- 
 ters, and unions ; but there was one bond of aversion, and that 
 was domestic service of any kind. That no woman could de- 
 velop or soar properly, and cook, scrub, sweep, dust, wash 
 dishes, mend, or take care of babies at the same time to 
 defend this proposition they would cheerfully have gone to the
 
 Home- Making as a Social Art. 41 
 
 stake. They were willing to concede all these sordid tasks as 
 an honorable department of woman's work, but each wanted 
 them to be done by some other woman. Neither had she any 
 sane and healthy interest in good works of any kind ; she 
 simply had a sort of philanthropic hysteria, and her most suc- 
 cessful speeches were so many spasms. 
 
 Granting that this is caricature, we have excellent 
 feminine authority for fearing that it is caricature which Broken lives. 
 comes dangerously near an occasional portrait. The 
 truth is that both men and women of a certain tempera- 
 ment are overborne by craving for notoriety and pub- 
 licity, and spend their distracted lives in fragmentary 
 talk and work which have no mastery of any subject as 
 a basis. This charlatanism can be corrected only by cre- 
 ating a public sentiment absolutely intolerant of sham 
 reformers who begin to make speeches before they have 
 studied the matter in hand. Reformers must be taught 
 that no individual is responsible for every good cause 
 and that there must be a division of labor in philan- 
 thropy as in scientific research and in business or indus- 
 try. If all could learn that certain persons are fitted by 
 natural and acquired gifts for leadership in definite and 
 restricted lines, and that the duty of others is apprecia- 
 tion and assistance, we should have much less waste of 
 effort and more steady and assured progress. 
 
 The only "leisure class" in America are well-to-do 
 women. Men are usually too busy to deal with social 
 service at first hand. They pay in their checks and buy 
 out of responsibility. They ought to have some small 
 credit, however, for what their wives and daughters 
 accomplish. It is a sign and proof of a savage plane of 
 non-culture when the men loaf and smoke while the 
 women build the huts and hoe the maize. It is an 
 evidence of civilization when men sizzle in summer
 
 The Social Spirit in America, 
 
 Religion in 
 the Home. 
 
 The Mother 
 Union. 
 
 offices while their wives and daughters are off at the 
 seashore resting and recuperating after charity balls and 
 reform committees, world without end. 
 
 Why not have a sanctuary all the year round and 
 dwell in the house of the Lord forever? The public 
 temple is indispensable, but first the home. Schools 
 supported by public money cannot teach religion. That 
 is pretty well settled for vis by our historical condition. 
 This leaves the field and the responsibility for domestic 
 religion. It is upon this point that religious people 
 ought to concentrate associated effort during the next 
 generation. The Sunday-school system is fairly rooted 
 and has already produced magnificent results. But that 
 great institution has definite limits. There are some 
 signs that parents have come to depend on Sunday- 
 school teachers to perform a duty which can never be 
 delegated. This is a sore evil. When the holy flame 
 expires at the altar of home it is likely to be dim every- 
 where. The old family worship, which Burns has so 
 beautifully praised, must be revived. 
 
 As a hint of what may be done let us cite the English 
 society called "The Mothers' Union." 1 It was formed 
 in 1876 in the Winchester diocese. Its objects are to 
 uphold the sanctity of marriage ; to awaken in mothers 
 a sense of their great responsibility as mothers in the 
 training of their boys and girls ; to organize in every 
 place a band of mothers who will unite in prayer, and 
 seek by their own example to lead their families in purity 
 and holiness of life. Mothers of all classes and ranks 
 have joined this union. A card is given each mother, 
 on which is a prayer for her daily use. Rules are 
 printed on the card and definite ideas of the purpose are 
 thus kept before their minds. They agree to bring up 
 
 i "Woman's Mission," page 68.
 
 Home- Making as a Social Art. 43 
 
 their children in habits of obedience, truth, purity, and 
 self-control ; to watch over their conversation, compan- 
 ionships, and amusements ; to be careful as to the liter- 
 ature placed in their hands, the books and newspapers The ideal 
 
 of mothers. 
 
 they read ; and to inculcate temperance. The union has 
 two organs which have a wide circulation. The society 
 is worked by a diocesan organizing committee, and they 
 have a central fund for the circulation of information and 
 the printing of annual reports. Here is a hint for 
 mothers. But have the fathers no duty?
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRIENDLY CIRCLES OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 THE question of the relation of the family to external 
 associations has many sides. It is obvious that the craze 
 New problems, for organizing something has frequently driven good 
 people to excesses. And yet there is a proper place for 
 associated effort. In earlier days our grandmothers pre- 
 pared the food, clothing, soap, and candles in the house. 
 But steam-power and machinery have drawn into the 
 factory many of those industries in which women were 
 formerly engaged. Consider some of the results of this 
 change. Girls and women have simply followed their 
 natural employments to the places where they could use 
 effective machines which are too costly for private houses 
 and too heavy for hand or foot-power. They seek 
 employment in huge spinning-mills, seed warehouses, 
 tobacco factories, tailor shops, canning factories, cheese 
 factories, print works, bicycle establishments, millinery 
 houses. 
 
 The goods thus made must be sold, transported, dis- 
 tributed. This cannot be done at home, and so we have 
 a growing army of girls and women in offices, stores, 
 and mills, employed in almost all kinds of trades and 
 professions. They are separated from their families, 
 work under uncongenial conditions, and have new dan- 
 gers to confront. On the whole, they have, as Mr. C. D. 
 Wright's inquiry showed, proved themselves superior to 
 the demoralizing temptations of their surroundings. The 
 fact that crime increases among women as they engage 
 
 44 
 
 Industrial 
 situation of 
 women.
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage-Earners. 45 
 
 in industry was to be expected. But that tendency will 
 not dominate the movement to give women a larger 
 opportunity. Perhaps most of these women and girls 
 live at their own homes or in private families. But many 
 of them have no home at any time and all feel the absence 
 of family surroundings during the hours of public toil. It 
 would be the height of folly and injustice to throw the 
 least obstacle in the way of women who wish to earn an 
 honorable and independent living. Rather should we 
 assist them to make the best of their difficult position. 
 At the best the peril and the suffering are very great. It 
 was to meet some of the difficulties of this situation that 
 clubs for wage-earning women were formed, sometimes 
 by the working women themselves, sometimes by their 
 friends who had good-will, wealth, power, and leisure. 
 
 It is evident that variety of method is demanded by 
 the variety of conditions. In some situations the girls 
 and working women are too much isolated from each The method 
 other, or too little accustomed to initiative, to under- pat 
 take organization without help from others. In city 
 life there are many thousands who have no certain 
 dwelling-place, form few permanent ties, and require 
 temporary homes until they can safely make other 
 adjustments for themselves. Very young girls have no 
 experience with organization and do not know how to 
 cooperate. Under such conditions the service of women 
 of leisure is indispensable, although it ought to aim at 
 making the girls self-supporting and self-governing as 
 far as possible and as quickly as possible. 
 
 The Young Woman's Christian Association is an or- 
 ganization whose branches are spreading over Christen- TheY.w. c. A. 
 dom. The local society is often founded and supported 
 by women of means who see the trials and perils of their 
 homeless sisters and desire to surround them with relig-
 
 46 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 A homeless 
 girl. 
 
 Boarding- 
 houses. 
 
 Noon rest. 
 
 ious influences and aids of the higher life. Young 
 women in factories, offices, and stores, weary of the din 
 and dirt and toil of the daily battle for bread, need a safe 
 lodging-place at night and on Sunday. Or even if they 
 dwell with parents, a cozy clean room, where lunch 
 may be spread and warm drinks provided at noon near 
 the place of work, is welcome and good. Health may 
 be prolonged and energy restored by a quiet hour. 
 Recreations and entertainments in the common resi- 
 dence or in a special hall add brightness and attraction 
 to life and prevent that deadly emptiness and vague 
 craving for excitement which only too often lure to 
 ruin. Classes are formed for teaching languages, music, 
 and the arts, by which earning power may be increased 
 and the spiritual life enriched. All these outward 
 appliances furnish a medium through which the per- 
 vasive influence of kind matrons may be felt. 
 
 The boarding-house of a city is not seldom a dreary 
 place, furnishing room and meals as a mere business 
 transaction without any of those elements of companion- 
 ship which make up our idea of home. Many young 
 women are too much scattered over the city to form any 
 permanent union for cooperation, and strangers coming 
 to a city ignorant of the perils which beset the unwary 
 and innocent, are in danger of making a fatal choice of 
 lodgings. In railroad stations in American cities a 
 woman may find notices directing her to some such 
 home, Catholic, Protestant, or other. The Young 
 Woman's Christian Association, with its permanent 
 board of lady managers, offers advantages which are not 
 otherwise furnished and it meets a real social need.. 
 
 Groups of King's Daughters or other circles of Chris- 
 tian girls have found a beautiful opportunity in pro- 
 viding rooms for noon rest in the center of a busy town
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage-Earners. 47 
 
 where thousands of young women are employed. It 
 does not require much capital or machinery. A room Fellowsh 'P- 
 is rented in a convenient locality. This place is pro- 
 vided with lavatory, tables, furniture for rest, and is 
 made dainty and beautiful with decorations and pictures. 
 Some of the young ladies in turn are present to receive 
 their friends, converse, read, sing, play, and in various 
 ways make the hour cheerful. Acquaintance with the 
 girls furnishes a medium of helping them in a hundred 
 ways. As soon as possible the girls should form a club 
 and make it as nearly self-supporting and self-governing 
 as can be. This is one way by which the unhappy 
 divisions of society may be crossed by human kindness. 
 
 "Poor little ' Marm Lisa,' as the neighbors called 
 her. She had all the sorrows and cares of maternity 
 with none of its compensating joys " (Mrs. Wiggin). The Little 
 ' ' Marm Lisa " is a type of thousands in these days when Association, 
 the mother must go abroad to earn a living and the old- 
 est daughter, herself needing a mother's care, must bend 
 her young frame and untaught mind to the severest and 
 most exacting tasks of child-care and culture. Good 
 women have seen this social call and have endeavored in 
 various ways to divide the burden of the little mothers. 
 The establishment of a creche, or day nursery, is one 
 method, and this involves the employment of a hired 
 nurse for the task. In other places young women who 
 had no money to give but could offer a certain amount 
 of time and work have devised ways of gathering the 
 little mothers into a room, helping them with the in- 
 fants, and have taken advantage of the meeting to im- 
 part such useful knowledge and training as the poor 
 girls require. 
 
 An English institution of wide range of usefulness, 
 called the Girls' Friendly Society, has found its way
 
 48 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The Girls' 
 
 Friendly 
 
 Society. 
 
 Protective 
 agencies. 
 
 into the United States. It is a guild for mutual aid 
 rather than for charity, although it is managed by 
 women of leisure. The main features are thus stated 
 by Miss Edith Sellers in " Woman's Mission " : 
 
 The society was founded in 1875 by Mrs. Townsend, for the 
 purpose of uniting in one great fellowship women and girls 
 of all ranks. The associates are as a rule ladies of culture ; the 
 members are of all sorts, from trained teachers to workhouse 
 helps ; for the only condition the society imposes on those who 
 join it is that they shall be of good character and be striving to 
 do their work in life honestly. Each associate undertakes 
 to help a certain number of members by all the means in her 
 power, but especially by treating them as her personal friends. 
 The members in their turn are bound to act as friends to each 
 other. . . . England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the 
 colonies, America, and North Central Europe, have each a 
 separate, autonomous society, the only connecting link amongst 
 them being the Central Council in London. . . . The Eng- 
 lish society stands in close relations to the Established Church, 
 of which it is a powerful auxiliary. . . . The secretaries of 
 all the branches in a diocese form a diocesan council ; the 
 presidents of the diocesan councils, together with the colonial 
 and foreign presidents, the heads of departments, and ten 
 elected members, form the Central Council. 
 
 The work is divided into ten departments. Each 
 of these departments has a special task, as : caring 
 for the interests of educated persons, factory girls, 
 domestic servants, workhouse girls, free registries, 
 lodges, recreation rooms, emigration, schools and 
 homes for industrial training, cheap and wholesome 
 literature, and charge of members when they are ill. 
 
 The people of our country intend to make public law 
 minister to the most humble citizen. But this intention 
 is often thwarted through the cruelty and coarseness 
 of base men. There is a field, especially in cities, 
 for a society whose mission it is to secure legal protec- 
 tion for friendless women and helpless children. These
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage-Earners. 49 
 
 societies are supported by voluntary contributions of in- 
 terested friends. They employ a firm of lawyers for 
 presenting cases in court and giving legal advice. 
 ' ' There is a constantly increasing tendency toward the 
 quiet and thoughtful adjustment of difficulties. The ad- 
 visory features are considered the most helpful and 
 hopeful indications." Through this agency money 
 withheld by dishonest employers is secured ; the com- 
 plaints of wives against cruel husbands are investigated ; 
 men guilty of criminal assault are prosecuted ; chattel 
 mortgage usurers are brought to reasonable terms ; 
 seducers are compelled to assist their victims ; sewing- 
 machine frauds are brought to light and punishment ; 
 and in general the forsaken and desperate are made 
 to feel that the powers that be are on their side in 
 the contest with misery and neglect. One poor mother, 
 left by a worthless husband to care for five small chil- 
 dren, was helped until she could support herself in 
 a comfortable house; and she gratefully said: "It's 
 you folks did it, putting heart in me so often when 
 I could not go on alone." 
 
 The founders of another useful association have thus The consum 
 stated their object : ers> Lea s" e - 
 
 Recogni/ing the fact that the majority of employers are virtu- 
 ally helpless to improve conditions as to hours and wages, un- 
 less sustained by public opinion, by law, and by the action 
 of consumers, the Consumers' League declares its object to be 
 to ameliorate the condition of the women and children em- 
 ployed in the retail mercantile houses of New York City, 
 by patronizing, so far as practicable, only such houses as 
 approach in their conditions to the standard of a fair house, 
 as adopted by the league, and by other methods. 
 
 By a " fair house" they mean one in which equal pay 
 is given for work of equal value, irrespective of sex. In 
 the departments where women only are employed the
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 A "fair house.' 1 
 
 A ju*t boycott. 
 
 minimum wages should be six dollars per week for 
 experienced adult workers, and should fall in few in- 
 stances below eight dollars. Wages are paid by the 
 week. Fines, if imposed, are paid into a fund for 
 the benefit of the employees. The minimum wages for 
 cash girls are two dollars per week. The hours are 
 from 8 a. m. to 6 p. m. , with three quarters of an hour 
 for lunch, and a general half-holiday is given on one day 
 of each week during at least two summer months. A 
 vacation of not less than one week is given with pay 
 during the summer season. All over-time is compen- 
 sated. The rooms are so arranged that work, lunch, 
 and retiring rooms are apart from each other and 
 conform to the sanitary ordinances. Seats are provided 
 and their use is permitted. Humane and considerate 
 behavior toward* employees is the rule. Fidelity and 
 length of service meet with due consideration. No 
 children under fourteen years of age are employed. 
 
 This league investigates retail establishments, learns 
 whether they conform to the minimum standards just 
 outlined, and then publishes a "White List" which 
 recommends the more humane houses to public patron- 
 age. It is practically a form of boycott without objection- 
 able features. The tendency is to bring all salesrooms 
 under the rules which secure humane treatment of em- 
 ployees. There seems to be no doubt that these women 
 and girls need such protection. They are usually timid 
 and unaccustomed to associated action ; they are young 
 and therefore without the wisdom and experience which 
 would enable them to act on their own behalf ; if they 
 sink down under their burden their places are easily filled 
 from a throng of eager and hungry applicants ; competi- 
 tion to them means death or degradation unless they 
 have the help of others. Dr. W. S. Rainsford tells of a
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage- Earners. 51 
 
 girl who for ten days before Christmas worked until 
 10:30 every night of the week and from 9 a. m. to 
 5 p. m. on Sunday. No food was provided while she 
 endured this strain. Her wages were four dollars per 
 week. When she got home on Christmas Eve she 
 fainted from exhaustion. 
 
 Shoppers are advised to shop during reasonable 
 hours, in the morning if possible ; and to avoid Satur- Advice to 
 
 shoppers. 
 
 day afternoon, so as to build up a custom favorable to a 
 half-holiday. Holiday purchases should be made early, 
 so as to diminish the strain on employees. Customers 
 can help the girls by inquiring if seats are provided and 
 used, and by treating them with patience and considera- 
 tion. On the other hand, the saleswomen must help 
 themselves. They cannot be simply carried by out- 
 siders. Reforms are always based on improved charac- 
 ter and are fruitless without that inner quality. ' ' Our 
 efforts to secure for all the women and girls who work 
 in retail shops in this city the same conditions which 
 exist in the shops on the ' White List ' of the Consum- 
 ers' League are hampered by the fact that the service is 
 often better in the shops which are not on the ' White 
 List.' The saleswomen in the shop which of all others 
 in New York gives its employees the greatest number of 
 privileges have been so notoriously rude in their treat- 
 ment of the public that ladies have given that reason for 
 not patronizing it, and thus a very strong moral as well 
 as business argument can be made in favor of fines and 
 severity of discipline." 
 
 The name of Miss Grace H. Dodge is identified with 
 a movement which deserves particular study, as it seems ('* Girl * 
 to have a genuine root in the life of European and 
 American peoples. Enlargement of economic oppor- 
 tunity has brought with it a new sense of independence
 
 5 2 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Classes of 
 
 working 
 
 women. 
 
 Method of 
 organization. 
 
 and personal responsibility. Fewer women expect or 
 desire to be in absolute subjection as a condition of sup- 
 port. Women who have caught the spirit of the new 
 era despise charity as a source of living, and they are 
 sensitively suspicious of anything which has a taint of 
 pauperism. They are willing to work long hours at 
 hard work, and with miserably inadequate wages, in 
 order to maintain their self-respect and keep ' ' the 
 glorious privilege of being independent." They are 
 drawn together by the fact of a common calling, and 
 this not only gives them a feeling of sympathy for each 
 other but it creates class distinctions which are as keenly 
 felt as those which fill the circles of the upper ' ' four 
 hundred" with envy, spite, and all uncharitableness. 
 The seamy side of solidarity is exclusiveness. As in- 
 dustrial association has brought them together, without 
 regard to denominational lines, any method of combin- 
 ing them must scrupulously and delicately keep to what 
 is common and avoid the discussion of controversial 
 matters. For these reasons there is a field for organi- 
 zation quite different from that of the Young Woman's 
 Christian Association and the Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union. This field is occupied by the Working 
 Girls' Societies, whose methods may be illustrated by 
 the following suggestions. 
 
 Any one who is interested, whether wage-worker or 
 woman of leisure, may make the beginning. It is pru- 
 dent to start with young women, since the work is 
 chiefly for girls. The earlier meetings for consultation 
 should be held in one of the homes of the girls or in 
 some secular place which will not give offense to de- 
 nominational prejudices. One of the first steps will be 
 to raise about $150 for furnishing the club rooms and 
 paying rent for the first month. This money may be
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage-Earners. 53 
 
 borrowed and gradually repaid from the dues. About 
 two hundred girls of various occupations should be in- 
 vited to the first meeting for organization, and if a 
 sufficient number respond the constitution and rules Constitution, 
 may be discussed and adopted. Forms may be pro- 
 cured from the Association of Working Girls' Societies 
 in New York or from some particular society, and these 
 forms should be ready for the first meeting. 
 
 The officers elected should include working women 
 and women of leisure, and these officers may constitute 
 a council or executive committee for administration. But 
 all important matters should be brought before the entire 
 association for discussion and decision. The committee 
 on rooms is asked to look out a quiet place on a retired 
 street where rents are not excessively high. The com- 
 mittee on furnishing should be assisted by all the mem- 
 bers in making the rooms beautiful. It is very desirable 
 to have a piano, and this can be rented. When the 
 rooms are ready an opening reception should be held, 
 and at this time explanations should be carefully made 
 to the newspapers and to the neighboring clergy, so as 
 to prevent all misunderstandings. Up to the time of 
 the reception publicity should be avoided. Very early 
 in its history the club will provide for class instruction. 
 It is stated that in a large city the expenses are about 
 $40 to $50 per month : rent, $25 ; coal, $j. ; i;as. 53 ; 
 cleaning, $4 ; piano, $4. The fees for expenses are 
 about twenty to twenty-five cents per month. 
 
 " Volunteer teachers, books for the library, even 
 money, when unsolicited, may, by vote of the club, be independence, 
 accepted with pleasure unmixed with the dread of pat- 
 ronage." Public educational and art institutions, open 
 to jH, may be used. But these clubs ought not to 
 solicit help nor in any way become dependent on out-
 
 54 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 aiders. Self-government and self-support are insep- 
 arable. The members seek to secure higher wages and 
 claim a fair reward for their industry, and they wish to 
 pay for all which they enjoy. The fundamental princi- 
 ples of their organizations are cooperation, self-support, 
 self-government. 
 
 From reports of the clubs we discover the range of 
 
 ac*hntif their activities and advantages. They employ a woman 
 
 physician, who is paid out of the funds. Teachers are 
 paid from special fees for instruction in dressmaking, 
 sewing, embroidery, fancy work, crocheting, knitting, 
 cooking, millinery, bookkeeping, and various English 
 studies. A library with reading-room is provided and 
 aesthetic culture is promoted by pictures, photographs, 
 musical entertainments, and readings. "Practical 
 talks" have formed an important part of the work 
 from the beginning. They are not lectures, but just 
 what their name implies ; and, as the rooms are not 
 large, the greatest freedom of conversation is enjoyed. 
 Certain common interests are set forward by various 
 devices of thrift and cooperation. The club room be- 
 comes a station for the Penny Provident Fund and is 
 thus connected with a savings bank. A mutual benefit 
 fund is sometimes started, which is a protection when 
 work is slack, when sickness or other misfortune befalls. 
 An employment bureau for the members mobilizes 
 their industrial force. During the summer the club is 
 able to secure very inexpensive outings in the country 
 for girls on vacation. A Domestic Circle, composed of 
 
 Domestic young married women, is formed, and has contributed 
 
 to the preparation of young mothers for the important 
 duties of motherhood and housekeeping. An inner 
 band called the Three P's Circle (from their motto, 
 "Purity, Perseverance, Pleasantness"), develops more
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage-Earners. 55 
 
 earnest womanhood and devises ways of making homes 
 more bright and pleasant. Classes are formed to learn 
 the art of "first aid to the injured." Lectures on health 
 and on legal relations give the girls a more accurate 
 notion of the conditions of physical well-being and of 
 their social environment. 
 
 While the members dread to receive they find it 
 truly blessed to give. There is but a single step from 
 mutual benefit to disinterested kindness. "We have 
 such a good time, what can we do for others ? ' ' That 
 is the note of a woman's voice. So we naturally find 
 the clubs of self-reliant girls forming Lend a Hand Benevolent 
 
 work 
 
 Clubs and visiting committees for the sick. The 
 members arrange to go to hospitals and to carry to sick 
 children fancy scrap-books, full of pictures, to make 
 dull days tolerable. They supply beef tea, flowers, 
 fresh eggs to the sick poor. These gracious, delicate, 
 personal ministries do not appear in the lists of rich 
 contributors to institutional charity, but there is One 
 who sees. 
 
 The Working Women's Social Club, of New York, is 
 
 Working 
 
 an illustration of the cooperative method of providing a 
 home for unmarried women. Any woman engaged in 
 household service may become a member. The plan 
 includes the establishment of a home where women of 
 this calling may find board and comfortable surround- 
 ings when unemployed or in need of rest, and the estab- 
 lishment of a training school for the instruction of women 
 in household work. By the payment of small regular 
 dues provision is made for care in case of sickness or 
 lack of employment. The wages of women engaged in 
 domestic employment are usually sufficient to provide 
 moderate fees for this kind of sick insurance. It renders 
 it unnecessary for them to go to a charity ward of a hos-
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Bible Class 
 
 Clubs. 
 
 The 
 
 "Jane Club." 
 
 Influence of 
 clubs. 
 
 pital when they are too ill to work. By the payment of 
 a small sum each month into a common treasury, and 
 by making a contract with hospitals, the right to board, 
 nursing, and medical attendance can be enjoyed without 
 a thought of dependence or humiliation. Such an 
 arrangement can be made where a large Bible class 
 of working women is connected with a church. There 
 is no better proof of the weakness of selfishness and the 
 power of cooperation than the success of these plans of 
 mutual help. 
 
 The "Jane Club," one of the fruits of the Hull House, 
 Chicago, may serve to illustrate another method of 
 cooperative housekeeping for homeless women. Any 
 self-supporting unmarried woman, or widow without 
 dependent children, between the ages of eighteen and 
 forty-five, who is of good moral character, is eligible for 
 membership. Members who attain the age of forty-five 
 and who have previously belonged to the club are not 
 affected by this provision. The home provided is very 
 attractive, and all the members share benefits, expenses, 
 and losses. 
 
 It is easy to see that such associations may be abused. 
 But the general and normal tendency must be to fit girls 
 for domestic life. In these clubs girls learn all the arts 
 which make women more useful in the household. They 
 learn to cut and fit dresses ; to prepare food daintily, and 
 to set a table so that it will have a refining influence ; 
 they learn the structure and functions of the body and 
 the laws of hygiene, the principles of modesty, purity, 
 and dignity, and the way to that higher self which is 
 awakened by consciousness of the help of the Divine 
 Father. The practical talks and the class instruction 
 assist the formation of womanly character and secure 
 adaptation to domestic life.
 
 Friendly Circles of Women Wage-Earners, 57 
 
 Miss Grace H. Dodge is a competent witness : 
 
 A live working club is felt in many directions, and homes, 
 factories, shops, neighborhoods, towns, and villages should 
 feel the good of the organization. 
 
 One aim of the first society was that by association together, 
 wives, mothers, and home-makers should be developed, that 
 the tone of womanhood should be raised, and earnest lives 
 developed in girls who, perhaps, without bright, helpful associ- 
 ation would have been content to remain in narrow circles of 
 selfishness or frivolity. This desire has been realized, and 
 many homes have been created or made beautiful by club 
 members. Dozens of girls have had hidden talent cultivated, 
 and have shown by brave, true living and working what the 
 society has done for them. This is a possibility in every club, 
 and the officers must see that the importance of the home life 
 and the beauty of earnest living are recognized, and that the 
 influence of bright womanhood is appreciated. , 
 
 A society opens fields of usefulness for many young women 
 of greater or less culture, leisure, and education, and those 
 many, who are busy during the day but who have talent and 
 brains, are needed to help the girls who have not the same 
 natural advantages. 
 
 It is impossible to separate that part of social service 
 which belongs to women and to distinguish their specific 
 share. The unit of the nation is the home and there 
 the mother is queen by divine right. This century 
 of the purest literature would not be so pure or so rich if 
 the contributions of women were omitted. The public 
 school system is in the hands of women, and the same 
 thing is largely true of the Sunday-school. In charities 
 and churches, in missions to the heathen at home and 
 abroad, American women have a high place and com- 
 manding influence. All professions, trades, and arts are union of 
 open to them and occupied by them with honor, 
 Therefore in all our succeeding chapters we shall be 
 studying woman's work, ^even when the fact is not 
 specifically stated. And this union of service is highly
 
 58 The Social Spirit in America. ' 
 
 desirable. Julia Ward Howe's name gives high sanction. 
 
 to the thought : ' ' Every enlargement of freedom brings 
 
 with it an extension of moral responsibility. . . . To 
 
 Freedom brings see t h e best men move in sympathy and harmony with 
 
 responsibility. * ' 
 
 the best women, and to see both linked together by zeal 
 
 and service to all ranks of their fellow creatures, this is 
 
 what my heart desires, this is what American men and 
 
 women owe to their country. ' ' And Marion Harland : 
 
 { " Woman should by now have ceased to be a specialty. 
 
 \ There should be no need of ' movements ' in her behalf, 
 
 \ and agitations for her advancement and development 
 
 \ apart from the general good. ' '
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BETTER HOUSES FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 THE external system which serves society affects 
 human character and happiness very closely at many 
 points. The places in which we dwell and work, the 
 paths by which we walk, the means of transport and 
 communication, are all related to each other and to 
 community welfare. 
 
 Our study of the family has shown us the meaning 
 of the social movements to secure more suitable external 
 accommodations, especially in the crowded and con- Dwellings. 
 gested centers of population. In the open country 
 a man may build almost any kind of a house without 
 much danger to his neighbors. But in large towns 
 a private dwelling is not a mere private interest. If the 
 house is too high it casts upon all neighbors a depressing 
 and unwholesome shadow. Brightness is turned into 
 gloom. If one builds a chimney so that it develops 
 cracks the entire block is in danger of conflagration. If 
 the air is foul in one dwelling of a tenement it may 
 poison twenty families who live under the same roof. 
 The single family is helpless without associated action. 
 Frequently the better people of a whole district lack the 
 knowledge, courage, or power to defend themselves 
 from filth, disorder, and demoralizing influences of bold 
 and shameless characters. They are sometimes crowded 
 into quarters for which they pay high rentals but which 
 do not furnish decent accommodations for the develop- 
 ment of worthy human qualities. Take some examples
 
 6o 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Examples of 
 "how not 
 to do it." 
 
 Death-rate. 
 
 from reports of inspectors of a certain city, and remem- 
 ber that many of these houses are owned by highly 
 respectable and even eminent landlords. 
 
 No. . One-story frame house, built on rear of lot, below 
 grade; two feet lower than alley. Poorly ventilated. Dark 
 and damp. Ceiling low. Floor on ground. Three feet of 
 refuse, consisting of dead dogs, cats, and other matter piled 
 against west side of house. No. . Two-story frame house, 
 occupied by two families. First floor store, three living rooms, 
 and stable. Thin boards between kitchen and stable. Two 
 horses in stable. Kitchen door opens into stable. Horses not 
 *wo feet from kitchen door. Stable not clean and foul odor from 
 same. House unfit for human habitation. No. . Plumbing 
 and drains in bad condition. Yard filled with rubbish. Filthy 
 and foul-smelling vault in rear. No. . Building in last stages 
 of decay, floors rotten, walls open to the air, ceiling broken. 
 no water or sewer connections, corners filled with decaying 
 rubbish. Character of the whole place beggars description. 
 No. . On an alley ; formerly a stable, or shed for horses ; 
 four feet below grade. Floors and wall damp ; no sewer con- 
 nections. Corners filled with decaying rubbish. In this eight 
 people stay. Two are sick children. No. . Small house, 
 low ceilings, no ventilation, below grade, vaults uncleaned, no 
 sewer connection, stable adjoining where apples, bananas, and 
 vegetables in various stages of preservation are kept. In these 
 premises ten Greeks, two horses, and one goat all live in 
 a confused mass with the fruit to be sold in the streets. No. . 
 Similar vile conditions. Eight Greeks live here with their 
 fruit. From this place last winter a case of diphtheria was 
 taken. At that time a horse was stabled in the same room 
 with the men. 
 
 A volume of such descriptions might be copied here. 
 It is well known that the death-rate in such quarters 
 is much higher than in the parts of the city where order 
 and cleanliness are maintained. 
 
 In New York City, in a population of 255,033 per- 
 sons, only 306 had access to a bathroom in the houses 
 in which they lived. In the old, dilapidated, filth-
 
 Better Houses for the People. 61 
 
 soaked, dark, unventilated buildings the death-rate 
 
 among children under five years of age ran up to 254.4 
 
 in a thousand, while under wholesome conditions it 
 
 might be reduced to thirty in a thousand. Christendom 
 
 still shudders when it reads of Herod's "slaughter of innocents. 
 
 the innocents," but that butchery was insignificant in 
 
 proportions when compared with the murderous effects 
 
 of city tenement life. The general death-rate for such a 
 
 crowded quarter is 61.97, while that of the city at large 
 
 is only 20.03. 
 
 Why do these people not leave such miserable 
 houses? The question betrays the ignorance of the 
 questioner in respect to the income of such people and 
 the possibility of securing better accommodations for 
 what they are able to pay. Why do not the landlords 
 put the houses into a sanitary condition? Perhaps 
 they are non-residents and leave the collection of rents 
 to hired agents who think of commissions and not of 
 the interests of the occupants. Perhaps the landlord 
 would not make a change which cost him much even Neglect, 
 if he had gone with the inspectors. Perhaps the owner 
 is himself an ignorant immigrant or native who is 
 "saving" a fortune and, seeing that a dirty house 
 brings as much rent as a healthy house, compels his 
 tenant to help him in his scheme of thrift. Perhaps it is 
 because the alderman from that ward is so busy seeking 
 booty and boodle from giving away franchises that he 
 cannot find time, even if he had the knowledge, to pro- 
 tect his fellow-citizens from the ravages of greed and 
 pestilence. It is well said that before we can disinfect 
 our tenements and alleys we must disinfect our city 
 councils. Moral character and external conditions of 
 health are in reciprocal relations, they act and react 
 upon each other as causes.
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Investigation. 
 
 Landlord 
 
 miuionarle*. 
 
 This social misery has been felt in all civilized lands 
 since the rise of modern sanitary science made dull resig- 
 nation to disease a crime, and since the beginning of the 
 rapid growth of large towns under the pressure of 
 machine industry. The problem has been studied by 
 highly competent engineers, statisticians, accountants, 
 municipal administrators, physicians, philanthropists, 
 and business men. Vigorous efforts have been put forth 
 to provide adequate housing for the poor of cities ; but 
 there is still room for the heroic virtues of citizenship in 
 this field. Let us see what can be done. 
 
 First of all, we must study local conditions and place 
 the results of investigation before the public. Light is 
 a very effective moral disinfectant. Information about 
 abuses is often the only remedy that is required. 
 Owners of houses which are unfit for human habitation 
 become very sensitive to public criticism when the 
 publications are confined strictly to facts set forth by 
 photographs and measurements and descriptions by eye 
 witnesses. Landlords may sometimes be persuaded to 
 correct the conditions which increase disease without 
 the penalty of publicity. For such investigation a 
 course in bacteriology, chemistry, sanitary science, and 
 microscopy is an excellent preparation ; but any ex- 
 perienced housekeeper equipped with a tape measure, 
 with normal standards of propriety, and with a healthy 
 olfactory organ, can soon detect enough causes of 
 pestilence to supply nightmares for a whole ward. 
 People who tolerate such abuses have no right to sleep 
 soundly of nights until they have tried to remedy the 
 wrong. 
 
 Octavia Hill's noble name is connected with a move- 
 ment of great and increasing significance. With the 
 help of John Ruskin she secured control of some houses
 
 Better Houses for the People. 63 
 
 whose inhabitants had an unsavory record for untidiness 
 and other unneighborly qualities. Without any pre- 
 tense of philanthropy she went among them as a rent col- 
 lector. One of her first principles was to require prompt 
 payment of rent. This established natural business re- phi 
 lations between her and the customers. The power to 
 eject a disobedient tenant was in the background of her 
 friendly counsels of perfection ; but she soon proved 
 that it would not often be necessary to employ this legal 
 coercion. She found ways of rewarding those who took 
 superior care of her property, and hope was a more reli- 
 able motive than fear. The heedless and awkward were 
 obliged to wait for improvements and conveniences 
 which their more skilful and tidy neighbors enjoyed 
 first. Thus she transformed the houses and the people 
 at the same time. 
 
 This method of social service has been taken up in 
 the United States. One philanthropic lady of leisure 
 and wealth who was looking about for a career worthy 
 of her station and opportunities found it in collecting 
 rents in the tenements owned by her husband. After a 
 time she reported that she had lost some interest in phi- 
 lanthropy but had increased the interest on her invest- 
 ment. It is no reflection on a mode of philanthropy 
 that it turns out to be wise economy and brings five per 
 cent. Indeed a great idea never becomes catching till it 
 shows well in a trial balance. 
 
 One form of this rent-collecting; plan (tried in Cincin- 
 
 An example. 
 
 nati by Mr. C. G. Fairchild) deserves more particular 
 notice. In this instance the philanthropist in disguise of 
 a hard-hearted collector went to live in the same house 
 with the people. He was not regarded by them as an 
 outsider but as a sort of chief janitor or caretaker of the 
 building. His family, whose culture was of the highest
 
 64 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 order, went with him and aided materially in the task of 
 renovation. On this point he says : 
 
 In this discussion drop out of mind the thought of sacrifices. 
 Amodel rent Life in the tenements of our cities can be just as wholesome 
 physically and with more of a tonic morally even for our chil- 
 dren than in the more sensuous and sheltered suburbs. . . . 
 The scope of our activity is bounded by the one thought : how 
 can we in the long run promote the value of this property. 
 This may seem narrow and mercenary, but as a matter of fact 
 it has brought us in helpful contact with nearly every branch of 
 the city government and the main charitable organizations 
 of the city. It has brought us into exigencies of individual and 
 family life where ... we were called to exercise the most 
 delicate and accurate judgment touching the most complex and 
 important questions of character and human welfare. 
 
 This gentleman took a house which had a bad reputa- 
 tion. Charity visitors dreaded to go there. 
 
 The place was lonely, the house forbidding, the halls cold 
 and cave-like, the reputation was of the worst, and the next 
 streets poured in their disorderly elements. 
 
 He took possession of this property with very little 
 improvement by the owners. 
 
 This living upon the premises is the most vital thing con- 
 nected with the whole work. We found some good people, 
 standards. people who merit and receive our admiration and our love. 
 Here is a woman, the mother often children born in rapid suc- 
 cession, who has carried and is still carrying the burden of her 
 drinking and inefficient, not to say lazy, husband ; who is 
 working all night at a restaurant, half the hours at washing 
 dishes and the other half at scrubbing floors, for fifty cents 
 a night and a basket of broken victuals. In times past chari- 
 table hands have helped her, but as her children have grown to 
 help this aid has ceased and she pays her rent promptly and 
 preserves a wholesome family life. ... In a little home of 
 two rooms once or twice a week we would find the kitchen 
 floor spotlessly clean, though it was the living room and sleep- 
 ing room of four small children. One day in praising the
 
 Better Houses for the People, 65 
 
 appearance of the portion of the outside hall which it fell 
 to this family to care for the father pointed to a little girl 
 of eight who had done this work. 
 
 Other aspects of the problem were more discouraging. 
 Some of the people were guilty of carousing and making 
 disturbance. Neighbors or strangers would sometimes 
 fill the streets with confusion. But a firm and intelligent 
 use of the legal authority of a landlord brought order 
 and quiet in place of chaos and conflict. The necessity 
 of protecting one's own family gives such a worker a Absenteeism, 
 moral force which could never be gained by a casual 
 visitor or pastor. This is a form of service which cannot 
 be delegated. Many rent collectors have made utter 
 failure of the method because they let it out to contract 
 while they went to Europe or to a seaside resort. 
 
 Miss Clare Graff enried says : 
 
 The chief cause of bad conditions in manufacturing towns, 
 more visible in them than in large cities, is absenteeism. The 
 manufacturer of to-day seldom lives at the central source of in- 
 dustry from which he draws his wealth. He lives away from it, 
 and when he does that the model industrial settlements do not 
 grow up. ... I was talking lately with a Connecticut 
 manufacturer who has surrounded himself with conditions that 
 are almost ideal. I could not help praising him for many 
 things he had done. There was practically no poverty there. 
 " Why," he said, " do you suppose I should do all this if I did 
 not live here myself? " 
 
 The problem of housing the people is closely con- 
 nected with that of cheap and convenient transit from 
 center to circumference. With the increased provision home's a " 
 of rapid and cheap electric trains it will be possible for 
 many to live in little homes of their own far from the 
 congested regions. This will have a tendency to lower 
 rents and improve condi^ons at the center. Where the 
 hours of labor are very long, or where they are irregular
 
 66 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Towns made 
 to order. 
 
 Pullman. 
 
 and include much night work, or where the wages arc 
 excessively low and uncertain, the wage-earner cannot 
 go any distance. Thus one reform waits on another 
 and all must be carried forward at the same time. 
 
 In some instances important manufacturing establish- 
 ments have been placed near a water-power or on lands 
 selected on account of nearness to a great commercial 
 city. The famous town of Pullman is a conspicuous 
 illustration. There is a town where the contaminating 
 influences which curse a city are kept at a distance. 
 Beautiful buildings and grounds, model workshops, 
 charming lodge rooms, library, reading-room, church, 
 theater, playgrounds, flower beds, ornamental shade 
 trees, hotel, are all so arranged as to present a satis- 
 factory vista at every step and to bring elevating agen- 
 cies near to all. This is not the place to analyze the 
 economic basis of the plan or to follow out the effects of 
 the industrial contracts. Unquestionably a generous 
 public spirit and a high appreciation of the aesthetic 
 values in industry have been a part of the inspiration of 
 this enterprise. Much as we may dislike centralized 
 control, it is difficult to see how such results could be 
 accomplished without a design of superior intelligence 
 carried out by a single executive will. In time a way 
 may be found to reconcile these advantages with a plan 
 of industry which agrees with the democratic tendency 
 of our age. But that will be when democracy itself has 
 improved both in taste and cooperative spirit far beyond 
 anything yet known. Meantime capitalistic leadership 
 has shown the way to build a town where nothing gives 
 serious offense to the eye. 
 
 Modern manufacturers are already beginning to dis- 
 cover advantages in assisting their employees to secure 
 nomes of their own, while themselves shaping the plan
 
 Better Houses for the People. 67 
 
 of the town as a whole with a view to health, conve- 
 nience, and beauty. Associations of wage-earners have 
 succeeded in building small homes at greatly reduced 
 cost, and the future will certainly bring forth many more 
 such enterprises. But after making ample provision in 
 such schemes for well-paid mechanics, clerks, and sales- 
 men, there remains a multitude of people whose low 
 wages and uncertain occupation render the purchase of 
 homes an unrealizable dream. They will remain renters. 
 They must be near their task. They cannot command 
 capital or credit. 
 
 It is not enough to prosecute recreant landlords and 
 
 _, Private build- 
 
 eject poor people from untidy houses. They must have ing companies. 
 
 a place of shelter. It has been found that stock com- 
 panies can build excellent tenements, entirely suitable 
 for human habitation, rent them at a rate which com- 
 petes with the miserable dens now offered to the poor, 
 and still return a moderate interest on the investment, 
 the property being good security for the capital. 
 
 The City and Suburban Homes Company of New . 
 York has begun its work under such favorable aus- E J*" l P leof 
 
 a building 
 
 pices, with such competent leadership, and with such association, 
 complete assimilation of the world's experience, that we 
 may venture to give its essential features particular 
 notice. It has a capital stock of $1,000,000, assured 
 by the purchases of wealthy men, but open to the 
 public in shares of ten dollars each. It offers interest at 
 five per cent, the surplus over that being reserved for 
 extending operations. This company will facilitate 
 proprietorship among the better paid members of the 
 wage-earning population. To this end it will purchase 
 areas of land where good transit facilities are afforded. 
 The intending purchaser can have some voice in select- 
 ing the style of his home, as plans of small houses
 
 68 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 costing from $1,000 to $2,000 will be offered for choice. 
 Twenty or thirty houses will be built at one time, so 
 that the purchaser can reap the advantages of coopera- 
 tive methods. The client will pay down ten per cent of 
 the purchase price of the house and lot, with option of 
 either a ten, fifteen, or twenty years' period in which to 
 repay the remainder in monthly installments. These 
 monthly payments will also cover the cost of a life 
 insurance policy. All this will cost purchasers little 
 more than rentals in the city. 
 
 This company also turns to the congested districts 
 
 For rent. w ith plans of building model apartment houses for 
 
 wage-earners who cannot escape from the city and 
 cannot command capital for the purchase of homes of 
 their own. The plans for these houses have been made 
 by architects who have become experts in this branch of 
 their art. Every room will be open to air and light. 
 Every apartment will have its private water closets, 
 laundry tubs, etc. No bedroom will have less than 70 
 square feet of floor area and the smallest living room 
 will have 144 square feet. Laundries, steam drying- 
 rooms, baths, gas stoves, and other conveniences will 
 be supplied. For the same rentals now paid in slum 
 dwellings which are infested with vermin, foul with 
 disease, dark and noisome, a poor family can secure 
 twenty-five to thirty per cent more room. It is not 
 supposed that a few corporations can supply the over- 
 whelming needs of a metropolis ; but by the influence of 
 competition and example they hope to compel other 
 landlords to come up toward their standard. 
 
 Voluntary associations of private citizens have not 
 
 Municipal the power to do all that needs to be done for the 
 housing of the poor. We must invoke the help of 
 legislature and city government before we can overtake
 
 Better Houses for the People. 69 
 
 the need. Such is the bad power of ignorance, selfish- 
 ness, and greed that the community must use its 
 supreme authority in order to protect community 
 interests. Enlightened self-interest has not been found 
 in experience an adequate motive. If the public is 
 defended it must arm and rule its own troops. Every Public seif- 
 
 * , * protection. 
 
 city must frame and enforce ordinances which require 
 builders to submit their plans to public engineers and 
 sanitarians for approval in advance. These building 
 regulations must prescribe minutely and specifically the 
 qualifications of plumbers, the cubic feet of space for 
 rooms, the height of ceiling, the window space for 
 admission of light, the number of stories, the quality of 
 materials in walls and roof, the method of ventilation, 
 the amount of space which may be covered by the 
 house and the amount which must DC left free, the kind 
 and position of drain pipes, the fire escapes, the thick- 
 ness and materials and structure of chimneys, and every 
 other condition of health and safety. The ordinances 
 of the larger cities contain in themselves a sanitary code 
 which all citizens should study. 
 
 At the risk of being regarded utterly visionary we 
 may venture to suggest that the future American will 
 not live as our contemporaries live, in isolated dwellings. 
 It is not good for families nor for men to dwell alone. 
 In our cities people hurt each other by crowding ; in the 
 country they wither and pine in solitude. When the 
 rich merchant can get out of his office he flies from the 
 noisy throng as from a plague, and when it is possible he 
 buys a summer residence in the country. The city en- 
 feebles vitality and dwarfs child life. Its fret and bustle 
 file away the nerves. In rural regions the opposite evils 
 are seen. Our great system of individual landownership 
 has some disadvantages. Aside from the fact that farm-
 
 7O The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 ing has become a competitive art in which large capital 
 and unusual qualities of administrative ability are de- 
 manded, there are other considerations which point to 
 
 ownership some other system of ownership and control which will 
 secure higher degrees of cooperation, a wiser use of 
 materials and machinery, and more genial arrangement 
 for residence in groups. Ultimately that method will 
 prevail which most nearly corresponds to the economic 
 interest of the nation, but a transition may be rendered 
 more easy and pleasant if the situation is more thor- 
 oughly understood and if a tendency to sociability is 
 fostered in sentiment and action. 
 
 After all, the suggestion here made is not at all with- 
 out precedents in experience. In Europe the tillers of 
 the soil generally live in villages around schools and 
 churches. But in America the family lives in a vast and 
 unbroken silence. There are too few opportunities for 
 reciprocal services and intellectual interchange. Medi- 
 cal care and nursing are too difficult to obtain in extrem- 
 ity and emergency. Common interests are discovered 
 
 Beginnings too slowly and the farmers are defrauded by those who 
 
 made. . J 
 
 are in a position to respond more quickly to the swift 
 changes in the commercial world. No doubt many diffi- 
 culties are in the way of an adoption of the European 
 custom. But there are already instances of the success- 
 ful application of the ancient method in this country. 
 As men set higher value on social joys; as they outgrow 
 the extreme individualism which made our pioneers so 
 brave and hardy but also so rude ; as the refined pleas- 
 ures of music, literature, and science come to be more 
 valued, we may hope to see the village increa?': and the 
 isolated and lonely farmhouse become more rare. When 
 that movement has made progress would it not be pos- 
 sible to secure better fire protection and so reduce the
 
 Better Houses for the People. 71 
 
 risks and cost of insurance? Would it not be possible to 
 have graded schools where now the country teacher is 
 made head of a pedagogical menagerie ? Would it not Real sociability, 
 be reasonable to expect that many of the best youth 
 would have a warmer attachment to the wholesome life 
 of the country and not be drained off in excessive num- 
 bers to swell the army of miserable people who worry 
 through life in the narrow quarters of crowded cities ?
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Social cost 
 of disease. 
 
 War less 
 destructive 
 than disease. 
 
 PUBLIC HEALTH. 
 
 EVERY adult citizen represents a large expenditure 
 for his rearing and education. A witty friend says that 
 it requires twenty years and two thousand dollars to 
 transfer the center of gravity from the stomach to the 
 brain. The expense is borne chiefly by the parents and 
 by the community ; a long investment before appreci- 
 able dividends are returned by the individual. The 
 death of a strong man is the loss of all that he has cost. 
 His sickness is a serious injury to the productive forces 
 of the community ; it disarranges the order of business 
 and hinders the action of his associates. 
 
 In Boston, in 1892, the average loss of time for sick- 
 ness was twenty-four days in the year ; in Berkshire 
 fourteen days ; in Massachusetts at large the average 
 was seventeen days. The estimated loss from sickness 
 among wage-earners was $15,000,000, and for the 
 whole population $40,000,000. Much of this loss was 
 preventable by good sanitation ; perhaps $3,190,916 for 
 the working people, which is equivalent to the interest 
 on $50,000,000. The state could well afford to spend a 
 good deal of money on means of limiting this waste of 
 life. 
 
 Preventable diseases cause more loss of life than war 
 with all its horrors. England, in twenty-two years of 
 continuous war, lost 79,700 lives ; in one year of 
 cholera she lost 144,860 lives. It is said that for every 
 human being dying twenty fall sick, and every case of 
 
 72
 
 Public Health. 73 
 
 sickness is equal, on the average, to a loss of 550. 
 Some years ago over one fourth of the deaths in England 
 were from preventable diseases. Sanitary improve- 
 ments reduced the typhoid rate in twelve small towns 
 47 J/3 per cent. Two hundred years ago the death-rate 
 in London was eighty in one thousand ; now it is 21^, 
 in spite of greater crowding. A comparison of the 
 statistics of 1861-70 with those of 1871-80 shows that 
 deaths from phthisis decreased 359 per million. These 
 figures give hope and they condemn neglect as criminal. 
 
 4 ' Mr. Wadly described as a stout, robust gentle- 
 man could not understand all the fuss made nowadays 
 about the water question. Mr. Cooper cut the knot. 
 He said that sin had brought disease into the world, 
 and the Almighty permitted the outbreak of diarrhoea 
 in their midst ; neither doctors nor any one else could 
 prevent it. Mr. Cooper is not far wrong. Sin has 
 much -to do with diarrhoea, especially municipal sin, 
 which permits a population to drink sewage, and then 
 coolly satisfies itself with referring the judgment to the 
 Almighty." (Quoted by Mr. Waring.) Mr. Cooper 
 was wide of the truth in saying that the doctors could 
 not prevent such diseases; for the doctors have made 
 great advance in spite of bad theology, gross igno- 
 rance, and immoral politics. 
 
 The economic value of good customs may be felt in 
 this way. Many thousands of our citizens belong to Disease and 
 
 "-.. , insurance. 
 
 mutual benefit societies, lodges, and insurance com- 
 panies. The rate of premium depends on the average 
 health and longevity of the shareholders or members. 
 Those who live longest and who are most careful of 
 their health must pay higher rates because of the care- 
 lessness, stupidity, awkwardness, gluttony, unchastity, 
 lechery, wine-bibbing, and beer-guzzling of others.
 
 74 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Causes of 
 disease. 
 
 Heredity. 
 
 Soil. 
 
 Manufactories are hindered by the feebleness and irregu- 
 larity of sick men. 
 
 Sanitation is the interest of all. Fevers which start 
 in a pauper's cellar travel along drain systems and rise 
 up into the sumptuous bathrooms of marble mansions. 
 Deadly gas, the product of ferment in the lower town, 
 finds vent in the palace which crowns the hill. En- 
 feebled people, victims of defective drains and filthy 
 streets, become paupers and transmit to posterity a 
 burden of taxation. Depressed by the enervating in- 
 fluence of dark rooms and foul air, many weak persons 
 easily become addicted to alcoholism, seeking in artifi- 
 cial stimulants a momentary elevation above the feeling 
 of exhaustion, at the expense of prolonged misery and 
 multiplied wrongs. 
 
 The foes of health creep out of the ground, sail in the 
 atmosphere, swim in the drinking water, and swarm in 
 the food. For a complete discussion of the subject we 
 refer to the systematic works, and here summarize some 
 of the results of scientific investigations. 
 
 Generations dead have bequeathed to us in imperfect 
 constitutions and unwholesome environments a sad 
 legacy of disease. Millions of the present race are 
 liable to sickness in consequence of the ignorance of 
 their ancestors, of their vices, their self-indulgence, 
 their superstition, their neglect. 
 
 In towns our streets and alleys, whose natural function 
 is to facilitate communication and cleanliness, have often 
 become the agencies of destruction. The earth, the 
 pavements, the gutters are frequently covered with 
 a mud which embalms the bacteria in frosty weather 
 and lets them loose when the sun of spring warms them 
 into life. This mud is a composition of organic matters 
 which would be very useful as fertilizer in the gardens but
 
 Public Health. 75 
 
 becomes deadly when it is out of place. This slush and 
 paste of the street is tracked into houses and brings 
 with it untidiness, debasement of aesthetic and moral 
 feeling, germs of disease, and consequent illness. 
 
 Beneath the houses, unless science and law flash their 
 vigilant lamps into the corners, the cellars are only too Hidden 
 
 J enemies. 
 
 often heaped with all kinds of decaying matters, vege- 
 tables, cloth, rags, wood. Perhaps the walls are moist 
 and covered with mold. There fevers originate, rise 
 ghostlike through doors and floor, and fill the houses 
 with terror, gloom, and mourning. Near city, town, 
 and village may be seen the damp morass, the vile- 
 smelling pond, the stagnant pools, where the micro- 
 scopic foes of energy and longevity thrive and organize 
 for invasions of human habitations. 
 
 It must be remembered that all organic matter, all 
 wastes of the body, if left to decay, are terrible 
 sources of contamination of the well water and of the 
 air. On isolated farmsteads and in villages which have 
 not established systems of water-works and drains, 
 medical advice should be taken as to the most efficient 
 and practicable methods of restoring organic matter 
 to the cultivated soil, and thus rendering it useful 
 rather than harmful. A Village Improvement Society, 
 led by the physicians, may improve the situation. 
 
 In country places and villages there is a great peril in 
 the sources of drinking water. The filth of barnyard, water supply. 
 valuable fertilizing fluids, is drained into the well to 
 poison the family and the cattle. The surface wells are 
 especially dangerous, for they take the organic matter 
 from the surface and while the water may be perfectly 
 clear and sparkling it is deadly as a drink to man 
 and beast. The water supply must be severely ques- 
 tioned in the interest of health. Typhoid fever is com-
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 municated by this agency. In 1894 twenty-five of the 
 Typhoid fever, principal cities of the United States had an average mor- 
 tality from typhoid of 39.6 per 100,000 of population. 
 The cities which had the largest mortality from this 
 disease were supplied with a highly suspicious quality of 
 drinking water (Dr. G. H. Rohe). In Chicago, the 
 extraordinary outbreak of typhoid in 1889 to 1893 led 
 to the extension of the intake pipe in Lake Michigan to 
 a distance of four miles from the shore ; typhoid mortal- 
 ity fell from 159.7 P er 100,000 in 1891 to 31.4 per 
 100,000 in 1894. 
 
 Temperance people are engaged in a noble enterprise. 
 Duty of tem- Their holy creed of pure cold water ought to be lived 
 
 perance people. J 
 
 up to. But there are communities where abstinence 
 from alcohol is a sacred custom, and where a color- 
 less liquid more dangerous than beer or light wine is the 
 only beverage of children. Great cities send hundreds 
 of thousands of children to school while their boards of 
 education quarrel over defective filters and succumb 
 to the blandishments of corrupt agents. Meantime the 
 death-rate of school children indicates the mortal effects 
 of intrigue, and mental incapacity of officials charged 
 with a high task. 
 
 Food and milk, necessaries of life, become the ve- 
 Food hides of unfriendly bacteria. The intelligent people 
 
 of our towns and cities are unable to protect themselves 
 against the ignorance and neglect of dairymen, farmers, 
 and railroad officials. Every town must provide a large 
 force of inspectors and detectives who are under orders 
 to visit all the dairies, milk establishments, groceries, 
 and commission houses which supply the food of the 
 population. Often the fever travels a long distance 
 from an infected house in the country. The cans 
 which contain the milk are lined with disease germs.
 
 Public Health. 77 
 
 Vigilance must never close its eyes. The causes of 
 death are hidden in the means of life. 
 
 In addition to the sources of contamination already 
 mentioned we must give heed to the other means by Foul air. 
 which air is poisoned. Public buildings, as court-houses, 
 concert halls, theaters, where multitudes find entertain- 
 ment or pursue public business, are frequently so ill 
 ventilated as to be destructive of health. Churches are 
 great sinners in this respect. The thrice-breathed air, 
 robbed of oxygen, left full of the waste products of a 
 thousand lungs, is shut up tightly from the close of 
 Sunday service to the next Sunday morning. The 
 sanctuary smells like a sepulcher. Blessed is the janitor 
 who knows oxygen when he inhales it. Would not the 
 sweet and heavenly flowers of piety thrive more finely in 
 a purer air and a brighter light? The minister's sore 
 throat would not so often annoy the hearers and bring 
 the messenger of glad tidings to an untimely end of 
 service, if the church were kept full of pure air as well 
 as of pure doctrine. 
 
 Then in going to church, school, shop, and office we 
 must use the street-cars. When ungentlemanly men 
 are permitted by law to expectorate upon the floors we 
 may be sure the air will be loaded with flying microbes. 
 Medical authorities warn us against this aggravation of 
 the perils of consumption. The dried sputa of diseased 
 lungs communicate the dreadful malady to unsuspecting 
 travelers where the germs are driven about in the dust 
 of the air. 
 
 In country schoolhouses one may only too frequently 
 see a single room into which all the children come with 
 wet and streaming clothing. The schoolroom should 
 not be a drying room but a place for teaching. Open 
 closets for airing outer garments should be provided.
 
 
 78 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Cleanliness of the body must be insisted on by the 
 teachers, because the exhalations from the skin enter 
 the lungs with the polluted air. For this reason a spray 
 bath is an important adjutant of ventilation in quarters 
 of a city where habits of bathing are almost unknown. 
 
 Public health is affected by all that affects the material 
 Economic income of persons and families. We seldom hear of a 
 case of starvation ; but all charity visitors and physicians 
 are familiar with starvation diseases. Insanity is some- 
 times the consequence of imperfect food supply, uncer- 
 tainty of employment, commercial crises and depressions, 
 class antagonisms, trade disputes. 
 
 As long as society favors the feebles, gives them 
 the means of existence without insisting on limitation of 
 a feeble posterity, so long it must pay the penalty of 
 having an accumulating population of degenerates. 
 Some day we shall learn that it is not only a social 
 duty to keep alive those who already exist, however 
 bad or defective, but also to see that disease dies in the 
 death of those thus humanely sheltered. So long as 
 people are self-supporting social law can do little ; but 
 as soon as a family claims a "right to labor and sup- 
 port," the society has a right to determine on what 
 terms the support shall be given. The high rate of 
 morbidity and mortality in a particular business is some- 
 times due, not merely to the fact that it is dangerous to 
 health, but to the fact that it is conducted by a class of 
 persons who have low vitality and are peculiarly liable 
 to disease. Such are some of the problems for the 
 social spirit. This brief chapter is not a treatise on pub- 
 lic hygiene, but a series of illustrations of the need 
 of studying such a treatise and applying its teaching. 
 The people perish from lack of knowledge, and they 
 will not seek the knowledge unless they come to set a
 
 Public Health. 79 
 
 higher estimate on the dignity of the body. When we 
 regard our bodies, as Paul did, as the "temples of 
 the Holy Spirit," we shall discover that sanitary art is a 
 kind of worship. 
 
 A forest of green trees will not appear red to a sober 
 man. The habits of individuals are the customs of influence of 
 
 customs and 
 
 society. Take an example of the dependence of public habits, 
 health on family customs : the reduction of the typhoid 
 plague by boiling drinking water. The board of health 
 discovers bacteria of a malignant and fiendish variety in 
 the water supply. For the time being no other general 
 source is available. The board issues a ukase com- 
 manding all housewives, in the name of science, to boil 
 the drinking water. In the localities where the people 
 read the newspapers the water is boiled and typhoid dis- 
 appears, and the reputation of that city as a health 
 resort rises many degrees. But there are people who do 
 not know that these impish foes of human health lurk 
 sleepily in ice, and such persons pay the penalty of 
 ignorance after they have melted a colony of hibernating 
 bacteria in gallons of pure water and come down sick in 
 consequence. In the palatial dining-cars they are at 
 pains to advertise the pure spring water, but the pedi- 
 gree of the ice is seldom shown on the card. It may be 
 taken for granted that it is always bad, since it is usually 
 employed to chill and poison the drinking water. 
 
 Public health means health of the people. If the peo- 
 ple do not care for health no benevolent despot will step societies, 
 from the clouds to force the luxury upon them. Pro- 
 fessor Gould's admirable report shows that voluntary 
 associations of citizens are important agents in sanitary 
 reform and he illustrates methods by the experience 
 of the civilized world. He tells us : " Some of the 
 most prominent witnesses before the English Royal
 
 8o The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Commission on the housing of the working classes, 
 of 1885, stated their belief that the existing laws were 
 ample for dealing with all sanitary questions if they were 
 properly enforced." No law works automatically and 
 mechanically. The benefits of government are not en- 
 joyed at so cheap a price. Administration depends 
 upon the state of public knowledge, of popular taste and 
 
 Custom. customs. When men are in the habit of expectorating 
 
 on the floor of street-cars and on sidewalks, and so long 
 as they insist on using a smoking-car as swine use a sty, 
 and so long as people throw fruit, paper, and cigar 
 stumps in every direction where we must walk and look, 
 just so long will it be impossible to have a clean city. 
 Where cleanliness is popular, as in Berlin or Dresden, a 
 comparatively small force of sweepers can maintain a 
 tidy appearance and a purer atmosphere. 
 
 Mr. Gould's summary of the functions of sanitary aid 
 
 Functions of associations is as follows : To organize and mold popu- 
 
 sanitary aid . , . . 
 
 associations. lar sentiment in favor of wise sanitary legislation. . . . 
 To assist boards of health by bringing to their knowl- 
 edge the existence of insalubrious conditions. . . . To 
 encourage sanitary authorities by support of public sen- 
 timent when they need it, and to spur them to action 
 when they are inclined to relax effort. To assist in the 
 education of the poor on sanitary questions ; teaching 
 them that there is an authority to appeal to against 
 nuisances, instructing them in procedure ; leaving in their 
 homes a printed list of elementary hygienic observances, 
 giving suggestions on the care of infants, and the con- 
 ditions to be observed in the treatment of persons in the 
 cases of infectious diseases. To publish facts gleaned 
 from official sources which show certain neighborhoods 
 to be unhealthy. Education lies back of reform. In 
 sanitary matters eternal vigilance is the price of safety.
 
 Public Health. 81 
 
 Church visitors and charity workers who move about 
 among the poor and become acquainted with them Chanty 
 ought to study books on hygiene and sanitation and 
 they should distribute tracts and sell books on the 
 divine laws of health as well as on the cure of souls. 
 Associated charities through their visitors have fre- 
 quently discovered and exposed the violations of sani- 
 tary laws by landlords and tenants. Such unofficial in- 
 spectors should be careful not to become mere peevish 
 faultfinders, but should take able physicians and lawyers 
 into their counsel and make complaints only on well- 
 ascertained facts of a nature too serious to pass over in 
 silence. No permanent success can be gained without 
 hearty cooperation with the constituted authorities. 
 
 Now that psychologists are emphasizing psycho- 
 
 3 . r J . . Public water 
 
 physics and physiological psychology, and universities supply and 
 
 , . , , , . , drainage. 
 
 are measuring the physical and mental capacity or 
 students by means of mathematically accurate instru- 
 ments of precision, and the correlation of physical and 
 mental processes is established and estimated in terms 
 of foot-pounds and calories, even the finest idealists 
 and spiritualists are insisting on community care of 
 health. The individual cannot protect himself, and is 
 safe only as all are defended from egoistic microbes and 
 deadly dust. In a sparsely settled district the traveler 
 may drink with impunity from any wayside spring. The 
 pure and sparkling stream does not mock his thirst with 
 poison in solution and with millions of microscopic foes 
 lying in the ambush of a drop. But our cities contami- 
 nate their water supplies. The very earth becomes 
 saturated and charged with deadly elements. The CitytoU% 
 death-rate rises, and, thermometer-like, tells how the 
 wells are becoming impure. The poor people cannot 
 afford to import water from distant springs and they
 
 82 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The physicians 
 foremost. 
 
 The spoils 
 system kills. 
 
 suffer first and most. At last a cry of distress goes up, 
 as when the angel of death passed over Egypt, smote 
 the first-born in palace and hovel, and filled the land 
 with mourning and terror. Led by the physicians, 
 that guild of benefactors who prefer public health to 
 private gain, the city begins to consider the serious 
 problems of securing pure water, of disposing of sewage, 
 of destroying or utilizing garbage. ' ' Free as water and 
 air" means nothing in a city, for everything costs 
 heavily. 
 
 Here again there is work for the social spirit. The 
 evils that accompany defective water supply and drain- 
 age are not like those self-limiting diseases of childhood 
 which all must have and which soon run their course. 
 These evils grow steadily worse until the more intelli- 
 gent citizens consider, unite, and agitate for improve- 
 ment. In the United States it is even more important 
 than in Europe because we have few permanent and 
 well-trained officials. Our abominable spoils system 
 often turns men out of office as soon as they have 
 begun to learn the best methods. Men who employ 
 their time in bargaining away franchises to corrupting 
 corporations have no time left for such trivial matters as 
 the health of citizens. The only redeeming feature of 
 the spoils system is that it occasionally ejects hopelessly 
 bad officials and gives the public a momentary rest of 
 expectation. When the social spirit has driven out the 
 mere private spirit from city legislatures we may hope 
 for Edenic conditions. Meantime societies of citizens 
 should publish health maps of their towns, discover with 
 expert aid of health officers the exact location of plague 
 spots, and arouse the officers to a more conscientious 
 discharge of their duties. 
 
 Those comfortable people who have bathrooms and
 
 Public Health. 83 
 
 plenty of living apartments in their houses are hardly 
 
 able to realize the demoralizing forces operating: upon a PWIC means 
 
 r . of cleanliness. 
 
 family of eight who must perform all the functions of 
 daily life in one room and even take in lodgers. It 
 furnishes amusement to talk and write about the "great 
 unwashed," and it must be confessed that the clothing 
 of many working people does smell vilely in street-cars 
 where dainty people come in contact with men who 
 sleep in suffocating rooms and work in fumes and 
 vapors and sweat. And yet poor people will wash if 
 they have a fair chance. Bad surroundings make bad 
 characters. Men who are compelled to be dirty at last 
 become indifferent and forget the luxury of cleanliness. 
 We have medical authority for defending even swine 
 from the charge of the original sin of filth. " The hog 
 is a clean animal. It is certainly a mistaken idea that 
 he desires and needs even any kind of a wallow." 
 
 In a certain rescue mission which deals with vaga- 
 bonds this has been put to a test. A laundry is provided Tramps will 
 where tramps can wash their own clothing ; and, con- 
 trary to the authority of the comic newspapers, this 
 laundry has a large patronage, and a hundred men may 
 be seen waiting for their turn to use the hot water and 
 soap. In New York City a public bath-house has been 
 offered for several years in a locality accessible to the 
 poor. During the years 1891 to 1896 401,652" baths 
 were taken. During the year ending September 30, 
 1896, the total baths taken were 93,808, of which 
 68,856 were taken by men, 14,125 by women, 4,301 by 
 boys, 2,265 by girls; children's free baths, 4,261. A 
 fee of five cents entitles the bather to towels and soap, 
 with the use of the compartment for twenty minutes. In 
 many cities the spray bath is used in place of the old tub 
 or tank bath system. It is to be preferred because there
 
 84 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Public wash- 
 bouses. 
 
 Public 
 lavatories. 
 
 is no danger of taking contagious diseases as there is when 
 many persons wash in the same small body of water. 
 
 It is claimed that the spray bath is less expensive 
 and that it is more tonic in its effects. In a small town 
 a spray bath might be furnished at very low cost and 
 with great advantage to health. Since ' ' cleanliness is 
 next to godliness" there may be a good reason, in be- 
 nighted, tardy, or otherwise peculiar communities, for 
 providing in connection with churches spray baths for 
 those who need to wash themselves as well as their 
 garments. The ancient priests were not willing to go 
 unclean to serve at the altar, but we have found wor- 
 shipers and lusty singers who are not so scrupulous. 
 
 In crowded cities there are many families of "cliff- 
 dwellers ' ' who must live, sleep, cook, eat, wash, iron in 
 one to three rooms. The noisome steam of wash-tubs 
 fills the air with noxious fumes and detestable odors. 
 The huge tenement on days of laundry work is to a 
 sensitive person unendurable. In hot summer weather 
 the stove transforms the living apartments into purga- 
 tory. The social spirit seeks relief in municipal wash- 
 houses and laundries, where the poor can take their 
 clothing to wash and iron at a trifling expense. The 
 cost of fuel is very small when many use the tubs and 
 the enhanced comfort and health are a good return for 
 the investment. 
 
 In a city few public lavatories and places of conve- 
 nience are to be found outside of hotels and saloons. In 
 all European cities a decent provision is made for the 
 public in all parts of the cities. The saloon is always 
 open to men at all hours and its power for evil is aug- 
 mented by every service it renders. Health and morality 
 suffer from the inexplicable and inexcusable neglect of 
 American cities and towns.
 
 Public Health. 85 
 
 It is a pleasure to record the wise philanthropy of Mr. 
 Nathan Strauss of New York, who could not endure the pure milk - 
 spectacle of the babies dying all about him because their 
 parents could not secure for them wholesome milk. 
 Science connects with the famous name of Pasteur the 
 wonderful discovery of a process by which the bacteria 
 in milk can be rendered harmless without coagulating 
 the albumen and rendering the milk indigestible. But 
 philanthropy and public sympathy are necessary to 
 make the glorious discovery of use to humanity. Mr. 
 Strauss furnished sterilized milk in tenement homes of 
 the poor, and in those districts the rate of infant mor- 
 tality instantly fell. Why should not city boards of 
 health supply Pasteurized milk at cost to those who 
 need? 
 
 Mr. Baker of Boston found that the grocers in a tene- 
 ment district were not keeping pure milk. He spent 
 $30,000 on refrigerators and gave them out. Medical 
 men saw the blessed results in the saving of infant life. 
 
 It is highly desirable that parents should know the 
 
 , , , , . . School hygiene. 
 
 elements of the science and art of school hygiene m 
 order to cooperate with public authorities. In towns 
 where vaccination is universal the once-dreaded scourge 
 of smallpox is no longer feared. In some localities the 
 people are so ignorant and superstitious that they resist 
 compulsory vaccination, and in those localities the dis- 
 ease is likely to break out at any time. And as clothing 
 is frequently made up in such neighborhoods the social 
 peril is very great. 
 
 It needs to be widely understood that many skin dis- 
 eases are communicated from person to person, and that 
 children who have "ring- worm," certain forms of sore 
 eyes, ulcerated throats, erysipelas, consumption, must 
 be excluded from school. The danger from whooping
 
 86 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Study of 
 hygiene. 
 
 Health and 
 politics. 
 
 Progress. 
 
 cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, and mumps is 
 more generally appreciated. But it is highly desirable 
 that parents should be gathered into the schoolhouses 
 and instructed by sanitarians, with the aid of the magic 
 lantern, so that they may more clearly see the necessity 
 for the precautions urged by men of science. 
 
 The foundation of national health must be laid in the 
 teaching of physiology and hygiene in the public schools 
 and by extension methods among adults. Already 
 great advance has been made. 
 
 After all, public health is at the mercy of public 
 officers. Sanitation on a large scale is the work of 
 experts employed by commonwealth or municipality. 
 The health of the community depends in great part on 
 its political morality and intelligence. No large scheme 
 of drainage, sewage, water supply, food and milk inspec- 
 tion, can be carried out by individuals or voluntary 
 associations. Hence the supreme importance of efficient 
 local government. All heads of households need to 
 know enough of sanitation and hygiene to regulate their 
 own conduct and to realize the necessity of expert 
 service and common cooperation. But for the highest 
 success in resisting disease we must depend on engi- 
 neers, boards of health, and sanitary police. The con- 
 nection between public health and political morality is 
 close and vital. 
 
 The social spirit has employed the inventions of sci- 
 ence and art in the interest of the public. A century 
 ago only two cities had water works. Diseases due to 
 ignorance of sanitation, to lack of good and abundant 
 water and defective drainage, have retreated before 
 patriotism armed with knowledge. Smallpox is no 
 longer dreaded. Yellow fever, which once raged in 
 New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, has crept
 
 Public Health. 87 
 
 back to the dismal swamps of undrained districts. 
 Dickens' s description of the devastations of malaria in 
 the fertile regions of the Mississippi Valley has long 
 since ceased to be applicable. Mark Tapley would now 
 find no such occasion for the display of his devotion 
 and cheerful courage in a struggle with ague.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Their signifi- 
 cance for civil- 
 ization. 
 
 Social function 
 of roads. 
 
 GOOD ROADS AND COMMUNICATION. 
 
 THE power of the Roman Empire depended in great 
 measure on its splendid roads, the traces of which may 
 yet be found not only in Italy but also in the remote 
 parts of Europe which once came under the sway of the 
 Eternal City. Our own civilization could not advance at 
 railroad speed without railroads. The movement to 
 secure better means of transport and communication is 
 supported and urged by many converging interests. 
 The farmers, with growing intelligence, see that with 
 smooth, hard highways they can get their grain to 
 market at much less cost and under more favorable con- 
 ditions for the market. The capitalists are eagerly 
 looking for employment of their idle funds. The noble 
 army of bicyclers, to whom tacks, broken glass, ruts, 
 mud, and heavy sand seem mortal enemies of joy, are 
 allies of the associations consecrated to improved ways. 
 All social enterprises wait upon this enterprise. Indus- 
 trial operations are fostered ; the circulation of money 
 in remote districts, the interchange of courtesies, the 
 growth of ideas and of fellowship, the prosperity of 
 schools, lodges, churches, sociables, entertainments, 
 spelling-matches, and musical classes are all assisted 
 by good roads. It is said that city people go insane 
 because they feel so much jar and crash and crowding, 
 while country folk become insane because of isolation 
 and loneliness. Good roads favor nervous equilibrium.
 
 Good Roads and Communication. 89 
 
 Military men advocate good roads as a measure of 
 defense and aggression in times of war or riot. 
 
 Each person who feels the desire to advance the com- 
 mon welfare can have a share in this reform without 
 joining a club or spending too much time on committees 
 at the county seat. One may build a foot bridge over a 
 stream where many like to cross. A tree which has 
 fallen across the road may be cut into firewood and 
 drawn away. A Good Samaritan may replace a broken 
 plank where a horse might break its leg. Another 
 might give his dominie a point for his sermon on ' ' the 
 highway of holiness" by hinting that more people would 
 come to church if the county road were put in better re- 
 pair, better drained, and covered with gravel. Almost 
 all can serve their country by agitation and talk. In 
 this country, as in Holland, a deal of good grist is 
 ground out by windmills, and so they are not to be 
 despised. They are useful as well as picturesque. 
 
 The very effort to secure better paths of travel has a 
 moralizing influence. Hon. J. M. Rusk said : 
 
 No one man can improve the highways of a neighborhood. Moral 
 All must act together in behalf of their common interest, and influence of 
 people in yielding something to the common interest will in * 
 the end, by intelligent cooperation and systematic methods, be 
 the recipients of benefits far beyond any possible results arising 
 from discordant and uncompromising individual demands. 
 Every person must be brought to see this and be induced 
 to yield his individual interest to a wider range of road im- 
 provement and to a single system wider than the horizon 
 as seen from his own doorstep. 
 
 Thus a spiritual bond of unselfish devotion to com- 
 mon well-being is the prelude and condition of the 
 material road which facilitates communication between 
 towns. The thing is the outside of an idea and the idea 
 is the inside of a thing.
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Economy of 
 good roads. 
 
 Mud tax.' 
 
 It is estimated that the total weight of farm products 
 marketed in the United States each year amounts to 
 313,000,000 tons. It is said that the cost of hauling 
 this may be $946,500,000. It has been estimated, 
 although there may be some exaggeration in the esti- 
 mate, that $600,000,000 of this could be saved if we had 
 smooth, hard roads. Such figures are largely conjectu- 
 ral, but they help us to realize the vastness of the 
 interest at stake and the possibility of an immense 
 economy through improvements. We have many strong 
 testimonies of practical experts that the improvement of 
 country roads may, by suitable methods, be made to 
 pay, and that without undue financial strain. The 
 problem is not the same for all localities, and experience 
 teaches us to avoid the crushing load of public debt. A 
 moderate debt, however, may indicate a real gain. 
 Hon. Edward Burrough, president of the board of 
 agriculture in New Jersey, is reported as saying that on 
 a new stone road from Merchantville to Camden his 
 teams haul eighty-five to one hundred baskets of pota- 
 toes where they formerly hauled twenty-five. ' ' One of 
 our counties issued $450,000 of four per cent bonds and 
 put down sixty miles of stone roads, averaging sixteen 
 feet wide, and though they pay taxes to meet the inter- 
 est on these bonds, their tax-rate is now lower than 
 it was before the road was built. ' ' The increased value 
 of property and the enhanced returns from product at 
 lower expense for marketing make the investment 
 reasonable. 
 
 The farmer does not escape a heavy road tax even if 
 not one dollar is spent on public highways. The ' ' mud 
 tax ' ' is heavier than that imposed by the authorities, 
 for it is paid ' ' in wearing out his horses, his wagon and 
 harness, in wallowing through the highway with half a
 
 Good Roads and Communication. 91 
 
 load ; in wasting his time waiting for the sun to make it 
 passable in the spring ; in driving to town with a double 
 team when one of the horses might be left at home to do 
 farm work if the road to town was smooth and hard as 
 it should be " (Mr. Otto Dorner). 
 
 An interesting and suggestive illustration of our sub- 
 ject comes to light in the report of Mr. R. O. West, at- 
 torney of the city of Chicago. On January i, 1897, 
 there were pending in the courts 684 suits at law against 
 the city with claims for damages amounting to $9,393,- 
 600. The total amount of damages sustained by the 
 city in 1896 for personal injuries was $216,369.50. It 
 cost something over $55 to defend each case. Physical 
 and moral causes are closely linked, for ' ' the large 
 increase of suits was due to the increase of population, 
 the bad condition of the wooden sidewalks, especially in 
 the outlying districts, and the agencies instituted and 
 abetted by certain lawyers for the purpose of collecting 
 all suits of this character and prosecuting them on com- 
 mission of one half of all money recovered and without 
 any cost or trouble to the clients." The principle illus- 
 trated may be applied to cities in all parts of the land. 
 The entire community is responsible for defects in side- 
 walks, bridges, or roads. The injured members can 
 make their claim good as against all others. It is the 
 common interest that the sidewalks should be sound and 
 safe. 
 
 The recent enthusiasm for better roads is manifesting 
 itself and seeking means to gain its ends in various Methods 
 directions. Obviously the first step was to employ the 
 old system of "working the roads" where it prevails 
 with more rigid rules and higher efficiency. The diffi- 
 culty has been to secure real work from those who took 
 this way to pay their road taxes. Much depended on
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Cash wages. 
 
 Working 
 prisoners. 
 
 the character of the official in charge. Frequently 
 where there was honest labor with a minimum of shirk- 
 ing the effort was mostly wasted because it was put forth 
 without rational plans. It has sometimes been found 
 that the town officers can secure far better results if the 
 taxes are paid in money and the laborers are hired to 
 perform specific tasks under direction of the overseers. 
 The commutation of money rates for personal service is 
 according to the natural order of society with a de- 
 veloped trade and currency system. "Working out 
 a road tax " belongs to a primitive barter system, and it 
 is especially liable to abuse in large towns with dense 
 population. In some places the assessments have been 
 made according to some scale of benefits received and 
 laid upon the property which gained most from the im- 
 provement. When it seems apparent that the wisest 
 method involves a distribution of cost over several years, 
 townships and counties have found it best to borrow 
 money for the early completion of a road and pay in- 
 terest on bonds. In still other regions the state, as 
 in Massachusetts, has undertaken the direction and 
 development of the scheme on a scale impossible for 
 smaller districts. It is manifest that a commonwealth 
 can command a higher order of engineering talent than 
 is possible for a township or county. And where a 
 drainage system must be completed in order to secure 
 dry road-beds the state must frequently control the 
 construction and adjust levels as between the smaller 
 legal divisions. 
 
 Many friends of the cause have strongly advocated 
 the employment of convicts on the public highways. 
 The good roads movement has not always employed 
 sound reason, and many arguments and suggestions 
 born of zeal more than of understanding must be
 
 Good Roads and Communication. 93 
 
 revised. It is proposed to employ convicts on the high- 
 ways, the argument being that their labor is cheap and 
 will not compete with the free labor of wage-earners. 
 The fact is that there is no non-competitive work. If 
 the convict is idle the taxpayer must support him. If 
 the convict mends the country road there is one place 
 less for a wage-earner of some kind. But any one who 
 has ever seen a chain gang, and has not been already 
 degraded by the custom, cannot think of tolerating the 
 employment of convicts before the public eye. They 
 are likely to be morally offensive in speech and gesture. 
 To prevent escape they must be guarded by riflemen 
 and a certain number will be shot down every year. 
 The vaunted boast that we are seeking the reformation 
 of the offender and not revenge comes to be a hollow 
 mockery. Some states and countries have thus tried 
 the experiment and such results always follow. The 
 low productive energy of prisoners under such condi- Difficulties, 
 tions and the high cost of supervision and guarding 
 render the economic argument very weak. It is entirely 
 possible to employ convicts and country vagrants within 
 enclosures at breaking stone. This may be found 
 feasible in some localities. But the chief end of impris- 
 onment is to teach and train the offender, if he is still 
 young, to work at some useful calling. If he is old and 
 hardened the occupation is less important, but he must 
 be treated with humanity. This view has been branded practicable, 
 "scntimentalism," but it is based on direct observation 
 of the chain gang and on the almost unanimous con- 
 sensus of opinion of students of penology. Work in the 
 open air is highly desirable, reformatory, and hygienic, 
 but not work of criminals in contact with the public. 
 
 There are certain advantages and elements of fairness 
 in a state tax for the more important highways. If the
 
 94 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 state offers a county or township a certain sum on con- 
 state aid. dition that the district thus aided shall complete a certain 
 length of road according to specifications, there is at 
 once a motive for local enterprise and a guarantee of 
 superior workmanship. When it is considered that 
 cities are to receive much of the benefit it seems only 
 just that they should divide the expense with farmers, 
 and this can be adjusted only by a state tax. Where 
 the general interest is far more important than the local 
 interest a state road may justly be constructed on the 
 basis of a state tax. 
 
 Zealous advocates of smooth paths, stumbling home 
 after dark and dragging their bicycles, are not always 
 Caution. careful to hear the other side. The farmer who must 
 
 pay for the improvements must be treated with con- 
 sideration. After all, if he seems slow he is in the 
 majority and reads his newspaper. If he pays taxes 
 rather than shares or money rent he is likely to cool the 
 ardent road-menders with his objections, as follows : dirt 
 roads are not bad all the year, but only a few weeks at a 
 time, and when they are good they are very good 
 indeed ; much smoother, softer, and quieter than the 
 harsh gravel. No farmer drives on a gravel road when 
 the noiseless side track is passable. And as to cost : 
 with corn at sixteen cents a bushel and oats at twelve 
 cents a bushel the improvement of roads is too serious 
 an expense to make a present to bicyclers and pleasure- 
 drivers. These conservative landowners recall the craze 
 of railroad and canal construction when counties and 
 states plunged into bankruptcy and repudiation, or 
 pressed the groaning population during a whole genera- 
 tion with heavy interest charges. He desires a solid 
 and even surface for his wagon, but he pauses until the 
 expense can be estimated. He sees that "political"
 
 Good Roads and Communication. 95 
 
 management has so increased the cost of making gravel 
 roads in some places that he sighs for the toll roads 
 which cost much less than his present road tax. It was 
 only fair that this reputable body should be heard, as it 
 must be heeded at the polls. 
 
 The inventions of our age are at the service of 
 sociability. The condensation of population has made Electric roads, 
 better means of transport and communication practi- 
 cable ; science and art have supplied the contrivances 
 for convenience ; and the spiritual dispositions of men 
 have cooperated with all self-regarding motives to make 
 swift and safe transport desirable. In a country where, 
 as in China, the strongest unit of association is the 
 extended family or clan, and where a national and cos- 
 mopolitan feeling is very weak, railroads and telegraphs 
 are regarded as an impertinence. The growth of social- 
 ity is not merely the result of improvement, it is also 
 a cause of research, invention, and common use of im- 
 provements. It is fraternity as well as drills and dyna- 
 mite which bores tunnels through granite mountains. 
 
 It is impossible to set bounds to the use of electric 
 
 ,, , , , , . Effects of 
 
 cars. We can already see that the fresh air and green cheap transit. 
 
 fields of the country are not so far from the city dweller 
 
 as they were a few years ago. We can already safely 
 
 prophesy that farmers will soon be carrying grain and 
 
 vegetables to market and fertilizers back to the soil 
 
 at the rate of twenty or thirty miles an hour instead of 
 
 four miles an hour. Even gravel roads will have their 
 
 rivals. The social influence of this change is beyond 
 
 present calculation. Life's pulse will beat more rapidly. 
 
 Let us trust that a more kindly understanding will 
 
 be fostered when men of city and farm meet each other 
 
 more frequently to exchange sentiments and ideaa, 
 
 as well as commodities.
 
 96 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The transportation of persons and goods is always 
 catik>M imii ~ closely connected with the instruments of intellectual 
 correspondence. No technical treatment of our system 
 of telegraphs and postal service is here attempted. But 
 the value of these agencies to the sense of fellowship and 
 the enlargement of life must be pointed out. The pro- 
 duction and exchange of material goods is merely a 
 "preliminary item." The system of communication 
 serves not only the interests of trade but also those 
 of intelligence, art, and religion. The expansion of 
 souls by bartering spiritual goods is the chief concern of 
 humanity. Financial rewards and social fame are prizes 
 sufficient to awaken the talents of inventors. The labo- 
 ratories of universities prepare the scientific basis for 
 useful machines. Ordinary motives may be trusted 
 to extend lines of telegraphs and telephones among a 
 people eager to learn and capable of moral union. Capi- 
 talists all over the civilized world are eager to find 
 a place for lucrative investment. The miser's gold goes 
 begging for some man-serving task in order that it may 
 earn its six per cent, and the most mercenary slave 
 of Mammon is yoked up with philanthropy to do the 
 bidding of the common will. 
 
 It is true that a great nation must be served by great 
 Social combinations of capital ; and these powerful hired hands 
 
 telegraphs. are not always quickly obedient to that largest wisdom 
 which is akin to justice and goodness. But the nation 
 which found a way, through a bloody and sorrowful 
 road, to abolish slavery, will know how to keep its cap- 
 tains of industry within the bounds fixed by the condi- 
 tions of universal welfare. In the meantime telegraphs 
 and telephones, wl lie in economic form private monop- 
 olies, are really the nerve system of the social body, the 
 material means of welding this nation and all nations
 
 Good Roads and Communication. $7 
 
 into one spiritual community. It is incredible that 
 a system whose social function it is to serve humanity 
 should ever come to be a mere minister of selfishness. 
 
 The postal system of our government has made 
 familiar and inviting one way by which the people 
 can directly control the machinery of spiritual inter- 
 change. There is no large party ready to urge that this 
 department of social service be handed over to private 
 control. All are satisfied with the arrangement. Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany have government ownership 
 of these organs of mental traffic. Vast as is the power 
 of concentrated capital and managerial shrewdness, the 
 laws of life are on the side of regulation in the general 
 interest, and the tendency of the ages is against selfish 
 uses of wealth. 
 
 Cheap postage has rendered a great service to human 
 culture, to family affection, to commercial progress, to the 
 growth of a religious kingdom among men. Our legisla- 
 tors have not viewed a moderate "deficit" with alarm, 
 because facility of intercourse pays for its cost in ten 
 thousand ways. Doubtless with completed civil service 
 reform, with a stable force of employees who owe their 
 places to their own efficiency and fidelity and not to the 
 selfish caprices of political " bosses," we shall see prog- 
 ress in the Post-office Department, which already occu- 
 pies so honorable a place. 
 
 We ought to consider that we are still predominantly 
 an agricultural people ; that the majority of our popula- ! 
 tion are farmers ; that all are equally entitled as tax- 
 payers to the best advantages of our government ; and 
 that rural neighborhoods need the earliest possible infor- 
 mation about crops, markets, and social movements. 
 Urban residents can learn much from conversation, 
 Inokted farmers are those who most of all require hlp
 
 98 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Electric bonds 
 of country 
 and city. 
 
 World-Wide 
 view. 
 
 from a perfect organization for the diffusion of fresh and 
 accurate knowledge. Private enterprise will never 
 extend an express line, a telegraph, telephone, or an 
 electric service where it does not promise prompt cash 
 dividends ; but the post-office sends a letter across the 
 continent at as low a rate as is required for a city deliv- 
 ery. Why should not the mail be collected and 
 distributed at every farm gate every day? Farmers 
 cannot afford to go to town for letters and papers when 
 a much less expensive agency can be furnished without 
 additional machinery. We may confidently look for a 
 gradual and, perhaps, rapid extension of a free daily 
 delivery system in all settled farming districts. 
 
 With extended electric communication and transpor- 
 tation, with the telephone ringing at every village, and 
 with electric power carried afar along metal wires, we 
 may look for the extension of manufactures in country 
 places. This tendency may be a serious counterpoise 
 to the present mad rush to the crowded and unhealthy 
 cities. It may come to mean a real cottage and garden, 
 a cow and a poultry yard for millions of wage-workers 
 or small independent mechanics. It may mean that the 
 ideas of Ruskin and Morris are not so wild after all, and 
 that artistic handwork may in some degree replace the 
 monotonous, machine-made, inartistic products of the 
 huge, ugly factories of the towns. It is difficult to fore- 
 see the actual course of future events, but the outlook 
 for a saner, finer, healthier life is surely brightened 
 by electric motors and cars and telephones. 
 
 We are led forward to a still wider vision. It will be 
 remembered that in 1896 a message was transmitted 
 around the world in fifty minutes, the words being com- 
 posed by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew : ' ' God creates, 
 nature treasures, science utilizes electrical power for the
 
 Good Roads and Communication. 99 
 
 grandeur of nations and the peace of the world. ' ' The 
 
 telegraph aids in settling or avoiding disputes, leads 
 
 to clearer understanding, allays suspicion, puts a speedy 
 
 end to venomous rumors and rankling memory of 
 
 injury, terrifies the criminal who flies from justice only signal service. 
 
 to discover that the lightning tracks its prey. The ship 
 
 captain looks up at the weather bureau signal for a 
 
 warning of storms. The farmer reaps or journeys 
 
 according to the knowledge brought from all stations of 
 
 observers. And thus the network of swift conveying 
 
 lines, magical as genius, ministers to common utilities 
 
 and to the cementing of cosmopolitan friendship.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Natural law in 
 
 the economic 
 w.rld. 
 
 Labor already 
 organized. 
 
 THE FIRST FACTOR OF INDUSTRIAL REFORM : THE 
 SOCIALIZED CITIZEN. 
 
 Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, 
 Which we ascribe to heaven. 
 
 OUR first duty in respect to ' ' the present social 
 system" is not to mend it or praise it, but to under- 
 stand it ; not to do something, but to find whether any- 
 thing can be done ; not to fly into a passion and lose 
 our wits, but to concentrate our wits on definite prob- 
 lems. If we find that some knots are too hard to untie 
 we may let them rest while we attempt what is prac- 
 ticable. The immediate field of this book requires us 
 to give undue space and emphasis to change and re- 
 construction by conscious plan, and this may lead us 
 aside from a point where we see facts in true per- 
 spective. Dissent at many vital points need not prevent 
 us from admitting that Mr. Spencer is profoundly right 
 in saying : 
 
 Blind to the significance of innumerable facts surrounding 
 them, multitudes of men assert the need for the organization 
 of labor. Actually they suppose that at present labor is un- 
 organized. All these marvelous specializations and these end- 
 lessly ramifying connections, which have age by age grown up 
 since the time when the members of savage tribes carried on 
 each for himself the same occupations, are non-existent for 
 them ; or if they recognize a few of them, they do not perceive 
 that these form but an infinitesimal illustration of the whole. 
 A fly seated on the surface of the body has about as good a 
 conception of its internal structure as one of these schemers 
 has of the social organization in which he is embedded.
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. 101 
 
 This caustic criticism of amateur economic reform is 
 none too severe. It has come to be regarded as a Amateur 
 
 economists. 
 
 criminal offense for a man to practice the art of surgery 
 or medicine or even pharmacy without having given 
 proof of training. As society becomes more compiex 
 and intelligent it becomes more exacting. The medical 
 schools are compelled to lengthen their course from one 
 year of study to five years. A knowledge of industrial 
 history, of economic principles, of political and legal 
 development, is even more necessary to a social ad- 
 viser than knowledge of embryology and anatomy is 
 to the physician. Tinkering the industrial system is 
 far more serious than setting bones or tying arteries. 
 In both cases a community must get on with such 
 knowledge and leadership as it can command, and the 
 cooperation of laymen is unavoidable. But educated 
 laymen are not nearly so apt as ignorant people to 
 prescribe medicine. 
 
 It is obviously essential to national welfare both that 
 there should be a body of expert social students and 
 that the people be generally so well informed that they infonMtl "- 
 will be discreet in the selection of administrators. All 
 citizens, and even children, may be taught to treat 
 emergency cases with much skill and to give ' ' first aid 
 to the sick and injured" while a physician is coming. 
 So all citizens in a self-governing republic must learn 
 enough of economic principles and history to guide 
 them in business and in voting. It is impossible to 
 delegate all questions of finance, taxation, tariff, and 
 municipal franchises to cliques of benevolent despots 
 who enjoy a monopoly of science. The final jury, after 
 all the learned advocates and judges have spoken, is 
 the common people, who, as Lincoln said, must be 
 favorites of the Creator since he made so many com-
 
 IO2 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Vitality of the 
 
 industrial 
 
 system. 
 
 The eternal 
 purpose. 
 
 mon people. If manufacturers and bankers desire the 
 majority to vote intelligently they must come down 
 from their thrones and communicate their knowledge to 
 their political masters at the polls. There is no escape 
 from this responsibility save in bureaucracy and des- 
 potism, and the campaign of 1896 made this apparent 
 to the most haughty and obtuse of aristocrats. There 
 is one method open to wealth and that is only too often 
 taken, the thorny path of bribery and corrupt purchase 
 of councils and legislatures. But let us hope that an 
 enlightened social spirit will make this way impassable 
 even for billionaires. 
 
 The social body has inexhaustible vitality or it could 
 never have survived the bleeding, purging, and quack 
 economic nostrums which have so long been admin- 
 istered for its health. Great is the healing power of 
 nature, since the nation has outlived not only the 
 drafts of crime and pauperism, the thefts of officials and 
 legislatures, the parasitic robbery of selfish politicians, 
 the jobbery of social wreckers, the depleting effects of 
 famine, pestilence, war, and city aldermen, but even the 
 well-meaning but uninstructed schemes of philanthropic 
 reformers. Mr. Gilman paints these incompetents with 
 accuracy : 
 
 Six or twelve months are quite sufficient time for them to run 
 up a pretty gingerbread work of the walls of their Utopia, to 
 pave the streets with candy, and set fountains of sweetened 
 honey running in all the public squares. The expense of the 
 journey to the pasteboard city is made very low, and every 
 man may command a copy of an infallible guide-book. 
 
 There must be in the very structure of the world a 
 wisdom which transmutes error itself into wisdom and 
 crime into progress, or the end of the world would have 
 come with explosion long ago.
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. 103 
 
 The primary wants of men, as hunger and desire for 
 3helter and comfort, and the secondary motives, as love The industrial 
 
 J ' system a 
 
 of admiration, praise, decoration, and worship, have growth, 
 stimulated men to labor. Increase of population on a 
 limited territory with limited resources sharpened com- 
 petition between individuals and between groups. Acci- 
 dental discoveries with chance division of labor revealed 
 the fact that specialization secured increased product at 
 diminished cost. By insensible gradations, so faint that 
 history has seldom preserved an account of the transi- 
 tions, the several trades developed. The order of 
 development was noticed and reflected upon only when 
 civilization had already attained a high level. No man 
 planned this order in advance. Each man pursued his 
 own interest, selfish or generous, and the industrial 
 order grew. We can now see, from the height of our 
 century, that there was a plan, but it was not discovered 
 at the dawn of time. Even yet no human being com- 
 prehends the system in all its details. 
 
 But while industrial development has thus proceeded 
 
 11 j i 111 ^his growth 
 
 naturally and spontaneously, we must not overlook the is in Human 
 fact, as some are prone to do, that this is a human de- 
 velopment. The evolution of a planetary system from 
 fire mist, of a tree from a seed, of a bird from the egg, 
 has many points of similarity with that of society. But 
 there are marked differences and contrasts, just because 
 man is something more than earthy ball or bird or tree. 
 Into the process of industrial development man himself 
 enters with all his inherited and acquired powers of in- 
 telligence, taste, conscience, religion, will. The savage 
 may be able to plan some simple work, like the making 
 of an arrow-head, a stratagem for trapping deer, or a 
 ruse of jungle warfare ; but the civilized man invents a 
 locomotive, a steamship, a trunk railway, an interna-
 
 104 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Intelligence a 
 fact.r: 
 
 Individualists 
 and socialists 
 
 tional trade union. The activity of shaping intelligence 
 becomes even a more important factor. A state may 
 project a scheme of forestry whose best results will not 
 be realized for a century. It is characteristic of men 
 that 
 
 We look before and after, 
 
 And pine for what is not. 
 
 Enlarged, multiplied, refined desires quicken ingenuity 
 and give motive to industry. The air is rife with schemes 
 of betterment, many of which, like precocious May blos- 
 soms, will perish frost-nipped and wind-shaken. It is a 
 severe law of evolution that millions of germs must die 
 that the species, the type, the race, the persistent truth, 
 the victorious idea, may live and flourish. With in- 
 crease of intelligence force may be economized and the 
 ratio of wasteful failures be reduced. The higher forms 
 of life are produced and maintained at less cost to 
 parents than is true of lower forms of life. 
 
 Some writers and thinkers dwell too exclusively upon 
 one or other of the aspects of truth, and thus we have 
 two extremes of speculation. The individualists empha- 
 size the truth that personality is the chief end of social 
 action and that a man must not hang with parasitic 
 weakness upon his neighbor. The socialist tends to 
 emphasize the truth that we are members of a com- 
 munity. Optimism and pessimism, as temperaments, 
 are connected with these theories of development in a 
 very odd way : the socialist is optimistic when he is 
 revealing the glories of the state of the future Bellamy 
 paradise, and pessimistic when he harrows our souls 
 with the miseries and cruelties of our "capitalistic 
 system" ; the individualist is optimistic in praise of 
 "this best possible world," especially if he has grown 
 rich in it, and he cannot use too black a paint in setting
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. 105 
 
 forth the dangers of governmental regulation of busi- 
 ness. With this singular and remarkable exception, he 
 thoroughly believes in governmental help and paternal 
 care if he is asking for a valuable franchise or a special 
 tariff rate for which he is quite willing to pay a "reason- 
 able consideration, ' ' not to the dear people but to their 
 authorized representatives and robbers. Aristotle long 
 ago recommended the golden mean as nearest th Murkm. 
 truth, and George Eliot professed a good creed when 
 she declared herself to be neither optimist nor pessimist, 
 but just a meliorist. Our limits oblige us to give scant 
 and inadequate treatment to the natural harmonies of 
 our economic system, since we are in search of the more 
 artificial and positive agencies of human satisfaction and 
 improvement. 
 
 Our present business is with modes of amelioration, 
 the correction of abuses, the improvement of methods, wrong*. 
 No instructed person questions, even in his most san- 
 guine hours, that there is need of improvement. 
 "Something is wrong," is a phrase on all our lips, 
 even when we are bewildered in fixing the responsible 
 author of the wrong or in pointing out the way of 
 escape. Sympathy clouds imagination with the gloom 
 of human sorrow. Those who live constantly among 
 the very poor often come to feel that life has nothing 
 but misery and wrong. A vast literature of fiction, his- 
 tory, social analysis, and statistics has made us familiar 
 with the phenomena of wretched poverty, economic in- 
 equality, tragic contrasts. An abundance of cruel and 
 bitter poverty can always be found in cities and even in 
 some rural districts. The satirical story of "Ginx's Baby" 
 could be written anywhere. Ginx was a man with small " CUut>i u b > r -' 
 income and large family, two facts which seem to have 
 lective affinity for each other. He "looked around \\\^
 
 io6 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 "Lord 
 Munnibagge." 
 
 Tragedies. 
 
 nest and saw many open mouths about him. His chil- 
 dren were not chameleons ; yet they were already forced 
 to be content with a proportion of air for food ; and even 
 the air was bad. They were pallid and pinched. How 
 they were clad will ever be a mystery, save to the poor 
 woman who strung the limp rags together, and to Him 
 who watched the noble patience and sacrifice of a daily 
 heroism." It is true that " Lord Munnibagge, a great 
 authority in economic matters, . . . had never heard 
 of a case of a baby starving. There was no such wide- 
 spread distress as was represented. People were always 
 making exaggerated statements about the condition of 
 the poor. He did not credit them." But then Lord 
 Munnibagge had turned the wrong end of his telescope 
 to his eye and the moon seemed to him only a small 
 and distant asteroid. And so "a right honorable 
 gentleman extinguished the subject in his own little 
 brain with his big hat ; but everywhere else the sparks 
 are still aglow." 
 
 Those who are not blind or deaf at heart can easily 
 find, if they will, tragedies far more terrible than those 
 over which they stir jaded and blasZ spirits at the 
 theater. Women who spend an income on poodles 
 might have pets enough if they spent a little more time 
 and affection on human beings made in the divine image. 
 There are the toiling mothers who work for a pittance 
 far into the night, faint, weary, despairing. Twenty- 
 nine cents a dozen for sewing shirts and overalls ! That 
 means slow death or vice. Hearts break under that 
 sign "plain sewing." Laborers without skill earn in 
 irregular ways ten dollars a week and spend one fourth 
 of this for rent alone. When sickness comes, as it is 
 sure to do, there is no credit, and beggary is only a 
 week off. Few people starve to death outright ; but in
 
 TTie First Factor of Industrial Reform. 107 
 
 every hard winter our physicians and charity visitors 
 report suicides and death from starvation diseases. Men 
 try to break into prisons to escape cold and hunger. 
 Prison fare is better than that of multitudes of working 
 people and it is more sure. 
 
 Every year there are armies of willing men out of em- The , 
 
 J J unemployed. 
 
 ployment. The word "unemployed" is an indefinite 
 term which covers several classes of those who are out 
 of work. But among them are found, especially in 
 years of financial depression, a great troop of honest 
 men. The very inventions which are the marks and 
 means of social progress turn into the cold street many 
 men who are too old to learn to use the new machinery. 
 Progress moves forward in its triumphant chariot and 
 crushes its own ministers under its pitiless wheels. 
 Witness the effect of the introduction of the type-setting 
 machines, which have reduced the price of our daily 
 papers but which have brought to many a respectable 
 home of veteran compositors desolation and despair. 
 The period of transition to better things is full of 
 horrors. The cost of general progress is too often borne 
 by a part of society. Is it not strange and pitiful that 
 men with strong arms and stout hearts should go 
 hungry, cold, and ragged, driven to suicide by the cries 
 of hungry children, while wheat is a drug in the market 
 and looms are idle ? Is there no "physic for this grief 
 in all the earth and heavens, too"? Among all our 
 great "captains of industry" is there not organizing 
 ability enough to make a more economical distribution 
 (A the industrial army? Is it altogether strange that 
 men who suffer much from causes over which they have 
 no control should investigate and question that gigantic 
 system which looms above them and is ?r> unmerciful ns 
 well as mysterious ?
 
 io8 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Mr. E. L. Godkin has said with wisdom : 
 
 In examining the ills of our lot, the first question we have to 
 ask is, Are they remediable ? Complaints unaccompanied with 
 remedies or suggestions of remedy, are, we all acknowledge, 
 among the most useless forms of human activity. Continual 
 discussion of wrongs or afflictions which cannot be removed 
 is generally held to indicate weakness of character. . . . 
 If I am to speak strongly I should say that the sowing of 
 discontent among the masses, among men in a democratic 
 country in our day, without specifying the evil and laying your 
 finger on the culprit, is very distinctively anti-social work. 
 
 But there is a related truth ; he who sees the evils of 
 society is morally bound to seek constitutional and 
 specific remedies, and not give out the impression to 
 toiling and suffering multitudes that their way is blocked 
 and that hope is unreasonable. This drives men to 
 desperation, and it, also, is distinctively anti-social. 
 There is "no escape from death and taxes." But decay 
 may be postponed by suitable hygienic, dietetic, and 
 sanitary measures ; many diseases are preventable ; and 
 even taxes may be more equitably assessed and honestly 
 applied. The sphere of voluntary action is limited but 
 it is large and important. 
 
 All that is achieved must be the result of personal en- 
 terprise and patient toil. Human nature is the primary 
 vTJ^aUimdo!" consideration. Man cannot be blest in spite of himself. 
 There are no social changes for the better which go for- 
 ward independent of individual action. If a nation lifts 
 a million foot-pounds that weight is the sum of many 
 lifts. Modern sociology has not discovered any royal 
 highroad to competency which the author of the 
 Hebrew Proverbs overlooked. The sluggard's garden 
 is still full of weeds and thistles. The borrower is still 
 slave of the lender. Mr. Spurgeon's John Ploughman 
 sums up homely wisdom in the jingle :
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. 109 
 
 Once let every man say Try, 
 Very few on straw would lie, 
 Very few of want would die ; 
 Pans would all have fish to fry ; 
 Pigs would fill the poor man's sty ; 
 Want would cease, and need would fly ; 
 Wives and children cease to cry ; 
 Poor rates would not swell so high ; 
 Things wouldn't go so much awry 
 You'd be glad, and so would I. 
 
 "Poor Richard's Almanac" needs to be corrected up 
 to date for its tables, but the maxims of industry, thrift, 
 and honesty represent one side of truth which will never 
 be obsolete. There are only a few methods of acquisi- 
 tion, as industry, frugality, economy on the one hand, 
 and theft, fraud, robbery, and beggary on the other. 
 This applies to thieves of all grades, rich and poor. 
 There is no substitute for hard work. But he who 
 mixes thought with brute power serves himself and 
 society better than does one who brings to his task the 
 primitive forces in which oxen, horses, mules, donkeys, 
 iron, and steam surpass stupid and awkward human 
 giants. Man must set his hands to work for his wits as 
 foremen, and must guide his fingers with intelligence. 
 A nation composed of men who like wheelbarrows bet- 
 ter than engines can never become rich. 
 
 The blacksmith who spends his evenings learning me- 
 chanical drawing, the tensile strength of iron and steel, 
 the history of inventions as disclosed in patent office 
 reports, is ever preparing himself to rise, and he is alto 
 contributing a larger share to social wealth. Misfortune 
 and accident sometimes lead to misery. Not all th 
 causes of poverty lie within the range of individual will 
 and character or can be removed without the coopera- 
 tion of the community. But every man can go a certain
 
 no 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Problems of 
 population. 
 
 J. S. Mill's 
 view. 
 
 distance on the path of self-education and self-reliance. 
 If the sense of the power and responsibility of the 
 individual decays, if men generally grow into the habit 
 of looking to others or to the government for the initia- 
 tive, the strength of character and productive force must 
 diminish, and with these personal happiness. Multiply- 
 ing zeros will not solve the labor problem. A nation of 
 dwarfs is not a great people. 
 
 Economic progress is impossible so long as people 
 think that children are "sent." They are "brought " 
 into existence by a conscious and responsible act of 
 rational beings. There is very general agreement 
 among classic economists that no social readjustment 
 can improve the condition of wage-earners so long as 
 ten men are scrambling for one position. In India, 
 where girls marry at the age of twelve, and where 
 the land swarms with a superabundant population, over 
 12,000,000 persons died within a few years, of starvation 
 and of famine epidemics. Under such conditions it is 
 not altogether strange that infanticide should be re- 
 garded as moral and religious. There is a limit to the 
 earth's surface, a limit to the productive power of an 
 acre of land, a limit to the ability and willingness of men 
 to move to free land. John S. Mill did not sufficiently 
 make account of other elements of the causes of poverty, 
 but he represents a respectable school of economists in 
 saying : 
 
 Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of 
 mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious 
 foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature 
 by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers become the 
 common property of the species, and the means of improving 
 and elevating the universal lot. . . . Unhappily, sentimental- 
 ity rather than common sense usually presides over the discus- 
 sion of these subjects ; and while there is a growing sensitive-
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. ill 
 
 ness to the hardships of the poor, and a ready disposition 
 to admit their claims upon the good offices of other people, 
 there is all but universal unwillingness to face the real difficulty 
 of their position, or advert at all to the conditions which nature 
 has made indispensable to the improvement of their physical 
 lot. Discussions on the conditions of the laborers, lamentations 
 over its wretchedness, denunciations of all who are supposed to Misplaced pity. 
 be indifferent to it, projects of one kind or another for improv- 
 ing it, were in no country and in no time of the world so rife as 
 in the present generation ; but there is a tacit agreement to ig- 
 nore totally the law of wages, or to dismiss it in a parenthesis, 
 with such terms as ' ' hard-hearted Malthusianisrn "; as if it were 
 not a thousand times more hard-hearted to tell human beings 
 that they may, than that they may not, call into existence 
 swarms of creatures who are sure to be miserable, and most 
 likely to be depraved ; and forgetting that the conduct which it 
 is reckoned so cruel to disapprove is a degrading slavery to a 
 brute instinct in one of the persons concerned, and most com- 
 monly in the other helpless submission to a revolting abuse 
 of power. Poverty, like most social evils, exists because men 
 follow their brute instincts without due consideration. But 
 society is possible precisely because man is not necessarily 
 a brute. Civilization in every one of its aspects is a struggle 
 against the animal instincts. 
 
 We read at intervals that the doctrine of Malthus has 
 been discredited by science. In the form in which Mai- Practical 
 
 acceptance of 
 
 thus himself left his teaching it did require modification, the doctrine. 
 Criticism has corrected the formula but not denied the 
 essential truth of the doctrine that animal instincts must 
 be brought under rational control. Civilized peoples 
 in their more intelligent ranks have accepted the law 
 and reduced it to practice. Among all cultured societies 
 the age of marriage has risen. Trades unions recognize 
 the truth of Malthus' s law of population when they 
 restrict the number of competing apprentices or in other 
 ways seek to prevent immigrants and others from inter- 
 fering with the victories won in strikes. These changes 
 have been accompanied by increasing comforts, a lower
 
 112 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Moral 
 restraint*. 
 
 Personal 
 character 
 
 infant mortality, and a larger, happier social life for 
 women. Immorality has also accompanied this tendency 
 to smaller families, but it cannot be said that society has 
 so many hopelessly brutal, desperate, cruel, and be- 
 sotted members as in the early decades of the century. 
 And it is precisely where self-control and prudence are 
 unknown that vice and crime reign supreme. These 
 facts prove that the population problem, serious and 
 perplexing as it is, should not be regarded as insoluble. 
 It is true that those who cause themselves and society 
 most suffering from excessive size of families are the last 
 to adopt the ' ' moral restraints ' ' advised by Malthus. 
 But, on the other hand, many of these low families 
 are precisely those which lose most from excessive mor- 
 tality, especially among infants, and from confinement 
 in prisons, penal colonies, and asylums for idiots. 
 
 Character is the fundamental condition of economic 
 betterment. It would be more accurate to say that 
 a human nature adapted to the conditions of the best 
 life is the essential element. For we are too apt to use 
 the word character as a mere synonym of an amiable 
 disposition. But we must include more in the definition 
 if we are to retain the word. Intelligence and strength 
 are duties. This world has no place, at least of happi- 
 ness and respect, for the weak. All climates, all mar- 
 kets, all professions weed out the unfit. The only favor 
 that society, mighty as it is, can show to feebles is to let 
 them die out with as little pain as possible. An ignorant 
 man, a savage who has lost his way in modern civiliza- 
 tion, fights like a blind man with keen antagonists 
 armed with sharp weapons and obliged to be pitiless. A 
 man who has no skill and energy has no place in a com- 
 petitive world. It is reported that out of six thousand 
 applicants for employment at the Cooper Union Free
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. 113 
 
 Labor Bureau only eight persons proved to belong 
 to trades unions. This illustrates the law that skill and 
 cooperation are necessary to make men able to stand 
 alone. Among the elements of character required by 
 the modern conditions of existence is the desire to enjoy Desire to 
 a variety of goods. A negro plantation hand, debased e 
 by slavery, makes an inefficient, unreliable, lazy, fac- 
 tory hand if the earnings of two days in the week 
 are sufficient to buy all he wants. A man who is con- 
 tent with corn, bacon, and a one-roomed cabin has no 
 place in the modern industrial system, which runs by 
 steam and requires every employee to keep up with 
 machinery six days in the week and ten hours in the 
 day. A civilized man wants many things and is willing 
 to work hard to get them. 
 
 The favored classes owe the first duty. Successful 
 people, especially the heirs of unearned wealth, and social duty 
 
 r . ... of wealth, 
 
 parasites who live upon the fruits or common toil, 
 
 are wont to declaim against the vices of the poor. The 
 vices of the rich look so beautiful in satin robes and 
 evening dress that they charm like virtues. Vulgar 
 variety theaters are often very objectionable and coarse, 
 but then many costly operas on which wealth is lavished 
 sufficient to build many model tenements are frequently 
 mere nasty crime set to fine music, and the only re- 
 deeming feature of the libretto is that it is in a foreign 
 tongue. It would be amusing if the thing were not so 
 exasperating and dangerous, to hear a fine gentleman 
 declaim against the extravagance of the poor in periods 
 made eloquent by expensive champagne. There is an Hvpocrity in 
 immense amount of cant about the wastefulness of the 
 "lower classes" on the part of those who, if they were 
 paid according to the value of their social service, would 
 be clothed in rags and fed on hominy like other paupers.
 
 H4 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 No reasonable person will complain that property has 
 been accumulated in vast and convenient masses so long 
 as the process of acquisition has been honest and the 
 investments are consistent with social welfare. A rich 
 and industrious manufacturer is, so far as he is an 
 investor and manager, a mere trustee of social capital. 
 Nor does a reasonable and instructed person object 
 to very unusual expenditures for personal use so long as 
 those expenditures give leisure for higher forms of 
 service, and bring into the common life finer natures 
 enriched by pictures, travel, and wide intellectual rela- 
 Luxury. tions. It is the meaningless, barbaric, sensual, de- 
 
 praving, enervating, immoral, debasing, voluptuous, 
 ostentatious use of wealth against which all should pro- 
 test in every effective way. 
 
 Such mad extravagance as flaunts itself at many 
 watering places and on public occasions diverts capital 
 from the production of goods, which are within the reach 
 of all industrious men ; consumes the products of ex- 
 hausting toil without any rational return in beauty or 
 knowledge or culture; makes ordinary houses, furniture, 
 and clothes relatively more expensive, and tends to in- 
 crease the number and intensity of crises and depres- 
 sions. It arouses bitter feelings among all citizens, and 
 even among the rich themselves. The only enjoyment 
 possible to derive from ostentation comes from the sight 
 of the envy of neighbors, and that pleasure is inhuman. 
 Luxury works by the law of suggestion and imitation 
 upon all men and awakens an ignoble discontent which 
 embitters all existence and brings many into debt and 
 dishonesty. In colleges this meaningless display sets 
 up a materialistic standard of success, lowers the tone 
 of scholarship, discourages the poor student, and drags 
 ideal aims into the dust. It intensifies the mad race
 
 The First Factor of Industrial Reform. 115 
 
 for riches, the worship of mere wealth, the temptations 
 of fraud, oppression, and corruption. Let us bring two 
 sober and competent witnesses. Says Mr. Andrew D. 
 White : 
 
 It must be confessed that during recent years there have 
 been some conduct of rich men and several careers of rich 
 men's sons fit to breed nihilism and anarchy. Many wild doc- 
 trines among the poor may be traced back to senseless osten- 
 tation among the rich. Glorification in our press of this Evil example, 
 woman's "tiara" and that woman's wardrobe ; of this young 
 millionaire's genius in driving a four-in-hand, and that young 
 millionaire's talent in cooking terrapin; of some Croesus buying 
 or begging his way into the society of London or Paris ; of 
 social or financial infamy condoned by foreign matrimonial alli- 
 ances ; what wonder that men out of work in tenement houses, 
 or struggling with past-due mortgages on the prairies, should 
 be led by such examples to look at all property as robbery ? 
 
 And Mr. Goldwin Smith : 
 
 Few things in social history are more unlovely or more likely 
 to provoke righteous indignation among the people than the 
 matrimonial alliances of the upstart and sometimes ill-gotten 
 wealth of New York with the needy aristocracy of Europe. 
 What must an American workman feel when he sees the prod- 
 ucts of American labor to the extent of scores of millions sent 
 across the Atlantic to buy nobility for the daughter of a million- 
 aire ! The thing is enhanced by the extravagant splendor of 
 the nuptials. Nor are these marriages merely offenses against 
 feeling and taste. They are an avowal that American wealth is 
 disloyal to the social principles of the republic. 
 
 There is an impression in many quarters that exist- 
 ence on less than ten thousand a year is unworthy of a 
 human being. Any man who has a small income is re- 
 garded with ill-concealed contempt. It is true that 
 many very worthy, gracious, and useful citizens spend 
 a good deal more than that on themselves every year. 
 But quite as valuable citizens have served the world 
 at less cost. Socrates, Milton, Shakespeare, Dante, and
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 others of similar rank did not cost as much as many a 
 supercilious dandy has consumed in a few wine parties. 
 
 One of the most exasperating elements of the case 
 is that these flippant and shallow spendthrifts dress 
 themselves in the feathers of economic virtue and strut 
 about as benefactors of the land. They claim the 
 exalted merit of ' ' circulating money ' ' and ' ' increasing 
 employment of the poor." It is true the economists, 
 from Adam Smith down, have exposed the miserable 
 fallacy of this sophism of vanity which would present a 
 vice for the worship of mankind ; but then the weak 
 head which is turned by selfishness could not compre- 
 hend the economic doctrine of consumption if it were 
 printed in capital letters. The only correction of such a 
 narrow spirit will probably be found in the taxing power 
 of an educated democracy. But educated people can do 
 something to suppress the sensual vanity of the luxuri- 
 ous by ceasing to pay it homage and begging invitations 
 to its parties. 
 
 The best contribution any man can make to the 
 economic welfare of society is himself, as a socialized 
 citizen who finds his habitual satisfactions in ways which 
 are, on the whole, favorable to the well-being of all. By 
 a quotation we may bring the witness of two eminent 
 men to bear on our theme. Mr. Ruskin wrote : 
 
 The only final check must be radical purification of national 
 character. But in this more than in anything, Plato's words 
 . . . are true, that neither drugs, nor charms, nor burnings, 
 will touch a deep-lying political sore any more than a deep 
 bodily one ; but only right and utter change of constitution ; 
 and that they do but lose their labor who think that by any 
 tricks of law they can get the better of those mischiefs of com- 
 merce, and see not that they hew at a hydra.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHAT GOOD EMPLOYERS ARE DOING. 
 
 The leaders of industry, if industry ever is to be led, are vir- 
 tually the captains of the world. If there be no nobleness 
 in them there will never be an aristocracy. 
 
 CarlyU. 
 
 IT is almost an unpardonable sin for a "mere theo- 
 rist" to give advice to practical business men on any 
 
 place of a 
 
 matter touching the conduct of their business. If the theorist, 
 town were in danger of conflagration in consequence of 
 the methods of the manager he would still be inclined to 
 regard all that went on in his factory as a private affair. 
 He hates advice as the worst sort of vice. It is pro- 
 posed in this chapter to eschew and avoid this fault. 
 We shall give no counsels of perfection for other people 
 to follow at their own expense. We shall confine 
 our discussion to matters of fact which ought to be gen- 
 erally known, and to the judgments of successful busi- 
 ness men who have treated their employees as men and 
 not merely as "hands." 
 
 This course is legitimate, and it is the only one which 
 an essayist, teacher, preacher, or editor can properly 
 take. Facts must talk. If books do not directly 
 reach a certain class of thick-skinned employers by the 
 direct route, ideas may find the weak joints of their har- 
 ness by the way of public opinion. Most capitalists care JJ^)f e of 
 far more for a good name than they do for money, and 
 American business men are not misers. They love 
 power and praise, senatorial seats and reputation for 
 
 "7
 
 u8 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 All sorts 
 of men. 
 
 philanthropy, far more than mere possession of millions. 
 Indeed, the books of assessors show that they are very 
 generally exceedingly modest in the publication of their 
 personal property ; and if we did not have Jenkins's ac- 
 count of weddings, banquets, balls, and opera parties, 
 yachts, butlers, and Keeley Cure colonies, we should 
 sometimes be inclined to pity them for their small 
 success in fighting fortune. But even those who evade 
 the assessors are not incapable of wincing under the 
 shafts of literary criticism, especially when it works with 
 universal suffrage as ally. There are few men of this 
 powerful and intelligent class who are not open to 
 appeals to the most generous motives which do honor to 
 our kind. If we are to gain heroes we must praise hero- 
 ism when it appears. Generosity is contagious. Phi- 
 lanthropy is a bank on which the community can draw 
 very heavy checks if they are not too heavy. When 
 philanthropy gives reasonable hopes of paying dividends 
 it walks in silver slippers. 
 
 Managers of industrial establishments have control 
 over the actions and surroundings of their employees. 
 The wage-earner has an apparent freedom of contract, 
 and can offer his services to any employer. But, as 
 Mr. Spencer says, "This liberty amounts in practice to 
 little more than ability to exchange one slavery for 
 another ; since, fit only for his particular occupation, he 
 has rarely an opportunity of doing anything more than 
 decide in what mill he will pass the greater part of hib 
 dreary days. The coercion of circumstances often bears 
 ces> more hardly on him than coercion of a master does 
 on one in bondage." Whether a man breathe pure air 
 or expand his lungs in an atmosphere laden with poison- 
 ous exhalations and fine dust; whether he work in a 
 crowded room or in a spacious and lofty shop ; whether 
 
 Power of 
 employers. 
 
 Coercion of
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 119 
 
 he have a clean place to wash his hands and face, and a 
 tidy room for his lunch, or must feed like swine by the 
 gutter or greasy bench, assailed by disagreeable odors ; 
 whether he look out from his toils through clear glass to skyand 
 
 landscape. 
 
 see bright sunshine and flowers, or through obscured 
 panes upon a wilderness of dirty and rusty fragments of 
 machinery ; whether he be compelled to endure the 
 villainous profanity and obscenity of an overseer from 
 whom he takes his orders under penalty of discharge, or 
 can receive instructions from a gentleman ; whether he 
 be treated as a beast of burden or as a creature compact 
 of nerves and pride, who can suffer and remember ; 
 whether he be made to feel every minute that he is 
 a suspected thief who must be watched or a man of 
 honor who can be trusted all this depends somewhat 
 on himself but much more on the character of the 
 employer. Under the wage system the initiative must 
 always be taken by the man whose employing and 
 discharging power is a whip with a long lash. He who 
 seeks and gains place and power can never escape 
 an unusual share of responsibility. 
 
 It is often asserted, in spite of the discussions of a 
 
 , ,, . , . , r , ,. Responsibility 
 
 half century, that the entire duty of an employer is dis- of employers. 
 charged when he has paid the rate of wages for which 
 he has contracted, and that the rate of wages is fixed by 
 the labor market absolutely apart from the will of the 
 employer. The ' ' labor question ' ' according to this 
 philosophy is entirely simple : pay the market rate of 
 wages and there is an end. Any suggestion of further 
 social or moral responsibility is sometimes met with 
 fierce invective and charges of ' ' sentimentalism ' ' and 
 impertinence. It is not strange that business men, sen- 
 sitive to criticism of honor, should resent any hint of 
 injustice. Nevertheless society cannot release the most
 
 120 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Employers 
 dependent on 
 society. 
 
 Witness of a 
 money-maker. 
 
 powerful class of modern times from their duty. As 
 soon as capitalists are assailed by superior numbers they 
 ask the community to turn out with guns and taxes 
 to drive away the strikers and rioters, and they have a 
 right to such protection. Society cannot afford to let 
 rich men hire their hordes of detectives at personal cost, 
 as did the feudal lords of half-barbarian ages and as 
 some employing corporations have done in recent years. 
 Modern society must control all armed bodies by its own 
 general laws. Therefore society has a right to inquire, 
 in case of social disturbance and call for protection, who 
 is responsible for the cost of armed defense. And as 
 the wage-worker must respond to the legal inquiry 
 so must the employer. Where public opinion is passing 
 judgment outside of courts it must be equally impartial. 
 A successful and humane capitalist, famous for his shar- 
 ing profits with wage-earners in his employ, says : 
 
 We are told that the strike and the election of labor candi- 
 dates must be met. Met by what ? By force and carnage or 
 by reason and justice ? Can a man lay claim to morality, much 
 less to Christian humility, who answers his brother's despair 
 and his sister's degradation with the brutal words of Cain ? 
 The noblesse oblige of the French, the Golden Rule of all 
 religions . . . declare that we are not for ourselves alone, 
 we are our brother's keeper. 
 
 It is not out of a preacher's study or an editorial 
 sanctum, but from business experience that he writes : 
 
 No man can justly take to himself all that selfishness and 
 power and cunning can bring within his control. Where igno- 
 rance and injustice and distress are the deepest, there is his 
 sternest responsibility. (Mr. N. O. Nelson). 
 
 He believes that the wage system is itself responsible 
 for piling up a surplus so rapidly, without increasing 
 the purchasing power of the wage-earners, that like 
 a flooded water-wheel it stops the entire productive
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 121 
 
 machinery. Crisis, depression, starvation, ill-will, cruel 
 injustice, he thinks, are inseparable from the traditional 
 wage system. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie voices the common impression 
 of capitalists and economists, and probably of labor Cooperative 
 
 production far 
 
 leaders themselves, when he declares that the ideal of distant, 
 cooperative production is very far off. It seems certain 
 that for many years, perhaps for generations, the chief 
 control of business must be mainly in the hands of a com- 
 paratively few men of great organizing ability. Most men 
 who attempt to direct the immense systems of business 
 which characterize modern life have failed. Only those 
 who have extraordinary endowments have succeeded. 
 This very fact makes it socially imperative that those 
 who direct the management of business during this age 
 of transition from the wage system to the cooperative 
 future should have in high degree that sense of obliga- 
 tion which alone makes power gracious and secure. 
 Happily employers have changed their character dur- 
 
 . Improved 
 
 ing this century in the typical and most advanced character of 
 
 employers. 
 
 industrial countries. The earlier English managers had 
 risen from the ranks of coarse and narrow laborers in 
 the days before free schools had softened the manners of 
 the populace. To a great extent this has been true 
 in this country among the "self-made men who are 
 proud of their makers." But employers tend to become 
 what society admires and praises ; they take color from 
 their environment, and yield to the terrors of criticism 
 or the charms of flattery. When society ceases to wor- 
 ship bare wealth, crude lucre, and shows its respect for 
 higher human qualities, it will have still higher, gentler, 
 more humane capitalists. Social selection is already at 
 work. More sons of rich men graduate at college, and 
 the finer, nobler life of college and technological school
 
 122 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Difficulty of 
 
 personal 
 
 relations. 
 
 Forces of 
 selection. 
 
 is transforming the factory and the wholesale house. 
 
 It is true that the day has gone by for those close per- 
 sonal relations between ' ' master and man ' ' which 
 obtained before this age of huge factories, great imper- 
 sonal corporations, and foreign syndicates. The capital- 
 ist employer is to the wage-earner a myth, a soulless 
 thing, a vague and perhaps terrible and remote demi- 
 god, who has no concern in the business but to draw 
 dividends, even if they bring the blood of laborers with 
 them. ' ' Corporations have no souls ' ' and classes in 
 society have no backs to smite. And yet individual 
 stockholders, bondholders, and especially directors are 
 not so far removed as at first sight appears. The presi- 
 dent of a railroad has no trouble in securing a knowl- 
 edge of every defective rail, of every broken lamp, 
 of every ounce of oil used by trainmen. The hierarchy 
 of responsibility by which vast enterprises are controlled 
 from a central office is one of the amazing phenomena 
 of our century. It is not impossible to use a detective 
 service to surprise an impolite conductor or a sleepy 
 switchman. The great corporation can set its spies 
 on the most minute actions of its servants. And the 
 encouraging fact is that the members of this service are 
 of a far higher quality than they were some years ago, 
 better in dress, speech, and manners. 
 
 Now the men who can thus control the very thoughts 
 of their employees are able to affect their fortunes and 
 happiness by personal influence through this same com- 
 plicated but omnipresent machinery. The most suc- 
 cessful managers of great affairs are coming to recognize 
 this responsibility. The time will come when it will be 
 impossible for a corporation which is brutally indifferent 
 to the physical and intellectual well-being of its men 
 to secure helpers. Employers compete with each other
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 123 
 
 for workmen and they compete with each other for 
 public approval. The consumers have the balance of 
 power, and when that fails the democracy has universal 
 suffrage in reserve to bring to terms men who will not 
 heed a hint of humanity. 
 
 The power of employers to increase wages is limited 
 but real. The conditions of economic life give the aiuUnin/mum 
 master power to "oppress the hireling in his wages." 
 Economists agree that there is a margin between the 
 maximum and minimum which a business permits to be 
 paid on wages account. Of course if the rate rises too 
 high the manager is bankrupt. But the margin is quite 
 wide enough for some employers to show how mean 
 or how generous they wish to be. Industrial fairness is 
 not absolutely secured by automatic social machinery. 
 Some employers have a reputation for grinding the 
 faces of the poor, while others deserve a good name 
 as doing their best. So that even in this restricted 
 field, where the upper and nether millstones seem to 
 press so hard, there is a space in which the disposition 
 and character of the captain of industry can show them- 
 selves. The tendency is for the better workmen to 
 gravitate toward the best employers, those who strive to 
 reach the highest possible levels of wage reward. The 
 process of social selection tends to eliminate the inferior 
 employer by driving his inferior goods out of the 
 market. And where a business fdls into the hands 
 of men who are willing to "sweat" the wage-earners, 
 democracy at last finds a way to correct the harshness 
 of greed by legislative measures. Thus the social spirit 
 is a factor when one would least expect it, when it seems 
 that the terms of destiny are hard as fate. 
 
 One whom the writer of these pages reveres as a son A fi , UI trlbute 
 and pupil, and mentions here with grateful filial memo-
 
 124 
 
 Social Spirit in America. 
 
 illustrations of 
 
 the social spirit 
 
 in a factory. 
 
 
 ries, was wont to boast in a modest way that all those 
 who worked in his employ for wages after a few years 
 owned their own homes. He paid the highest rate 
 of wages and then lent them his ability as a business 
 man in showing them how to invest their savings. And 
 his example was such that they were won to a nobler 
 use of their powers and means. 
 
 In a little book accessible in cheap form to all, Mr. 
 D. Pidgeon has told about ' ' Old World Questions and 
 New World Answers." He fills many pages with 
 
 . . ..... 
 
 descriptions of the effects of intelligence, refinement, 
 democratic and Christian feeling in the practical man- 
 agement of New England factories. A few illustrations 
 will show how slovenliness and cruelty of some employ- 
 ers is rebuked by the taste and humanity and by the 
 enlightened self-interest of a superior order of managers. 
 
 The New England manufacturer has no notion of spending 
 the greater part of his day in a dirty, ill-furnished, ill-ventilated 
 room, or, indeed, of asking his bookkeeper to do so. On the 
 contrary, he houses his staff in large, handsome rooms, fitted 
 with many clever devices for facilitating work, from among 
 nhich the telephone is never absent. Most of his clerks are 
 girls, who also conduct the correspondence, using the type- 
 writer almost universally for this purpose. The offices are 
 kept scrupulously neat and clean, and their occupants are dis- 
 tinguished by an air of briskness very different to that which 
 characterizes their duller brethren of the desk in England. The 
 workshops, again, are so comfortable, and the operatives 
 so like the masters in ideas and manners, that an Englishman 
 is altogether, but agreeably, surprised on his first introduction 
 to a Yankee factory. 
 
 He describes the workshops of a watch factory : 
 
 These might more appropriately be called saloons, so sightly 
 are they and so beautifully fitted with every appliance for com- 
 fort and convenience. Entering at the operatives' door we 
 came, first, upon the dressing-room, where each workman has
 
 What Good Employers are Doing, 125 
 
 his ticketed hooks for coat and hat, his own ticketed towel, 
 while the common lavatory is equal to that of an English club. 
 The girls' toilet room is quite dainty in its arrangements, a 
 separate supply of water, for instance, and separate vessels for 
 hand and face-washing being provided. The most exact neat- 
 ness and scrupulous cleanliness are assured, by the appoint- 
 ment of a special attendant to this usually neglected depart- 
 ment. . . . The first requisites of a watch factory are 
 abundance of light, neatness, and cleanliness. No man can do 
 his best when physically uncomfortable, whether from excess 
 of heat or cold, poor light, or, above all, bad air. It is now 
 universally acknowledged, at least in the Naugatuck Valley, 
 that everything which contributes to the comfort and mental 
 benefit of the workman pays good returns on its first cost. 
 Hence the walls of the train-room are all windows, the ceilings 
 are high, the warming and ventilation are perfect. There is no 
 smoke, dust, or bad air, and the operatives are comfortably 
 seated at their respective benches. 
 
 And here is a pretty picture of personal relations : 
 
 A few moments before six o'clock we stationed ourselves at 
 
 Picture at the 
 the factory door to watch the issuing operatives. Of these the factory door. 
 
 greater number are girls, but, girl or man, almost every one 
 had a smile and a nod for the manager, and a smile and 
 nod which were charming because of their eloquence as to the 
 relations between employer and employed. Of one Mr. L. 
 would say, " He is our librarian "; of another, " He teaches in 
 my Sunday-school "; of this girl, "She is the best singer in our 
 church choir"; of that, "She is my wife's right hand at a 
 bee." If there is military discipline inside the works, there is 
 both friendship and equality between employer and employee 
 without the walls. 
 
 With such delightful examples the theorist has no 
 need to point the moral or preach a sermon ; he has 
 only to hold up a mirror. Passing through beautiful 
 gardens of flowers one comes to the library of the Yankee 
 factory on whose walls the practical Yankee, a com- ldeall " m - 
 pound of shrewdness and ideality, has caused to be 
 hung this legend, the words of Horace Mann :
 
 126 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Sentiment with 
 money value. 
 
 Help the 
 Inspector*. 
 
 Remember that the learning of the few is despotism, the 
 learning of the multitude is liberty, and that intelligent and 
 principled liberty is fame, wisdom, and power. The well- 
 educated operative does more work, does it better, earns more 
 money, commands more confidence, rises faster and to higher 
 posts in his employment than the uneducated workman can. 
 
 This is sentiment, but sentiment that can be coined 
 into money, sentiment which raises the occupation of a 
 business manager from the despicable position of a 
 slave-driver to the proud elevation of the spiritual leader 
 of his fellow-workmen. Such employers are friends of 
 social peace, guardians of justice, successors of the 
 apostles of piety, wisdom, and humanity. 
 
 Sir E. Chadwick furnishes a valuable illustration of 
 the power of a wise and moral employer. 
 
 The East India Company instituted an inquiry into the causes 
 of sickness and break-down among their, employees : they 
 proved that through influences which they had brought to bear 
 and which had been suggested by the collection of facts of pre- 
 vention, they had secured from their workingmen in London 
 returns as favorable to health as had been obtained from men 
 living in rural districts. The success was due to the circum- 
 stance that the company had learned how to make the health. 
 Selecting their workingmen with care at first, they made pro- 
 vision against sickness. They supplied medical attendance free 
 of expense, so that the moment a man began to fail he could 
 be certified from labor ; and as in course of time each man by 
 increasing age lost power to carry out the heavier work, except 
 at serious cost to his health and strength, they reduced his 
 labor, and allowed it to become suitable, stage by stage, to his 
 actual condition for labor. 
 
 Employers can cooperate with factory inspectors in 
 the effort to exclude tender children from the exhaust- 
 ing labors fit only for adults, in the protection of 
 workers from accident and disease. It is their plain 
 duty not to resist reasonable factory legislation, as they
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 127 
 
 have too often done, but to assist in it, since it is simply 
 a movement to lift the plane of competition and provide 
 for the future a healthier and stronger race. It is a most 
 unfortunate obstacle to social peace when capitalists 
 secretly or openly combine to obstruct and annoy in- 
 spectors instead of fostering reasonable legislation and 
 helping to carry it into effect. It should be understood 
 by this time that factory legislation is the chief means by 
 which honorable and humane employers are enabled to 
 protect their employees without being ruined by heart- 
 less and unscrupulous competitors. 
 
 One of the great causes of social friction is an unsuit- 
 able form of payment, and this is a frequent source of ing wages. pa ' 
 anger apart from the amount of the wages. This is a 
 matter which is largely under the control of the mana- 
 gers. Abuses of power have been so flagrant that legis- 
 lation had to be invoked to correct them. In mines, 
 lumber camps, saw-mills, and other industries employers 
 have insisted upon paying wages in orders on their own 
 stores. No doubt with honest and liberal employers this 
 arrangement has been the most economical, and fre- 
 quently it has been a means of great convenience for 
 the isolated workmen. But in the hands of unscrupu- 
 lous employers the system gives power to rob the work- 
 ingmen of all beyond a mere existence. They are 
 compelled to pay monopoly prices. It is a pity that 
 the baser employers have thus perverted their power 
 and even fought the legal remedies which have been 
 passed in spite of their protests. 
 
 The object of selecting a method of remuneration is 
 on the one side to secure the best quality and highest 
 amount of service, and on the other to promote the 
 health and economic welfare of the wage-earner. Into 
 the technical details of time wage, piece wage, and
 
 128 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Consulting 
 workmen. 
 
 Trials of 
 
 patienoe. 
 
 other current schemes we cannot enter in this place. 
 They are largely determined by the nature of the special 
 forms of industry and no general rule can be laid down 
 for all. But there is one principle of great practical im- 
 portance and of universal application : that method 
 should be adopted which appeals to the better nature 
 and higher motives of the workmen. All charity and 
 sentiment excluded, this principle is declared by saga- 
 cious managers, peers of the strongest, to be practical 
 and imperative. There is a mean and antiquated notion 
 among some employers that it is beneath them to con- 
 sult wage-earners in making arrangements, and that 
 it weakens discipline. Employers of the better class 
 have already proved that conferences with *vorkmen, 
 and a high degree of confidence shown th^m, have a 
 reward in good understanding and avoidance of out- 
 bursts of unreasoning because uninstructed men. 
 
 Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
 In other men, sleeping but never dead, 
 Will rise in majesty to meet thy own. 
 
 It is pitiful to see a real master of the massive engine 
 of business become distrustful of his workmen, cynical 
 and suspicious because they have misunderstood him 
 and returned his kind advances with contempt. It 
 requires a lofty and superior spirit to persist in doing 
 kindness after repulses and insinuations of cowardice 
 and selfishness. And yet this is just the task laid 
 on those who repeatedly remind the world that they be- 
 long to the ' ' higher classes. ' ' An able and humane 
 superintendent opened a resting and reading-room for 
 his employees. There had been dissatisfaction with 
 wages and the men charged his kind act to fear. It 
 made him angry and he turned them in wrath out into 
 the cold. The milk of human kindness had turned acid
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 129 
 
 in the thunder storm. Why could he not trust the 
 might of mercy just a little further ? Had they not some 
 slight cause for their suspicion of sinister motive ? Had 
 they always met such friendliness and good faith that 
 confidence must be taken as a matter of course ? Surely 
 large endowments and superior social position should 
 call for corresponding display of patience and gener- 
 osity, and, if need be, pity with those whom a hard and 
 bitter lot has made to feel that they are aliens. Fortu- 
 nately other men have persisted in kindness until it 
 has won its reward. Perhaps generosity would more 
 frequently succeed if it were not tainted with a lordly 
 feudal spirit which is becoming more and more anti- 
 quated and dangerous in a land of political equality. 
 
 Many improvements in the lot of our wage-earners 
 can be secured without any new societies, clubs, or creating public 
 guilds. Have we not already churches, pulpits, clubs, 
 parties, homes, newspapers, campaigns, and a hundred 
 other vehicles of expression ? If each one of us could 
 discover one particular act which any particular em- 
 ployer might reasonably be expected to perform and 
 tell him so, very sweetly, a score or more of us, he 
 would be likely to do it if he could, and he would be 
 ashamed to put himself in the wrong by getting furi- 
 ously angry. 
 
 The fears and anxieties of wage-earners are due to real 
 and not imaginary causes. Millions of our fellowmen provident 
 live close to the margin of their income, and any slight n 
 change in their plans must lead to misery. There is a 
 strict limit not only to the possibility but to the wisdom 
 of "saving." There are men who "save" money at 
 the cost of vitality, of the education of their children, 
 and the decent comforts of home. There are millions of 
 honest, industrious, thrifty people who are daily ex
 
 130 The Social Spirit m America. 
 
 posed to the danger of discharge, to sickness, due 
 to their employment and surroundings, to accident, and 
 to sudden death. They are affrighted and worried 
 by the thought that they may leave wife and children 
 without income. It irks them sore that their chil- 
 dren should be in danger of beggary, or be unable to 
 fit themselves for a trade. The process of providing 
 for these emergencies by the savings bank method is 
 very slow and uncertain. In cities unskilled laborers 
 cannot buy costly land for homes. Ordinary life insur- 
 ance requires premiums which are simply impracticable 
 for men with low wages and family expenses. Some of 
 the ' ' industrial ' ' companies make it easier by collecting 
 the premiums weekly ; but this is a costly method and is 
 often abused in practice, especially in connection with 
 the insurance of young children. 
 
 It is just here that employers, especially great and 
 Friendly permanent corporations, have their opportunity. Scores 
 
 leadership. , ,. , ... . , 
 
 of establishments are providing various plans of collect- 
 ing insurance funds against times of sickness, accident, 
 and death. Some of these corporations add a subsidy 
 by way of aid and encouragement. Here is a great firm 
 which provides a bookkeeper to care for the accounts of 
 the society of employees who contribute a small sum 
 each week and govern the entire plan through their 
 own officers. There is a company which collects and 
 manages the funds by its salaried accountants. Experi- 
 ments are being tried in various parts of the civilized 
 world, and some of the most instructive and hopeful of 
 these are American. 
 
 It is a pleasure to quote, not a theorist and preacher, 
 Testimony of a but a railroad president, Mr. O. D. Ashley, on the 
 social obligation of capitalists in relation to employees 
 and the public.
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 131 
 
 If there is social unrest in the civilized world, a fact which 
 will hardly be disputed, we are bound, not only as Christians 
 but as parts of the human brotherhood, to give careful exami- 
 nation to all plans which contemplate man's improvement and 
 elevation in the social scale, and in the United States, espe- 
 cially, where the liberty of the individual is a marked feature 
 of our system of government, we are bound to study plans 
 which may render that personal liberty more precious and en- 
 during. 
 
 His little book, "Railways and Their Employees," 
 contains descriptions of various methods by which man- 
 agers of large industries are assisting their employees in 
 providing against the times of need. 
 
 The principle which underlies the German govern- 
 ment system of insurance for workingmen is that 
 each business of production should support the 
 laborers, and that support includes provision for the 
 children and the aged, the invalid and the injured 
 during non-producing periods. Some laudable 
 experiments have been tried by private firms to carry 
 out this principle by providing accident, sick and 
 out-of-work funds for employees. But there are 
 inherent difficulties in the way of ordinary business 
 houses or factories. The duty of carrying obliga- 
 tions for the future may imperil credit. The bank- 
 ruptcy of the firm may scatter the funds accumulated. 
 Changes from place to place or changes in the man- 
 agement interfere with a continuous policy. 
 
 In the case of vast corporations, like railroads and 
 iron works, some of these difficulties are diminished 
 or disappear, and the outlook for their schemes is 
 more hopeful. But we must look to Germany for 
 the most complete and reliable plan of legalizing and 
 supervising this method of insurance and fixing the 
 rates on uniform principles of equity and economic
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Meani of 
 
 culture. 
 
 Elevation of 
 oul. 
 
 science. There are, indeed, schemes of employers 
 to insure themselves against loss by claims of work- 
 men injured by machinery; but this protects the 
 wrong party and leaves the injustice without remedy. 
 The true principle is to provide legally for indemnity 
 in all cases of accident, without suits to enforce "em- 
 ployers' liability." The expense of insurance thus 
 becomes a part of the costs of production. Only 
 when constituted authority controls the entire plan can 
 it be placed on a substantial and enduring foundation. 
 
 Employers, as influential members of the community, 
 are able to serve wage-earners by promoting the educa- 
 tional agencies of the city or town. It is not always 
 necessary to establish libraries and reading-rooms in 
 connection with the factory or the store ; but rich men 
 can foster the means of culture to which all have access. 
 In these days, when there is a strong tendency among 
 the wealthy and their imitators to educate their own 
 children in private schools, there are distinct signs 
 of indifference or even hostility toward the free public 
 schools. Yet these are precisely the institutions which 
 must give character to our people, as they are the only 
 means of education for wage-earners. Rich men can 
 give time and thought to the management of the com- 
 mon schools. 
 
 Grandly did Channing, in his noble lecture ' ' On the 
 Elevation of the Laboring Classes, ' ' say : "I know but 
 one elevation of a human being, and that is elevation of 
 soul." The improvement in physical and economical 
 conditions is nothing save a means to this end ; and em- 
 ployers have the power to contribute to this in varied 
 ways. Sagacious and magnanimous men, as the 
 Coopers, Drexels, Pratts, have set a worthy example. 
 Some of the trunk line railroads have provided reading-
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 133 
 
 rooms, baths, and even religious services of the Y. M. 
 C. A. for the employees. The expenditures are justi- 
 fied on the ground of economy and humanity. 
 
 The capitalist, optimistic with success, tells the wage- Increased ^^ 
 earner that the only way to gain more is to earn more. in * p w er. 
 This is partly true. But so far as it is true it shows how 
 intelligence and riches, the gifts of the "higher classes," 
 can improve the income of the poor, by providing 
 instruction in those arts by which wealth is increased 
 and finer goods are produced. 
 
 Railroad companies and other corporations have en- 
 couraged their employees to buy stock and thus become, 
 in a sense, partners in the enterprise. Aside from the 
 insecurity of such stock and the extreme fluctuations 
 in their value, the possession of shares gives little real 
 power over the management. The method has a value, 
 but only within narrow limits. It is not the ideal of the 
 working people. 
 
 Students of social history have long since corrected 
 
 * Profit-sharing. 
 
 the notion that a system of industry to which we are ac- 
 customed is a part of eternal order and is not subject to 
 change. In other times the laborer was a slave, bound 
 to render service to a particular person according to his 
 will on penalty of death for refusal, and subject to sale 
 like any chattel. The slave received his living because 
 he was useless unless he was fed. But he could not, as 
 a rule, accumulate wealth, and he was liable to be 
 separated from his family. No very high development 
 of character was possible. Under that system, which 
 is called serfdom, the laborer belonged to the territory 
 rather than to a person ; and while he could not move 
 about as he chose, and owed certain duties to his 
 lord, he also found security, maintenance, and social 
 consideration in his position. But slavery and serfdom
 
 134 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The wage 
 system. 
 
 Us defects. 
 
 have passed away from civilized lands, and a third form 
 of regulating labor, which also lived by the side of 
 the others, has come to be very general in industrial 
 communities. 
 
 This is called the capitalistic wage system. Its dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic is that it is based on a free 
 contract which can be enforced at law, but may be 
 terminated by consent. This system admits of a higher 
 degree of personal freedom ; it permits a man to go 
 where he thinks he can do best for himself ; it opens to 
 the workman some hope of becoming a manager of 
 business ; and there is a general correspondence be- 
 tween effort and reward, since the more efficient work- 
 man usually receives higher pay than one who lacks 
 capacity and skill. But there are disadvantages in this 
 system, so serious that it is under a steady fire of 
 criticism from many standpoints. As capital becomes 
 more concentrated in large masses, and as division 
 of labor is carried further, the workman is more sep- 
 arated from the employer ; he no longer owns and con- 
 trols the instruments used for production ; he is exposed 
 to the risks of business without having any voice in 
 its management ; he is under the power of the managers 
 of capital to such a degree that freedom of contract 
 is frequently a mockery, since the places open to him 
 are all under the sway of similar principles of govern- 
 ment. The wage-earner has no direct and tangible 
 interest in the product, save as it affects his rate of 
 wages ; and the interests of his employer frequently 
 seem in antagonism to his own. The disputes relating 
 to the rate of wages, the length of hours, the regula- 
 tions of the shop, and the competition with outsiders 
 have been so bitter as to endanger and sometimes 
 destroy the social peace. The history of mankind
 
 What Good Employers are Doing. 135 
 
 shows that a change of some kind is to be expected, 
 and that a method of employment which brings with it 
 so many losses and perils cannot be regarded as ab- 
 solutely final. 
 
 It is not strange that both philanthropists and busi- 
 ness men should cast about for some mode of ameliora- 
 ting the situation and promoting a more satisfactory 
 arrangement. Among the proposed experiments is 
 profit-sharing. This means, as here used, "An agree- 
 ment spontaneously entered into by which the workman profit-sharing. 
 or employee receives a share of profits determined in ad- 
 vance." This method must be carefully distinguished 
 from many schemes of bonus, piece wage, pensions, 
 benefit funds, and other forms of remuneration and 
 stimulus which sometimes go under this name. Strictly 
 speaking, the word profit-sharing should be reserved for 
 that form of industrial remuneration in which a fixed 
 part of the profits shall be divided among the employees 
 according to their wages. Certain advantages are 
 claimed for this system : that it makes the workmen 
 more industrious, careful of waste and wear, less likely 
 to strike and thereby lessen their chances at a share of 
 profits. It is claimed that workmen would not be so 
 likely to disturb social peace if they had hope of a share 
 in the profits of business. 
 
 Objections have been urged from various points of 
 view. Employers have objected that wage-earners would o ^ ectioni - 
 be quite willing to share gains but in bad years could 
 not be reconciled to sharing losses. The answer to this 
 objection has been made that the workmen in fact 
 do share losses every year, since they lose income every 
 day and hour they are not engaged. It is further urged 
 in reply that the manager can create a fund in good 
 years which will provide for the years of loss. Social-
 
 136 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Conflicting 
 opinions. 
 
 Experiment 
 must decide. 
 
 ists are inclined to ridicule the scheme because it de- 
 pends on the generosity of capitalists, a trait of character 
 which they are not inclined to count a large factor. In 
 reply to this objection it is urged that the capitalist em- 
 ployer who adopts this method would succeed so well 
 that he would compel competitors to come to his way of 
 doing, and that the success of the system does not rest 
 entirely on philanthropy. 
 
 Economists are generally favorable to a trial of the 
 scheme. Some business men are very enthusiastic over 
 it, but comparatively few managers have attempted 
 it, and more have abandoned it than have persisted. 
 Where the cost of superintendence is high and the pos- 
 sibilities of waste of material and time are relatively 
 great, with a superior type of men on both sides, a fair 
 degree of success has been won. 
 
 Perhaps the most serious theoretical objection is that 
 the men may deserve a share and fulfill their part 
 perfectly, and yet, owing to the incompetence or misfor- 
 tune of the manager, they may fail to secure what they 
 deserve. It is claimed that workmen should not be ex- 
 posed to the danger of losing the results of their extra 
 efforts on account of defects in that management in 
 which they have no voice. Since wages are and must 
 long remain the major part of income, and since a wage 
 contract can be enforced at law while a gratuity can- 
 not be so enforced, it does not seem likely that wage- 
 earners will abandon their union when it comes to a real 
 conflict of interests between the rate of wages and 
 the fluctuating and uncertain share in profits. The ver- 
 dict at present must wait on further experiment. There 
 is enough to recommend it as worthy of trial in suitable 
 conditions.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 
 
 ORGANIZATIONS OF WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 THE wage-earners, like all other men, should have a 
 
 ~, . i Common 
 
 universal and supreme ideal. Character, in its widest interests of 
 
 humanity. 
 
 and highest sense, is the ripe fruit of all social growths. 
 The need of knowledge of God, man, and nature is com- 
 mon to all, not peculiar to a class. The enjoyment of 
 vigorous and robust health is a good which most persons 
 can appreciate. And while multitudes of people care 
 little for aesthetic values, for beautiful sights and har- 
 mony, all have a latent faculty for art and are defective 
 unless it is developed. But the condition of securing 
 all the blessings of life in any high measure is the 
 possession of income. Economic welfare is the con- 
 dition of all other welfare. The primary ' ' labor ques- 
 tion" is a question of money. Wage-earners are not 
 alone in this situation. All men are alike in depending 
 upon the acquisition of at least a minimum of wealth 
 for the attainment of spiritual satisfaction. The ladder 
 which reaches heaven rests on the earth. This is not 
 "materialism," it is common sense. Those who declare 
 that money is not essential to noble life give the lie to 
 their theory by their conduct. An all-wise Creator 
 gives us bodies before there is any mind to speak of. the'spfritua? 
 Paul himself affirmed that the natural comes before 
 the spiritual in the order of time, although it is not 
 first in dignity. A minister seldom accepts a call until 
 he has an agreement about salary. 
 
 While there is so much in common there are some 
 
 MT
 
 138 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Trades unions. 
 
 important differences. Modern machine industry, with 
 ^ e accompanying concentration of capital, has, during 
 tn j s ce ntury, produced a wage class whose permanent 
 interests are bound up with a particular form of income. 
 Looking now at industrial communities we see that 
 wage-earners are usually compelled to act together 
 as wage-earners because of the method of industrial 
 organization to which we all are subject. A relatively 
 small minority can rise to be managers of industry, but 
 the ratio seems to grow smaller every year. 
 
 Certain it is that the prospect of becoming capitalists does 
 not act as so powerful a motive on the laborers to-day as on 
 those of a generation ago. The opportunities to save are as 
 great or greater ; but the amount which has to be saved before 
 a man can hope to become his own employer has increased 
 enormously. (Professor Hadley.) 
 
 Many wage-earners may be able to lay aside some- 
 thing in savings banks and can purchase stocks in manu- 
 facturing and transporting corporations. But ten hours 
 a day, six days in the week, the large body of opera- 
 tives are separated from the controlling and directing 
 persons by distinct interests relating to the hours of 
 labor, the intensity of labor, and the rate of payment. 
 Naturally men desire to secure themselves against arbi- 
 trary and unreasonable regulations of their captains. 
 One means of doing this is the trades union. 
 
 It is almost impossible to mention trades unions with- 
 out exciting feelings of hostility on the part of those 
 identified with the fortunes of rent, interest, and profit. 
 But a calm and rational consideration of their history 
 will temper this bitter hatred without committing us to 
 unqualified admiration. The simple historical fact is 
 that the development of the factory system has created a 
 class of capitalists and a class of wage-earners ; that the
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 139 
 
 capitalists are already the embodiments of concentrated 
 power because of their control of machinery and their 
 known power to wait without suffering, while wage- 
 earners are urged by hunger and danger of starvation ; 
 and that wage-earners have constructed a semi-military 
 organization to defend themselves, to meet the con- 
 centrated power of managers, and to secure more 
 favorable wage contracts than they could secure' as 
 individuals. 
 
 From the standpoint of this discussion no very strong 
 eulogy of trades unions is reasonable. This book is 
 written in the interests of social peace, while trades 
 
 .... Relative 
 
 unions and capitalistic organizations to meet them are necessity, 
 on a kind of war basis. The best word we can say 
 for the union is that it is relatively justifiable ; that it is 
 indispensable to progress, somewhat as the powder-cart 
 is a vehicle of advance. We cannot give it high praise 
 nor unqualified rebuke. It is an effective weapon in an 
 apparently unavoidable strife. We may think of it just 
 as of ancient slavery and armies, ugly but necessary 
 means of climbing out of the barbarian pit. And yet 
 trades unions are the work of the social spirit and mani- 
 festations of solidarity of interests ; a primary school for 
 a coming wider cooperation. Just as all affections must 
 take deep root in the nursery of the home before they 
 can bear transplanting and exposure in the wide world, 
 so the semi-militant cooperation of the trades union is 
 on the way to the parliament of man, the federation of 
 the world. 
 
 The guilds of former centuries were organizations 
 of manufacturers and of merchants, or of persons who 
 looked forward to becoming masters in the small indus- The past of 
 
 trades union*. 
 
 tnes of their times. The trades unions are of a different 
 character and are constructed on a different principle.
 
 140 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 They are composed of wage-earners who know that only 
 an insignificant part of them, thought of as " deserters 
 from their class," have the least chance of rising to the 
 ranks of regulating agents. Since their home and com- 
 pany must be with operatives they are determined 
 to make their permanent place as comfortable as pos- 
 sible. This class consciousness may seem very narrow 
 and selfish, but is much better than dull, swinish 
 apathy. 
 
 At the beginning of this century in England and 
 Baritth history. ot k er countries of Europe it was a crime for laborers to 
 combine for the purpose of resisting the demands of the 
 masters. It was only after the most bitter and pro- 
 longed resistance that they fought their way to self- 
 respect and conquered the respect of the employing 
 classes by exciting their fears. Adam Smith had said, 
 ' ' Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, 
 but constant and uniform, combination not to raise 
 the wages of labor above their actual rate ' ' ; and for 
 a long time the employers, as political rulers, were able 
 to enforce their will by the help of force. But after the 
 struggle which so much resembled war, the right of 
 coalition has been recognized by all modern nations. At 
 first prohibited, then tolerated, trades unions are now 
 legalized, regulated, with definite rights and duties. 
 ' ' Capital is not absolute ; and it is idle to compare the 
 position of the capitalist nowadays with his position 
 when his workmen were slaves and the law-makers were 
 his creations." (Theodore Roosevelt.) The conquest 
 of the laborers has been won by their unions. 
 
 There is no necessary connection between these asso- 
 
 ReUtlon of . . . ., -.. 
 
 unions to ciations and strikes. Long before there were unions 
 
 there were strikes of the most desperate and cruel kind. 
 Even now among unorganized laborers there are striko,
 
 Organizations of Wage-Earners. 141 
 
 lawless and bloody acts, and obedience to demagogues. 
 On the other hand, some of the strongest unions do not 
 strike, and all of them tend to become conservative as 
 they gain wealth, funds, power, and reputation. Per- 
 haps the very common prejudice against unions in this 
 country is due to the fact that they are comparatively 
 new, have had but brief experience, and are composed 
 of a mixed multitude of city men who have come to- 
 gether from all nationalities. Perhaps a further reason 
 for the excesses and irregularities of American unions in 
 the past has been that our agricultural civilization had 
 not provided us a legal ideal and rule, such as England 
 has formed. A new country, where manufactures are 
 just beginning to be a prominent factor, must work out 
 suitable social regulations which will anticipate deeds 
 of violence and bring associations under the direction as 
 well as protection of law. As these temporary condi- 
 tions are changed we may hope to find the use of strikes 
 by unions less frequent and characteristic. 
 
 Indeed, the function of organization is to regulate ac- 
 tion. Men who are accustomed to discuss their plans, 
 to weigh, criticise, and resolve after debate and delibera- 
 tion, are much less inclined to rash and precipitate 
 conduct than the same men would be if they were with- 
 out the means of comparison of views. The same 
 aggravating conditions would arouse the same resent- 
 ments and reactions of feelings as now, but without 
 a society for deliberation the outbursts of indignation 
 would be more frequent and more desperate. It is 
 true that a strong union is more likely to be suc- 
 cessful than one composed of raw recruits, but that 
 is because it is more able to find out whether the 
 employer is able to give better terms, and whether 
 success is within reach. This knowledge and power
 
 I 4 2 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Methods. 
 
 Legal status of 
 trades unions. 
 
 make a strike less necessary just because it is known 
 to be fairly certain of success. 
 
 One of the labor leaders has said that the object of 
 their movement is to secure a larger share of the world's 
 treasure, leisure, and pleasure. They, in common with 
 all men, desire shorter hours of drudgery, higher in- 
 come, wider opportunities, more respectful and consid- 
 erate treatment. 
 
 The trades unions succeed by bringing the represent- 
 atives of a trade into a society which can present 
 a united front, formulate demands, sustain their mem- 
 bers long enough to endure a siege while strength 
 of both sides is put to the test, restrict the competition 
 of other laborers, influence legislation on matters of 
 interest to wage-earners, and provide funds for various 
 exigencies of life. Illegitimate methods, as violence, 
 intimidation, and insult, belong to the campaigns of the 
 unions only in the sense that mutilating non-combatants 
 and burning libraries belong to war. 
 
 Even war has its rules, and these tend to become 
 more humane. International strifes are likely to be 
 referred to judicial courts. And so modern nations, 
 recognizing trades unions as necessary evils, or at most 
 only relatively good, seek to restrict their militant oper- 
 ations as much as possible and to see that the contest is 
 carried on in the spirit of fair play. Trades unions have 
 always been legal in this country since the Revolution. 
 Strikes are lawful. Men can continue to promote their 
 own interests so long as they do not seek the injury 
 of their fellowmen by threats, disturbances, riots, or in- 
 sult. It is ordinarily lawful to do by union what is 
 permitted the individual to do. Whether a strike is 
 good policy is an economical question, an affair of 
 bookkeeping. But the hoodlum cry of "scab," the
 
 Organizations of Wage-Earners. 143 
 
 bludgeon of the assassin, the incendiary torch, are to be 
 judged on other grounds. In a country where any citi- 
 zen can appeal to law and where manual workers are the 
 majority of voters violence is inexcusable, and experi- 
 ence shows that it will not be tolerated. 
 
 Passing out of the warlike atmosphere of the trades 
 
 r i j / -u ^.i s Pacific organ- 
 
 unions, we feel more confident of ascribing the creation izations for 
 
 , , , . j, . . . . , . . , . , . mutual benefit. 
 
 of the friendly societies to the social spirit which is our 
 theme. To one who moves about among the poor of a 
 great city there are few signs more beautiful and hopeful 
 than the various associations of wage-earners formed to 
 provide funds against times of exigency. On our cards 
 of investigators for relief societies there is often printed 
 the question : ' ' Do you belong to any club, lodge, 
 or friendly society ? " The number of these societies is 
 legion and their modes of work as varied as the colors 
 in a kaleidoscope. Among the foreigners about our 
 social settlements these associations constitute one of the 
 foremost factors making for elevation and protection. 
 They raise a lofty and strong barrier against pauperism, 
 and bring men and women into relations of mutual help- 
 fulness and friendship. 
 
 The older trades unions have generally tended to add 
 these features to their more belligerent functions, and 
 history seems to teach that this gives them increased 
 power. May we not hope that when the labor insurrec- 
 tion is over, and labor has won proper recognition, that 
 the benefit factor will be left as the element of perma- factor in 
 nent interest and value ? We have already noticed that 
 employers have sometimes taken the initiative in provi- 
 ding income for times of sickness, accident, and death. 
 A weekly fee is not severely felt by a wage-earner, 
 where fifty dollars would be a crushing burden. Sick- 
 ness of the bread-winner is robbed of its worst terrors
 
 144 
 
 The Social Spirit in America, 
 
 Invention of 
 
 Insurance. 
 
 Cooperation of 
 others than 
 wage-earners. 
 
 and made more amenable to remedy if there is a fund to 
 provide for immediate wants. On the average a man 
 will be out of employment from illness and accident 
 so many days in a year, the average being different for 
 various occupations. This average can be calculated 
 and a sum can be made up by cooperation which will 
 sustain the family until working capacity is restored. 
 
 The discovery of the principle of distributing individ- 
 ual risks by social action ranks with the invention of the 
 steam-engine. The association for giving this principle 
 effectiveness is at once cause and consequence of the dis- 
 position of sociability. Indeed, the cultivation of the 
 friendly nature and the increase of knowledge and good 
 breeding are among the most important elements. 
 Those who are cut off from ' ' society ' ' find in these 
 clubs and lodges a society which gives them pleasure 
 and, in the long run, refinement of manners and a 
 certain intellectual power. While the same financial 
 benefits may sometimes be obtained at even less cost 
 where employers manage the business, the highest results 
 cannot thus be attained. Just as fast as wage-earners 
 can learn to gather and manage their own funds, as they 
 do in the friendly societies, the more rapidly will they 
 acquire business tact, insight into the nature of our eco- 
 nomic world, and those qualities of independence, self- 
 reliance, and foresight which lift men in the scale of 
 social rank. 
 
 Every sincere lover of working people must rejoice at 
 every sign of independence. This does not mean isola- 
 tion from the employing class. Any of us can join such 
 associations if we pay our dues. It is a great deal better 
 for the capitalist to knock at the door of a lodge and ask 
 admission than it is for him to keep his employees in a 
 state of minority and dependence by methods of patron-
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 145 
 
 age. As the wage-earners become more intelligent and 
 self-respecting they will more and more conduct their 
 own affairs. Even their losses of money will teach teaches 6 " 
 them wisdom, and the increase of mental and- moral 
 force will compensate for many disappointments. 
 
 If young capitalists, with real gifts of financial wisdom, 
 wish to be of the most benefit, they must give over their 
 foolish and meaningless class pretensions and become 
 members of some of the existing benefit societies. 
 Politicians are doing this now " for what there is in it." 
 It is an unworked field for genuine democrats who 
 despise the narrowness of class arrogance, have a sincere 
 desire to be useful, and are not itching for political pre- 
 ferment. But an unselfish and earnest political purpose 
 would be promoted by membership in the clubs of 
 workingmen. Merely personal ambition, however, is 
 soon detected. Workingmen have been deceived so 
 often that they are sensitive and suspicious, and nothing 
 short of a serious and persistent devotion to their happi- 
 ness can remove the moral barrier. 
 
 Life insurance is a much more difficult science than 
 that which underlies the mutual benefit societies. The insurance 
 
 , . t ... . c , , fraternities. 
 
 history of hie insurance on some of the assessment plans 
 is strewn with wrecks and marked with sorrows. There 
 are certain fixed principles clearly ascertained by the ex- 
 perience of the century. Here as elsewhere the word 
 " cheap " is likely to prove a deceiver. Life insurance 
 costs, on the average, a certain sum. To be real and 
 secure, a staff and not a reed, certain conditions must be 
 observed. The modes of operation may vary but these 
 conditions cannot be ignored with impunity. The terms 
 of admission must be such as to exclude the feeble 
 and the aged, or extra sums must be charged sufficient 
 to cover the risk, or provide a fund from the young
 
 146 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 and strong ready to meet the certain loss. To omit 
 in variable laws, medical examinations on grounds of " fraternity" with- 
 out facing the inevitable loss in advance is to invite 
 ruin. Then the premiums must be paid according to 
 ages, or as the old men begin to die off rapidly the 
 younger will find the burden unbearable and desert the 
 sinking ship. There must be a reserve fund sufficient 
 to meet the drafts made by deaths as they occur, since 
 life insurance is simply a device for distributing a given 
 sum over a number of years. Furthermore a society 
 must cover a wide territory so as to be able to divide 
 the losses of a particularly unfortunate locality over a 
 large number of members. 
 
 The insurance department of Massachusetts has pub- 
 lished opinions on these points. The English "Friend- 
 lies," described by Baernreither, have tried all sorts of 
 experiments and won success after mistakes and fail- 
 ures. If a friendly society enters the insurance business 
 it must submit to rational laws or disappoint the hopes 
 of confiding members. 
 
 There is no device for extracting light from cucum- 
 bers or producing perpetual motion without a constant 
 renewal of force. There is no magic in life insurance 
 which will enable men to pay in fifty dollars and take 
 out a thousand dollars. * The average member must, in 
 order to secure to his family the sum of one thousand 
 dollars at death, pay each year a sum which, together 
 with the interest compounded, will not only equal 
 the amount desired at the calculated time of antici- 
 pated death, but also a sum for the expenses of the 
 business. No philanthropy, sentiment, or brotherly 
 
 Sentiment and / 
 
 mathematics. goodness can circumvent mathematics. 
 
 It is highly desirable that these very useful societies 
 should be placed on a sound basis. This can be done in
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 147 
 
 several ways. The diffusion of scientific statements 
 of the essential principles of safe life insurance is the first 
 method. Only as wage-earners learn accurately the ex- 
 perience of the English societies and the results of statis- 
 tical and actuarial study will they make the necessary 
 sacrifices to secure sound insurance. The ordinary 
 assessment plan is so enticing to beginners and looks so 
 much cheaper on its face that many are led astray. 
 Knowledge arms the worker against mathematical falla- 
 cies. Another method is state inspection and regulation. 
 It cannot be hoped that all wage-earners can at once 
 master the principles of insurance. These are complex 
 and difficult. Just as the government protects citizens 
 against short-weight coins and tainted meat, so it should 
 protect citizens against societies built on deceit or even 
 on unreliable plans. 
 
 Baernreither, historian and eulogist of the English so- Limitations 
 cieties, recognizes defects and shortcomings which are sodeUes. ly 
 in general more common in America : 
 
 These societies, as a whole, are imperfect in two respects. 
 They do not reach equally all grades of the working classes, 
 while for the more helpless and the poorer portion of them 
 they provide only imperfect forms of insurance ; and then, they 
 are not yet sufficiently consolidated to prevent the insurance, 
 purchased perhaps by the sacrifices of many years, from being 
 frustrated by insolvency, an eventuality to which the poorer 
 workingmen are necessarily more exposed than thoir brethren 
 who can afford to join the sound societies. 
 
 What is here set down is the warning of a friend of 
 mutual benefit societies. True friendship is not satis- 
 fied with flattery but seeks absolute clearness and safety. 
 One form of work of the social spirit has found little 
 more than a beginning in America, although it has Cofi eration 
 promise of future extension. In 1844 the Rochdale 
 Pioneers of England started a humble store in Toad-
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Hopeful 
 
 statistic*. 
 
 Joint stock 
 companies. 
 
 lane with twenty-eight members and $140 capital. In 
 1892 there were reported to the Royal Commission 
 of Labor in Great Britain 1,459 retail distributive coop- 
 erative societies, having 1,098,352 members, with ^n,- 
 520.045 capital and 1, 207, 204 loans. The sales during 
 1891 amounted to ^31,514,634, on which profits of 
 ,4,342,373 had been realized. Why does not this 
 movement extend more rapidly in America? There 
 are several reasons. Our economical conditions have 
 been very different from those of the old country. 
 Until within the last ten years every man had a chance 
 of escaping from the wage status to ownership of cheap 
 government land, if he chose to do so. The easy pros- 
 pect of becoming a capitalist by taking a homestead 
 tended to dissolve the bond which connected the mem- 
 bers of the same occupation. A permanent residence in 
 a city or manufacturing town was not thought of as 
 necessary. Wages were higher than - in any other 
 country and the necessity of small economies was not 
 seriously felt. It was more convenient to be served by 
 retail dealers and pay for the luxury. Such were some 
 of the reasons for the belated introduction and success of 
 cooperation. 
 
 And even now the principle is not generally under- 
 stood and appreciated in the United States. There is 
 confusion of thought in respect to the objects, principles, 
 and methods of real workingmen's cooperation. The 
 idea has been made so popular by the English success 
 that the title has been appropriated by various promo- 
 ters of schemes for profit. More legitimate, yet still 
 misleading, is the use of the term by all kinds of joint 
 stock companies in which the members invest capital 
 and draw dividends in proportion to capital invested. 
 There is no obiection to this method of investment. For
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 149 
 
 a long time it will be one of the best ways for wage- 
 earners to improve their conditions. But this is not co- 
 operation in the proper sense. 
 
 In all these plans the gain goes to capital and the con- 
 trol is in few hands. This is a business method but not success of 
 a workingman's ideal. The fact that there is a large profit."* 
 number of partners and that they are manual workers, 
 as is the case in so-called cooperative production, does 
 not change the matter in its essential basis. It is still a 
 company in which the profits are confined to the mem- 
 bers, while the great public is excluded from the benefit. 
 Probably for this reason the form of cooperative pro- 
 duction under consideration has not been able to 
 command sustained enthusiasm either in Great Britain 
 or America. It appeals to too narrow a range of inter- 
 ests. It leaves control in the hands of a select set, to the 
 exclusion of the community. A moderate degree of 
 success has been attained under very favorable circum- 
 stances, as in the case of the coopers of Minneapolis who 
 have a contract with millers to take their entire product 
 of barrels, and who on this account are not exposed 
 to the vicissitudes of competition. No doubt the man- 
 agement of business on such terms is a valuable educa- 
 tion to the members of the association. Probably it is a 
 financial advantage to them. But it leaves the great 
 body of wage-earners about where they were before. 
 The trades unions in time of strikes have repeatedly 
 tried to establish business to compete with the employ- 
 ers and have almost uniformly failed. The instructed 
 leaders say that failure is due to lack of education 
 and business qualifications. But Beatrice Potter, in 
 reviewing the English movement, said that all such 
 efforts ought to fail because they are too selfish and un- 
 democratic.
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Democratic 
 principle of 
 cooperation. 
 
 Economic 
 advantages. 
 
 There is an element of spiritual and prophetic am- 
 bition in the English movement which is thus expressed 
 by Thomas Hughes, who did so much to advance 
 the work in England: "Human society is a body 
 consisting of many members, not a collection of warring 
 atoms. True workmen must be fellow workmen, and 
 not rivals. A principle of justice, not of selfishness, 
 must govern exchanges." The dominant aim is the 
 welfare of the community, not merely the interest of the 
 trader and manufacturer. The joint stock company 
 divides profits according to capital and gives power 
 according to investment. Cooperators divide profits 
 according to purchases, and management is based on 
 the principle ' ' one man, one vote. ' ' The one plan 
 is limited and feudalistic ; the other is frankly and 
 thoroughly democratic ; its aim being "to place all 
 men on the same level in respect to control over man- 
 agement, eligibility for office, and equally divided 
 profits." 
 
 The immediate advantages of cooperation are seen in 
 the superior quality of goods, in protection from short 
 weights and adulteration, in assurance of moderate 
 prices. Since the management is in the hands of con- 
 sumers and not of capitalists, there is no interest in 
 adulteration nor excessive prices, but the interest is all 
 the other way. Since a market is assured by the 
 membership there is small expense for costly advertis- 
 ing. As the payments are for cash there is no loss for 
 bad debts to be charged up to the prompt customers as 
 a punishment for being good citizens, as is the rule in 
 capitalistic establishments. Wage-earners in Great 
 Britain have become owners of millions of dollars of 
 capital by an insensible process. Every pound of coffee, 
 meat, or flour purchased at market prices represented a
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 151 
 
 minute investment. The cooperators have grown rich 
 literally by buying. 
 
 Cooperators have something of that education which 
 managers of business enjoy. They must discuss and Moral advan- 
 decide questions akin to those which tax the powers and 
 train the intelligence of merchants and bankers. They 
 must learn to compromise with their fellows, to cultivate 
 tact, courtesy, patience in debate, and submission to the 
 majority after vote is taken. It is manifest that such 
 training tends to fit wage-earners for that true dem- 
 ocracy which comes nearer each generation. Coopera- 
 tors have been leaders in the movements to secure fair 
 and humane treatment of employees ; as in granting 
 shorter hours, half-holidays, and the best wages ; and in 
 mitigating the evils of sweating, child labor, and unsani- 
 tary physical conditions. Many societies own libraries 
 and halls for discussion, provide lecturers and entertain- 
 ments, and set apart a per cent of the profits for these 
 educational purposes. 
 
 There must be one price plainly marked, and that 
 must be about the market price ; cash payment must be Conditions 
 
 . ... ... . ofsuccess. 
 
 insisted on without exception, since credit is rum ; 
 dividends are assigned to purchasers according to the 
 amounts of registered purchases ; the members buy 
 shares, but each member has only one vote ; the in- 
 vestment pays a certain rate of interest like any other 
 capital ; the employees of the association are paid fixed 
 -ahries, but have no more control in the management 
 than other members, although they may be permitted to 
 vote as shareholders ; there must be efficient and honest 
 management, since defective administration will wreck 
 the finest scheme, and salaries must be high enough to 
 secure competent persons and remove temptations to 
 steal. In order to diffuse the benefits of the association
 
 152 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The 
 
 cooperative 
 spirit. 
 
 The movement 
 in the United 
 States. 
 
 as widely as possible the cooperative stores are open to 
 the public. "The cooperative spirit" is one of the 
 essential factors, as one of the publications defines it : 
 
 A true cooperator has three qualities, good sense, good tem- 
 per, and good-will good sense to dispose him to make the 
 most of his means ; good temper to enable him to associate 
 with others ; and good-will to incline him to serve them and be 
 at trouble to serve them and go on serving them, whether they 
 are grateful or not in return, caring only that he does good, and 
 finding it a sufficient reward to see that others are benefited 
 through his unthanked exertions. 
 
 The financial success of the movement indicates that 
 these qualities are not altogether lacking, although no 
 one would claim that they are universally present. 
 
 In the appendix will be found recent statistics 
 gathered by Dr. E. W. Bemis. Outside of New Eng- 
 land the conditions are not yet very favorable for the 
 Rochdale plan of cooperation. The returns for 1886 
 showed a business of about $1,000,000, while the partial 
 report for 1895 yields only about $900,000. The years 
 of depression have told heavily on this form of business 
 as well as on others. 
 
 In New England, with a more concentrated popula- 
 tion of industrials, there has been greater success. Dr. 
 Bemis says that ' ' while six of the stores that had a trade 
 of $134,000 in 1886 are now closed, the trade of the re- 
 maining thirteen of those in existence in the former 
 period has grown from $479,000 to $978,951.48, and 
 nine new stores report a trade of $251,409.49. The 
 total cooperative trade in New England, almost entirely 
 on the Rochdale plan, is thus twice as great as ten 
 years ago." 
 
 He adds: "A few cooperative societies secure dis- 
 counts elsewhere, not only on boots and shoes, dry 
 goods, coal and wood, hardware, oil, meat, bread, cloth-
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 153 
 
 ing, and furniture, but on bicycles, jewelry, watches, 
 milk, musical instruments, laundry, photographs, ath- 
 letic goods, and the services of the tailor, dentist, and 
 physician." 
 
 The next stage of development, corresponding to that 
 of the English associations, is the federation of all the Federation, 
 societies of the Rochdale type. The Bulletin of Labor, 
 No. 6, gives an account of the beginnings of this move- 
 ment. 
 
 It is well known that managers of business are mem- 
 bers of the debtor class, the heaviest borrowers in Popular crdu. 
 the nation. When they pay six per cent interest they 
 have reason to hope they can make the money bring ten 
 per cent or more when it has been mixed with their 
 powers of direction. Credit is itself capital to one who 
 can use it. And this is as true of poor men as of rich 
 men. The story told for Continental Europe in Wolff's 
 " People's Banks" is more interesting than a novel. It 
 points out the path to a gold mine. It shows how 
 the wage-earners can redeem themselves from the clutch 
 of the usurer and win for themselves property. 
 Throughout the civilized world the workingmen are 
 coming to be aware of this instrument of elevation. 
 Their necessities bring them into cooperation, which is 
 itself civilizing. 
 
 There are societies known in this country by various 
 names, as Building and Loan Associations, Cooperative bankhig. Uv< 
 Banks, Cooperative Savings and Loan Associations. 
 They are to be carefully distinguished from the joint 
 stock companies of private capitalists and investors who 
 have appropriated the name. The " national " building 
 and loan associations have no particular interest to us 
 here, although they are not under criticism. All the 
 associations here mentioned are combinations of persons
 
 154 
 
 TTie Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Statistics of 
 business. 
 
 Method. 
 
 of limited means, largely mechanics and clerks, to win 
 a possession by means of small regular payments. The 
 first of these societies was formed at Frankford, Penn- 
 sylvania, in 1831. In the Ninth Annual Report of the 
 Commissioner of Labor there were reported from forty- 
 eight states and territories 5,598 "local" associations, 
 with 710,156 male shareholders and 263,388 female 
 shareholders, of whom 29.83 per cent were borrowers. 
 The total dues paid in on installment shares in force 
 plus the profits amounted to $413,647,228. If we 
 add the figures for the 240 "national" societies the 
 amount would be $450,667,594. Mr. C. D. Wright 
 pays this tribute : 
 
 A business represented by this great sum, conducted quietly, 
 with little or no advertising, and without the experienced 
 banker in charge, shows that the common people, in their own 
 ways, are quite competent to take care of their savings, espe- 
 cially when it is known that but thirty-five of the associations 
 now in existence showed a net loss at the end of their last fiscal 
 year and that this loss amounted to only $23,332.20. 
 
 The plan of organization and operation is not compli- 
 cated. The capital is collected by the letting of shares 
 of $200, more or less. These shares are paid for by 
 monthly installments of one dollar. If a member has al- 
 ready paid for a lot and wishes to build a home without 
 ready money he can borrow on this security enough 
 for his purpose and pay it back with interest as he is 
 able, meantime enjoying the use of his house. It is true 
 that he must often pay a premium to secure the loan, 
 and the interest is often somewhat higher than he would 
 have to pay private parties. But the arrangement to 
 pay in small sums is an encouragement to undertake and 
 carry through a plan which involves foresight and self- 
 denial. There is a danger that the saving may be made
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 155 
 
 at the expense of health and culture, in which case 
 it comes too dear. 
 
 It may be asked whether there is any field for credit 
 among wage-earners in cities and manufacturing towns, 
 It may be thought that credit is the bane of persons ' credit 
 so situated, even if it might be a blessing to small land- 
 holders like renters and peasants. While pondering 
 this point the following advertisement fell under the 
 writer's eye : 
 
 We advance money to honest employees holding good posi- 
 tions with first-class firms or corporations, without security of 
 any kind, at bankable rates. Positively confidential. Your 
 employer will not know anything about it. Established 17 
 years. 
 
 It is evident from such notices that mechanics and 
 clerks have frequent occasion for making small loans, 
 that honesty and occupation can be coined into capital, 
 and that capitalists find profit in lending to such per- 
 sons. Whether the advertisements are in good faith, 
 and whether they keep their word, is not to be here 
 discussed, since the question is whether such a social 
 expedient is superfluous or not. Why not organize 
 for mutual benefit rather than for the benefit of capital- 
 ists ? The Raiffeisen method seems applicable to this 
 country as well as to the continent of Europe. Here 
 also we have honest and capable mechanics and clerks 
 who, in a pinch, rather than ask alms or favors, are com- 
 pelled to borrow at usurious and ruinous rates from 
 private parties. This is especially true after a long period 
 of depression in business. There are also many cases 
 in which a man could secure a bit of valuable property 
 at a bargain if he had a little more money to add to his 
 limited hoard. In other instances the head of the family 
 might be assisted by the mother or mature daughter
 
 156 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Renters need 
 capital. 
 
 Raiffeisen. 
 
 if they could command a little capital to set up a store. 
 In the suburbs of towns, near schoolhouses in cities, 
 near depots of railroads, and in other situations there is, 
 in spite of the colossal department stores, an oppor- 
 tunity of carrying on a small business which will be a 
 convenience to the neighbors. In the suburbs the older 
 children might cultivate a garden, or keep a cow and 
 sell milk, or raise chickens, or keep flowers for the mar- 
 kets, if they had a little capital. These illustrations in- 
 dicate a permanent field of no mean significance. 
 
 One thinks also of the colored people of the South, 
 struggling to escape the grasp of the money-lender, yet 
 compelled to employ some form of credit, buying every- 
 thing at exorbitant rates and paying a crushing interest 
 on his loans. And what is true of the negro is true 
 of multitudes of white men, North and South. Of what 
 use is it to advise men to leave the crowded cities and till 
 the soil when they have no tools, no food, no wagons, 
 plows, and cattle ? Nature in the most fertile regions 
 has no pity on a man who has nothing but his bare 
 hands. There are beginnings of associated efforts to 
 furnish mutual help which might be promoted by apply- 
 ing the principle of the Raiffeisen banks so successful in 
 Germany. 
 
 F. W. Raiffeisen was born in 1818. As a young man, 
 being incapacitated for a military position by physical 
 infirmity, he obtained a position in the civil service 
 as burgomaster in Westerwald. It was a bleak and im- 
 poverished land, with barren soil, shut off from large 
 markets, the people ill-fed, oppressed by usurers who 
 lent them cattle and money on terms which pulled them 
 down into slavery. Raiffeisen raised a small sum of 
 money to carry out his social invention and pushed his 
 plan through to success past many forms of opposition.
 
 Organizations of Wage- Earners. 157 
 
 The plan as developed includes the following elements : 
 the capital is obtained from any source, and is frequently 
 advanced by rich men, savings banks, and trust societies. 
 Interest is paid of about three and one half per cent. 
 The borrowers pay about five per cent. There are 
 no salaries except for the accountants. The expenses 
 are kept at the lowest possible point because the man- 
 agement is contributed by the rich and experienced 
 business leaders of the community. There are no 
 dividends, because all profits go to a reserve fund or to 
 the poor, on the ground that the least taint of selfish 
 motive would spoil the enterprise. The district of 
 operations is so small that the borrowers are acquainted 
 with each other, and this is an essential factor in success. 
 The members are personally liable without limit for 
 the payment of the loans, and this makes them very 
 careful about accepting new debtors. The only security 
 is character. No mortgages or pledges are taken. The 
 note of hand is signed by the borrower and perhaps one 
 or two friends as sureties. Of course there is the most 
 careful inquiry as to the habits, honesty, industry, and 
 outlook of the borrower. A lazy, inefficient fellow 
 might get credit from distant strangers, but never from 
 his neighbors. 
 
 Germany has a system of relief for paupers, and these Mora , effocts 
 associates are independent peasants, proud of inde- 
 pendence and rejoicing in freedom from usurers. The 
 moral influence of such a system is so great that rural 
 pastors have fostered it on this ground, and many have 
 declared that its effects are surprising. Drunkenness, 
 idleness, wastefulness are diminished ; thrift, economy, 
 industry are promoted. There is higher ambition and 
 less discontent. The system is a new and powerful 
 social bond and deepens the sense of local attachments
 
 158 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 and solidarity. There is little danger from vicious radi- 
 calism where the people are connected by a bond of 
 mutual helpfulness. The borrower must show that he 
 can make good use of the capital intrusted to him. In 
 forty-three years no member or creditor has lost a cent. 
 Various other forms of cooperation have grown out 
 of this movement. The People's Banks are known, 
 under modified forms, in Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, 
 and France. 
 
 It would seem from this survey that the cooperative 
 
 schemes in all countries have failed of the highest suc- 
 
 Unseifishness cess just so far as they were narrow and selfish ; and 
 
 a factor in * . 
 
 business. that the most frankly democratic have taken deepest 
 
 root and borne most abundant fruit. It may be several 
 generations before the largest enterprises can be con- 
 ducted on a democratic plan ; but a beginning has been 
 made of no mean proportions and with splendid promise. 
 The ethical and religious idea involved in this chapter 
 has been thus expressed : 
 
 Man thinks of the few, God of the many ; and the many will 
 be found at length to have within their reach the most effectual 
 means of progress. ... I have expressed a strong interest 
 in the laboring portion of the community ; but I have no 
 partiality to them considered as laborers. My mind is attracted 
 to them because they constitute the majority of the human 
 race. My great interest is in human nature, and in the working 
 classes as its most numerous representatives (W. E. Channing, 
 " On the Elevation of the Laboring Classes ").
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ECONOMIC COOPERATION OF THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 WE have in the chapters immediately preceding con- 
 sidered the working of the social spirit as expressed 
 in the helpful acts of employers and of organized wage- p^S?c opinion, 
 workers. It has been very clear that there are some 
 achievements beyond the power of isolated individuals, 
 and even beyond the power of vast private associations. 
 Every great community has under its control other 
 organs of regulation and enterprise public opinion, 
 custom, law, and government. The "struggle for ex- 
 istence " is no longer mere brute conflict for the means 
 of animal satisfaction. The struggle of civilized and 
 Christianized men is for beauty, amiable character, 
 dignity, inward worth. In the family the violence 
 of antagonism has always been tempered by the instinct- 
 ive affections of parents. In all higher societies sym- 
 pathy, regard for the welfare of neighbors, patriotism, 
 and at last humanity as cosmopolitan sentiment, have 
 transformed the motives which enter into the contest. 
 There are still trials of strength, ever necessary to 
 determine the fitness of each man for his place, but 
 the trial is no longer a scrimmage but a game played 
 according to rule. 
 
 Slowly but surely public sentiment is crystallizing into 
 a conviction that the disputes between employers and 
 employees shall be decided by rational means rather 
 than by brute force. There is a community interest 
 closely connected with quiet and order. There is a sen- 
 
 159
 
 i6o 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Unregistered 
 tribunals of 
 peace. 
 
 French coun- 
 cils. 
 
 sitive area which is wounded where hunger and gun- 
 powder are asked to decide between capitalist and 
 laborer. This sentiment is shared by the wage-workers 
 and the employers as members of society and partici- 
 pants in the spirit of the age. It finds expression in va- 
 rious arrangements and institutions. 
 
 America has already shown numerous examples of 
 conciliatory conferences. If the great world only knew 
 what was going on in factories and shops they would be 
 surprised to learn how few occasions of dispute ever be- 
 come public. Incipient riots at the bench are daily 
 quenched by good sense, and soft answers on both sides 
 turn away wrath. As the social spirit takes the place of 
 a mere egoism and animal instincts the settlement of 
 differences will be more frequently a direct and friendly 
 act. Both in England and this country various methods 
 have been devised for anticipating trouble by agreement 
 or by a principle of settlement. The sliding scale, com- 
 mon in the iron and coal industries, is an example of 
 this type. Under this arrangement the wages go up 
 and down, automatically, according to the market price 
 of the product. It is by no means an unobjectionable 
 method, but it is preferable to war. It has been ac- 
 cepted as a rough standard of justice, until a more 
 equitable scheme can be devised. In scores of in- 
 stances, on the eve of strikes, trouble has been avoided 
 by an informal, friendly conference of managers and 
 representatives of the workingmen. 
 
 Since 1806 France has had its Conseils des Prud' 
 Hommes, a tribunal for decision of disputes between 
 employers and employees. These courts take cogni- 
 zance only of past agreements and do not consider 
 future rates of wages. Their first step is to secure 
 an adjustment by conference and they usually succeed.
 
 Economic Cooperation of the Community. 161 
 
 Afterward the matter may come to trial and be con- 
 cluded without litigation, and enforced as in the 
 ordinary cases. Germany and other countries have 
 adopted the principle. Massachusetts, generally most . . . . 
 advanced in labor legislation, as in so many other Massachusetts, 
 things, has for several years worked upon this line. The 
 conscience of the nation will not long tolerate a strike 
 or a lockout without previous resort to some method of 
 conciliation and arbitration. Whether a just law can be 
 framed to make the verdict of arbitration final and com- 
 pulsory, is doubted on both sides, and cannot be 
 regarded as a settled question. In respect to the en- 
 forcement of contracts and specific agreements there is 
 no great difficulty. But neither employers nor em- 
 ployees are willing to submit the future rate of wages to 
 a tribunal. 
 
 It would be impossible to enumerate the services 
 already rendered by our national and local governments protective 
 for the economic welfare of the people. Every dollar 
 that we earn has greater purchasing power because we 
 enjoy, in a high degree, the help and defense of the 
 state. It would allay discontent and subdue distrust if 
 all the children of our schools could be shown what they 
 and their parents owe to the government. Life, liberty, 
 property, good name are under the great shield of 
 the nation. The fire department of the metropolis 
 hurries its engines to quench the flames which are con- 
 suming the two-room cottage. The health department 
 is busy fighting diseases to which the poor are especially 
 exposed. The police department upholds those laws 
 which are made for the universal welfare. The officer 
 of the law is proud to escort the ragged girl across 
 the street, as well as to warn back the drivers for the 
 lady clad in rustling silk. Many and dark are the
 
 162 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Factory laws. 
 
 Protection 
 of working 
 children. 
 
 iniquities of the police, and cruel and shameful deeds are 
 done by courts and sheriffs ; but these are done in 
 the dark, they are inconsistent with the genius of our 
 constitution, and they are in express violation of oaths 
 of office. 
 
 Doubtless we should urge more efficient execution of 
 these sacred trusts. The adulterations of food by 
 grocers, the short weights and measures from which 
 all suffer, the concealed traps set by unscrupulous 
 plumbers or careless builders, require vigilant notice 
 and unsparing criticism. Reformers have yet more 
 enemies to conquer. 
 
 The necessity of placing workshops under govern- 
 ment control has long been felt in older countries. 
 Farmers little realize what this means because they 
 work alone, have all the air they can breathe, are not 
 obliged to conform to the motions of machinery or 
 of fellow- workers, and can control their hours and 
 methods of labor. Most of our legislatures are com- 
 posed of men who, generally speaking, have formed 
 their ideas according to rural conditions. They cannot 
 easily appreciate the necessity for special legislation 
 regulating the life of operatives in city shops and stores. 
 A conscientious farmer elected to the legislature owes it 
 to himself and to his country to visit the factories, 
 and the city legislator should visit the farmers, and both 
 should exchange opinions in relation to the various 
 demands of a complex and growing community. 
 
 There are men who declare that legislation should not 
 be invoked to protect adults from the neglect, greed, 
 and cruelty of employers. But few intelligent and 
 humane persons will object to laws on behalf of helpless 
 children. Experience has shown in all modern countries 
 that not even parental affection can be trusted when
 
 Economic Cooperation of the Community. 163 
 
 deep poverty presses and blind ignorance is set to 
 watch. In the ranks of the noble medical profession 
 unworthy charlatans can be found who, for a petty bribe, 
 will sign a certificate of health for a feeble child. Em- 
 ployers may be found who accept the perjured affidavit 
 of parents that their children are of age, or take from 
 them a release in case of injury in the shop. Nothing 
 but the most rigid law, carefully enforced by state 
 inspectors and physicians, and supported by enlightened 
 public opinion, can defend child life from heartless, piti- 
 less greed. 
 
 Young persons are more easily affected by unwhole- 
 some trades than adults. Saturated with the nicotine 
 vapors of tobacco works their growth is stunted, their Perils of 
 
 , ....... .... the young. 
 
 heart action is impaired, their powers of digestion are 
 enfeebled. Set to work in stockyards and butcher-shops 
 the sensibilities are blunted and the moral nature per- 
 verted. Glass-works are so hot that children working 
 in them go blind, become rheumatic, or develop tuber- 
 culous tendencies. Boys are permitted to grind steel 
 cutlery at emery wheels, and are murdered by the dust. 
 At an alarm of fire a throng of girls crowded in a box or 
 candy factory trample each other in panic on the stairs. 
 Young people do not appreciate the value of guards for 
 dangerous machinery ; the young are less ready to use 
 safety devices than are the old. The figures show that 
 the girls under sixteen have thirty-three times the prob- 
 ability of being hurt of those over sixteen, and that 
 practically all accidents to female factory operatives 
 befall the young and inexperienced. The figures also 
 show that a boy in a Minnesota factory has a probability 
 of accident about twice that of an adult ; and that his 
 chance of fatal accident is over seven times as great 
 as that of a grown man. (Minnesota Labor Report.)
 
 164 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 When it is thus made clear that accidents are certain 
 
 to occur in undue ratio among children the necessity of 
 
 state intervention ought to be clear. It is amazing how 
 
 Compulsory the pressure of poverty blinds parents and avarice blinds 
 
 education. * r 
 
 employers to the significance of these facts. The place 
 for the child is not in the factory but in school. A 
 reasonable amount of work in the garden along with 
 kind parents may not injure a young person, but work 
 in a close factory, a steamy laundry, amidst the vapors 
 of chemical works, is murderous. For the sake of the 
 coming race all children should be given a chance to 
 start in the race of life with the elements of education 
 and without the handicap of acquired disease. Very 
 pitiful is the condition of many children who work at 
 errands or as cash carriers in great stores. Years after 
 factory children are protected these weary little ones are 
 overlooked. Ladies who buy their goods so cheaply in 
 these magazines should not forget that the child em- 
 ployees are paying a part of the price. If extreme 
 poverty has compelled parents to send young children 
 to labor then the community must assist. The result 
 would be that when the children are taken out of public 
 occupation adults, the natural breadwinners, would find 
 employment. As it is the little ones, because their 
 labor is cheap, drive out their own parents from wage- 
 earning employments, and reduce whole families to beg- 
 gary. There is no apology or excuse in any American 
 community for permitting children under fourteen to be 
 out of school and chained up to serve pitiless machinery. 
 Regulation by law has been found necessary in case 
 Women o f the public work of women. It is idle to say they are 
 
 workers. * * 
 
 able to take care of themselves ; they cannot. They are 
 practically shut out from employing the methods of 
 trades unions just where those are most needed. All
 
 Economic Cooperation of the Community. 165 
 
 modern states have been compelled to prevent women 
 from working in mines, in dark places, and at all-night 
 occupations. And while legal restrictions must not be 
 made to hinder women from earning an honest living 
 under suitable conditions there is one principle which 
 may be applied as a test of suitability in all situations : 
 the proved tendency of the occupation under given con- 
 ditions to destroy health and unfit women for their 
 duties as wives and mothers. The character and health 
 of women workers are not a mere private concern ; the 
 very existence of society is involved. Therefore society 
 is not violating individual rights when it adopts whole- 
 some measures of control. 
 
 It is said that the fatal accidents in the mines of Great 
 Britain and Ireland show a decrease during the last Kffi.-ieiK-v 
 
 of factory 
 
 forty years of more than double per 1,000 tons of coal inspection, 
 produced, and a decrease from 3.9 to 1.6 per thousand 
 persons employed. This is due in part to the increased 
 efficiency and perfection of machinery, but still more to 
 the legislation which excluded women and children from 
 the perilous mines, which required the use of safety 
 lamps and other devices, and which made employers 
 liable in costs for injuries for which the management was 
 responsible. What can the reader of these lines do 
 to help our miners ? He can ask a labor leader to tell 
 him the present requirements in his own state and write 
 a letter to the representative in the legislature asking 
 him to give it attention. He can study the reports 
 of the factory inspectors and assist in urging their 
 recommendations. The persons best informed as to the 
 dangers and injuries to which wage-workers are exposed 
 are the leaders of trades unions. Ministers of the gospel 
 and all other defenders of human rights, health, and 
 happiness, should learn from the representatives of the
 
 1 66 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The sweating 
 evil. 
 
 Inside the 
 sweat-shop. 
 
 workingmen and give voice to their reasonable demands. 
 Mr. Henry White, general secretary of the United 
 Garment Workers of America, thus defines the sweating 
 system : "A condition of labor in which a maximum 
 amount of work in a given time is performed for a mini- 
 mum wage, and in which the ordinary rules of health 
 and comfort are disregarded. It is inseparably asso- 
 ciated with contract work, and it is intensified by sub- 
 contracting in shops conducted in homes." The most 
 serious evils grow out of the crowding of strangers into 
 the homes set apart for the family. Foreign immigrants 
 without skill, but thrifty and industrious, unacquainted 
 with the laws of health and with a low standard of living, 
 are the victims and causes of this evil. The crowding of 
 cities, the excessive cost of rents, and the method of 
 contracting-out work are favoring conditions. The 
 community, once awake to the misery and degrada- 
 tion of this system, can cooperate to reduce its danger 
 by refusing to buy goods without the guarantee of a 
 union label that they are not made in insanitary rooms 
 and at starvation wages. Community action is also 
 necessary in order to secure and sustain laws which pro- 
 hibit the manufacture of clothing in rooms occupied by 
 families ; or in infected, filthy, and dark places ; or 
 by little children. Public opinion should also demand 
 an adequate number of efficient inspectors and give 
 them moral support in enforcing the statutes. The min- 
 isters ought to discover, by faithful parish work, the 
 existence of these wrongs and should direct the moral 
 opposition of religious people against the iniquity. Phi- 
 lanthropy and patriotism must join with religion in 
 invoking the ordinance of government on behalf of the 
 oppressed slave of the tenement as well as on behalf 
 of public health and purity.
 
 Economic Cooperation of the Community. 167 
 
 All the mutual benefit societies, the incorporated 
 companies, the lodges, the fraternal insurance associa- 
 tions require the recognition of public authority. They 
 cannot live as legal persons, sue and be sued, and carry 
 on enterprises, without legislation. They cannot defend 
 themselves from fraud and unscrupulous competition 
 without legal help. So that some social cooperation 
 and oversight are essential in the promotion of self-help. 
 The building and loan association needs to be protected 
 against dishonest competitors and managers ; and the 
 public requires safeguards against wily schemers or 
 incompetent organizers of companies. 
 
 Some of the states are providing agencies for the 
 registration of men seeking employment. Much time 
 and money are lost by traveling blindly and aimlessly 
 from place to place in search of occupation. Business 
 men do not know where to look on the instant for work- 
 men. To bring the two parties together is the function 
 of the employment bureau. The private bureaus are 
 not always reliable, and are often distrusted. The 
 charitable agencies are shunned by independent and 
 skilled workmen. The state bureau meets the need. 
 
 The great industry which began with the century has Trusts d 
 grown to colossal height. The progress of combination combinations 
 of capital has been resistless and magical. What has 
 the social spirit to say and do in presence of this 
 phenomenal product of the age of steam-driven machin- 
 ery ? Can the ordinary patriotic citizen do nothing but 
 fold his hands in despair, or cry to a pitiless and relent- 
 less fate ? There is not a citizen so humble but can help 
 himself and his country. The vaster the corporation 
 the more it attracts public attention. Child labor was a 
 hidden and incurable evil until it was massed in a huge 
 bulk before the public eye in factories, and there it
 
 1 68 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Criminal acts. 
 
 Politics and 
 franchises. 
 
 began to be corrected by law. Corporations are very 
 powerful but the state which gives them a charter 
 can take it away, modify it, or make better terms. The 
 matter is not nearly so difficult or dangerous as it is 
 sometimes represented by excited alarmists. Let us see 
 first what the social spirit has for its work. 
 
 First of all, if criminal acts have been done, there 
 is the machinery of the courts to discover, to prove, 
 to punish by civil or criminal process. We have 
 learned in the case of the most powerful robbers that 
 detection is possible and punishment can be inflicted. 
 Before a jury a corporation is already at a disadvantage. 
 The fewer the rich criminals the greater interest has the 
 public in suppressing them. 
 
 In the second place, if the corporation is acting con- 
 trary to public policy and contrary to its charter, 
 we have courts and legislatures through which to 
 revoke charters. Again, charters are given for a 
 limited period, and when they are about to expire 
 the public can make better terms. 
 
 Some of the worst injuries have been done by city 
 and state legislatures elected by the people. Franchises 
 have been given away because the people chose repre- 
 sentatives who were either dishonest or weak. A town 
 or state will have as good government as it deserves. If 
 the honest men refuse to take aggressive part in carry- 
 ing on their own government they must not whine if 
 venal and treacherous men sell out the public interest 
 for private pelf. 
 
 A community is not shut up to one single method of 
 reducing a monopoly to serve instead of dominate. For 
 example : a city council disposed to be honest can either 
 let out contracts for street-car service on the best terms 
 to the highest bidders ; or it can tax the franchises when
 
 Economic Cooperation of the Community. 169 
 
 they expire ; or it can build its own lines if it thinks that 
 
 the most economical method. In the same way rail- Control of 
 
 * corporations. 
 
 roads, refineries, coal oil corporations, and all other 
 large combinations of capital can be brought under con- 
 trol. It is simply a question of whether a democracy 
 can command the services of honest and capable legisla- 
 tors and legal advisers. There is absolutely nothing in 
 the nature of the case to fear. The great corporations 
 have developed a machinery for production which has 
 marvelous efficiency and economy. The consumers 
 have shown their appreciation by buying the product 
 where it was produced most cheaply. It remains for the 
 public not to destroy this elaborate and magnificent 
 industrial and commercial machinery, but to put a yoke 
 on it, and compel it to work in the way most friendly to 
 the common weal. Niagara Falls have been harnessed 
 and compelled to serve the public. Great trusts can be 
 brought to terms by the invention and use of suitable 
 political machinery, managed by capable and honest 
 legislators and administrators. 
 
 In Mr. Spahr's "The Present Distribution of Wealth 
 in the United States ' ' we are told : " Less than half the Danger from 
 
 ..... . , , great estates. 
 
 families m America are property-less ; nevertheless, 
 seven eighths of the families hold but one eighth of the 
 national wealth, while one per cent of the families hold 
 more than the remaining ninety-nine." The method by 
 which this astounding result was reached is not beyond 
 criticism. But the accumulation of portentous fortunes 
 is unquestioned. It leaps to the eye. When this accu- 
 mulation is the result of a service to the public worth far 
 more than its cost, and while the wealth is employed in 
 legitimate and useful industries, we have nothing but 
 praise for owners and managers. If a great capitalist 
 becomes a millionaire or a billionaire by taking a moder-
 
 170 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 ate commission on a commercial invention or achieve- 
 ment which enriches the nation, no reasonable person 
 can complain. He remains still a mere trustee through 
 whose hands the stream of public capital flows. 
 
 But so far as such fortunes are accumulated by 
 perjured assessment lists ; by bribing the assessors to 
 return property at a rate far below that returned by 
 poorer men ; by bribery of legislators and courts ; or by 
 any other inequitable and atrocious process that is 
 matter for a new criminal law adapted to the new 
 temptations of recent commercial life. 
 
 And if the evil presses until it becomes intolerable 
 a way will be found, perhaps with a new Supreme 
 Taxing power. Court, to lay an income tax. Already the principle of 
 the inheritance tax has been grafted upon the legislation 
 of some states and it is always a means of turning the 
 attention of heirs to the wisdom of cultivating habits 
 of industry in their youth. The truth is that the dem-' 
 ocracy has absolute control. It is a sleeping giant not 
 yet fully conscious of its strength. The chief danger 
 always is that when it wakes up it may at first, drunk 
 with a sense of power, become unjust and foolish. The 
 remedy for that is the schoolhouse and the church, 
 knowledge and justice, the social spirit. 
 
 Examples of the helpfulness of state agencies in rela- 
 iv.sitive min- tion to economic welfare may be given to show not onlv 
 
 .siriesof J 
 
 government. what has been done but what remains to achieve. At 
 this writing the United States government is behind 
 most of the great nations in respect to postal savings 
 banks, and it is to our reproach. Here are the offices of 
 the postal service ready at hand, in every city, town, and 
 village throughout our great country. There is a corps 
 of trained officials who could, with little additional cleri- 
 cal assistance, handle the small savings of the people, as
 
 Economic Cooperation of the Community. 171 
 
 is done in Europe. What would be the advantage 
 of such a system? The very poor would be encouraged 
 to save a little from hard-won earnings and set it aside 
 for the days of need. Timid people, who are frightened 
 by the rare cases of failure of private banks, would trust 
 the government. Inhabitants of suburbs and of remote 
 villages would find it convenient to make deposits if 
 
 there was an office near them to keep their treasures 
 securely. Regular banks would not be disturbed by the 
 new agency, because large deposits would still go as 
 they do now to commercial houses. People would thus 
 be able to accumulate a moderate capital for favorable 
 investment, and they would become still more deeply 
 attached German, Irish, Bohemians, Russians, Italians 
 to the government which takes care of their slender 
 but precious hoard. 
 
 The public schools should not only teach thrift but 
 should give discipline in the habit of saving by collect- 
 ing the pennies by means of a stamped card, and so 
 assisting the growth of a social custom which is more 
 valuable than a gold mine or a diamond field. 
 
 What can you do, reader? Sit down at once and 
 write a letter to your congressman and another to your 
 senator at Washington, and ask them what they are 
 going to do about the postal savings bank ? By the 
 way, do you know the names of these gentlemen ? 
 
 Those who oppose such uses of municipal and state 
 government as is here urged are fond of calling it .. p alert , a ij sm . 
 ' ' paternal, ' ' and of representing that self-respecting 
 workingmen do not want to be "patronized" by the 
 government. But what is the government ? Is it, as it 
 once was, a royal person who grants favors to subjects 
 in answer to a beggar's plea ? Is not our government, 
 under a democracy, simply our own tool to use for the
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 More power, 
 more respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 Political duty. 
 
 POLITICAL REFORMS. 
 
 WE have been considering the wisdom and methods 
 of extending the functions of our various governments. 
 But these governments are only so good as our political 
 morality and skill can make them. Unless we can im- 
 prove our city councils and secure better officials it will 
 be dangerous to intrust to them more responsibility. 
 There is not a business man in the country who would, 
 in the present condition of things, confide to a city 
 council the management of his bank or his railroad. 
 Good citizenship must now resolutely set itself to the 
 task of securing honest, efficient, trained administrators 
 of public business. 
 
 The first political duty of a patriotic person is to 
 master in thought the framework and activity of our 
 national, state, city, county, and township governments ; 
 to fix clearly in his mind what are the actual duties 
 of each official in the executive, legislative, and judicial 
 branches of government. How can we criticise the con- 
 duct of our public employees until we know what they 
 ought to do ? The constitution of the United States is 
 not a long document and it tells the essential things 
 in relation to national officials. The constitution of 
 every state describes the work laid out for governor, 
 judges, courts, legislators, and county officers. The 
 charter of a city prescribes the task of municipal agents. 
 There are books, written by able men, which explain 
 constitutions and laws, and recite their history. Even 
 
 174
 
 Political Reforms. 175 
 
 young persons are capable of learning the fundamental 
 elements of our government. No one can read the 
 daily newspaper intelligently who has not first studied 
 the general outline and history of all these governments. Preparation 
 
 for newspaper 
 
 But with a map of the whole field in his mind the reader ea din K- 
 knows how to find the right pigeon-hole for every 
 fragment of information which is supplied by the period- 
 ical press. Without this systematic study of government 
 the daily newspaper is confusing, and the reading of it 
 induces partisanship. Only when the mind is prepared 
 by a theoretical and historical study can the journal do 
 its best service for the mind and for conduct. 
 
 There are some kinds of work which a government 
 must perform as a condition of social existence and 
 order, and these may be called necessary functions. For 
 example : the nation must provide an army and navy to 
 protect it against foreign invasions and injuries, and to 
 maintain peace at home. A nation or a state must 
 determine who shall be citizens and who shall have a work oVthe* 
 share in political control as voters and officers. Laws 
 must be made to decide disputes among citizens about 
 the rights of property, the ownership of land, the in- 
 heritance of estates, the obligations of parents and chil- 
 dren, of husband and wife. Evil-doers must be re- 
 strained and convicted, and measures must be taken 
 to prevent crime. No society can maintain its existence, 
 much less its peace, without such general regulations 
 from an authority which the people recognize. Legis- 
 latures must make laws; courts must tell what they 
 mean ; governors, presidents, and mayors must ad- 
 minister. 
 
 We have already seen that a government may go 
 beyond the merely protective work of maintaining order 
 and may be made an agency of progress. A vigorous,
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 More power, 
 more respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 Political dutv. 
 
 POLITICAL REFORMS. 
 
 WE have been considering the wisdom and methods 
 of extending the functions of our various governments. 
 But these governments are only so good as our political 
 morality and skill can make them. Unless we can im- 
 prove our city councils and secure better officials it will 
 be dangerous to intrust to them more responsibility. 
 There is not a business man in the country who would, 
 in the present condition of things, confide to a city 
 council the management of his bank or his railroad. 
 Good citizenship must now resolutely set itself to the 
 task of securing honest, efficient, trained administrators 
 of public business. 
 
 The first political duty of a patriotic person is to 
 master in thought the framework and activity of our 
 national, state, city, county, and township governments ; 
 to fix clearly in his mind what are the actual duties 
 of each official in the executive, legislative, and judicial 
 branches of government. How can we criticise the con- 
 duct of our public employees until we know what they 
 ought to do ? The constitution of the United States is 
 not a long document and it tells the essential things 
 in relation to national officials. The constitution of 
 every state describes the work laid out for governor, 
 judges, courts, legislators, and county officers. The 
 charter of a city prescribes the task of municipal agents. 
 There are books, written by able men, which explain 
 constitutions and laws, and recite their history. Even 
 
 174
 
 Political Reforms. 175 
 
 young persons are capable of learning the fundamental 
 elements of our government. No one can read the 
 daily newspaper intelligently who has not first studied 
 the general outline and history of all these governments. fonews 
 But with a map of the whole field in his mind the reader *a din K- 
 knows how to find the right pigeon-hole for every 
 fragment of information which is supplied by the period- 
 ical press. Without this systematic study of government 
 the daily newspaper is confusing, and the reading of it 
 induces partisanship. Only when the mind is prepared 
 by a theoretical and historical study can the journal do 
 its best service for the mind and for conduct. 
 
 There are some kinds of work which a government 
 must perform as a condition of social existence and 
 order, and these may be called necessary functions. For 
 example : the nation must provide an army and navy to 
 protect it against foreign invasions and injuries, and to 
 maintain peace at home. A nation or a state must 
 determine who shall be citizens and who shall have a work of the 
 share in political control as voters and officers. Laws 
 must be made to decide disputes among citizens about 
 the rights of property, the ownership of land, the in- 
 heritance of estates, the obligations of parents and chil- 
 dren, of husband and wife. Evil-doers must be re- 
 strained and convicted, and measures must be taken 
 to prevent crime. No society can maintain its existence, 
 much less its peace, without such general regulations 
 from an authority which the people recognize. Legis- 
 latures must make laws; courts must tell what they 
 mean ; governors, presidents, and mayors must ad- 
 minister. 
 
 We have already seen that a government may go 
 beyond the merely protective work of maintaining order 
 and may be made an agency of progress. A vigorous,
 
 176 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Government 
 agencies of 
 progress and 
 convenience. 
 
 Party politics. 
 
 ambitious, humane people will not merely employ their 
 legal machinery to maintain the being of the nation ; 
 they will also employ it to promote well-being. They 
 will not permit a dry theory, a mere arbitrary assump- 
 tion as to the right use of government, to cripple its use- 
 fulness. If they believe a national post-office can serve 
 the public need of communication they will suppress all 
 private competition in that field by a national monopoly. 
 If they come to believe that the telegraph, as in Europe, 
 should be owned by the public rather than by private 
 companies, they will erect their government telegraph 
 lines and go into the business. If the people of a city 
 come to think that gas, electricity, water, or street-cars 
 can be furnished more cheaply by local government, 
 they will find a way of adding this department. A gov- 
 ernment is simply an organ of public convenience ; it is 
 the means by which the people in a given territory get 
 what they want. That is the definition given, not by 
 theorists, but by the actual life and conduct of all mod- 
 ern countries. If a community find it has made a mis- 
 take and can secure commodities or services better 
 through contracts with private parties it is always able 
 to lease out its streets, watercourses, roads, or other 
 common property on favorable terms. 
 
 In our age and country the citizen must generally 
 act through a party. Edmund Burke defined a party as 
 "a body of men united for promoting by their joint en- 
 deavors the national interest upon some particular prin- 
 ciple in which they are agreed." And he urges that a 
 citizen ought to seek to make his convictions felt by 
 cooperation with his fellow -citizens. " I find it im- 
 possible to conceive that any one believes in his own 
 politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses 
 to adopt the means of having them reduced to practice. ' '
 
 Political Reforms. 177 
 
 Lieber declares : " It is impossible for civil liberty to ex- 
 ist without parties. ... A sound party, which the 
 conscientious citizen may join, ought to have the follow- 
 ing characteristics: Its principle ought to be an enlarged Part y principle 
 and great one, a noble principle worthy of moving 
 masses ; its members ought to be, if possible, large ; its 
 consistency and mutual adherence ought to be chiefly a 
 
 moral or mental one, and it should have its strength in 
 physical organization ; its members ought to feel, and 
 act as if they felt, that before all they are citizens of their 
 country. ' ' 
 
 Selfishness, narrowness of interest, unpatriotic use of 
 party machinery for sectional and personal ends are the 
 bane and curse of parties, the diseases of political organ- National aims, 
 ization. A healthy, worthy party is a voluntary associa- 
 tion of citizens for promoting the welfare of the whole 
 nation. The existence and maintenance of political par- 
 ties at great cost are proofs of the high estimate placed 
 by the people on their institutions. Of course corrupt 
 and designing men contribute to party funds and work 
 for party success for unworthy ends, and even criminal 
 use is often made of the ' ' machine. ' ' And yet political 
 machinery is just as necessary as educational, commer- 
 cial, or ecclesiastical machinery. It is not a sign of 
 healthy morality when people sneer at parties and talk 
 loftily of the mean tricks of politicians, while they stand 
 aloof from the conflict in order to keep their cuffs clean. 
 It is sheer cowardice and poltroonery, not ethical and 
 religious superiority, which regards political wire-pulling 
 with contempt. Jesus did not pray that his disciples 
 should be taken out of the world, but that they might be 
 delivered from the evil ; that they might maintain their 
 integrity in the caucus, the committee, the club, the 
 mass-meeting, the lobby.
 
 178 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 False inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 Independent 
 action. 
 
 When party spirit is no longer identified with the 
 national interest, with all the elements of welfare for the 
 entire people, and becomes a mere breath and voice 
 of class, or set, or sect, or trade, or profession, then it is 
 evil. Lieber names several classes of citizens according 
 to their relations to parties : ' ' apathists, neutrals or in- 
 dependents, party-members, partisans or zealots, fac- 
 tionists, and trimmers." Too many fastidious and 
 conceited citizens who pretend to be independent 
 deserve his definition and stigma : "an independent 
 man is a man you can never depend upon. ' ' To defend 
 the policy of neglect, to retire into the desert or the 
 closet of prayer, on the pretext that politics are wicked 
 and worldly, is a base denial of religion, and of the fun- 
 damental law of Christ that his followers should be 
 leaven, salt, and light for the world. It is a good man's 
 duty first to learn, second to talk, and third to work for 
 his country. It is better to vote in error than not to 
 care what becomes of the nation, because interest will 
 lead to intelligence, while mere sulky fault-finding leads 
 to nothing. 
 
 There are times, especially in connection with local 
 and state questions, when the independent voter finds it 
 his duty to part company with his party, to oppose the 
 nominations, to organize effective resistance to tricky, 
 unfit, and unscrupulous leaders. This simply means 
 another form of party, not isolated and impractical 
 action. 
 
 The questions affecting national parties have little or 
 nothing to do with municipal or town problems. The 
 tariff question, currency, foreign policies, may prop- 
 erly divide the nation into parties, but they have no 
 bearing on such matters as street-cleaning, supply of 
 water and light, local franchises and public schools.
 
 Political Reforms. 179 
 
 For the election of city officials men should unit* in 
 entire disregard of party affiliations in order to secure 
 the most perfect administration possible. As there is 
 little hope of reaching this ideal at present, leagues of 
 honest voters must be formed to fight the professional 
 politicians and franchise ' ' boodlers ' ' at every point by 
 independent nominations. 
 
 The patriotic citizen ought to be alert, vigilant, and 
 energetic at every stage of a campaign : in the discus- 
 sion of issues ; in the local committees and clubs ; in vigilance ail 
 
 along the lin. 
 
 caucuses, primaries, and circles where "slates" are 
 made up ; in town, county, state, and national con- 
 ventions. If his party refuses to select measures and 
 men according to his conviction about the general 
 good, the independent voter has several ways open. 
 He can assist in the formation of a new party ; or he 
 may persist in efforts within his party to influence con- 
 duct ; or he may join others in securing a balance of 
 power between parties and in casting a strong vote with 
 the best candidates available. Circumstances must 
 determine which is, on the whole, the wisest course. 
 ' ' Going to the polls ' ' or even ' ' going to the primary ' ' 
 is not the whole duty of a good citizen. Even the 
 primary, if the party machine controls its nominations, 
 is not primary but secondary a mere agency for giving 
 popular approval and endorsement to the schemes of 
 men who plot to debauch and rob the public. 
 
 Some social movements must be carried on by a part 
 of the people : civil service reform is a vital concern of civil service 
 all the people. The administration of national, state, 
 and city affairs has been corrupted and perverted by the 
 "spoils system," and the people have been robbed and 
 misgoverned because we have not had a reasonable, 
 fair, and sensible method of appointing public officers.
 
 i8o The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The men who live by concocting schemes to steal from 
 the city or state dread nothing more than the civil 
 service reform. Therefore they misrepresent it, ridicule 
 it, hate it, try to cripple it. 
 
 The principles of the civil service reform are simply 
 principles of those of all successful private business. The offices of 
 all governments should be filled by persons who have 
 proved their fitness for the particular work, and no 
 other basis of choice should be considered. All citizens, 
 without regard to party or sect, should be eligible, and 
 none should be excluded. The principle of merit 
 carries with it the law of tenure and promotion. No 
 civil officer as postal clerk, policeman, school-teacher, 
 superintendents and attendants in charity institutions 
 and prisons should be discharged save for incompe- 
 tency, failure, dishonesty, or neglect. While the duties 
 are well discharged the office should be secure. Re- 
 fusal to contribute to party funds or to take part in 
 a canvass should not affect tenure of office. 
 
 Promotions to vacancies should be according to merit 
 and preparation. So far as possible there should be an 
 ascending order of promotion for faithful service, so 
 that every official should feel at the beginning that there 
 was hope of advance if he gave himself unreservedly to 
 his work. 
 
 An appeal signed by Mr. Carl Schurz sets forth the 
 common interest in this reform. 
 
 A poor man has a personal interest in the abolition of the 
 
 The poor man's spoils system, because he is not incompetent in consequence of 
 
 interest. being poor, and he has a right to a chance for appointment if 
 
 he wishes it ; because if not competent himself, his son or 
 
 daughter, educated in the public school, may readily become 
 
 so ; because the spoils system wastes the public money, and 
 
 the poor man pays his full share of taxes, in house rent, and 
 
 food, and clothing, and everything that he uses ; because it is
 
 Political Reforms. 181 
 
 the interest of every citizen that the business of the government 
 shall be honestly managed; because the politician who is trying 
 to feather his own nest is always the worst enemy of the citizen, 
 while pretending to be his friend, and the abolition of the spoils 
 system means the destruction of the boss, whose power rests 
 on the distribution of offices as spoils ; because no other reform 
 is safe or can ever be successfully prosecuted until the abolition 
 of the spoils system has been secured. 
 
 This reform is necessary in order to enable the execu- 
 tive officers, presidents, governors, mayors, to give time 
 and strength to their duties. The mayor of a certain The necessity 
 
 for civil servic 
 
 city was compelled to lock himself in his office during reform, 
 business hours in order to keep off the swarm of office- 
 beggars who besieged his door. Public business is im- 
 peded or paralyzed by this pressure. It should be no 
 part of the work of an incoming executive to satisfy the 
 ' ' claims ' ' of low ward politicians who did mean work in 
 saloons to help elect him. If every applicant must pass 
 an examination and then take his place according to his 
 capacity, the crowd of office-seekers would be smaller 
 and of a better quality. 
 
 Corruption of political life comes largely from the 
 
 , . .... T T j Misplaced 
 
 power or executives to appoint civil servants. Under our power of 
 
 ... ... appointment. 
 
 present system the executive is almost compelled to pay 
 his political debts with appointments to office ; and the 
 ground of his selection must frequently be private in- 
 terest and not public welfare. Hence we have militia 
 officers who never learned the manual of arms, and 
 heads of insane asylums who get mad from drink ; and 
 teachers in public schools who have diplomas from igno- 
 rant aldermen, but none from the normal school ; and 
 park commissioners who never heard of landscape gar- 
 dening ; and overseers of the poor who have not im- 
 agined there ever was a treatise on scientific charity. 
 This state of things disgraces our nation in the eyes of
 
 182 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 How to help. 
 
 Municipal 
 reform. 
 
 the civilized world ; it introduces rascality, wastefulness, 
 and inefficiency into our municipal administration ; it 
 makes further extension of useful state and municipal 
 activity seem impossible. The civil service reform is 
 honored and recommended by the character of the 
 enemies it has made. All scoundrels, "ward-heelers," 
 mean drudges of unprincipled leaders hate it. Their 
 hatred is a high and deserved compliment and an excel- 
 lent argument for all good Christians to fight for it. 
 
 Individuals, churches, associations can assist the Na- 
 tional League by small contributions of money ; by 
 purchase and distribution of their literature ; by offering 
 prizes to students in schools and colleges for able dis- 
 cussions of the subject ; by holding conferences ; by 
 investigation of the appointments made by mayors, 
 governors, and congressmen. Gradually the principles 
 of civil service reform have made the way in nation, 
 states, and cities, and in many public institutions. This 
 progress is the fruit of the social spirit ; of self-denying, 
 high-minded, intelligent, and courageous agitation and 
 hard work. Advance has been gained in spite of the 
 combined opposition of mercenary office-seekers in both 
 parties, and it is a moral triumph which should encour- 
 age every good citizen who is engaged in difficult social 
 work. 
 
 The management of our American cities is thought to 
 be the weakest point in our government. A few years 
 ago we had few great cities. We had less experience in 
 municipal administration than older countries where 
 cities have grown quite as rapidly as with us. An 
 agricultural people suddenly confronted the difficult 
 problems of building large towns and learning to live 
 in them. Perhaps the worst factor was a general feeling 
 that one man knew as much as another about streets,
 
 Political Reforms. 183 
 
 schools, taxes, finance, sanitation, and the thousand 
 intricate questions of a great municipal business. De- 
 mocracy has not yet become enlightened enough to 
 respect the specialist and the expert. The simple affairs 
 of a village or a rural neighborhood may easily and 
 frequently change hands without serious results. But 
 the complicated affairs of a huge manufacturing, rail- 
 road, and commercial town demand the study and 
 experience of many years. 
 
 The whole difficulty lies in one point : how to get the 
 right man in the right place and keep him there so long Right men in 
 
 the right places. 
 
 as he does the work well and responds to public needs. 
 The following suggestions were made by Mr. Franklin 
 Mac Veagh, and may serve as a basis for discussion. 
 The mayor of a city should be independent, with full 
 power to appoint executive officers without the inter- 
 ference of the council. The heads of departments should 
 not be boards but single, responsible men, who should 
 answer to the mayor directly, as in a great business 
 house, without the possibility of sharing the responsi- 
 bility with a crowd. The powers of the council should 
 be limited by the charter to legislation within legal 
 bounds. The members should be paid reasonable sal- 
 aries "and should not be expected to steal them." 
 They should have no power to appoint subordinate 
 officers. The merit system should control the selection 
 of all employees except the chiefs of departments and 
 their private secretaries. 
 
 The city should have power to govern itself under a 
 charter granted by a general incorporation law of the Liniitatioil 
 state. The limits of taxation should be fixed by the ofcouncils - 
 state constitution and laws so that councils could not 
 ruin and bankrupt the municipalities with debts. There 
 should be a constitutional prohibition of special legisla-
 
 1 84 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Electoral 
 reform. 
 
 The Corrupt 
 Practices Acts. 
 
 tion. The state authorities should have no power to 
 impose officials on a city. Reforms in election methods 
 must accompany and supplement these measures. Ulti- 
 mately all reforms depend upon the intelligence, the 
 vigilance, the devotion of the citizens, and therefore 
 popular education is essential to good local government. 
 
 It may be questioned whether the recent tendency to 
 strip city councils of power is altogether wise. The 
 representatives of the people must be trusted. To load 
 the mayor with responsibility can never relieve us from 
 the necessity of electing honest and capable aldermen. 
 It is here that the chief difficulties lie. 
 
 The object of an election is to secure an expression 
 of the real wish of the people. Under present con- 
 ditions it is notorious that a clique of politicians, ruled 
 by a boss, fortified by the hope of office, takes posses- 
 sion of the political machinery and registers their will in 
 the name of all the people. So powerful, insidious, 
 and unscrupulous have these gangs of politicians be- 
 come that it is very difficult to break them up and 
 defeat them. All parties come into their hands, and 
 even honest statesmen are often subjected to a humili- 
 ating and compromising alliance with degraded and 
 corrupt villains. A brief statement will be made of the 
 current social movements to circumvent these nefarious 
 schemes and make elections the genuine expression of 
 the popular will. It is assumed that no improvement in 
 elections can be of great value unless the popular choice 
 is itself wise, instructed, and honest. 
 
 American patriotism is willing to learn of our English 
 cousins, and they, being older, have some things to 
 teach us. We need to learn how to secure and main- 
 tain a pure and free ballot, and patriotism in a land of 
 universal suffrage has no holier task. The social spirit
 
 Political Reforms. 185 
 
 is moving toward this reform, and is calling all good 
 citizens in all the states to assist. The temptations to 
 bribe voters are constant and pressing, and the forms of 
 bribery are numerous and subtle. Civil service reform 
 would remove some of the prizes, the so-called 
 ' ' plums, ' ' which reward political success, but there 
 would still remain powerful incentives to purchase votes, 
 which means to set a price on the splendid and invalu- 
 able right of an American citizen. The possession of an 
 office brings social consideration, honor, and sometimes 
 a chance to plunder the dear public. It frequently en- 
 ables a man to control the actions of inferior officials. 
 Success of a party in some campaigns brings with it 
 financial advantage in connection with tariff legislation. 
 Hence employers are tempted to bring pressure to bear 
 on their employees to vote with them ; often with the 
 sincere belief that their interests are common. Men of 
 highest character are sometimes led to purchase votes, 
 or wink at the act in others, when they see that a large 
 body of ignorant and venal voters can be secured for the 
 right side in no other way. The dangers from the 
 southern negro and from. the raw immigrant of the 
 North are akin. 
 
 Plausible as are the apologies for buying votes, all 
 clear-minded men must see that it is shameful, humilia- 
 ting, and degrading. No body of people can long 
 engage in such practices without deep moral stain. 
 England has succeeded better than any other country 
 in reducing bribery to a minimum. Professor J. W. 
 Jenks reported that he found "still a very little brib- 
 ery ; a little persecution ; more, but still not very 
 much treating ; some coercion by employers, some by 
 priests ; a good deal of trickery and misrepresentation 
 that is mean but very natural," and some indirect cor-
 
 1 86 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The Australian 
 ballot. 
 
 Referendum. 
 
 ruption ; but on the whole he found the elections pure. 
 
 When the candidates are compelled to make out 
 a sworn and itemized list of election expenses ; when the 
 law punishes with disfranchisement, imprisonment, and 
 heavy costs all acceptance or offers of bribes ; and 
 liquor is kept at a distance ; and public opinion sustains 
 the law, bribery can be reduced to a very inconsiderable 
 amount. Several states have already passed such laws, 
 and the task now is to extend them to all the states and 
 enforce them with vigor. 
 
 The new ballot-system has for its purpose the sup- 
 pression of intimidation and bribery at elections. ' ' The 
 ballots are printed by the state, and contain the names 
 of all the candidates of all the parties. Against the 
 name of each candidate the party to which he belongs is 
 designated, and against each name there is a small 
 vacant space to be filled with a cross. At the polling- 
 place the ballots are kept in an inclosure behind a rail- 
 ing, and no ballot can be brought outside under penalty 
 of fine or imprisonment" (J. Fiske). The voting is 
 absolutely secret and the voter is free from all pressure 
 upon his independent judgment. It is beautiful to note 
 how the impertinent and corrupt crowd which once 
 haunted the voters has melted away under the action 
 of this law. 
 
 It may fairly be claimed that the movement to refer 
 all essential issues to a direct vote is growing popular in 
 the United States. A democracy is frequently thwarted 
 in its purposes by combinations among its own elected 
 representatives. Laws carried by a small majority in 
 the legislature have often been contrary to the actual 
 will of the majority. The referendum is a means of 
 giving direct expression to the will of the voters. State 
 constitutions are thus amended. Critical and vexed
 
 Political Reforms. 187 
 
 questions about taxation, control of the liquor traffic, 
 important increase of debts for improvement are finally 
 determined by submission to a popular vote. Measures 
 thus decided are less likely to be causes of disturbance. 
 The issue is disentangled from all foreign matter and 
 discussed in a large way, free from personal and partisan 
 considerations. As Mr. Lecky says, ' ' Democracy has 
 been crowned king. The voice of the multitude is the 
 ultimate court of appeal." If the people err in judg- 
 ment they must learn better by bitter experience, and 
 the earlier they can put their theory to the test the 
 sooner they will learn their lesson. 
 
 The referendum enables the people to check the 
 legislature after it has acted. But Switzerland has con- initiative, 
 structed political machinery by which any large constit- 
 uency can bring a measure to the attention of the 
 legislature and so to decision. The democratic princi- 
 ple here finds its most distinct expression. That which 
 is accomplished indirectly by newspaper discussion, 
 popular agitation, resolutions by societies, congresses, 
 and party platforms is, by the initiative, made the im- 
 mediate issue before the community of voters, in a 
 concise and legal form demanding attention. 
 
 Majorities are often despotic and merciless. Some- 
 
 . . . . ... Proportional 
 
 times they are ignorant and unjust. Victory means representation, 
 trampling the unsuccessful minority under foot, and the 
 minority has rights and may have superior wisdom and 
 worth. Republican government ought not to mean 
 a new kind of tyranny. There is nothing in a majority 
 worthy of worship. The ideal of a just government 
 is the welfare of man, woman, and child, whether their 
 votes count or not. The aim of "proportional repre- 
 sentation " is to secure in legislative halls a hearing for 
 the minority, and for every considerable body of citizens
 
 1 88 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Evils illus- 
 trated. 
 
 Advantage*. 
 
 who have common convictions and interests. Indeed 
 majority rule often means merely the rule of the "ring" 
 which leads the majority by the nose. 
 
 Professor Commons illustrates the injustice of the 
 present system. In 1894 "the total vote cast for con- 
 gressmen was 11,288,135. Of this number the Repub- 
 licans cast 5,461,202; the Democrats, 4,295,748; the 
 Populists, 1,323,644; the Prohibitionists, 182,679; and 
 24,862 scattering. The result was the election of 245 Re- 
 publican, 104 Democrat, and 7 Populist congressmen." 
 The Prohibitionists, though they constituted a large part 
 of the population, had not a single representative to 
 voice their convictions in legislative halls, and the Pop- 
 ulists with 11.7 per cent of the votes secured only 2 per 
 cent of the congressmen. In some elections the other 
 party has had the extreme advantage, but in no election 
 is there a fair representation of the various interests of 
 the nation. In 1892 Tammany Hall, with 59 per cent 
 of the votes, elected every one of the thirty aldermen. 
 The corrupt machine, under such conditions, can con- 
 trol the election undisturbed by the helpless independent 
 votes. Sometimes the great corporations get possession 
 of the bosses on both sides, and then the whole state 
 legislature is in their grasp. 
 
 Proportional representation carries with it the right 
 and power of any respectable number or class of citizens, 
 even if a majority is against them, to send legislators to 
 the law-making bodies of the commonwealth or city to 
 present their views, to urge their rights, and to check 
 the arbitrary and tyrannical action of those who chance 
 to be in power. If this plan was employed in electing 
 city councils on general tickets, instead of ward tickets, 
 it would enable reform parties to consolidate their 
 strength, secure more competent representatives, and
 
 Political Reforms. 189 
 
 resist the corrupt organizations which now rule our 
 cities. It \vould compel the party leaders to offer a 
 higher class of men as candidates. It would induce 
 honest men of ability, business men, wage-earners, and 
 professional men to stand for election, since they would 
 not be compelled to secure office by the degrading 
 methods now so common. 
 
 A radical reform would still further encourage busy 
 
 ... j 1 i Legalized 
 
 citizens to go to the primaries and the best men to primary, 
 accept office the abolition of the caucus and convention 
 and the substitution of a legalized primary. There 
 should be in every state legal provision for the nomi- 
 nation of any candidate on the petition of a respectable 
 number of voters in a party. Under the present order 
 it is usually a waste of time to go to the primary unless 
 one is an expert politician, and the consciousness of dis- 
 appointment it is which prevents honest citizens from 
 going to the place of nomination. Give them a fair 
 chance to be on equal terms with tricksters and they 
 will be glad to perform their duty. Give the inde- 
 pendents power to place their own candidates on the 
 ballot in as favorable a place as those of the professional 
 ring and all dark and selfish schemes will come to 
 naught. 
 Well does Mr. Fiske say : 
 
 Popular government makes many mistakes, and sometimes 
 it is slow in finding them out ; but when once it has discovered optimum 
 them it has a way of correcting them. It is the best kind of 
 government in the world, the most wisely conservative, the 
 most steadily progressive, and the most likely to endure. 
 
 But our earnest must not slacken 
 
 Into play ; 
 Men of thought and men of action, 
 
 Clear the way.
 
 190 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Fortunately for national life no governmental ma- 
 justice not chinery can be invented which will, once wound up, run 
 
 Hutomatic. * 
 
 automatically without intelligent supervision, devoted 
 interest, self-sacrificing patriotism. The corrupt ward 
 politician performs a useful function, though in a dis- 
 creditable way, when he irritates the business com- 
 munity into paying some attention to the working of 
 this divine institution of democratic self-government.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 It is a work of charity, and charity is the work of heaven 
 nay, it is the highest and noblest charity, for he that teacheth or k teacher s 
 another gives alms to his soul ; he clothes the nakedness of his 
 understanding, and relieves the wants of his impoverished 
 reason. He indeed who governs well, leads the blind ; but he 
 that teaches, gives him eyes. . . . Doctrine is that which 
 must prepare men for discipline ; and men never go so cheer- 
 fully as when they see where they go. R. South, Sermons. 
 
 OUR purpose in these pages is to show the good 
 citizen how he can best work for the common- 
 wealth. There are social services which all are bound 
 to perform and which do not demand professional train- 
 ing. Treatises on pedagogy must be consulted by the 
 teacher for direction in the technical processes of his 
 calling. But in a democratic country, whether we like 
 it or not, the quality of the schools will depend very 
 greatly on the cooperation of the people. Let us in 
 this chapter give attention to some of the ways in which 
 intelligent citizens are assisting the school authorities, 
 and to the measures which require very general interest 
 and devotion. Many parents would be glad to take 
 part in the movement for better schools if they realized 
 how much they were needed, and if they saw any prac- 
 tical method of effort. 
 
 "You will hear every day," said Emerson, "the 
 maxims of low prudence. You will hear that the first 
 duty is to get land and money, place and name. 
 What is this truth you seek? What is this beauty?' 
 
 191
 
 192 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Function of 
 the school. 
 
 Democracy 
 and schools. 
 
 men will ask with derision. If, nevertheless, God have 
 called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, 
 be firm, be true. When you shall say, 'As others do, 
 so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early 
 visions ; I must eat the good of the land, and let learn- 
 ing and romantic expectations go until a more con- 
 venient season ' ; then dies the man in you ; then once 
 more perish the bonds of art and poetry and science, as 
 they died already in a thousand thousand men." Thus 
 does our great ethical inspirer and prophet call the 
 leaders of a nation to unite firmly to promote the higher 
 elements of popular welfare. 
 
 The school system is that social institution by which 
 the entire people consciously and of set purpose seeks 
 to transmit its knowledge and its higher ideals to the 
 next generation. The people of the United States, 
 without murmuring or protest, have rapidly set apart a 
 larger and larger portion of their growing wealth to 
 these exalted ends. 
 
 Amiel, a delicate and timid spirit, feared that all fine 
 things would disappear with the leveling processes of a 
 commonplace democracy. And many refined souls 
 share his anxieties. We who believe in the future of 
 democracy may do well to listen to these forebodings of 
 gloomy prophets in order to prevent the fulfillment of 
 the dark anticipations. "The age of great men is 
 going ; the epoch of the ant-hills, of life in multiplicity, 
 is beginning. The century of individualism, of abstract 
 equality triumphs, runs a great risk of seeing no more 
 true individuals. By continual leveling and division of 
 labor, society will become everything and man nothing. 
 
 ' ' As the floor of valleys is raised by the denudation 
 and washing down of the mountains, what is average 
 will rise at the expense of what is great. The excep-
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 1 93 
 
 tional will disappear. . . . The statistician will 
 register a growing progress, and the moralist a gradual 
 decline : on the one hand, a progress in things ; on the 
 other, a decline of souls. The useful will take the 
 place of the beautiful, industry of art, political economy 
 of religion, and arithmetic of poetry." But this de- 
 lightful writer does not regard this tendency as final, 
 and he thinks a craving for spiritual good will appear 
 after the animal hunger is satisfied. There will "arise 
 a new kingdom of mind, a church of refuge, a republic 
 of souls, in which, far beyond the region of mere right 
 and sordid activity, beauty, devotion, holiness, heroism, 
 enthusiasm, the extraordinary, the infinite, shall have a 
 worship and an abiding city." But this can never be 
 unless the people provide liberally for the means of 
 culture. 
 
 In the Report on Secondary Education, presented by The aeuument 
 the Royal Commission of England by Assistant Com- 
 missioner J. J. Findlay, we find the following testimony : 
 
 The contrast between ourselves in England as a people and 
 the English race in America across the ocean lies mainly here, 
 that in the most progressive states of America the people 
 believe in education, and are willing to make sacrifices for the 
 sake of their creed. Outside of the scheme of public educa- 
 tion, we have presented in the United States an almost 
 prodigal liberality in the establishment and support of private 
 educational enterprises. On every hand colleges and universi- 
 ties and technical institutes are bountifully supplied with the 
 gifts of rich men, and it is evident that this stream of wealth is 
 the result of a national sentiment in favor of education. We 
 have no parallel to this generosity either in England or in any 
 other country. 
 
 President Garfield voices the best convictions of true 
 Americans in his words : 
 
 There is no horizontal stratification of society in this country
 
 194 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The school 
 unknown to 
 citizens. 
 
 Pride in our 
 svstem. 
 
 like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below 
 forevermore, and let another come to the surface and stay 
 there forever. Our stratification is like the ocean, where every 
 individual drop is free to move, and where from the sternest 
 depths of the mighty deep any drop may come up to glitter on 
 the highest wave that rolls. . . . We confront the dangers 
 of suffrage by the blessings of universal education. 
 
 The schoolhouse to the average citizen seems almost 
 as impenetrable as the French Bastille. He knows it is 
 entirely harmless and that there is no legal obstacle to 
 his entrance. But he fears to disturb the classes and 
 teachers ; he is busy about his own occupation ; and he 
 is afraid to expose his ignorance of many forgotten ele- 
 ments by asking questions. Therefore the average citi- 
 zen passes the schoolhouse without much thought, 
 unless the principal sends for him or punishes his pet 
 bad boy. Still we are all proud of our free public 
 schools, and are seldom disturbed in our placid dream 
 of complacent contentment by stories of schools in the 
 lands of Pestalozzi and Froebel. Indeed, we have im- 
 ported and naturalized so many German ideas and living 
 teachers, and even teach the language of Germany to 
 such an extent, that we are acquiring a fine fruit from a 
 Teutonic graft on a rude but healthy American stock. 
 We are very sensitive to any attack on this institution, 
 to open criticism, covert insinuation, or distant sugges- 
 tion of dividing school funds among the sects. An 
 assault on the school system, with the stars and stripes 
 floating over its buildings, is with us high treason. 
 
 Most of us know all too little of what is going on 
 inside those walls where our children spend so many 
 bright days of youth. It seems the affair of boards, 
 normal schools, principals, and teachers. Our people 
 feel incompetent to deal with the theory and practice of 
 instruction and discipline ; and only occasionally does
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 195 
 
 one ascend the chair of the infallible and dogmatic 
 anonymous correspondent. Very much of popular dis- 
 cussion is of these two irrational, extreme types, confi- 
 dent abuse or timid questioning. 
 
 It must be apparent that there is a close connection 
 between the home and the school which demands a Home and 
 
 school. 
 
 clear and friendly understanding. The primary teacher 
 is merely the mother's assistant. The family is the real 
 primary school and, for weal or woe, the mother is the 
 first teacher. And then the school is educating children 
 to live in society ; imparting to them the knowledge 
 which they will need to fit them to move in the great 
 world's life ; training them in the habits of regularity, 
 punctuality, neatness, order, courtesy, honesty, obedi- 
 ence, cooperation which will fit them to be valuable and 
 happy citizens. 
 
 Divorce or any serious isolation of school from gen- 
 eral society is, therefore, injurious and dangerous. And djvorce f 
 it becomes a serious question by what means and to 
 what extent the non -professional public can, without an- 
 noyance and disturbance, be helpful to the school. 
 Remember that the representatives of democracy hold 
 the purse ; that elected councilmen, boards of education, 
 and legislators control school policies ; that they reflect 
 the convictions of their constituents ; that expert educa- 
 tors cannot go faster than they are permitted to go 
 by public opinion ; and it will be seen that all citizens 
 must either help or hinder the system of education. 
 
 Dr. Broadus's homely story brings home to us the 
 necessity in a republic of giving moral discipline to our 
 political masters: "I'll bet you five dollars on the 
 gray horse," said a man, "and Squire Thornton shall 
 hold the stakes." " And who will hold Squire Thorn- 
 ton ? " said the other. It is the old query, "Who shall
 
 196 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The public 
 school and its 
 present work. 
 
 Financial 
 importance. 
 
 watch the guardians?" Our journalists, statesmen, 
 legislators, financiers are our masters, and our schools 
 form them. We must educate our masters. 
 
 From the report of Hon. W. T. Harris, commissioner 
 of education, 1894-5, we learn the vast interest of the 
 nation in common schools, as measured by property, in- 
 come, teachers, and pupils. The entire population was 
 estimated to be 68,748,950. The persons of school age 
 (five to eighteen years) was 20,328,147, the number 
 enrolled as pupils 14,201,752, to whom maybe added 
 all who were in private and parochial schools. The 
 total number of pupils and students of all grades in both 
 public and private schools is estimated at 15,688,622. 
 The entire population is receiving an average of 4^ 
 years of 200 days each. Massachusetts gives 8.04 years 
 per inhabitant. The people of the German Empire 
 receive 7.2 years of 200 days each. The average for 
 the United States is steadily rising. The South is ad- 
 vancing in a most encouraging way. The average 
 amount of schooling given in the South Atlantic Divi- 
 sion in 1870 was i. 20 years, while in 1895 it had risen 
 to 2.85 years. The whole number of public school- 
 teachers is 396,327, of whom 32.4 per cent are male. 
 The average monthly wages are $46. 82 for male teachers 
 and $39.41 for female teachers. There are 237,416 
 schoolhouses, and school property is worth $439,071,- 
 690. The income is $177,597,691, of which 85.7 per 
 cent is from state and local taxes. The average expend- 
 iture per capita of population is $2.59, in addition to 
 all that is expended upon private schools of all grades. 
 The financial aspect of the system is important enough 
 to command the attention of every taxpayer. The ex- 
 penditures are already immense and they are certain to 
 increase.
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 197 
 
 In our cities there is a marked tendency among rich 
 people to send their children to private and ' ' select ' ' 
 schools. They claim that the teaching in the public sch ols 
 schools is inferior ; that the rooms are crowded ; that 
 the manners of the pupils are rude. Let us grant that 
 there is a measure of truth in these charges. Let us 
 give no undue emphasis to the counter-charge that 
 there is among us the beginnings of a class spirit, an 
 aristocracy, and that "select" schools are patronized 
 by those who wish to keep their children afar from the 
 common herd, and form them to become the imitators 
 and lackeys of the rich. 
 
 Mr. Robert Grant, in his "Art of Living," brings , 
 
 Moral inilu 
 
 out a phase of the problem too often overlooked. nces. 
 
 Excellent as many of our private schools are, it is doubtful 
 if either the morals are better, or the liability to disease is less, 
 among the children who attend them than at a public school of 
 the best class. To begin with, the private schools in our cities 
 are eagerly patronized by that not inconsiderable class of 
 parents who hope or imagine that the social position of their 
 children is to be established by association with the children of 
 influential people. Falsehood, meanness, and unworthy am- 
 bitions are quite as dangerous to character when the little man 
 who suggests them has no patches on his breeches as when he 
 has, and unfortunately there are no outward signs on the moral 
 nature, like holes in trousers, to serve as danger signals to our 
 darlings. 
 
 Let us not question the legal and moral right of a 
 parent to give his child the best opportunities he can 
 afford, and the kind of an education which he believes 
 most suitable. Surely the father is under no obligation 
 to sacrifice his own child to an institution, even if it be a 
 national institution. The nation has no right to require 
 such a sacrifice. 
 
 But if those who are rich can afford to give their
 
 198 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 children costly opportunities the people generally can- 
 not do so. The foundation of national education cannot 
 be laid in private and parochial schools. If our common 
 schools are really so inferior the duty of all is to bring 
 them to a higher grade, to provide them with the best 
 facilities. 
 
 The danger from private schools is that their patrons 
 Danger from w ju b e alienated from the common schools and come to 
 
 private schools. 
 
 regard the school tax as an injustice. ' ' Why should 
 we be taxed to educate the children of other men?" 
 This is the question so ominous of danger. It comes 
 from the egoistic, atomistic, individualistic theory of 
 society. The children of the poor are our children. 
 They also are members of the same community. Their 
 labors help to create wealth in which all share. 
 Their character is the character of society. Their votes 
 will ultimately decide all political fortunes. 
 
 The Earl of Shaftesbury warned against those great 
 English schools which some of the wealthy people of 
 America are patronizing or seeking to copy. He said 
 that they made admirable gentlemen and finished 
 scholars, but did not prepare men for the life of our 
 age. ' ' We must have nobler, deeper, and sterner 
 stuff ; less of refinement and more of truth ; . . . a 
 contempt for ridicule, not a dread of it." The great 
 philanthropist may have spoken too bitterly against 
 Eton and similar institutions, for certainly they have 
 sent out many noble servants of humanity. But such 
 schools ought not to be built up at the expense of 
 the free high schools of the democracy. And there is 
 always a real danger at this point. 
 
 Citizens have it in their power to assist the public 
 
 fl S uence S * schools and their administrators by sympathetic study of 
 
 education, by listening intelligently to the expert leaders
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 199 
 
 of schools, by generous financial support, by activity in 
 promoting improvements. It is possible to build up a 
 consensus of opinion in the country which will represent 
 a high average of conservative judgment and which will 
 make progress certain and constant. 
 
 Public opinion should require that the buildings which 
 represent the public taste, and are the homes of fourteen 
 millions of pupils and four hundred thousand teachers, 
 two hundred days in the year, should be so constructed 
 as to favor the health, the refinement, and the intelli- 
 gence of the coming generation. Of school hygiene we 
 have already spoken. Its importance cannot be over- 
 estimated. 
 
 If the people are to be redeemed from coarse, rude 
 ways and are to rise to the appreciation, enjoyment, and 
 creation of beautiful things, then the forms of art must 
 be set before them when they are young. Miss Starr, of 
 Hull House, who is doing so much to 'bring fine things 
 into schoolrooms, thus illustrates the necessity for bring- 
 ing beautiful objects into a child's life : 
 
 Two small girls who were going to one of our Hull House 
 nicnics were crossing the bridge over the Chicago River. " 1 
 hate rivers; don't you?" one of them said, and the other 
 answered, " Yes, they smell so awful bad." Now that is what 
 the absence of beautiful sights and sounds did for those chil- 
 dren. You could never make them see a river as anything 
 better than bad smell, because purling brooks and pebbly bot- 
 toms and green banks meant nothing to their minds. 
 
 Many teachers are trying with limited means to adorn 
 the assembly halls and places of recitation. One will 
 frequently see a home-like curtain at the window, a pot 
 of flowers on the sill, some colored chalk drawings on 
 the board. 
 
 Societies are formed in some cities for the purpose of
 
 aoo The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 beautifying the walls of schoolrooms. Photographs of 
 famous pictures, plaster casts of classic sculpture, sup- 
 plied at moderate cost but excellent of their kind, 
 are placed before the eyes of youth and left to plead the 
 cause of an aesthetic perfection. The color and decora- 
 tions of the walls and ceiling are made to conform to the 
 canons of good taste, and children carry back into their 
 homes standards of beauty. There is a general move- 
 ment to make the grounds about the buildings beautiful 
 with sward, flowers, and suitable play-grounds. 
 
 From appreciation we pass to creation. To many 
 An in the minds the introduction of drawing into the schools 
 
 course of study. . 
 
 seems a piece of foolish extravagance. And yet its 
 value ought to be obvious. Every one can learn to 
 draw well enough to add a new power of expression to 
 the written or spoken word, while the practice of draw- 
 ing fits one for the finer processes of mechanical arts, 
 gives a power of criticism and pleasure in the presence 
 of pictures, and awakens and discovers the latent genius 
 of genuine artists who are scattered throughout the 
 country. European countries have introduced art 
 studies partly in order to hold the markets for manufac- 
 tured goods. The Educational Committee of the Wom- 
 en's Industrial Council of London discovered that 
 French artificial flower-makers were better paid than 
 An in industry. ^ E n gii sn an( j na( j a surer market even in England. 
 
 The cause was sought and found in the Ecole Profes- 
 sionelle of Paris, in which pupils are thoroughly trained 
 in drawing and design, and become competent to make 
 entire flowers. In the manufacture of furniture, metal 
 work, textile fabrics, upholstery, stone-work, mere 
 crude handwork is displaced by machinery. But if 
 artistic skill and taste are added the product earns 
 for the workmen a superior reward.
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 201 
 
 The final cause of education is not mere industrial 
 efficiency, but that for which mechanical skill is itself 
 a means, namely, the production of a complete and 
 happy life. Dr. James MacAlister's words express the 
 higher truth : ' ' While we are extending our system of 
 education on the utilitarian side, we must not forget 
 that the right enjoyment of life that is, the exercise of 
 the higher faculties is as much a function of living as 
 earning one's daily bread ; and for our education to be 
 useful in the true sense of the term, we cannot ignore 
 the training of the aesthetic faculties as much for moral 
 as for practical ends." It is because the public in 
 America is so slow to realize the larger meaning of ed- 
 ucation, and has had so imperfect a training in art, that 
 it is so difficult to introduce and foster this branch of 
 culture. But there are numerous signs of a better day. 
 
 If we are to provoke a revulsion against untidy 
 streets, hideous alleys, tumble-down houses, ugly and 
 weedy spaces, repulsive garbage-heaps, offensive adver- 
 tisements of black and yellow on barns, dead walls, and 
 mountain sides, and other sins against human perfec- 
 tion, we must make our schoolrooms teachers of beauty. 
 
 And far above these gross abuses the finer natures 
 among us have entertained visions of a complete life, 
 full of noble sentiment, instructed in the laws of the 
 universe, reverent toward the infinite goodness and 
 holiness. Such a life perfected is an aesthetic product 
 on which all rightly constituted minds can gaze with 
 complacency. To that perfected and beautiful life the 
 common schools may offer a most essential contribution. 
 
 In a former place we have insisted on the fact that the 
 
 School and 
 
 family is itself the first and most important of all schools, home. 
 Dr. Dike's report for 1896 emphasizes this point with 
 fresh illustrations.
 
 2O2 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The rapidly-increasing interest in child study and the incor- 
 Eariy intiu- poration of the kindergarten into the public-school system 
 can hardly fail to accelerate this movement back to the home ; 
 for the demand for the kindergarten rests largely on the 
 recognized educational importance of the years immediately 
 preceding the former school age. But child study is now 
 pushing us still farther back. The years before the kinder- 
 garten age are seen to be immensely potent in education. 
 The prenatal life of the child, its ancestral inheritance, and all 
 the supplementary life of the home and the hours of play out- 
 side school, are coming into view as being full of educational 
 meaning. 
 
 This is profoundly true. And the inference is natural : 
 the trained professional teachers must be pioneers in the 
 social function of preparing parents for their educa- 
 tional duties. There is no other body of persons fitted 
 for this service. Rarely do we see it hinted that a 
 young woman should go to a normal school in order to 
 fit herself to be the teacher of her own children. Yet 
 this doctrine is a logical inference from that of the 
 educational value of the family. Some socialists are 
 also logical when they say that mothers are not fit to 
 educate their offspring and therefore the children 
 
 Parental ' 
 
 training. should be brought up in communal establishments 
 
 conducted by trained and competent nurses and instruct- 
 ors. The only entirely satisfactory reply to the social- 
 istic theory is that we must teach the mothers to 
 perform duties which cannot be delegated without fear- 
 ful increase in mortality and without violation of the 
 holiest instincts of our nature. 
 
 Fortunately there is a movement already widely ex- 
 tended to bring school and home into relations of 
 reciprocal helpfulness. In some places the initiative is 
 taken by teachers, in others by parents. 
 
 The leaders of kindergartens and their training
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 203 
 
 schools are calling conferences of mothers which have 
 already proved very important. Principals of public 
 schools have long been in the habit of having exhibitions wilh P arent - 
 and festivals in which the community was invited to 
 enjoy the entertainment given by the pupils. Courses 
 of University Extension lectures on the principles and 
 methods of teaching might be offered in schoolrooms 
 and attract for their audiences teachers, parents, and 
 Sunday-school workers. The familiar discussion in 
 mixed classes would reveal to those persons the essen- 
 tial unity of their labors, and fit them for more effective 
 cooperation in the social task. 
 
 What institution of society can so well give the neces- 
 sary knowledge of the difficult art of household life as Domestic 
 
 ... science in 
 
 the common school ? Elementary instruction in regard the school, 
 to the chemistry of foods, the functions and dangers of 
 bacteria, the reasons for cleanliness, the selection and 
 care of furniture, bedding, and clothing, ventilation, 
 heating, plumbing and drainage, and household ac- 
 counts is entirely possible. Primary text-books are 
 already provided. Interesting experiments are easily 
 made. The educational value of the study could be 
 kept up by making it contribute to language and mathe- 
 matical work. With some care the scientific facts and 
 principles could be presented in beautiful literary form, 
 as has been shown in many charming juvenile books on 
 nature studies. The health and happiness of multitudes 
 depend on the universal diffusion of existing knowledge 
 on these subjects ; and there is no educational institu- 
 tion save the common school which can reach all mem- 
 bers of the nation. 
 
 We leave the seriously defective and perverted to be -Nature-i 
 studied at a later stage. They do not belong to the step<l 
 public schools, but to special institutions. There are
 
 204 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The duty. 
 
 Invent 
 
 methods. 
 
 many children, however, who must be dealt with in the 
 common schools and who require peculiar treatment. 
 Miss Alice J. Mott, in a suggestive paper, has called 
 them " Nature's step-children." They are not imbecile 
 nor criminal, but slow. They cannot keep up with ordi- 
 nary classes in all studies and the effort to push them 
 produces bewilderment, discouragement, despair. If 
 they are sweet-tempered constant failure in the presence 
 of superiors breaks their hearts and subdues their spirit. 
 If they are impetuous the school discipline turns them 
 into rebels, criminals. Most school-teachers and many 
 parents are acquainted with children of both types. 
 
 Society must provide for the suitable training of these 
 children or have to fight them as lawless adults or sup- 
 port them as parasitic paupers. The methods appropri- 
 ate for normal children tend to repress and stupefy the 
 slow pupils. 
 
 What should be done ? Let the school boards dis- 
 cover from the teachers the number of such children 
 and provide the necessary facilities for their develop- 
 ment. Here is a boy who turns truant and barn-burner 
 because he cannot learn language ; but in a machine 
 shop he discovers his talents and works out a good 
 heritage of character. Here is a girl to whom history is 
 one long torment ; yet in a sewing-school and kitchen 
 she can be made a model housekeeper. Colleges are 
 offering elective courses ; why should the rigid curricu- 
 lum be reserved for the younger students ? Why should 
 boys and girls be driven along in a way ever associated 
 with disgrace, humiliation, and unintelligible lessons? 
 The lady just cited tells of one who confessed : "I 
 never had a happy or even comfortable moment in all 
 my school life, excepting three times : once when the 
 schoolhouse chimney burned out ; once when the plas-
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 205 
 
 tering fell on our heads, and once when one of my 
 schoolmates had an epileptic fit." 
 
 Some one has related that Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, 
 though usually patient, once spoke sharply to a dull 
 pupil, who replied : "Why do you speak angrily, sir? 
 Indeed, I am doing the best I can." Dr. Arnold said 
 he never so felt a rebuke in his life. And surprises 
 sometimes await the impatient teacher who measures all 
 scholars by one rule. An Edinburgh professor once 
 cried out to a dull boy in his class : ' ' Dunce you are, 
 and dunce you will always remain." That student was 
 afterward known by the name of Sir Walter Scott. 
 Angels even in modern schoolrooms are sometimes 
 entertained unawares. One of the greatest orators in 
 America was as a schoolboy more famous for throw- 
 ing paper wads than for mathematics. The stupidity 
 ascribed to a pupil may really belong to the teachers 
 who lack insight and carefulness of observation. 
 
 Principal Parker, of the Chicago Normal School, 
 illustrated the injustice from which slow or defective njutice. 
 children suffer. 
 
 He spoke of a boy who had been brought to him by his 
 mother. Her story was that the boy was fifteen years old, 
 that he had attended school regularly from the age of seven, 
 and he had reached only the third grade ; he was years behind 
 boys of his own age. He was lovable, kind, had no bad 
 habits just stupid. Colonel Parker spoke to the boy, and 
 discovered from the way in which he held his head that he was 
 deaf. The mother protested that it could not be. Colonel 
 Parker insisted- that he was right. The boy was put in charge 
 of a careful, observing teacher, who, at the end of a session, 
 announced that the boy was near-sighted so near-sighted that 
 he could not distinguish letters or figures on the blackboard. 
 
 In all cases of unusually slow children careful tests of 
 their physical condition should be made by physicians
 
 206 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Improved 
 rural schools. 
 
 Obstacles. 
 
 Remedy. 
 
 and teachers, and special methods of patient instruction 
 should be adopted in order to unfold their powers. 
 
 To stem the tide of migration to cities ; to give the 
 best advantages of education to the sturdy and healthy 
 inhabitants of farms ; to equalize the privileges of civili- 
 zation ; to prepare all for the duties of citizenship, 
 better rural schools are required. 
 
 The difficulties in the way of raising the quality of 
 schools in the country are very serious. In many 
 districts there has been a steady decline of population, 
 due to the flow toward towns. The average number of 
 children in families is much smaller than in former 
 times. When the population is scant and poor the 
 financial burdens are very heavy. 
 
 As a result of these causes many schools have fewer 
 than ten pupils. With so small a number it is impossi- 
 ble to secure the services of a competent and energetic 
 teacher. In the absence of competition and emulation 
 the best energies of students cannot be called forth. 
 There is an atmosphere of discouragement and depres- 
 sion. In a small school where youth of all ages, from 
 six to eighteen, come for instruction, even a brilliant 
 teacher would find it impossible to meet their wants. 
 There can be no adequate grading of classes ; no 
 specialization of instruction. The teacher is distracted, 
 fretted, confused by the multiplicity of subjects, and 
 falls into the mechanical habit of hearing by rote recita- 
 tions out of text-books. In a poor district the school- 
 house must be scantily furnished with maps, charts, 
 globes, and other indispensable apparatus. 
 
 It has long been evident that the townships should 
 pursue a policy of consolidation. The inefficient small 
 schools should be closed up ; the children massed in 
 the villages and centers of population ; fewer and bette'
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 207 
 
 teachers set over larger and more inspiring classes ; 
 higher salaries paid so as to command better ability. 
 Since the towns keep their schools open a longer term 
 the number of days of schooling would be materially 
 increased. 
 
 One of the chief objections to consolidation came 
 from the parents who lived at a long distance from the 
 village. They complained that their children could not c f o 
 walk so far. This difficulty has been overcome in to school. 
 Massachusetts by providing carriages for the convey- 
 ance of children to school in case the distance is too 
 great for them to go on foot. By a law approved 
 April i, 1869, towns of that commonwealth were per- 
 mitted to use school funds for the conveyance of pupils 
 to and from the public schools. After a trial in that 
 state the experiment has extended to New Hampshire, 
 Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Ohio, and is 
 urged for adoption by educational authorities in New 
 York, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. 
 
 The pupils are aroused to their best effort by the 
 enthusiasm of numbers ; they are arranged in grades Advantages, 
 and classes more nearly according to their requirements; 
 they are trained to habits of promptness and punctuality; 
 their conduct on the way to school is under the super- 
 vision of a mature and trustworthy person, and the 
 moral dangers can be reduced ; they do not come to the 
 day's work in wet garments, chilled by winter's cold ; in 
 the schools they come under a higher quality of teach- 
 ing ability ; and the supervision of directors and super- 
 intendents can be made more thorough. The movement 
 seems to have passed the stage of experiment and to 
 deserve careful attention and imitation where the condi- 
 tions call for it. 
 
 The rural schools, it is complained, are making young
 
 208 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Adaptation of 
 rural teaching 
 to rural life. 
 
 High School 
 Extension. 
 
 people discontented with farm life and sending them to 
 the wicked and crowded cities to beg positions and 
 to sleep in garrets. Then let the rural schools show 
 how to turn the farm into a laboratory of science ; let 
 useful learning illustrate the infinite forces and everlast- 
 ing laws of soil and vegetation and atmosphere ; and the 
 intellectual attraction of the craft of husbandry will act 
 powerfully to retain the inquiring spirits upon the land. 
 The work of the real teacher must point to the future 
 calling of the farmer and not away from it. 
 
 While class work must remain the chief element in 
 the high schools there is the beginning of a movement 
 to bring this institution into closer relations with the 
 home, the shop, the store, and the common interests of 
 the adult population. Thousands of people are com- 
 pelled to leave school just at the time when the wider 
 outlook of the high school was opening to them a land 
 of promise. There is a deep and bitter feeling of an- 
 tagonism to this essential part of our system which may 
 be mitigated if not removed. No reason exists for the 
 exclusion from these advanced privileges of any citizen. 
 Those who have gone into business or trades can con- 
 tinue their studies all through life. 
 
 A quotation from a report by Principal F. A. Manny, 
 formerly of Moline, Illinois, will illustrate one method of 
 approach. "A college day program by Moline College 
 students, an address on eastern college life, a program 
 illustrative of high school work, lectures on travel, 
 current events, clubs, receptions for pupils and parents 
 all these have helped to make the high school build- 
 ing mean more to students and at the same time have 
 brought many hundreds of parents and friends to the 
 school. The purchase of a stereopticon makes the pos- 
 sibilities of this department vastly greater than ever."
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 209 
 
 The teachers and students have maintained night classes 
 in the town for persons who must work in the daytime. 
 A slight additional expense for teachers and care of 
 rooms would multiply the usefulness of the institution 
 and endear it to multitudes. Such a high school 
 promises to become the college for the people. 
 
 In April, 1895, the legislature of New York made an 
 annual appropriation of $25,000 for four years of free Lecture 
 lectures. During the first year the report of Dr. Bick- 
 more shows that the lectures were enjoyed by fully a 
 million people of the state, in country and city. Essen- 
 tial factors in this attempt to popularize instruction in 
 art, science, history, travel, and literature are the magic 
 lantern, music, and, for some subjects, dramatic repre- 
 sentation. Those who are not pursuing exhausting 
 avocations and have some powers of attention can do 
 better work in classes. Various methods, adapted to 
 local conditions, must be employed, and the field for in- 
 vention is practically boundless. 
 
 The scholars of a community ought to take to heart 
 the boast of one quaint English classic : 
 
 I make not my head a grave but a treasury of knowledge. I 
 intend no monopoly but a community in learning. I study not 
 for my own sake only, but for theirs who study not for them- 
 selves. (" Religio Medici.") 
 
 Social history points to a very important change in 
 industrial life. In a former age there was an appren- Trade schools, 
 ticeship system ; the boys lived with a master and 
 learned his trade. That time has gone by, never to 
 return. The millionaire manager will have no appren- 
 tice lads under his heels, and his diamond-decked wife 
 will not have the care of a hundred awkward youth who 
 work in her husband's iron-mill. Simply to suggest the 
 picture is to make thought of a renewal of the old sys-
 
 210 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Vicissitudes of 
 the trades. 
 
 Manual 
 training. 
 
 tem ridiculous. And then the machine has driven out 
 the apprentice. A machine costs money, goes by steam, 
 and cannot stop to wait even while a boy picks up the 
 finger which he has just cut off with a buzz-saw. The 
 foreman cannot wait to teach a lad. Enough if the 
 stout laborer is instructed to manage a single machine 
 "so strong that no fool can break it, so simple that any 
 fool can run it. ' ' There are no trades, only processes. 
 
 Looking over forty years of industrial history we see 
 the death of the trades, one by one : type-setting is 
 gone, killed by the linotype; house-building is composed 
 of many arts, and these are passing into sash, door, and 
 blind factories ; the electric motorman is displacing the 
 locomotive engineer ; the machine-cutter is expelling 
 the tailors. The shoemaker is a factory hand. 
 
 This swift transformation makes it at once impossible 
 and useless to have a full trade. And yet some special 
 arts can be taught and there is a limited demand for 
 technical schools. Mr. Auchmuty's building schools in 
 New York, business colleges, classes in type-writing, 
 telegraphy, and various technical institutes show what 
 may be done. Gradually the public system is being ex- 
 tended to give instruction in any art which will fit peo- 
 ple for their place in life. If the state teaches physicians, 
 lawyers, dentists, and pharmacists, why not smiths, 
 weavers, decorators, and machinists? These are ques- 
 tions democracy is sure to ask until it gets answer. 
 
 A discussion of manual training methods addressed to 
 teachers would be out of place in this book. But the 
 success of this new branch of education depends so 
 much on public sympathy that the grounds of appeal for 
 support should be frequently restated. In some cities 
 the manual training department has been established by 
 private enterprise and conducted at the cost of far-seeing
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 2 1 1 
 
 and liberal men until the community could appreciate its 
 value and consent to the necessary tax for support. But 
 private enterprise can never supply the wants of the en- 
 tire school population. 
 
 The modern fact just noted, that there are no full 
 trades, and that all mechanical arts are ever in process Lost arts - 
 of dissolution and transformation, implies the necessity 
 of training youth in versatility and adaptability. If a 
 course of instruction could be devised which should give 
 young people the key, the alphabet of all possible 
 trades, the principles common to all the arts, the per- 
 sons so educated would be able to pass over from 
 one trade to another. 
 
 Now there is just such a method of education. This 
 method goes by various names. In its best form it is 
 "kindergarten " for children of the ages of three to six. 
 At a later stage it is called "sloyd" and "manual 
 training." Educational experiments are now being 
 tried which promise to show that this constructive, 
 creative method should run through the whole school 
 life. A few tools are the elements of all complex 
 machines. A few principles govern the development 
 of all industrial processes. Therefore what we want is 
 an education of all youth which will enable them to 
 change from one process to another without undue loss 
 of time and energy. 
 
 The best years for this kind of preparation are those 
 from twelve to sixteen. Up to the twelfth year a boy Lengthen 
 
 ... , .; school life. 
 
 cannot be trusted with many sharp tools or swift 
 machines, nor can he carry on the mental processes 
 which make part of the manual training school method. 
 Professor C. M. Woodward' s tables show that the aver- 
 age age of withdrawal from schools in St. Louis is 13.3 
 years; in Chicago, 14.5 years; and in Boston, 15.9
 
 212 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Neglect of 
 crime causes. 
 
 Imported 
 competitors. 
 
 years. In many communities this age is lower. Boys 
 leave school earlier than girls, but without equipment 
 for the life of our industrial system, and, because many 
 of them are not prepared to be self-supporting, they 
 drift into idleness, vice, and crime. School boards 
 should be authorized and required to provide a course 
 of study fitted for these years ; the age of compulsory 
 attendance should be made as high as the industrial con- 
 ditions will permit ; and factory laws, enforced by in- 
 spection, should prevent the employment of youth not 
 duly prepared for specialized industry. 
 
 In these ways we should avoid the necessity of guard- 
 ing lads by a costly system of police, of punishing them 
 by an expensive series of courts and prisons, and of 
 supporting them as vagrants in poorhouses or by dole 
 charities and woodyards. Is it not a sorry tribute 
 to national shrewdness and insight that we first deny 
 our boys all chance to learn an art in its principles, im- 
 port skilled men to displace our own sons, and then, all 
 too late, give our boys in reformatories just that man- 
 ual and technical training the lack of which sent them to 
 those penal institutions ? 
 
 It has actually come to this deplorable result that the 
 only way in which a boy can learn a useful mechanical 
 calling is by committing some crime which will take him 
 to a manual training or trade school. As the ' ' social 
 spirit" becomes more enlightened it will reverse this 
 order ; it will build additions to the schoolhouses for 
 tool work and it will diminish the reformatories. A list 
 of cities which have already introduced these improve- 
 ments and which carry the honorable banner of pioneers 
 of progress would be an argument of hope and good 
 cheer. Teachers' institutes and conventions are eagerly 
 discussing methods of fitting youth for life in this actual
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 213 
 
 world which encompasses us all. Education is not 
 merely preparation for life, it is life. To make manual 
 work honorable we must give it rank and place along 
 with literature, history, art, and classics, and thus asso- 
 ciate the useful occupations inseparably with ideal pur- 
 suits. 
 
 Why should we tax the entire community to support 
 schools and then permit the children to pass school age Required 
 
 attendance. 
 
 without using them? Children have a right to a fair 
 opportunity of unfolding and discovering their native 
 abilities. The word ' ' compulsory ' ' education is a mis- 
 nomer. With the right sort of instruction, and with 
 good home influence there is seldom need to compel at- 
 tendance and work. Shakespeare's 
 
 whining schoolboy, with his satchel 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school 
 
 lived before the days of tool practice, drawing, clay 
 modeling, sand maps, and illustrated histories. And 
 yet even he, with all his whimpering, learned to read, 
 and afterward wrote laws and books and found his way 
 around the world. 
 
 If the avarice of parents robs their offspring of school 
 such parents must be prevented from carrying out their 
 base intention. If extreme destitution is the obstacle, 
 then charity must remove it. 
 
 In some parts of the United States there is a general 
 demand for religious services and very little opposition. Religious 
 
 teaching. 
 
 But in large towns and cities with a heterogeneous popu- 
 lation sectarian differences and secular antagonism have 
 banished Bible reading, religious teaching, and public 
 prayer from the tax-supported schools. It is impossi- 
 ble to foretell the issue of this unhappy controversy, 
 but some consequences are already becoming clear. If
 
 2I 4 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Ethical 
 teaching. 
 
 Higher edu- 
 cation by 
 the state. 
 
 the state must refuse to teach religion then this duty is 
 all the more to be felt by the family and the church. 
 Probably it will be found in the event that the instruc- 
 tion will be more vital, sincere, and potent than if it 
 were imparted in a perfunctory way by teachers who 
 are not always in sympathy with the exercises. The 
 mode of imparting knowledge may be less systematic 
 and accurate, but even this may be improved. 
 
 We can also see a tendency to recognize the Bible as 
 an indispensable factor in history, literature, and ethics. 
 Suitable selections can be made from it which will not 
 give offense to any reasonable person nor come into 
 collision with our fundamental law which separates 
 church from state and forbids the use of public funds 
 for sectarian uses. 
 
 There is a general and growing demand for the teach- 
 ing of human duties and virtues on the general basis of 
 social obligations. All well-ordered schools are, with- 
 out formal and set lessons, agencies for moral discipline, 
 for the formation of habits of respect, honesty, punctu- 
 ality, sympathy, and order. The best lesson in morality 
 is the life of the teacher and the daily conduct of the 
 student community. But in addition to these pro- 
 visions for forming character it is coming to be gener- 
 ally believed that a graded, comprehensive, and sys- 
 tematic method of instruction and discipline should be 
 adopted for forming, by conscious effort, the social im- 
 pulses and habits of the pupils. 
 
 There is no logical stopping-place in the development 
 of our public schools. Mr. Huxley's ideal of free 
 education for all citizens "from the gutter to the uni- 
 versity" is realized in the United States. It is too late 
 in the day to resist this tendency. Our governments 
 throw no obstacles in the way of privately endowed
 
 The Social Spirit in the State School System. 2 1 5 
 
 colleges and universities. There is no danger of an all- 
 powerful state monopoly of higher education with a 
 fixed and fossil type, secure from competition. The 
 nation will keep faith with the endowed institutions of 
 learning to which it has granted sacred charters. But 
 the whole people will not depend upon the capricious 
 working of private benevolence to make sure the oppor- 
 tunity of the highest culture to all its youth who are 
 competent and ambitious. There is room for all and a 
 generous rivalry will not exclude a patriotic cooperation 
 of all for the nation's honor and progress. 
 
 The members of the teaching profession are obliged 
 to instruct their directors. It is a delicate and difficult education, 
 work, and the pupils are not always docile and humble. 
 A great manufacturer or even a successful saloon- 
 keeper, once elected to a school board, suddenly feels 
 inspired with unlimited confidence in his own ability as 
 an educator. Fortunately, most of our directors are 
 capable of learning enough of the principles of educa- 
 tion, after some experience, to select good superintend- 
 ents and support them. When we can keep the 
 "spoils system" down, the boards can be turned into 
 normal institutes and fit their members for the business. 
 It must be confessed, however, that there is room, wide 
 as the continent, for improvement. The electors should 
 require proof of all candidates for these honorable offices 
 that they have themselves had a good education and 
 have studied the literature of pedagogy. 
 
 The library should be regarded as an essential part of 
 the school system. If the teacher's labors have been 
 successful the pupils will have a hunger for knowledge 
 and a taste for reading. The town or village which has 
 no public library and reading-room is resting under a 
 cloud of disgrace. Here is an appropriate object for
 
 216 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 the gifts of wealthy citizens whose real estate has risen 
 in value because of the growth of population and of the 
 industries of the locality. Here is a new profession, 
 the office of librarian, which ranks in dignity and useful- 
 ness with that of teacher and preacher. 
 
 The New York method of sending small libraries to 
 villages, to rural communities, and to groups of respon- 
 sible persons should be rapidly extended to all our 
 agricultural states. These libraries are sent on the 
 application of twenty-five resident taxpayers or other 
 trustworthy persons who must agree to seek the estab- 
 lishment of a local free library as soon as public interest 
 will warrant the venture. This method has already 
 been adopted in several western states and promises to 
 be popular and beneficent. 
 
 We have given generous praise to our public school 
 system because it deserves praise. We should seek to 
 improve the quality of teaching ; and this demands more 
 normal schools and students for them ; greater perma- 
 nence in the office, to secure the fruits of experience ; a 
 higher grade of examinations for certificates ; freedom 
 from partisan, personal, and sectarian influence on ap- 
 pointments ; better salaries ; smaller classes in the cities 
 where teachers are overwhelmed in the crowd of chil- 
 dren ; more thorough and sympathetic supervision. 
 
 The use of partisan methods and corrupting 
 influences in the selection of text-books and the 
 appointment of teachers is, in some parts of our 
 country, a serious injury to the educational and 
 moral influence of our schools. But all reforms must 
 come with civic interest, higher estimates of culture, 
 purification of political administration, and the gen- 
 eral diffusion of knowledge relating to the develop- 
 ment of human faculty and the values of human life.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION. 
 
 THE institutions of culture did not come down to us 
 from the clouds, carried by bodiless angels who can 
 work without salaries. They were not the free gift of Spontaneity. 
 foreign rulers nor even the product of a system of taxa- 
 tion. The fact that education is a growth of the free 
 social spirit, native to our soil, is evidenced by the crea- 
 tion, maintenance, and endowment of many schools and 
 associations which owe nothing to the government save 
 charters, protection, and exemption from taxation. 
 
 Some of the data for this opinion may here be set 
 down. The ambition to secure an education, the in- 
 tense craving for knowledge, the altruistic impulse to 
 diffuse the blessings of truth and beauty, the longing of 
 parents to give children a larger opportunity than they 
 themselves enjoyed, the patriotic pride in our own insti- 
 tutions have been among the motives which produced 
 our free school system and many other educational 
 agencies. Throughout many parts of the United States 
 the private school preceded the public school. It was a 
 common custom for the wealthier men in a community 
 to employ a teacher and then invite the neighbors to 
 share the expense according to their ability. It was this 
 spontaneous and philanthropic effort which prepared the 
 soil and sowed the seed for our present universal system 
 of state instruction. 
 
 The experiments in educational methods are usually 
 tried at the cost of progressive and enterprising men in 
 
 317
 
 218 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Freedom. 
 
 private station. Free libraries have been furnished in 
 Experiments. many localities by individual benefactors or by voluntary 
 associations, until the appetite for reading became so 
 general and keen that a tax could be ordered for extend- 
 ing the institution. In the same way at present the 
 kindergartens and manual training schools are being 
 brought before the public for consideration. Associa- 
 tions of charitable and energetic citizens who believe in 
 the efficacy of new methods are content to give proof of 
 their faith by investment in schools unlike any hereto- 
 fore familiar. It cannot be expected that large masses 
 of men will move so promptly as small companies of 
 superior persons. When the value of a method has 
 been demonstrated on a small scale it can be pressed 
 upon the attention of municipal boards. For this reason 
 it would be injurious, perhaps fatal, to progress, if the 
 state had a monopoly of education and should drive 
 private associations from the field. There would be 
 danger of stagnation, routine, formalism, death. 
 
 Happily the American people care little for mere 
 theoretical assumptions. They desire a satisfaction or a 
 means of culture and go about procuring it by the 
 most direct way. If they can induce the public to pay 
 for it, well. If the public is reluctant to risk capital in 
 a change, then some one will be found wise and rich 
 enough, or fanatical enough, to try it. Thus by a 
 gradual process of experiment and agitation kindergar- 
 tens, drawing, tool-practice, manual training, sloyd, and 
 Pioneers. many other novel features have come to form part of 
 
 the free school system. The pioneers, mocked, abused 
 at first, compelled to try their inventions at cost of 
 their own funds, are finally rewarded in honor for their 
 wisdom and their courage. If the scheme fails the pro- 
 moters are mercifully forgotten.
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 219 
 
 The statistics not only of denominational institutions 
 but even of state and city schools and colleges show how statistics, 
 large a factor in higher education philanthropy has be- 
 come. In the recent reports of Dr. Harris, 1894-5, 
 the following significant figures are given in relation to 
 colleges and universities in the United States. The 
 whole number reporting was 481, with 11,582 instruc- 
 tors and 149,939 students. The total increase reported 
 was $16,789,638, of which 37.8 per cent was derived 
 from students' fees, 31.7 per cent from endowments, 
 17.6 per cent from municipal, state, and national appro- 
 priations, and 12.9 per cent from miscellaneous sources. 
 The entire amount of benefactions reported for the year 
 was $5,350,963, but the year before it was nearly four 
 million dollars greater. The value of all property 
 belonging to these institutions is $232,195,461, of 
 which amount $102,574,808 are reported as permanent 
 endowment funds. Benefactions amounting in 1895 to 
 $495,760 were shared by 140 secondary schools. 
 
 The Roman Catholics report 3,361 parishes with 
 schools, and about 800,000 pupils. The Evangelical f c a hoois al 
 Lutherans report 3,079 parochial schools and a little 
 more than 200,000 pupils. The German Evangelical 
 Synod of North America reports 410 schools and 
 17,911 pupils. The Protestant Episcopal Church re- 
 ports 336 teachers and 6,860 pupils. The Holland 
 Christian Reformed reports 17 schools and 2,229 
 pupils. There are a few others of minor importance. 1 
 
 The total number of pupils taught in parochial 
 schools in the United States is given as 1,028,843. 
 These schools, with few exceptions, are supported by 
 voluntary gifts without taxation. But it must be 
 remembered that many of these children go to parochial 
 
 .1 Report of Commissioner of Education, 1894-5, pages 1662-3.
 
 22O 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 schools only for a time previous to confirmation and 
 attend the public schools at other times. 
 
 A significant and characteristically American move- 
 ment to popularize education was started at Chau- 
 tauqua, New York, and in the congenial spiritual 
 climate of our people has been imitated, with many 
 ingenious variations, in all parts of the country. The 
 central impulse of the movement has been belief in 
 God, and an ideal of culture which includes with 
 faith, hope and love, all beauty, truth and goodness. 
 Richer contents have been read into Puritanism, and 
 its powerful message made more gracious. 
 
 Religion with the founders was not a rite, a mere 
 literary deposit, a concern of Sabbaths, priests, castes, 
 or special occasions. It was the atmosphere and vital 
 element of all life. In its definition were comprehended 
 the faithfulness of the mother in kitchen and nursery, 
 the courage of the soldier, the sturdy manliness and 
 industry of the village blacksmith, the vigorous and 
 confident march and toil of the pioneer, the devotion of 
 the philanthropist, the sacrifice of hospital nurses, the 
 wise services of statesmen, the iconoclastic zeal of 
 reformers, the patience of the scholar's research, the 
 enthusiasm of the poet or preacher, the sensuous and 
 spiritual ecstasies of the musician, the craving curiosity 
 of the student. All days are Sabbaths. All labors are 
 sacred. We should study the works, the ways, and 
 the word of God, and that for the good of all, not for 
 ourselves alone. Education is never finished. The 
 spirit never grows old. They who think, learn, serve, 
 hope, and trust have immortal youth. We have seen a 
 woman of eighty years receive her certificate after a 
 course of reading with the blushing pride of a girl of 
 sixteen,
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 221 
 
 President Hegeman, of the Metropolitan Life, gave 
 to high school pupils counsel which reveals the law of 
 personal perfection and the condition of highest useful- 
 ness. It declares a principle on which Lincoln acted in 
 preparation for his career, and the advice has the 
 authority of a successful business man. 
 
 Be careful about the odds and ends of your time. If you are 
 tired and need rest, take it, that's as much your duty as to be 
 occupied. But look out and guard against the habit of loafing, 
 of murdering time, of wasting hours that once gone never can 
 be reclaimed. 
 
 In your later lives especially, watch the fifteen minutes this 
 morning and the half-hour at noon and the hour at night those 
 intervals that make up a day in the course of a week and that 
 might be given to some good deed. After a large stained-glass . . 
 window had been erected in a noble edifice across the water, window, 
 an artist picked up the discarded fragments of glass and made 
 one of the most beautiful cathedral windows in all Europe. So 
 one boy will pick up a splendid education out of the odds and 
 ends of the time which he carefully saves, as against another 
 who carelessly throws them away. 
 
 Two mechanics in a near-by city had each his hour at noon. 
 When lunch was finished one busied himself in studying some 
 improvements in the machinery he was using. He pegged 
 away patiently, at last succeeded, had his invention patented, 
 exchanged his overalls for broadcloth, and became a rich and 
 useful man. The other spent his time in teaching a dog to 
 stand on his head and do tricks, and at last accounts was 
 traveling with a circus at ten dollars a week, matine'es 
 thrown in. 
 
 We have free common schools, but most of our youth 
 leave them before the years of maturity and with scant 
 knowledge of the vast world in which they must live, 
 whose conflicts they must face, whose problems they 
 must solve. Evidently the common school can do no 
 more than start the intellect on its voyage of endless 
 discovery. Then we have the college and the university.
 
 222 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Wasted lives. 
 
 The modern 
 
 cam]> 
 
 meeting. 
 
 But these are for the elect few ; and many a college 
 graduate, caught in the whirl of business, forgets his 
 classics and his science, and permits his better faculties 
 to become a garden of weeds and briars. College 
 graduates must have impetus to learn, motive to con- 
 tinue systematic mental activity, incentive to assist less 
 favored neighbors. Then we have the public library, at 
 least in progressive towns and cities, and it is a boon 
 of inestimable value. But the average reader is lost 
 in the labyrinths of literature. Aimless, purposeless, 
 planless, the reader is often more injured than bene- 
 fited by contact with the literary treasures of dead 
 or absent teachers. The principle of selection is 
 wanting. The clue to the maze must be put in 
 the reader's hand. What is true of public 
 libraries is even more true of newspapers. For 
 here the laws of choice must be observed in order 
 to avoid not only the dyspepsia of surfeit but even the 
 poison of vice, the insanity of fragmentary presentation 
 of detached paragraphs. The broken bits must be 
 placed in the general scheme of color and outline 
 which compose a picture; the thread of history must 
 string the isolated beads; the groundwork of philos- 
 ophy must give unity and comprehensiveness to the 
 jumble of impressions, images, stories, statistics. 
 
 The old fashioned camp meeting, once so popular 
 with the pioneers, has taken on the form of summer 
 assemblies in various states ; some of them having 
 provided simple and comfortable cottages with care- 
 ful attention to order and sanitary conditions of the 
 grounds ; while some still show marks of frontier 
 manners. At these assemblies the ranting revivalist 
 has been succeeded by a great variety of entertainers, 
 so that all tastes may be gratified. Almost invariably
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 223 
 
 the entertainment is free from unclean suggestion and 
 radically anti-social teaching. All subjects are dis- 
 cussed, and there is some show of serious class study ; 
 but the people come together chiefly for rational rec- 
 reation, and the rigorous tests of examinations are net 
 ordinarily welcorrfe. 
 
 Conferences are held in the interest of temperance 
 reform, kindergartens, training of defectives, micro- 
 scopy, labor movements, social settlements, and a 
 hundred others. The religious meetings bring to- 
 gether the devout in congenial companionship, and 
 on Sunday all secular themes and ordinary amuse- 
 ments are set aside, while the most attractive 
 preachers address vast congregations. The severity 
 and austerity of Puritanism are relaxed, and there is 
 plenty of enjoyment in boat races, athletic sports, 
 fireworks, music, and humorous recitations. Usually 
 the dance and dramatic representations are not in 
 favor, because they are not recognized by many of 
 the churches as suitable forms of social recreation. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke has given admirable 
 expression to the aim of this religious movement culture and 
 on behalf of popular education. " I believe that 
 democracy, as it is embodied in this Republic is, next 
 to the Christian religion, the most precious possession 
 of mankind. I believe that it can be preserved only 
 under the light and leading of true culture, which 
 makes the demagogue ridiculous, the anarchist loath- 
 some, the plutocrat impotent, and the autocrat 
 impossible. I believe that the best culture is that 
 which makes not selfish and sour critics, but sane and 
 sober patriots. I believe that no man has the right 
 culture unless he is willing to put his clearer vision, 
 his loftier imagination, and his deeper thought at the
 
 224 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 service of his country and humanity. I believe in 
 culture. I believe in democracy. By democracy 
 purified, by culture diffused. God save the state! " 
 
 Perhaps it is through the C. L. S. C. (Chautauqua 
 
 Literary and Scientific Circle) that the movement has 
 
 The c. L. s. c. been most widely felt. From its central office by its 
 
 and Home 
 
 Reading. secretary this agency acts all the year around and 
 
 thousands kindle their fires at this torch. First 
 of all a course of connected reading is mapped out by a 
 competent committee, and it requires four years to com- 
 plete the required work, although the course for each 
 year is a unity and a satisfactory whole. The time 
 is laid out by the week and month. A monthly maga- 
 zine is published which carries the reader out in differ- 
 ent directions beyond the books. Papers for reviews 
 and testing examinations are prepared for those who 
 wish to use them. In order to do the work of a year it 
 is necessary, in the average, to devote one hour daily 
 for nine months. A certificate is given to those who 
 complete a course, and to this certificate seals are 
 attached as evidence of advanced and collateral reading. 
 Brief courses are provided for those whose time is very 
 limited, and many special courses are laid out for the 
 large number who desire to advance in particular di- 
 rections. 
 
 Relation to The circulars distinctly assert that " the circle is not 
 
 college work. . 
 
 in any sense a college, either in its course of study 
 or its methods of work." There is no sham, no false 
 pretense about the department. And yet it is true 
 that many young people have been inspired by the 
 circle to enter college and pursue their studies in 
 regular classes ; that tens of thousands who could not 
 attend college have gained accurate and liberal knowl- 
 edge concerning the sciences, the literatures, the great
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 225 
 
 race ideas which command the attention of college stu- 
 dents. 
 
 Throughout North America, in church parlors, in 
 homes, in rural schoolhouses, in the rooms of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, or Young Local circles. 
 Women's Christian Association, may be found groups 
 of readers and students under various leadership. It 
 has been found that the best work can be done by 
 young people if they assemble in companies, discuss 
 the topics, ask and answer questions, enjoy sociable 
 evenings, promote lectures, provide musical enter- 
 tainment and interest all faculties of the spirit. By 
 combination museums are established, magic lanterns 
 and slides can be rented, maps and pictures may be 
 purchased, and many appliances used which indi- 
 viduals could not command. Out of such social meet- 
 ings local improvement associations are apt to grow, 
 and the inspiration of new ideals seems to secure 
 better sanitation, parks, roads, educational agencies, 
 and other means of general wellbeing. 
 
 Mr. John Fiske said : "I am convinced it has not 
 been equaled by any other system of popular educa- Opinions of 
 
 . . ... the value of 
 
 tion. Dr. J. G. Fitch, English inspector of training Chautauqua. 
 colleges, said: "It seems to me you have hit upon 
 one of the most admirable and fruitful devices ever yet 
 adopted when, by means of reading circles and corre- 
 spondence helps, the solitary student has opened to him 
 what he shall read and what use he shall make of his 
 reading when he has it." President Garfield's words 
 seem especially significant when we remember the efforts 
 which it cost him to secure an education. ' ' It has been 
 the struggle of the world to get more leisure, but it has 
 been left for Chautauqua to show how to use it."- And 
 Dr. E. E. Hale : ' ' After the general system of public
 
 226 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Outgrowth. 
 
 Women's 
 clubs. 
 
 school instruction, the Chautauqua system is the most 
 important organized system of education at work in the 
 nation. ' ' 
 
 In the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 
 1894-5, P a g e 1488, may be found a "check list" of 
 319 summer schools, with address, length of term, 
 time of sessions, character of course, and other in- 
 formation. 
 
 The Chautauqua movement has been fertile. The 
 Jews and the Roman Catholics, encouraged and in- 
 spired by the example, have established similar systems. 
 Summer schools are formed all over the country, North 
 and South, East and West. Clubs and circles quite in- 
 dependent of Chautauqua have taken up its ideas and 
 methods. England has felt the influence of the home 
 reading method. The students of the circle are found 
 in all parts of the civilized world. 
 
 No survey of voluntary educational efforts in America, 
 however brief, can omit the women's clubs. The actual 
 functions of these important agencies of culture are 
 briefly indicated in reports collected by Mrs. Henrotin. 
 Four hundred and ninety-five clubs were united in the 
 General Federation in 1896. Of these fifty were pur- 
 suing purely literary subjects. In the department clubs 
 371 have a department of literature, which includes art, 
 science, and philosophy ; 232 have a department of 
 education, including practical work in kindergartens and 
 public schools ; 1 74 have a department of philanthropy, 
 which implies sociology as applied to philanthropy, 
 theoretical and practical ; 165 are pursuing household 
 economics ; 163 have social economics as applied to the 
 history and practical application of municipal and legis- 
 lative work, with village improvement associations, etc. 
 These organizations would justify their existence and
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 227 
 
 cost if they limited their activity to the higher education 
 of their own members ; for women have a right to the 
 best life for their own sake. But women with larger 
 knowledge see the social needs of the age and therefore 
 give attention to charity, to schools, to reforms, to all 
 that affects home, children, happiness, and character. 
 
 There is a movement to establish in all cities institu- 
 tions for the training of housekeepers and domestic Household 
 assistants (called "servants" in the feudalistic phrase- 
 ology which marks defective democracy). Many intelli- 
 gent women desire to lift household work to its true 
 dignity by making it the expression of a scientific and 
 disciplined culture. Various household economic 
 societies are fostering this tendency, and many of the 
 women's clubs have departments especially devoted to 
 this backward art and industry. Something more is re- 
 quired than a merely mechanical and routine drill in 
 dish-washing and pie-making according to fixed recipes. 
 Fundamental studies in chemistry, bacteriology, physi- 
 ology, sanitary science, must prepare wives, mothers, 
 and their assistants for the intricate business of making 
 and keeping healthy and beautiful homes. And this 
 same accurate and comprehensive knowledge will fit 
 women to be inspectors and directors of schools, coun- 
 cillors of cities, reformers of customs and morals. 
 
 The agricultural population in many portions of the 
 United States are greatly in advance of those in all 
 other countries in accessibility to new ideas. They use 
 more machinery and of a better kind. They are inven- 
 tive and progressive. From their ranks have come 
 many of the first men in our national history. The 
 great organizations of farmers have promoted the inter- 
 change of ideas and have quickened their intellectual life. 
 
 And yet there are many difficulties in the way of
 
 228 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 literary and scientific study. The farmers are isolated 
 from each other. A visit or a party becomes a serious 
 and difficult matter when the winds are keen and frosty, 
 or the roads miry. In the summer labor is too exhaust- 
 ing to leave vitality for an evening class or discussion. 
 Work in the open air induces sleepiness after the hearty 
 evening meal. There is not that constant social irrita- 
 tion and impetus which keeps the city dweller in a state 
 of mental ferment. 
 
 And yet the farmers should not rob themselves of all 
 participation in the heritage of science and the humani- 
 
 Machinery ties. The introduction of machinery has somewhat 
 lightened the burdens of exhausting toil. The sulky 
 plow, the horse rake, and the steam thresher have trans- 
 ferred to senseless matter part of the strain which once 
 wore out the muscles and nerves of country folk. With 
 better roads, postal service, schools, cheap books and 
 papers, and free libraries the obstacles to culture are 
 gradually melting down. 
 
 The farmer of the next generation must know more 
 than his ancestors or go to the wall. No tariff can help 
 him against the competition of the wheat plains of India, 
 Siberia, and South America. Knowledge is power, but 
 only to him who knows. Uncle Sam has no more farms 
 to give away. The trusts are making a profit out of 
 what ignorance once cast aside. Mining experts are 
 
 Higher working over rejected ores with new scientific method. 
 
 necessary! S Agriculture must become scientific. The clumsy, waste- 
 ful methods which were suitable and economical when 
 free land was abundant must be succeeded by precise cal- 
 culations of the values of fertilizers, plant foods, drains, 
 and machines. The farmers have come to see this. 
 The agricultural colleges and experiment stations, bul- 
 letins, professional papers, and the general press have
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 229 
 
 had influence. Associations for discussion, institutes, 
 granges, county fairs have become important media for 
 the interchange of technical information. 
 
 A distinguished director of agriculture has said : 
 ' ' The great nations of Europe strain every effort to 
 make science the handmaid of war. Let it be the glory 
 of the great American people to make science the hand- 
 maid of agriculture" (Hon. Jerry Rusk). 
 
 The farmer governor of Indiana, Mr. J. A. Mount, 
 voices the true aspiration of an awakened rural popula- 
 tion : 
 
 I have never favored, nor do I now favor, the exclusive 
 study of literature pertaining to the farm. Let the reading Higher 
 circle be a diversion from farm topics and the routine of farm culture! 5 * 
 life. . . . The gathering of farmers' families, alternately 
 in their farmhouses, and spending an evening, rendered 
 enjoyable by social good cheer, made instructive by literary 
 exercises, and enlivened by good music, cannot fail of good 
 results. . . . Our rural homes must be surrounded with 
 elevating influences, and afford the means for the development 
 of cultured men and women. Let these homes possess the 
 wealth of books, the charm of music, and the fragrance of 
 flowers, and the boys will not spend their evenings at the 
 village store in the fume of tobacco smoke and the atmos- 
 phere of stale jokes. 
 
 More's Utopia anticipated University Extension. In 
 that happy land, far, far away : 
 
 It is a solempne custome there to have lectures daylye in the 
 morning, where to be presente they onely be constrained that university 
 be namely chosen and appoynted to learninge. Howbeit a Extension in 
 greate multitude of every sort of people, both men and opia ' 
 women, go to heare lectures, some one and some another, as 
 everye mans nature is inclined. 
 
 Mr. George Picot has given articulate expression to 
 the social incentives of the scholar : 
 Every person ought to apportion his life in two fields ; and
 
 230 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The social 
 demand for 
 University 
 Extension. 
 
 The duty of 
 scholars to 
 the people. 
 
 while one of these is consecrated to the duties of his special 
 profession or even to the affairs more agreeable to his taste, 
 the other should be dedicated to those collective enterprises 
 without which a nation would be a collection of egoistic beings 
 without common bonds. 
 
 Every teacher or special student, in the course of his 
 particular studies, comes into possession of certain 
 general ideas, great race truths, which can be made 
 clear to all intelligent citizens and which are essential 
 to the common welfare. 
 
 It is true that a chemist or geologist cannot put in 
 popular form any part of his processes which involve 
 close mathematical reasoning or highly intricate meth- 
 ods. But all sciences of nature, language, history, 
 politics, economics, and sociology issue in certain well- 
 established principles which can be stated in plain 
 English and illustrated from familiar experiences and 
 phenomena. 
 
 The University Extension movement has grown out of 
 these two considerations, that scholars are in possession 
 of truths which the wide world needs to guide its con- 
 duct and enlarge its vision, and that scholars owe a part 
 of their life to the people whose labors sustain them and 
 whose institutions protect them. 
 
 It is not implied that University Extension is the only 
 method of popularizing knowledge, for there are many 
 methods. It is not asserted that all college professors 
 are under obligation to give public lectures, because not 
 all have the gift of exposition, and many are so engaged 
 in specialized research that they have no time or 
 strength for this method of teaching. But it is claimed 
 that institutions of higher culture, as soon as they can 
 command the means, should train a special body of 
 instructors and keep them in the field for this particular
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 231 
 
 educational task. Even busy professors can often find 
 time for occasional courses of lectures to the people. 
 In discussions of social problems the teacher will often 
 receive as much as he gives, and return to his study 
 with fresh materials for elaboration. Here again phi- 
 lanthropy frequently pays ten per cent on investment. 
 The Hospital illustrates the social necessity of popu- 
 larizing knowledge : 
 
 Science, more especially physiological and medical science, 
 suffers enormously from lack of able exposition. The in- social necessity 
 ventor, the man who has a "good thing" for sale, often fails of popularizing 
 
 science. 
 
 to realize a fortune because he has not the means or does not 
 know the best methods of "placing his goods upon the 
 market." In like manner discoveries have been made in 
 science from time to time, improvements are made in the art 
 of healing, which remain a dead letter to the world, sometimes 
 for years, because there has been no man of adequate exposi- 
 tory faculty to place them in clear, intelligent, interesting, and 
 convincing terms before all those who have actual or potential 
 interest in them. Sir James Simpson had not the merit of 
 discovering chloroform, nor even of making the first experi- 
 ments with it. He had the merit of so convincing the medical 
 mind that its general use became a necessity with hardly a 
 day's undue delay. But the real discoverer was a medical 
 student whose name is unknown to most of the medical men 
 of our own time. Science which is not adequately expounded 
 is lost to the world. 
 
 Now, while it is true that we have a multitude of 
 periodicals and newspapers which have wide circulation, 
 and these printed forms are useful and necessary 
 agencies of exposition, it is also true that the personal 
 assistance of a living teacher remains the most impress- Living 
 ive, economical, and expeditious method of helping l ers * 
 people to get at the essential elements of a scientific or 
 literary subject. 
 
 When the old Universities of Cambridge and Oxford
 
 232 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 began to awaken from their selfishness and cloistered 
 indifference to the world's needs, their apostolic fervor, 
 kindled and fanned by such men as Dr. Arnold of 
 Rugby, took many forms of expression. Missions 
 were manned by heroes. Popular traditions of error 
 were bravely fought down. The desire seized such 
 spirits as Denison and Toynbee to tet poor men share 
 with them the high thoughts of the ancient seats of 
 learning. Thus University Extension came to be. It is 
 a movement marked by many failures and errors, but 
 also by many triumphs. 
 
 Three general methods are pursued. The "lecture- 
 study method" provides a lecture, popular in mode 
 of presentation, but given by a specialist in his own 
 department. In order to fix attention, to save time 
 from note-taking, and to preserve a permanent outline 
 of the lesson, a syllabus of the lecture is distributed in 
 the audience. In connection with the lecture an oppor- 
 tunity is given for an informal discussion and confer- 
 ence. A list of books is printed with a syllabus, and a 
 traveling library containing the volumes is kept in the 
 town during the weeks in which the lecturer is making 
 his visits. 
 
 The ' ' correspondence method ' ' is designed to assist 
 isolated students who cannot reside at college and who 
 wish to be under the direction of a living teacher. In 
 this case the instructor prepares an outline of topics, 
 with directions for reading and study, and the student 
 after careful use of the instructions returns papers and 
 answers for criticism. Excellent results have been 
 obtained in this way when the student has time and 
 books, and is capable of sustained effort without the 
 spur of class work. 
 
 The ' ' class-study method ' ' does not differ from
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 233 
 
 ordinary college work. It is designed for persons who 
 must recite in the evening and can give only a part of 
 their time to the subject. 
 
 In all these methods the student comes into direct 
 relations with a living teacher, and the personal element 
 is found to be very valuable. 
 
 Voluntary agencies have their opportunity in connec- 
 tion with the splendid movement to supply reading for Libraries, 
 the people. In some cities rich men have furnished the 
 building and a fund, or have given the first "plant" to 
 the community upon a contract that the institution 
 should afterward be maintained at public cost. The 
 ' ' traveling libraries ' ' have often been furnished by 
 wealthy people and they have been eagerly and grate- 
 fully used by persons who lived far from the towns. 
 
 A beautiful work is that of the home library associa- 
 tions. The members of these societies purchase a few libraries, 
 carefully-selected books, attractively bound and neatly 
 arranged in a portable case. This miniature public 
 library is placed in care of a family in a quarter of the 
 city where the incentives to culture are as meager as the 
 opportunities. The managers of the library become per- 
 sonal friends of the children of the neighborhood ; read 
 to them delightful stories ; show them pictures ; talk 
 with them about the subjects of the books ; and when 
 the set of works has performed its mission it is ex- 
 changed for a fresh set, which may have been busy else- 
 where. This plan requires a very small capital ; it offers 
 a very natural occasion for introducing a visitor to the 
 poor ; and it has produced the most delightful fruits of 
 gracious social relations and eagerness for good read- 
 ing. By such means vile and trashy publications can 
 be driven out and a taste for better things so established 
 as to make them positively offensive. It is very well to
 
 234 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 burn pernicious printed stuff it cannot be called ' ' lit- 
 erature " but still better is it to cultivate a taste which 
 revolts at the unclean and demands healthier intellectual 
 food. 
 
 Social settlements and University Extension had their 
 origin in the same time, place, and inspiration. The 
 settlement has found a home and a native development 
 in American cities. The "subjective necessity," to use 
 Miss Addams's phrase, is what we call the "social 
 spirit." "It is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 A true culture is communicative. A right education 
 increases sociability and sharpens conscience. A whole- 
 some education makes the mind creative. A mother is 
 never hired to make sacrifices for her child ; it is natural 
 to her. If the ideas of Pestalozzi really take possession 
 of family, school, and college instruction and discipline, 
 the philanthropists will come forth burning with social 
 zeal. If the ethical philosophy of T. H. Green, the 
 life-giving sayings of Carlyle, the humanitarian periods 
 of Mazzini, the poetic creations of Lowell, the divine 
 messages of Channing and Phillips Brooks ever enter 
 the red blood of a scholar, then a new spiritual birth 
 occurs. And if the contemporary and indwelling Christ 
 comes to his throne in the heart there is ready, if need 
 be, the martyr, the hero, or heroine. To be sure, the 
 real martyr is never conscious of doing any extraor- 
 dinary thing. It is all so natural for a large soul to do 
 a generous deed and not know it to be such. ' ' When 
 saw we Thee a hungered and gave Thee meat ? ' ' 
 
 Then Miss Addams tells us there is an "objective 
 necessity ' ' for social settlements. The form taken by 
 philanthropy is fixed by the mold of circumstances. 
 Within a few decades the great industry has come to 
 dominate our life. It masses people in cities. It
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 235 
 
 divides rich from poor. It separates the population 
 geographically and socially, and sets them down in 
 camps of indifferent or even hostile citizens. People 
 live in the same town, work under the same roof, and 
 yet never touch each other in school, or church, or 
 hall. The non-conducting class spirit breaks the elec- 
 tric current of social sympathy. 
 
 But it is this same colossal and imperious great 
 industry which increases the democratic feeling and the 
 class consciousness of wage-earners. Wage-earners are Democratic 
 
 ' . feeling. 
 
 not the "poor" of Charles Booth's analysis. The 
 ' ' workingmen ' ' hate charity. To offer it to them 
 either offends or crushes them. They want justice and 
 they unite to get rights. They feel the slights of the 
 rich and the well-dressed. By living with persons of 
 the same occupations they form a class feeling which is 
 not a national feeling, and make a public opinion of 
 their own. Even the public school in great cities does 
 not unite the classes, because the well-to-do and the 
 wealthy live in their own part of town or send their 
 children to private schools. 
 
 This moral alienation is fraught with dangers to the 
 commonwealth. It makes city government more diffi- 
 cult and corrupt. It enfeebles the influence of religion 
 and art on common life. 
 
 The settlement is primarily a person, not a system or 
 a contrivance. The very essence of it is the gift of 
 one's self to a certain locality. One who has nothing personal factor, 
 superior to impart, or who has no talent for fellowship^ 
 or who thinks of self-display as a patron or Lady 
 Bountiful, cannot make a true settlement not if there 
 were a legacy of a half million of dollars to support the 
 scheme. Working people are clairvoyant. They dis- 
 cover shams, sometimes where they do not exist. They
 
 236 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 are sensitive and who can blame them? Hence, one 
 must be a real democrat to be of any value. The least 
 skepticism as to the capacity of the plain people for all 
 that is really noble and valuable in art, in religion, in 
 the essentials of high living, is fatal to the leader or 
 resident. No one should attempt the life without a 
 period of probation. 
 
 Stereotyped plans are of no value. The resident be- 
 Methods. comes a citizen. He discovers certain needs better 
 
 sewers, sanitation, lights, houses, libraries, schools, 
 police, poor relief, political customs. In order to 
 remedy the evils and promote the health, happiness, 
 and progress of the neighborhood he acts as he would 
 anywhere. He discovers the best people, the salt, 
 the "saving remnant" in the street or ward. There 
 are conferences and discussions. There is division 
 of labor. One set believe the sun of life rises and 
 sets in entertainments, and they start out to supplant 
 the low variety theater. There are people who enjoy 
 music, and they organize to expel bad spirits, as David 
 did, with harp and psaltery and dance ! There are 
 others who have not bowed the knee to the ward 
 "boss," who have discovered that he is vulnerable, 
 and they know his tricks dark and vain. These people 
 with a genius for political war join hands to put a decent 
 gl s ' shoemaker in place of a boodle saloon-keeper in the city 
 council. Still others wish to promote a finer worship, a 
 more real and human religion ; and so there comes to 
 be a pleasant Sunday afternoon, or some additional help 
 to the neighboring churches. Thus life in its fullness is 
 defended and assisted ; and this is a social settlement. 
 For a list of clubs and classes of all colors and kinds, for 
 baseball, football, German, embroidery, dancing, Bible 
 classes, foreign travel, flower missions, coal purchase,
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 237 
 
 book-keeping, cooking, painting, dressmaking, kinder- 
 gartens, creches, and all the rest one can consult the 
 bulletins of the settlements. But such printed exhibits 
 can tell little to one who has not by visits or work or 
 residence entered into the sacred intimacies of the life 
 itself. 
 
 Among the most remarkable manifestations of the 
 confidence of Americans in education are the gifts of in- Missionary 
 dividuals and churches for schools among the Indians 
 and negroes, the "wards of the nation." Various 
 denominational societies have raised and expended 
 vast sums for these institutions. 
 
 We give an illustration of the spirit and method of 
 this educational philanthropy. In 1882 Mr. John 
 F. Slater, of Connecticut, gave $1,000,000 for the 
 uplifting of the colored population of the South. The 
 income of this fund was to be devoted to education, and 
 it was stipulated that instruction should be on a broad 
 but positive Christian basis. All schools assisted must 
 provide manual training to fit the youth for industry. 
 The annual appropriations are nearly $36,000, and at 
 the end of the year 1894 tne trustees had distributed 
 $439,981. In the year 1896 $5,000- was given to "em- 
 ploy pious and intelligent women to travel in the rural 
 districts of Virginia and Alabama to start mothers' 
 meetings, where the average ignorant woman, who can- 
 not now hope to receive an education, may at least be 
 taught the way to keep a decent home, and to elevate 
 the moral standard of her humble life. ' ' 
 
 Out of many splendid examples of the union of all 
 social motives we may select the school of which Booker Aiabaml, egee> 
 T. Washington, a negro of fine ability, is principal, industrial" 
 This remarkable man won his way through poverty to 
 an education at the Hampton School. In 1881, with
 
 238 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 $8,000 furnished by General Marshall, of Boston, Mr. 
 Washington started a school with one teacher and thirty 
 pupils. A recent report shows eighty-eight officers 
 and teachers and 1,231 pupils, 2,500 acres of land 
 and forty buildings. Their property is valued at 
 $300,000. The state appropriated $2,000 a year to 
 aid the enterprise. This history is typical of the 
 spirit and method of educational progress. 
 
 In 1866 Mr. George Peabody gave $2,500,000 for the 
 Peabodyfund. promotion of popular education in the South. After- 
 ward he added another million dollars. A sum equal 
 to the original gift has been distributed and the principal 
 remains for further beneficence. 
 
 The first appropriations were made to selected schools and 
 towns and cities, to educational journals and agents, for the 
 purpose of creating a sentiment in favor of free education 
 supported by public taxation. When this sentiment was well 
 developed special efforts were made to induce the states to 
 organize public-school systems and make them a part of the 
 organic life of the commonwealths ; and when this end had 
 been attained there was a gradual withdrawal of grants for 
 local schools, and a concentration of the income upon schools 
 and institutes for training teachers. ( The Independent, Decem- 
 ber 17, 1896.) 
 
 Enlightened philanthropy has before it a serious and 
 Vacation hopeful field in the care of poor children during the 
 
 summer when regular work of the public schools is sus- 
 pended. Then the little ones are turned wild upon the 
 streets, or shut up in small rooms to torment weary and 
 overtaxed mothers. The year's work of teachers is un- 
 done. Habits of order are broken up. Temptations 
 assail the idle on every hand. 
 
 School colonies or vacation schools for the poor chil- 
 dren were first tried in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1876, 
 and have passed into other European countries. They
 
 Voluntary Organization of Education. 239 
 
 are supported by benevolent societies in conjunction 
 with the public authorities. The plan includes the 
 opening of the schoolrooms for informal work and en- 
 tertainment under the direction of a competent teacher ; 
 picnic excursions to parks, lakes, rivers, and the 
 country ; and, best of all, a sojourn of several days 
 upon farms. The schools of several cities, aided by 
 enterprising philanthropists, have already made a prom- 
 ising beginning of this beautiful work. For example, in 
 New York City six schools were opened in the neighbor- Example, 
 hoods crowded with poor families. The number of chil- 
 dren who enjoyed these privileges was, in 1894, 2,100 ; 
 in 1895, 5,225 ; and in 1896, 6,762. As the numbers 
 increased the per capita cost decreased. The expense 
 each day for each child was, in 1894, 11.7 cents; in 
 I 895, 5-6 cents ; in 1896 it was only 4.9 cents. The 
 expense for each teacher was $75 for the season. In 
 other cities the most encouraging results have been 
 obtained. The young people whose parents are able to 
 send them out to green fields and mountains, to seaside 
 resorts and foreign travel, should not forget those who 
 are shut up within the furnace-hot walls of city tene- 
 ments and streets.
 
 Play and art. 
 
 Teaching of 
 physiology. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SOCIALIZED BEAUTY AND RECREATION. 
 
 The most trivial question acquires dignity when it touches 
 the well-being or rouses the passions of many millions../. R. 
 Lowell. 
 
 THERE is a deep organic relation between the play 
 instincts and art. The men of the Reformation and of 
 English puritanism failed to appreciate this factor in life 
 at its full value. They thought of duty and of work, 
 and they became industrious, rich, powerful, morally 
 and religiously the leaders of the world. On the other 
 hand, the men of the Renaissance discovered another 
 side of life, its joy, its charm, its passion, its human 
 worth. It is coming time to wed the Reformation and the 
 Renaissance, the glory of integrity and the grace of art, 
 for both come from the one divine source, and their 
 separation is perilous to all social interests. Some men 
 and women have already united them in a very high 
 degree, as the classical Milton sought to do when puri- 
 tanism was fighting its way to recognition. 
 
 There is a physiological need for play and for beauty. 
 The joints stiffen and the muscles remain undeveloped if 
 youth is passed in the mere mechanical processes of 
 "useful" labor. Free play, whose end is in itself, 
 which is undisturbed by the care for something beyond, 
 is a necessary condition of a sound body, a long life, 
 an even temper, and a cheerful and wholesome dispo- 
 sition. The most difficult tasks become light if done in 
 sport. Mark Twain's story of the way in which Tom 
 
 240
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 241 
 
 Sawyer made his comrades do a disagreeable and 
 tedious piece of whitewashing is an illustration taken 
 from life. That father who induced his boy to clear the 
 field of mullein and other weeds by calling them hostile 
 Indians to be exterminated with a sword made out of 
 an old scythe-blade understood human nature. 
 
 Beauty is not for something else, it is a good in itself. 
 A tree which bears no fruit, if it is symmetrical and 
 casts a grateful shade, does yet bear fruit in an inward 
 satisfaction of the soul. In the inspired vision of that 
 lost paradise for which we human wanderers are still 
 seeking through the centuries, it is said, ' ' The Lord 
 God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the 
 sight, and good for food." There is a clear distinction 
 between the mere animal satisfaction and the aesthetic 
 pleasure. In the revelation of the City of God all jewels 
 and precious metals become symbols of the glory 
 and beauty of streets and walls. The huckster and 
 auctioneer see the dollar mark on the frame of a picture 
 and cry its worth in terms of currency ; but the amateur 
 or the artist gazes upon the Sistine Madonna or upon 
 sunset colors with a wonder and worship which it would 
 be cruel to disturb with low talk about prices and 
 markets. Beauty is a good apart from money values 
 and lower uses. It is a pearl of great price for which 
 coarse wealth may be lavished. The end of a tedious 
 and costly journey is reached when one stands in 
 rapture in Lincoln Cathedral or before Angelo's Moses. 
 
 These assertions of the ultimate value of music, 
 poetry, pictures, dramas, operas, can no more be 
 ' ' proved ' ' than religion can be demonstrated to the 
 unsusceptible. If the man is color blind an army of 
 witnesses could not make him see the difference be- 
 tween green and violet. Fortunately most human
 
 242 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Song of nature. 
 
 Closed doors. 
 
 beings, of the higher races, in their normal condition, 
 can be awakened to interest in beautiful objects by the 
 sight or hearing of them. 
 
 Whence and why 
 
 Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, 
 When he doth gaze on earth and sky ? 
 I am not overbold : 
 
 I hold 
 
 Full powers from Nature manifold. 
 I speak for each no-tongued tree 
 That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, 
 And dumbly and most wistfully 
 His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 
 Above men's oft-unheeding heads, 
 And his big blessing downward sheds. 
 I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, 
 Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, 
 Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves ; 
 Broad fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, 
 And briery mazes bounding lanes, 
 And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, 
 And milky stems and sugary veins. 
 
 Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, 
 And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, 
 Of Nature's utmost depths and heights. 
 
 So, Nature calls through all her system wide, 
 Give me thy love, O man, so long denied. 
 
 But oh, the poor ! the poor ! the poor ! 
 That stand by the inward-opening door 
 Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, 
 And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh 
 For the outside hills of liberty, 
 Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky 
 For Art to make into melody ! 
 Thou Trade ! thou king of modern days ! 
 Change thy ways,
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 243 
 
 Change thy ways ; 
 Let the sweaty laborers file 
 
 A little while, 
 
 A little while, 
 Where Art and Nature sing and smile. 
 
 Sidney Lanier, " The Symphony." 
 
 There are many excellent folks who can see the use of 
 art when they can be persuaded that it will prevent 
 pauperism, vice, and crime. There are some very use- 
 ful citizens who never get beyond that conception of teaut >'- 
 "reform." They seldom reflect upon the notion that 
 the bad people might attain that level of virtue which is 
 just above the jail and the almshouse and yet not be 
 very attractive members of society. Few of us would 
 think we had achieved any remarkable or praiseworthy 
 success if our highest claim to respect was that we had 
 never been arrested for drunkenness. Apparently there 
 are very zealous reformers who would find this a terribly 
 dull world if there were no idols to smash, no idiots 
 to feed, no lepers to cleanse, no drunkards to sign total 
 abstinence pledges. If we permit ourselves to reflect a 
 moment we can see that where " reforms " come to an 
 end the real humanity begins to appear. Beauty and 
 play are valuable reformatory agents. 
 
 Dr. E. Chadwick notices the effects of closing up the 
 walks and open grounds in Scotland. The only remain- 
 ing places of entertainment being the public houses, the 
 people went there for social intercourse, and drunken- 
 
 The Sabbath in 
 
 ness greatly increased. At the time of which he writes Scotland, 
 the Sabbath was observed with Judaic strictness, but 
 drunkenness and other vices were worse than in England 
 or Ireland. 1 The Sabbath has no reforming power if its 
 hours are left empty and ugly. Probably it would be 
 better for many people to work on Sunday than spend 
 
 l" Health of Nations," Vol. I., Chaps. XII. and XIII.
 
 244 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Expert valua- 
 tions of play. 
 
 Testimony of 
 Jevons. 
 
 the time as they do in debauch. Saint Monday wears a 
 sad face among the laborers whose pleasures are purely 
 animal. The guilt of neglect is enhanced now that we 
 know by experiment the moral influence of pictures, 
 music, and green parks made charming with flowers. 
 Permanent reforms are carried by substitution. 
 
 Mr. G. E. Johnson has written a special paper on 
 education by plays and games, and gives an estimate of 
 the value of 440 recreations. He has gathered testimo- 
 nies of masters of the art of teaching which it is worth 
 while to consider. ' ' Play is the first poetry of the 
 human being. It is the working off at once of the over- 
 flow of both mental and physical powers" (Richter). 
 "Man is wholly man only when he plays" (Schiller). 
 4 ' Education should begin with the right direction of 
 children's sport." "The plays of children should be 
 along the line of their future occupation." "Do not 
 use compulsion, but let education be a sort of amuse- 
 ment" (Plato). "Instruction should be amusing to 
 the child " (Quintilian). " Children should have enter- 
 taining employment" (Aristotle). "Plays are effica- 
 cious in education" (Fenelon). "Studies should be 
 made amusing and interesting" (Rabelais). "Play is 
 the purest, most spiritual activity of men at this stage, 
 and at the same time typical of human life as a whole, of 
 inner hidden natural life in men and in all things. It 
 holds the sources of all that is good. The plays of chil- 
 dren are the germinal leaves of all later life. ' ' 
 
 A serious economist like Jevons says, with careful 
 emphasis : " Among the means toward a higher civili- 
 zation, I unhesitatingly assert that the deliberate culti- 
 vation of public amusement is a principal one." Among 
 the agencies he mentions as having already had a civili- 
 zing influence on English workingmen are expositions,
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 245 
 
 theaters, science lectures. But he sets music in the 
 highest place because it can be enjoyed sitting down, in ugi a c ntages of 
 a posture of restful repose ; it is absolutely pure and re- 
 mote from trivial ideas ; and it is, more than any other 
 power of excitement, devoid of reaction and of injurious 
 effects of any kind. Musical gifts are widely diffused 
 and the art is socializing. Every town and village can 
 easily have its bands and chorus. 
 
 But play and art have, even on this lower level of 
 social ministry, a considerable and demonstrable value. 
 Music has charms to soothe the savage breast. Pictures 
 redeem a garret from extreme vulgarity. Lowell, in 
 his essay on the American Tract Society, written before 
 emancipation, laid bare with just severity the helpless, 
 futile, and irrational mode of dealing with degraded 
 men by merely negative means. When the negro 
 required education, liberty, opportunity, and help, it 
 was not enough to publish tracts. ' ' They would hold 
 their peace about the body of Cuffee dancing to the 
 music of the cart-whip, provided only they could save 
 the soul of Sambo alive by presenting him a pamphlet, 
 which he could not read, on the depravity of the double 
 shuffle." 
 
 The wants of civilized and progressive people multi- 
 ply in number and rise in rank. Savages have few and Many patterns 
 simple wants, but those are fiery and devouring pas- 
 sions. The influence of the highest religion does not 
 issue in monasticism or asceticism, but in abundant life. 
 Meat will not gratify the desire for music ; a symphony 
 will not quench thirst ; a prayer is not a substitute for 
 out-door exercise. There is a time for everything. 
 Piety does not remove the demand for recreation, or for 
 pictures, or for song. Healthy religion flows into all 
 the interests of existence and sanctifies them.
 
 246 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The drama. 
 
 Principles of 
 discrimination. 
 
 The heirs of the Reformation and of puritanism have 
 never quite forgiven Shakespeare, the greatest soul 
 who has lived since the prophets, for being an actor. 
 We see the vice of the theater. We dread the stage 
 and the greenroom. But we have not worked our 
 way to clear thought and just discriminations on the 
 subject. Our church rules and our social standards 
 are in a state of confusion, full of contradictions and 
 weakness. We have nothing consistent to say to youth. 
 Our appeals are hopelessly uncritical and without 
 authority. Meantime our young people go without 
 principles, without guidance and insight. Every one 
 knows that church discipline has broken down abso- 
 lutely in cities, so far as dramatic entertainments are 
 concerned. Some churches have attempted to meet 
 the deep and universal craving for impersonations of 
 character and life by giving shows of their own 
 frequently awkward, cheap, miserable failures. De- 
 nunciations without discrimination shoot over the mark. 
 Mere harangues about " worldliness " react upon the 
 speaker and rob him of moral influence, and give 
 ground for accusing him of injustice. 
 
 We have reached something like a sane and defen- 
 sible method of dealing with books and papers, with 
 fiction and poetry. We have worked out principles of 
 discrimination. No longer do we indulge in declama- 
 tion against all novels without critical measurement, 
 but we select the wholesome, grade the volumes 
 according to ages, and use the mighty art of story- 
 telling as a vehicle of noble sentiment. Polluting 
 printed matter we hunt down and consign to the flames, 
 and have the conscience of the people with us, as we 
 have definite laws in favor of these summary methods. 
 
 There is no reason why we should not arrive at just as
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 247 
 
 / 
 
 clear and definite standards in relation to the dramatic 
 art. Give to criticism of the stage the same quantity 
 and quality of study as has been given to fiction and 
 dramatic writings, and the church could build up an 
 intelligible and defensible standard which would com- 
 mand the respect of moral men and women and finally 
 influence legislation and administration. The reform of 
 the regular theater is, it is admitted, one of the most 
 difficult tasks before us ; but it must be resolutely 
 attacked and patiently pursued if we are to rescue it 
 from the powers of evil and compel it to minister to the 
 education of society in all that is noble and worthy. 
 It is difficult to reform municipal politics and many 
 other ancient evils, but the good citizen does not 
 despair. 
 
 Americans have yet to develop a defensible criticism 
 of other forms of art. What could be more confusing 
 than much of the current declamation against "the Pictures and 
 
 .. , , , , statues. 
 
 nude, as if garments could even conceal the most 
 pernicious suggestions of baseness. As we gradually 
 produce a native school of sculptors and painters we 
 may be able to evolve a code of criticism which will 
 leave us all that is beautiful and which will destroy all 
 that can really harm the soul and corrupt morals. But 
 so long as the people are deprived of great works of 
 art they will be unable to see in pictures or statues any 
 aesthetic value, and will think of them with the eye of 
 lust or avarice. But the nobler day has already 
 dawned. We have at work teachers of good taste and 
 high purpose who are interpreting for us the meaning of 
 line, form, color, expression in the aspects of nature 
 and in the numan body. 
 
 There are two forms of aesthetic enjoyment, passive 
 appreciation and active creation. The audience at a
 
 248 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 concert or play, the spectators of a ball game or a 
 running match, have a very keen pleasure in receiving 
 impressions on eye and ear. But creative energy 
 yields a higher delight. From this point of view it 
 seems desirable not only to employ professional artists 
 to entertain us and set before us the most perfect 
 standards of professional training, but also to bring out 
 Develop all local gifts of every variety song, instrumental 
 
 native talent. J 
 
 music, bands, readers, elocutionists, interpreters of sci- 
 ence and literature, and talents for modeling, carving, 
 drawing, painting. Our social settlements have shown 
 very clearly that the poorest people can appreciate 
 the best music and pictures, and that they and their 
 children have unsuspected resources of entertainment 
 within themselves. 
 
 Many a sluggish intelligence has been awakened by 
 the old-fashioned spelling-match, by amateur theatri- 
 cals, by a whistling chorus, or by a debate on some 
 matter of current interest. And every time a man 
 comes into the conscious enjoyment of a new activity he 
 is armed with a new weapon against vile lusts and 
 irregular appetites. 
 
 There is one great art which every family in the 
 Art helps nation can help to cultivate and which all local govern- 
 
 nature. . . . . 
 
 ments and associations can assist the art of making the 
 face of nature beautiful. 
 
 Miss Mary C. Robins, in an interesting series of 
 articles in the Atlantic Monthly, suggests the central 
 principle of the social movement for making the land- 
 scape attractive and pleasing : 
 
 It is in dealing with nature that we can best find an oppor- 
 tunity to gratify our need for a great art, an art the people 
 want, an art they can love, one that will give them true joy, 
 that will appeal to the humblest and the wisest alike ; for we
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 249 
 
 crave something popular to please the masses, something 
 large to gratify the race instinct for the colossal, something 
 bold and far-reaching to strike an answering chord in every 
 American heart. Ours must be an art that men are ready to 
 pay for. 
 
 Where shall we begin ? Perhaps with a window 
 garden overlooking an alley in a crowded city. At 
 least one spot shall have color. A pot of earth and a 
 few seeds may give hints of Eden. Or if the home is a 
 cottage, with space between wall and walk for a few 
 plants, that narrow plot shall tell the passer-by a story 
 of contentment, peace, and aspiration, and make him 
 wish as pretty a picture for the eyes of his own wife and 
 children. The rude laborer may be redeemed from his 
 cups and his degrading pleasures by the garden and the 
 flowers. 
 
 Or it may be we think of a grave, marked now by 
 sunken ground, overgrown with grass and weeds, these God's acre, 
 in the cemetery outside the town. All the graves 
 around it are neglected. Why not invite the neigh- 
 bors to help rebuild the fence, to mow the grass, to 
 plant some flowers, to secure an intelligent gardener to 
 trim the walks and adorn the unoccupied spaces ? An 
 appeal to love's memory will generally meet with a 
 response, and affection will necessarily and instinctively 
 express itself in beauty. 
 
 The village churches may not be large and costly, 
 but they may be made attractive. About each one 
 should be a protected space, every inch of it telling a 
 story of order, neatness, propriety, grace. Missionary 
 societies should employ the best architects in the 
 country to furnish plans for the houses of worship. 
 The schoolhouse and its play-ground, in country, 
 village, and city, should enlist the service of local
 
 250 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 patriotism. The style of building should be determined 
 by a state commission of consulting architects, and not 
 by the village carpenter. 
 
 All towns need parks for public meetings, for holiday 
 festivals, and for display of natural beauty. It is 
 happily becoming fashionable for rich men to give 
 tracts of land for public uses. But it is not necessary 
 to wait for a shower of manna. Towns can buy or 
 condemn land for this noble use, and they should not 
 wait until it becomes costly. 
 
 In cities ' ' every group of houses should as a matter 
 of course have its play-grounds for children, five per 
 cent of all building land being compulsorily set apart by 
 law for recreative purposes" (Jevons). It is not 
 enough to have vast areas at a long distance from the 
 people. In the center of every block must be a play- 
 ground, a fountain, a bit of green, room for color. 
 
 Egoism, "private enterprise," is an aesthetic failure 
 Failure of as ^ ' s mora lly vicious. Mere individualism makes 
 egoism. ugly towns. Selfishness compels us to find a half- 
 
 dozen planes of motion in a single square, since the free 
 American citizen chooses the level of his sidewalk to 
 suit himself. Here is a shanty next door to a house of 
 six stories ; a coal yard opposite a ribbon shop ; a 
 vacant lot full of thistles next a neat and charming 
 garden ; a sharp gable contrasting with a flat cornice. 
 
 Sociality, neighborliness, mutual respect will some 
 day put this bold, rude, ungentlemanly ruffianism to 
 shame. The inhabitants of a street will form an associa- 
 tion to bring the entire street up to the level of the 
 finest taste anywhere displayed. The poor widow will 
 have her house painted since she cannot afford to do it 
 herself ; but the selfish rich man who defies public 
 opinion will be rebuked and whipped into line.
 
 Socialized Beauty atid Recreation. 251 
 
 The ugliness of our towns usually arises from the fact 
 that they are like original chaos, without form or plan. 
 Each man builds his own house as he pleases or can. 
 The result is a wilderness of chimneys and roofs and 
 irregular lines. The mind is distracted by the view. 
 
 Some suburban towns have been laid out according to 
 plans. Intelligent landowners have set down "building 
 restrictions" in contracts of sale, preventing the erection Hopeful 
 
 examples. 
 
 of unsightly residences or shops. But the poor are sel- 
 dom thus protected against themselves. Nothing short 
 of municipal regulation can bring order and beauty into 
 the deformed streets where so many are compelled to 
 dwell and rear their children. Every city should have 
 an architect who should draw plans and assist in the 
 arrangement of new houses. 
 
 Who that has ever enjoyed the Italian cities can rest 
 in peace when he returns to America? The vision of 
 Florence and Milan haunts him. Patriotism is flattered 
 by our rapid growth and delights in the prospect of still 
 greater cities. But refined patriotism desires to see the 
 next generation born in the presence of buildings and 
 parks which will insure health and culture. 
 
 Not only foreign travelers in America, but visitors 
 from the picturesque regions of New England and the Monotony of 
 mountains of the South report a feeling of depression scenery. 
 after a long journey across the plains of the West. 
 They readily acknowledge the wonderful fertility of the 
 soil, the energy of the inhabitants, the amazing achieve- 
 ments of the pioneers. They can see that this central 
 plain must come to support a vast population whose 
 numerical preponderance will give it the political leader- 
 ship of the republic. But men accustomed to hills, val- 
 leys, cascades, and charming parks cannot conceal their 
 discontent, perhaps their disgust, at the dull level monot-
 
 252 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 ony of the country. Many of the prairie towns, with 
 their streets in spring mere lanes of sticky mud, with 
 their shabby and unpainted board houses, their ill-kept 
 yards, their half-dozen ugly churches, their long rows 
 of unwashed country wagons ranged along the principal 
 thoroughfare, horses standing in filth, irregular wooden 
 sidewalks, and general air of neglect and disorder, leave 
 in the memory of the visitor forbidding and disagreeable 
 impressions of the aesthetic and moral character of the 
 people. 
 
 But each country has its own peculiar attractions and 
 Examples of possibilities. Holland is a very flat region, and much of 
 
 better things. . . . 
 
 its soil was originally a sand in which no plant could 
 grow. But The Hague, Leyden, and many less famous 
 places have been made attractive for artists. Having 
 only too much water, they have lakelets and canals. By 
 liberal use of fertilizers they have redeemed the soil, 
 planted trees, cultivated flowers, and covered the naked, 
 sterile earth with living forms of beauty. Along the 
 sluggish canals are trees and windmills and interesting 
 quaint houses. The western towns and villages may be 
 transformed under the magic touch of refined taste. 
 Flower gardens, hedges, artistic houses, watercourses 
 lined with all varieties of shrubs, lakes which mirror the 
 sky, arched bridges, roads become avenues of noble 
 trees, windmills as useful as those now at work but more 
 attractive to the eye, these are among the possibilities of 
 the future. Mr. Pullman has demonstrated what can be 
 done on level ground, and discovered to the western 
 world the economic value of beauty. Here and there a 
 farmer has surrounded himself and his family with a land- 
 scape which suggests a paradise. There are villages, 
 first settled by New England people, where a charming 
 refinement is manifest in houses and public buildings.
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 253 
 
 But only too often it will require a long struggle with 
 stupid apathy, with coarse and vulgar indifference before A P atfa y- 
 the rude pioneer constructions and arrangements yield 
 to the demands of art and the villages and rural neigh- 
 borhoods become ministrant to a rich and splendid 
 human life. 
 
 Missionaries of beauty, with a zeal for the education 
 of aesthetic faculties dormant in the people, will be 
 required for the crusade. We need men like Jonathan 
 Chapman, nicknamed "Johnny Appleseed," who was 
 born in Boston in 1775, and who carried apple seeds 
 into Ohio, planted them in open spaces, sold or gave 
 away his infant orchards, and left behind him living and 
 grateful mementos of a worthy and devoted life. 
 
 We need city commissions who will call in a real land- 
 scape gardener to plan their parks and decorate open 
 spaces and cemeteries. For example, the visitor of 
 Detroit can see at Belle Isle what a genuine artist can 
 make of a perfectly flat and swampy piece of ground ; 
 how he can transform it into a "vision, a delight, and a 
 desire, ' ' by comparatively simple means. 
 
 There is a close connection between the movement to 
 
 , , Good roads 
 
 preserve and improve our natural scenery and the again, 
 movement to promote good roads. Senator Chandler, 
 in an address before the National League for Good 
 Roads, touches this point : 
 
 The question of good roads in New Hampshire has con- 
 nected itself with that of forestry, because, in order to keep 
 New Hampshire prominent among the summer resorts of the 
 United States, it is necessary for us not only to have good 
 highways and good roads, giving easy access to our natural 
 scenery, but we must preserve our forests and our water- 
 courses. 
 
 The public highway, now too often a dreary and
 
 254 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Village 
 
 improvement 
 
 societies. 
 
 How to form 
 them. 
 
 saddening stretch of monotony, gives opportunity for 
 rows of trees, clambering vines, fountains, resting 
 places, artistic wayside inns for bicycle riders and 
 pedestrians. 
 
 In union there is strength. The enthusiasts will be 
 obliged to organize their friends, to excite discussion, 
 to induce lawyers, merchants, pastors, teachers to com- 
 mit themselves in essays and speeches to a large and 
 worthy policy of improvement. Agitation itself will 
 educate. In order to prepare for discussions there 
 must be reading and thinking. On Arbor Day, when 
 trees are planted, the children will be told their uses 
 and the modes of caring for them. At the annual 
 festival those who have made unusual sacrifices will be 
 praised and honored. When men walk under the 
 grateful shade on hot summer days they will think of 
 doing for posterity what others have done for them. 
 Village will vie with village for the honor of first place 
 in attractiveness. 
 
 It is not difficult to form a village improvement 
 society. A dozen earnest people can engage all the 
 professional talkers and writers to set the air vibrating 
 with eloquence. The poets will proffer their rhymes 
 appropriate to the season and the subject. A president 
 can be induced to accept the honors and dignities of 
 the chief office. Various committees may be appointed 
 to collect funds, plan enterprises, persuade the slow, 
 ridicule the patrons of ugliness, and to do particular 
 pieces of betterment. It is not difficult to form such a 
 society, but it may prove a very weighty burden to 
 carry it afterward for several years. 
 
 Perhaps in the present state of public opinion we 
 must generally look to the women's clubs for leadership 
 and persistent agitation. The county fairs are institu-
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 255 
 
 tions which may be seized upon for autumn conven- 
 tions, while the farmers' societies may be enlisted with 
 great social advantage. 
 
 Miss Margaret J. Evans, president of the Minnesota 
 State Federation of Women, reports that 
 
 The state work embraces : first, fostering town and country 
 clubs in order to provide women from the country rest rooms women's'clubs. 
 when in town, to give the stimulus of social intercourse, and 
 a monthly literary program ; second, fostering public and 
 private libraries ; and, third, city and village improvement 
 associations. Parks and streets have been made orderly and 
 beautiful in several towns in Minnesota, the children in the 
 schools have been interested and instructed by placards to 
 lend their help, country school boards and teachers have been 
 entreated to make country districts attractive, and much use 
 made of the public press in educating public sentiment. 
 
 And what is true in Minnesota promises to be con- 
 tagious in all parts of the union. Fashions soon travel 
 from Paris to Oshkosh. 
 
 Village improvement societies and similar associa- 
 tions in cities will confront the problem of expense. Of Cost- 
 course the niggardly old fossils who never did care for 
 anything but money, and whose noblest craving is land- 
 hunger, will ridicule private effort and resist the levy of 
 taxes. But we are learning the value of franchises. 
 We have come near the end of giving away the use of 
 streets and roads to make rich capitalists still more rich. 
 We are growing weary of yielding the streets to be 
 deformed by unsightly poles and wires without compen- 
 sation. We are coming to the decision that a part of 
 every fare we pay shall go to some public use. Now 
 that electric roads are running out in all directions it is 
 time for the country people to look after their interest 
 and exact compensation for the use of roads. Here is a 
 source of revenue for improvements. Many a company
 
 256 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 will be glad to keep the highway in order for their 
 privileges, if the county town authorities are honest and 
 awake early in the morning of the day when the fran- 
 chise is to be let. 
 
 We may return to the subject of luxury in connection 
 _ ... with the topic of recreations and art for the people. 
 
 Social luxury. _ r 
 
 Professor Giddings has classed under the head of ' ' cul- 
 pable luxury" expenditures for objects which are 
 aesthetically bad ; which do not increase the sum of 
 beauty, of refinement, and of general cultivation in the 
 community. There are so many improvements to be 
 made ; so many ways of investing wealth which might 
 add to the rational happiness of hundreds of thousands 
 of people, that selfish and reckless outlays on momen- 
 tary pleasures seem doubly immoral. 
 
 As the social spirit pervades and masters all minds, 
 and as rich men come to see that the path to honor lies 
 in the direction of public service, they will make their 
 grounds and their picture galleries minister to the eleva- 
 tion of all their neighbors. Exclusive and insolent walls 
 will not obstruct the vision. There are already many 
 who have set the example of generous stewardship and 
 who bring their treasures of art before the eyes of the 
 entire community. 
 
 Let us hear the verdict of one of the principal econo- 
 mists of this century : 
 
 That useful function, therefore, which some profound writers 
 fancy they discover in the abundant expenditure of the idle 
 Luxurious rich, turns out to be a sheer illusion. Political economy fur- 
 
 o*seifishness. nishes no such palliation of unmitigated selfishness. Not that 
 I would breathe a word against the sacredness of contracts. 
 But I think it is important, on moral no less than on economic 
 grounds, to insist upon this, that no public benefit of any kind 
 arises from the existence of an idle rich class. The wealth ac- 
 cumulated by their ancestors or others on their behalf, where \\
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 257 
 
 is employed as capital, no doubt helps to sustain industry ; but 
 what they consume in luxury and idleness is not capital, and 
 helps to sustain nothing but their own unprofitable lives. By 
 all means they must have their rents and interest, as it is written 
 in the bond ; but let them take their proper place as drones in 
 the hive, gorging at a feast to which they have contributed 
 nothing. (J. E. Cairnes, " Political Economy.") 
 
 Let us heed the voice of a historian, commenting on 
 the service of the father of political economy : 
 
 Again, no rich man need fear that he will learn from politi- 
 cal economy the moral sophism that luxury may be laudably Witness of 
 indulged in because it is good for trade. On the contrary, he e 
 will learn to distinguish between productive and unproductive 
 consumption, and the results of each to the community.; and 
 he will have it brought home to his mind more effectually, per- 
 haps, than by any rhetoric, that if he does live in luxury and in- 
 dolence, he is a burden to the earth. The words, " I give alms 
 best by spending largely," have indeed been uttered, and they 
 came from a hard, gross heart. But it was the heart not of a 
 political economist, but of a most Christian king. Those words 
 were the answer of Louis XIV. to Madame de Maintenon when 
 she asked him for alms to relieve the misery of the people. 
 (Gold win Smith, " Lectures on the Study of History.") 
 
 Mr. Lecky, whose study of modern life has been pro- 
 found and extensive, declares : 
 
 The evils that spring from plutocracy are great, and increas- 
 ing. One of the most evident is the enormous growth of luxu- 
 rious living. The evil does not, in my opinion, lie in the mul- 
 tiplication of pleasures. Amusement, no doubt, occupies a 
 very disproportionate place in our lives, and many men grossly A historian- 
 mismanage their pleasures, and the amount of amusement ex- 
 pected by all classes and ages has within the last generation 
 greatly increased. But those who have realized the infinite 
 pathos of human life and the variety of human tastes, charac- 
 ters, and temptations will hesitate much to abridge the sum of 
 human enjoyment, and will look with indulgent eye on many 
 pleasures which are far from cultivated, elevating, and refined, 
 provided they are not positively vicious and do not bring with
 
 258 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 them grave and manifest evils. What is really to be deplored 
 Race of luxury, is the inordinate and ever-increasing expenditure on things 
 which add nothing, or almost nothing, to human enjoyment. It 
 is the race of luxury, the mere ostentation of wealth, which 
 values all things by their cost. 
 
 This feeling is wholly distinct from the love of art. To minds 
 infected with it beauty itself is nothing if it is common. The 
 rose and the violet make way for the stephanotis and the 
 orchid. Common fruits and vegetables are produced at great 
 expense in an unnatural season. The play is estimated by the 
 splendor of its scenery. Innumerable attendants, gorgeous 
 upholstery, masses of dazzling jewelry, rare dishes from distant 
 countries, ingenious and unexpected refinements of costly lux- 
 ury, are the chief marks of their entertainments, and the hand of 
 the millionaire is always seen. Nor is the evil restricted to the 
 small circle of the very rich. From rank to rank the standard 
 of social requirement is raised, making society more cumbrous, 
 extravagant, and ostentatious, driving from it by the costliness 
 of its accessories many who are eminently fitted to adorn it, 
 and ruining many others by the competition of idle, joyless, 
 useless display. It is a tendency which vulgarizes and materi- 
 alizes vast fields of English life, and is preparing great catas- 
 trophes for the future. ( " Democracy and Liberty.") 
 
 Luxurious expenditures "give work" to and dis- 
 xhe fallacy of tribute money among wage-earners cooks, milliners, 
 coachmen, florists, decorators, cosmetic venders. That 
 is true. A certain amount of this expense is justifiable. 
 But $200,000 in a single evening ! Is there no limit? 
 The voluptuary not only apologizes for this extrava- 
 gance but demands praise for a service to the poor. 
 ' ' Have I not given employment to scores of people with 
 this $200,000 spent upon my ball?" Yes. And in a 
 few hours nothing remains but wrecks and waste. Who 
 has not heard of the cruel tyrant who commanded a 
 sculptor to make him a statue of ice ? The genius which 
 might have left an imperishable work in marble was 
 whipped by fear to serve a moment's caprice. There is
 
 Socialized Beauty and Recreation. 259 
 
 something akin to this in the cruel wastefulness of the 
 plutocrat for whom the Jenkinses of society apologize 
 and whom they praise. Charles Kingsley suggested, in 
 "Alton Locke," that the same money spent on houses 
 would also give far more employment to wage-workers 
 and leave behind the permanent means of comfort. 
 Wealth spent on private and transitory pleasures if dis- 
 tributed on public parks, museums, galleries, music A better way. 
 halls, decoration of our ugly schoolrooms and mission 
 chapels, would give paying occupation to many more 
 people and diffuse satisfactions among hundreds of thou- 
 sands instead of a few hundreds, and for centuries in- 
 stead of seconds. To the student of history and 
 economics the insulting excuses and praises of extrava- 
 gance and barbarian ostentation are as exasperating as 
 the spectacle itself is revolting when placed in contrast 
 with the misery which is near it. 
 
 The chant of the English socialist leader and artist 
 paints a vision worth cherishing in every democratic 
 land : 
 
 And what wealth, then, shall be left us, when none shall gather 
 
 gold 
 
 To buy his friend in the market, and pinch and pine the sold? socialist.* 
 Yea, what but the lovely city, and the little house on the hill, 
 And the wastes and the woodland beauty, and the happy fields 
 
 we till, 
 
 And the homes of ancient story, the tombs of the mighty dead, 
 And the wise man seeking out marvels, and the poet's teeming 
 
 head, 
 
 And the painter's head of wonder, and the marvelous fiddle- 
 bow, 
 And the banded choirs of music, all them that do and know.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CHARITY AND CORRECTION. 
 
 Thus we have two distinct types of mind the egoistic, 
 which may be called the statical, and the altruistic, which may 
 be called the dynamic. The egoistic, or statical, type of mind 
 looks at things as they are, and has no thought of improving 
 them. . . . Strong sympathies may, indeed, coexist in 
 such minds, but they are impulsive only, and extend no 
 further than the concrete case which may happen to appeal to 
 them at the moment. The dynamic type of mind, on the 
 other hand, sees in everything a potential superiority to its 
 present condition. It demands the elevation of the low, not 
 by almsgiving, but by education and enfranchisement, until 
 no distinctions shall exist except those of actual native 
 capacity to do and to be, and in many ways it agitates moral 
 reforms for the future and the many when no direct gain to 
 self is to follow./:. F. Ward. 
 
 THE works of the social spirit in America are chiefly 
 those of the healthy, vigorous, progressive members of 
 society. When Commander Booth-Tucker, of the 
 Salvation Army, speaks of our country he no longer 
 writes of the ' ' submerged tenth ' ' but of the ' ' sub- 
 jJ^smSi 01 " mer ed twentieth." We have not yet a very great 
 sociology*! permanent pauper and criminal class. The best energies 
 
 of our people are not to be expended on the defective 
 and delinquent. We are finding a way to deal merci- 
 fully with the miserable, and yet not permit revenues 
 and energies to be absorbed in caring for those of whom 
 least can be made. There are, indeed, selfish persons 
 who should be made ashamed of their hard hearts and 
 unmerciful apathy. Some part of every strong life
 
 Charity and Correction. 261 
 
 should be given to the weak. But those persons who 
 represent ' ' charity ' ' as the chief business of mankind 
 are in error. Almsgiving and rescue missions ought to 
 occupy a relatively small place in the sum of social 
 labor. It is ridiculous to identify sociology with that 
 corner of it which considers human depravity. The 
 arts of navigation and marine commerce deal only 
 incidentally with hulks and wrecks, with rocks and 
 roaring straits. The science of health might be abso- 
 lutely complete without a section devoted to cancers 
 and fevers. Social pathology is but one aspect of the 
 science of society and the arts of social control and 
 amelioration. 
 
 It is true that contrary opinion is current, and that 
 some people feel guilty because the whole city is not 
 treated as a hospital. But the general instinct is sound Poverty is 
 
 A ' TU -1 J *i. 1 U 1 notpaupenstn. 
 
 and wise. The jail and the almshouse have nearly as 
 much room as they require and more than would be 
 necessary if the laws of general moral and physical 
 health were better understood and universally obeyed. 
 
 There will always be differences in ability and jn 
 wealth. We shall always have with us some who are 
 poorer than others. Poverty is a relative matter and it 
 is in imagination as really as in the purse. But pauper- 
 ism is not necessary, any more than yellow fever. Both 
 are diseases. The people of the Middle Ages cultivated 
 pauperism as a gardener grows mushrooms. Any com- cultivation of 
 munity can have all the beggars it is willing to pay for pauper 
 to adorn its church porches and furnish Lady Bountiful 
 with a background for her "charity." But the nation 
 which does not extinguish its pauperism and its de- 
 fective stock, or at least reduce them to a manageable 
 quantity, is itself to blame. 
 
 There will ever be occasion for neighborly kindness ;
 
 262 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Abolition of 
 pauperism. 
 
 The cannibal 
 method im- 
 possible. 
 
 for family care of helpless infancy and decaying age ; 
 for the organization of mutual assistance and insurance 
 against the unforeseen risks of life. Altruism will have 
 occasion enough for display and development without 
 keeping a degraded multitude of undeveloped or per- 
 verted human beings on hand for practice of the super- 
 natural virtues. 
 
 The best relief agencies are those which tend to make 
 themselves unnecessary, not those which report the 
 largest disbursements of money, coal, and old clothes. 
 The best prison or correctional system is that which 
 shows the fewest prisoners in proportion to the popula- 
 tion. 
 
 The ideal of charity is to rid the world of the pic- 
 turesque vagrant, the professional burglar, the begging 
 child, the gypsy mother, the drunken sot. No method 
 of relief was ever devised which did not tend to make 
 human beings in some measure parasitic, weak, help- 
 less, and base. All rational charity tends to sincere 
 fraternity, to development of self-reliance and self- 
 support. 
 
 It is important that this ideal of charity should be 
 held fast through evil report and good report, just 
 because it is impossible all at once to realize it. For 
 the present we have a great multitude of defective, 
 abnormal members of society on our hands. We can- 
 not kill them. We cannot, as Dean Swift suggested, 
 fatten and eat them. We are not cannibals. The past 
 has left us this heritage of misery, along with better 
 things. And the real problem of charity is to let this 
 entire degenerate stock die out as quietly as possible, 
 and meantime replenish the earth with human beings of 
 a higher type. Every measure we adopt should move 
 steadily and consciously in this direction, because mercy
 
 Charity and Correction. 263 
 
 and humanity set this goal before us. We owe it to 
 the coming generations not to burden them with a load 
 bequeathed to us from ignorance, if we can in any meas- 
 ure diminish it. 
 
 In the paragraphs of this chapter a system of charity 
 and penology will not be presented. All that is possi- Completeness 
 
 . &/ . . . , essential. 
 
 ble in the space is to state in aphoristic form the outlines 
 of a comprehensive method of dealing with degenerate 
 members of society. A fish- net must not have a hole 
 in it anywhere or it is useless. If the fence is down at 
 one angle the cows will soon go from lean pastures to 
 feed in the fat corn. A system of charity and correc- 
 tion must be a cordon absolutely complete at every 
 point ; and to the present chaos and disorder of our 
 methods is due a great part of existing evils. The 
 system of charity and correction must be one organic 
 whole in which every part has place and every action 
 tends to a common goal. 
 
 First of all, the entire nation must be led to adopt 
 methods of life which will not deprave human life. It is 
 not necessary to repeat here all that has been said in Preventive 
 
 i i 1 /tut i measures. 
 
 previous chapters on this subject. All that the social 
 spirit is doing to promote health, intelligence, beauty, 
 friendliness, morality, integrity, and faith in the Heav- 
 enly Father is a preventive measure. Much of the best 
 charity is never conscious of working for the pauper. 
 Mutual benefit societies, schools, insurance, savings 
 banks, athletic clubs, art museums contribute to that 
 vigor and energy which leave no room for theft and vice 
 and beggary. He who builds a wall for a road along a 
 dangerous cliff performs a higher service than the man 
 who merely watches and waits at the bottom with an 
 ambulance. There are bacterial diseases which never 
 hurt a man so long as he has good digestion.
 
 264 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Pauperism and crime appear in their worst forms 
 Causes. where the alleys are foul with stench ; where food is 
 
 scant and badly cooked ; where human beings are 
 crowded together like swine in a pen ; where sunshine 
 rarely falls ; where schools do not give training for life 
 duties and efficiency ; where family customs are com- 
 munistic ; where women toil in factories and home is 
 deprived of their presence and ministry ; where wages 
 are low and labor is irregular ; where political leaders are 
 corrupt and venal ; where amusements are vile and 
 sensual ; where music and all higher elements are want- 
 ing ; and where the rich and the educated set an ex- 
 ample of skepticism, materialism, and egoism. 
 
 So long as we tolerate such conditions we shall have 
 sickly, deformed, stunted, depraved people. We begin 
 too late when we introduce reforms in out-door relief, in 
 prisons and almshouses. The environment of a man is 
 his school. The slum shapes and bends people to its 
 character. 
 
 The only way to reach men is by changing their 
 Environment, environment. We are not pure ghosts. No spirit 
 ever changed another spirit save by modifying the 
 environment. By environment is meant here the 
 material objects, the language, the pictures, the enter- 
 tainments, the customs, the treatment of man by man, 
 the habitual appeals of speech and books and papers. 
 
 Christ himself became incarnate so as to teach souls 
 through the body. 
 
 And so the Word had breath and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds, 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
 God reveals himself in the forces and objects of 
 nature and human life. No short path to abolition of
 
 Charity and Correction. 265 
 
 pauperism is discoverable ; it must be attacked from all 
 sides. Mr. Arnold White has attempted a summary 
 program : 
 
 Emigrate four per cent of the fit among them, stop the 
 immigration of the incurable paupers, take the children out of 
 the guilt gardens, give relief work to the adults, restrict chari- 
 ties to the sick, aged, and young, encourage the growth of 
 trades unions, discourage improvident marriage. 
 
 Here are hints of a system which needs to be worked 
 out in detail and adapted to American conditions. 
 
 The story of Helen Keller, blind and deaf, reads 
 like a tale of the Arabian Nights. Out from a night Helen Keller, 
 that knew no stars or moon she was led into intellectual 
 day ; out from the gloom of speechless isolation she 
 was, by the patient wisdom of skilful instructors, trans- 
 formed into an inspirer and companion of mankind. 
 Beautifully has she spoken for such wise charity armed 
 with the weapons of science : 
 
 Remember, no effort that we make to attain something 
 beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, we 
 shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, 
 too, as God intended we should speak and sing. 
 
 We may distinguish among the children whose con- Dependent 
 ditions and perils require social care the following chi ' dren - 
 classes : the slow, the truant, the toilers, the juvenile 
 offenders, and the feeble-minded. 
 
 In every large school there are a few dull children 
 who cannot keep up in the race and at last cease to Dul , chil(lren 
 compete. They require special care and sometimes 
 separate rooms. The wiser teachers permit them to 
 drop part of their studies rather than crush their hopes 
 and bewilder their minds. Unless these little ones are 
 very tenderly and tactfully helped they are in danger of 
 becoming helpless or rebellious, paupers or criminals.
 
 266 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Truant children are cases of ' ' reversion ' ' ; that is, 
 they have a strain of an ancestral wandering instinct. 
 All children are naturally travelers. And when the 
 domestic environment is cramped, the air depressing, 
 the light dim, the mother nervous and irritable with 
 toil and hunger, there the centrifugal forces are strong. 
 Our juvenile prisons are filled with these truant chil- 
 dren. The parents cannot govern them. Principals of 
 schools sweep them out of their sight and send up the 
 report ' ' incorrigible. ' ' The label sticks to the fore- 
 head and the boy tries to deserve his bad name by 
 appropriate conduct. For the first time in his career 
 the boy finds in the bridewell or reformatory compul- 
 sory education and a chance to train his hands to 
 useful industry. We sow the wind and foolishly hope 
 to reap a soft zephyr. We plant a briar and curse the 
 ground for not growing us a fig. Crime is not a neces- 
 sity ; it is only a natural product of neglect. 
 
 None of us ever learned to speak or sing or pray 
 without help of teachers. Truants do not acquire heroic 
 virtues by intuition. 
 
 The social spirit is at work nearer the foundations. 
 Cities are providing "ungraded schools" and "parental 
 schools ' ' to correct these incorrigibles and make good 
 
 Parental . 
 
 schools. men of them. Workmgmen are away from home 
 
 before dawn and after dark. Frequently their wives 
 must help to earn the living. It is impossible for them 
 to administer discipline. The tenement house is a 
 Babel. The street is a theater of vicious influences, 
 and at night a city is an unspeakable tempter. To 
 ascend the stairs to his home the boy must often go 
 through a saloon. See the Hull House Maps and 
 cease to wonder that there are so many truants. It is 
 amazing that there are so few. It is a hopeful sign
 
 Charily and Correction. 267 
 
 that in these dull, noisome quarters blossom so many 
 lovely characters, affectionate mothets, sober and indus- 
 trious fathers, ambitious students. But the weaker 
 ones need help. 
 
 With "labor-saving" machinery so powerful that it 
 gluts the markets with goods, with armies of men Working 
 
 children. 
 
 seeking employment in vain, there is no excuse for 
 putting school children into factories before their bones 
 and muscles are developed, and before their brains have 
 been disciplined for continuous and effective thinking. 
 Machinery is doing nearly all the rough work now, and 
 muscles without intelligence have low price. Mr. 
 Depew says that the world is full of misfits, and that 
 misfits are always cheap. A great and rich people 
 cannot afford to rob a whole generation of the mental 
 equipment which is essential to social adjustments in 
 modern life. Compulsory education is social defense 
 against crime and vagrancy. We must follow the 
 better examples and remove the little girls from the Right ofthe 
 
 ~. . . , , , , , state to compel 
 
 streets. There is no social need for their service there, school attend- 
 
 j i i i ance. 
 
 and the innocent daughter in such an environment soon 
 becomes a plague and a sorceress. The retail shops 
 are leading others to the dark and dolorous path of sin 
 and shame. When mothers begin to investigate the 
 histories of these toiling children, ever grazing the 
 occupations of vagabonds, their hearts will cry out 
 against the evil. Follow the telegraph messenger boy 
 to his home. Talk with the match-seller, the bouquet- 
 seller, the news-vending girl on the corner. See how 
 ignorant these are of much that we think necessary for 
 our children. Discover how precocious they are in 
 knowledge of evil. Yonder are the "free" schools, 
 but barred to these. Is it any wonder that we furnish 
 recruits for the nameless haunts of vice ? Here also is a
 
 268 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 task for the social spirit to take the toiling children 
 from factory, sweat-shop, street, and saloon and bring 
 them into schools, and adapt the schools to their needs. 
 
 Motherless children must have a real home. Tem- 
 porarily they may be detained in an institution. But 
 no woman can care properly for a great brood. There 
 is need of a paternal as well as a maternal discipline. 
 Dependent children should be carefully adopted in 
 kind families. If it is impossible to find people to 
 adopt them they should be apprenticed or boarded 
 never heaped up in orphanages as for ' ' cold storage. ' ' 
 
 But when thus placed in homes there must be con- 
 stant supervision. Children are not always easily fitted 
 to a home. There are disappointments and must be 
 changes. Oversight by correspondence is not adequate. 
 The supervisor must actually visit the homes where 
 children have been placed, and the visits must be with- 
 out notice. 
 
 As the state must bear the burden of failures it 
 should have a system, like that in Michigan, for caring 
 for all dependent children. This does not prevent 
 churches and charitable societies from caring for orphans 
 and other homeless children, but it brings them all to 
 safe methods. No state, city, town, or county should 
 subsidize private or church institutions. No money 
 raised by taxation should be expended or used by any 
 persons who are not appointed and directed by the 
 governments. A society which professes to be charita- 
 ble should raise its own funds by voluntary contribu- 
 tions. It is hypocrisy to call that a gift to the com- 
 munity which is partly provided by taxes. Sectarian 
 and other politically irresponsible institutions should 
 have no grants from public treasuries. The subsidy 
 system is wrong in principle, unfair to a part of the
 
 Charity and Correction. 269 
 
 people, deceptive in form, tends to crowd institutions, 
 increases the number of dependents, causes financial 
 scandal, turns professed philanthropists into tricky lob- 
 byists. 
 
 The feeble-minded persons number, perhaps, 90,000 
 in the United States. It is difficult to discover all of Defectives, 
 them by any process of census-taking. They are beings 
 of arrested or unnatural development, dwarfs or mon- 
 sters by heredity. Only a few states have provided for 
 their custody. The girls grow up in many parts of the 
 land without protectors and become unmarried mothers 
 of weak, helpless, deformed creatures like themselves. 
 In Mr. Dugdale's "Jukes" and in Mr. McCulloch's 
 ' ' Tribe of Ishmael ' ' the reader can see what costly and 
 sorrowful consequences follow this shameful neglect. 
 Probably more than eighty per cent of the feeble- 
 minded had such parents. In one generation it would 
 be possible to cut off many thousands of these streams 
 of vicious heredity. How? By the simple and com- 
 paratively inexpensive process of confining them in 
 special institutions where they could work for them- 
 selves on farms and gardens and die without offspring. 
 This is the only merciful and religious way to deal with 
 this class, one of the most prolific sources of vice and 
 crime. Fortunately, public opinion during the past 
 few years has been directed to this evil and a great 
 advance has already been made in some of the states. 
 
 Education has been idolized among us. Almost un- 
 limited virtue has been ascribed to it. But education Ljmitsof 
 
 ... , n- <- education. 
 
 has Us limits of efficacy. Social selection is necessary. 
 Education accomplishes very little with imbeciles and 
 instinctive criminals ; it cannot make them fit to be 
 parents ; it cannot take vice out of the blood. Religion 
 itself does not consist altogether in sermons. A high
 
 270 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Th insane. 
 
 Religious 
 consolation. 
 
 stone wall, with sharp spikes on top, is as necessary a 
 means of grace to defectives as hymns are for normal 
 people. A microcephalous idiot is not converted into a 
 good mother by exhortations or by Froebel's gifts. 
 Unscientific philanthropy in this field is cruel and anti- 
 social. 
 
 In almost every state one of the first public institu- 
 tions to be established by taxation is an asylum for the 
 insane. These refuges of the mentally unsound are 
 demanded by considerations of safety as well as of 
 humanity. Our century has witnessed remarkable ad- 
 vance in the skill and gentleness of their treatment. 
 The ancient superstitions which ascribed insanity to evil 
 spirits have fled before the light of science which shows 
 that some specific disease of nerves and brain is the sole 
 and direct cause of every unusual disturbance of mental 
 activity. The asylum is simply a hospital for treating 
 nervous diseases. There is no more mystery about it 
 than there is about a hospital for treating the eye and 
 the ear. 
 
 As mental states react upon the body, all quieting 
 and cheering influences may be employed, under the 
 physician's control, as remedial agencies. But fanati- 
 cism and excitement must be positively excluded from 
 the hospital, and all aesthetic, educational, and religious 
 exercises must be regulated by expert physicians. This 
 principle is not always understood by zealous religious 
 teachers and evangelists who have never studied nervous 
 disease, and such misrepresentations of religion have 
 provoked the deserved suspicion and hostility of emi- 
 nent alienists who have seen the careful work of months 
 utterly ruined in an hour of indiscreet excitement. 
 
 The public should understand that the prospect of 
 permanent cure is much greater in earlier stages of dis-
 
 Charity and Correction. 271 
 
 ease than after it has made deep inroads. Therefore 
 public sentiment should favor placing those who are 
 mentally unbalanced under the care and direction of 
 special experts as soon as the unpleasant symptoms are 
 apparent. All of us should cultivate a mental habit of 
 regarding the insane as ill, and should avoid whispering 
 in their presence and making them feel that they are 
 peculiar. 
 
 Luther edited a book of beggars. Vagrancy is not a 
 modern pest. Centuries ago sturdy and valiant beggars Tramps, 
 moved in troops over Europe, levied on the stores of 
 peasants, and demanded help at the gates of convents. 
 There are fluctuations in the numbers of these wander- 
 ers at various periods. Times of business depression 
 naturally increase their number. After a "crisis" for 
 several months or years there are multitudes of the un- 
 employed, and we are compelled to provide emergency 
 relief. The following maxims, curtly stated, must be 
 the present contribution to the discussion of method : 
 
 We must distinguish the unemployed from the pro- 
 fessional vagrant. In times of emergency neighbor Emergency 
 should help neighbor, friend help friend. Those who relief - 
 are prosperous should extend their calling list and make 
 new acquaintances among the poor. Manufacturers 
 often make agreements with their employees to keep 
 the factories running at reduced cost because wares can 
 be marketed only at lower rates. It is a good time to 
 make improvements which will some day be necessary. 
 Cities, without opening public works, can undertake 
 enterprises which can be done earlier and more cheaply 
 when labor is abundant. It seems probable that a sys- 
 tem of insurance against loss by non-employment will in 
 the future help to tide over evil days. If forty millions 
 of people are thinking of little ways of helping in months
 
 272 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Vagabonds. 
 
 Labor 
 
 hdreaus. 
 
 Labor tests. 
 
 of emergency then as many millions of acts of aid will be 
 done. In fact, it is in these unrecorded ways that many 
 people have been kept alive during the past few years. 
 Charity organizations assist this process by bringing 
 many kind people into personal relations with those who 
 are in want. 
 
 Discrimination between honest workingmen and 
 tramps is as necessary as it is sometimes difficult, be- 
 cause the tramp professes to be seeking work as the 
 hypocrite professes to be seeking religion. In the chain 
 of agencies developed in older countries we find the fol- 
 lowing, each one performing a part of the social duty. 
 
 The first step is to provide information by means 
 of labor bureaus. Trades unions have organized one of 
 the most exact and efficient agencies of this species. 
 Mutual benefit societies are sometimes able to inform 
 members of their fraternities where remunerative em- 
 ployment may be found. Charity organization societies 
 always assist dependents as far as possible in cities, but 
 skilled workmen avoid them and employers find that the 
 grade of ability is frequently low. No very efficient sys- 
 tem has yet been devised, and the best system will not 
 find places for skilled workmen when the manufactories 
 are closed all over the country. 
 
 Investigations and catechisms are of little value in dis- 
 criminating between honest and dishonest wanderers. A 
 very hungry man is greatly tempted to profess almost 
 any creed which promises a mess of pottage. Free soup 
 attracts to missions the same class of men who are 
 drawn to saloons by free lunches. The labor test is 
 necessary to separate, in a general way, the sheep from 
 the goats. It does not tell who is "worthy" and who 
 is "unworthy." These ancient distinctions have no 
 practical value. When a man may be in danger of
 
 Charity and Correction. 273 
 
 freezing or starving inquiry into his pedigree and re- 
 ligious biography is mockery. Investigation may do 
 him harm. What if it should reveal that he is an ex- 
 convict ! The only question to ask of an able-bodied 
 man is, Will you work ? And the only evidence he can 
 give, without a certificate from his pastor, is that he 
 actually does some work. 
 
 But such temporary work tests as sawing wood and 
 wheeling sand are mere makeshifts. Tramps are often 
 willing to earn a meal or two but are not willing to per- 
 severe in well-doing. They have no habits of industry, 
 and a single work test cannot reveal this defect. 
 
 In order to take hold of a large body of dependent 
 
 . . : . . . Voluntary 
 
 and homeless men associations or municipalities must fe"" colonies 
 
 ..... and shops. 
 
 have ready regular places of productive industry. In 
 the cold climates of the North there is a great difficulty 
 in providing work hi winter. The county poorhouses 
 are crowded with men who in summer live by begging, 
 odd earnings, and theft. It is these men who frighten 
 farmers into feeding them by threats of burning barns 
 and ricks. It is these men who are voted in blocks of 
 fifty by low politicians. It is these men, perhaps 
 50,000 or more in our country, who are venal voters, 
 who are physically diseased, and who increase enor- 
 mously the expenses of police and courts and prisons. 
 
 It is therefore imperative that work should be offered 
 to this entire crowd in winter. A stone pile will empty 
 a poorhouse or a wayfarers' lodge like magic. Break- 
 ing stone for roads within inclosures is ennobling exer- 
 cise. Free soup-houses and free shelters simply attract 
 men to the city and confirm young vagabonds in their 
 habits. 
 
 The work test in poorhouses and city shelters and the Reveiatiom 
 voluntary farm colony will reveal the fact that some work'tcst.
 
 274 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 of the unemployed are strong and willing but have 
 never learned any useful art. Perhaps they were news- 
 boys, bootblacks, or telegraph messengers during the 
 age when a trade might have been learned. When they 
 became too big for such occupations they were turned 
 adrift by parents to shift for themselves. Perhaps they 
 left home to escape restraint and after a brief job in a 
 factory were discharged and soon brought to beggary or 
 theft. Once arrested they lost care for respectable peo- 
 ple and abandoned themselves to the company of men 
 and women who would not put them to shame. If they 
 are ever to get back into society they must be taught 
 some trade according to their nature and history. It 
 may be difficult to accomplish this, but it is the only- 
 path to their salvation. 
 
 The educational value of the suburban garden scheme 
 seems to be its chief recommendation. People learn 
 
 The potato 
 
 patch.' 1 how to get their food out of the soil, how to follow 
 
 an art and reap the fruit of their own industry. Many 
 families have thus been prepared for the transition to 
 country life or to horticulture. Experiments made in 
 Europe and in this country prove that it is a method 
 worth trying on a larger scale. Small towns can assist 
 some of their poor by lending them patches of ground 
 for cultivation in the summer. In many cases some 
 members of the family can thus raise so many vegetables 
 that it is unnecessary to appeal to charity for relief in 
 the winter. 
 
 After the labor test has selected out those who are 
 
 Themcomp- ..,.,. 
 
 tent residuum, capable and willing there will remain in the sinks or 
 cities another mixed multitude who require further dis- 
 crimination and varied treatment. Some of these will 
 be found quite able and ready to work under the direc- 
 tion of managers, but incompetent to find a manager.
 
 Charity and Correction. 275 
 
 They require some one set over them to direct and 
 arrange their work and show them just what to do. 
 These futile, feeble people at present are now about half 
 supported by charity. They throng the labor market 
 and help to lower the wages of competent men, and 
 reduce these to pauperism along with themselves. The 
 best method of dealing with these is the farm colony, 
 under county or city management, or under the care of 
 benevolent and religious associations. 
 
 Still another institution will be found necessary if we 
 are to deal effectually with vagrants. Some of them are The rebellious 
 criminals or at least confirmed beggars. It is useless to 
 invite these men to a voluntary colony, for they will not 
 come. Yet they are not fit to live in society and they 
 are dangerous in the community. For these a compul- 
 sory residence of years on an inclosed tract of land 
 seems the only method which promises restoration of the 
 more hopeful cases, and guarantees the public defense. 
 
 This last measure can be closely connected with a 
 system of progressive sentences in the criminal courts. 
 When it is thought safe to release regular offenders they 
 should first be permitted to go abroad on parole and 
 under guardianship. The present custom of giving 
 short sentences is worse than useless ; it discourages the 
 reformable and confirms the incorrigible. 
 
 We have multitudes of independent, separated associ- 
 ations for distributing relief, and many kind-hearted 
 individuals ready to bestow alms. But we have no 
 organized system of charities. Our several pieces of 
 benevolence are like short railroads cut off from trunk 
 lines, or like a telephone which has no connection with 
 the network of wires. Not only in cities but in county 
 towns is there a necessity for voluntary associations 
 of all benevolent persons, societies, and poor relief
 
 276 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Objects and 
 methods. 
 
 Friendly 
 visitors. 
 
 Public insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 officials for the purpose of systematizing philanthropic 
 enterprises. 
 
 A charity organization society is charged with the 
 duty of collecting and recording full information in 
 regard to all dependent persons within its district, be it 
 town, county, or city. Its secretary should be able on 
 the instant to tell exactly what person or institution is 
 ready to give help to a wanderer, an orphan, an aged 
 and helpless dependent, a sick stranger, a friendless 
 widow, a demented or insane charge. 
 
 Such a society would have a conference or several 
 conferences of ' ' friendly visitors, ' ' of men and women 
 who are willing to make acquaintances with needy per- 
 sons or families and do the part of a kind neighbor. 
 These conferences hear the reports of these visitors on 
 each case, once a fortnight or once a month, and tell 
 them what should be done until the next meeting. If a 
 hired agent or an individual visitor is permitted to con- 
 duct the case, save in an hour of pressing danger, the 
 conference will dissolve, will talk itself to death. If the 
 conference is made to feel that it must reach decisions 
 and determine treatment it will feel a sense of responsi- 
 bility and the members will take pains to attend the 
 meetings. These conferences can be organized in 
 churches or in neighborhoods or in women's clubs, 
 and each one should be related to the central office. 
 
 A charity organization society will have committees to 
 visit all public institutions, as jails, lock-ups, poor- 
 houses, orphanages, and asylums ; to study the condi- 
 tions of the houses and the methods of treatment ; to 
 see that no children are kept under the same roof with 
 adult paupers or criminals. A committee should act 
 with the overseer of the poor, watch the effect of pub- 
 lic relief on dependent persons, and devise means of
 
 Charity and Correction. 277 
 
 helping them to support themselves. A committee of 
 ladies or a circle of King's Daughters could visit the 
 poorhouse, furnish concerts and entertainments, con- 
 duct musical religious services, plan suitable occupa- 
 tion for sick and aged women, and help them to live 
 a useful and contented life. A committee of men should 
 see to it that tramps are not sent on from place to place 
 and confirmed in migratory habits, but held to task 
 work and sent away to the place where there is some 
 reasonable prospect of their finding employment. 
 
 A charity organization society in a small town can 
 study the social causes of personal degeneration : the 
 saloon, the coarse amusements, the idle groups for 
 gossip, the rude practical jokes, the low and depraving 
 entertainments furnished by strolling players. The 
 character of entertainments can be raised ; musical study of causes, 
 classes and concerts substituted for the demoralizing 
 shows ; debates and discussions planned to awaken the 
 intellect and prepare for citizenship ; common enter- 
 prises of sanitation and village improvement set on foot 
 to kindle local pride and public spirit as antidote for 
 animalism and selfish indulgence. The Raiffeisen credit 
 banks could be organized for renters and small shop- 
 keepers. Provident loan societies might provide small 
 loans to honest men who would otherwise enroll them- 
 selves and their children as public paupers and take the 
 first step downward. 
 
 Thus in all ways the conferences of friendly visitors 
 would go from external symptoms to the deep, underly- uaito loria ' d 
 ing causes of pauperism and crime, from the study of 
 particular instances of misery to the large social forces 
 which press upon the helpless individual and drive him 
 to despair. 
 
 Every benevolent person is under moral obligations
 
 278 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Duty of 
 cooperation. 
 
 Help for 
 the soul. 
 
 to work in harmony with others engaged in similar 
 service. The egoistic methods are dissolvents of 
 society. Courtesy, cooperation, the use of a common 
 registration of wants and resources are among the most 
 solemn duties of churches and individual benefactors. 
 The progress of the movement has been impeded by 
 ignorance and misunderstanding, by sectarian animosity 
 and suspicion, by the superstitions of tradition, by the 
 jealousy of relief societies working by antiquated meth- 
 ods, and by the mistakes of inexperienced representa- 
 tives. But charity organization principles have been 
 tested in the history of this century, and with growing 
 intelligence and fellowship will in due time command the 
 respect and secure the devotion of all philanthropists. 
 Mr. George Duruy wrote : 
 
 When Dr. Roux began his fight against diphtheria, did he 
 know the remedy for it? No. He said: "Here is a mis- 
 fortune; let us seek the means of combating it." Let us do 
 the same with poverty, even while knowing that this old social 
 evil, brother of disease and death, is, like them, eternal. It is 
 no longer possible to accept as an axiom that the fatality of 
 hard economic laws cannot be softened, when other fatalities, 
 such as those of disease and suffering, are receding before the 
 advance of science. . . . Minds suffer more than bodies 
 nowadays. There are no asylums, workhouses, hospitals to 
 appease the torments of envy that rack them nor the thirst for 
 justice that burns them. 
 
 The charity organization society stands for instant 
 and tender relief of passing need, of kindly and neigh- 
 borly relations of mutual understanding between rich 
 and poor, and for study of the large social conditions 
 and forces which make for want and sin or for educa- 
 tion, purity, health, happiness, and power. 
 
 Once each year there meets a national body of charity 
 workers from all fields : members of state boards, state
 
 Charity and Correction. 279 
 
 secretaries, friendly visitors, residents of social settle- . 
 ments, pastors, missionaries, trustees of benevolent in- conference of 
 stitutions, and all the noble army of those who toil for correct e ion and 
 the suffering. Their discussions are collected in a vol- 
 ume, and constitute a valuable library for every social 
 student and practical worker for the poor. Not only 
 philanthropists of the United States and Canada, but 
 eminent persons from Europe are heard in these con- 
 ventions. It is highly desirable that more pastors and 
 other church leaders should become members of this 
 organization whose thoughts and purposes are inspired 
 by the Author of the Glad Tidings, and whose labors 
 illustrate the "program of Christianity,"
 
 Food vs. 
 surgery. 
 
 Healthv hate. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN" CONFLICT WITH ANTI-SOCIAL 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 HITHERTO we have dealt almost entirely with con- 
 structive methods. The best agencies of reform are 
 those which make reformation needless. Right forma- 
 tion is the organic process of giving happiness the 
 held. Medicine and surgery have a small place in the 
 life of normal infants compared with milk, light, fresh 
 air, and room for play. And yet there are evils to 
 fight and there is a call for heroic adventurers and bold 
 pioneers. There is a function even for fanatics and 
 hobby-riders. If they are sane, honest, and pure of life 
 they do disagreeable tasks which fastidious critics will 
 not touch with their little fingers, gloved as they are. 
 
 There are so many anti-social customs, traditions, 
 associations, corporations, and institutions that a mere 
 list of them might fill a chapter. Therefore we may 
 select a few contemporary enemies and use them as 
 illustrations of the detestable. Life without healthy 
 hate would be as insipid as fruits without acid. The 
 meekness which the New Testament commends was not 
 embodied in Uriah Heep, but rather in the whip of 
 cords and the invectives against robbers of widows. 
 Oliver Cromwell was a good soldier because he was 
 humble before God. Bismarck declared that the Ger- 
 mans fear God therefore none other. 
 
 We shall not imitate the big poltroon who always 
 selected a dwarf for his attacks and challenges ; but we 
 
 280
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 281 
 
 cast our glove in the face of a giant, the drink evil. The drink 
 What has the social spirit to say and do in presence ev ' 1 ' 
 of this monster? 
 
 First in order of duty is a study of the history and 
 causes of the drink evil. Impatient declaimers protest 
 against this scientific procedure, and say it is too slow. 
 But there is an increasing number of citizens who are 
 willing to join the sappers and miners since the open 
 assault on the walls has met with indifferent success. 
 
 History tells us that we are dealing with an old foe. 
 One of the most conspicuous acts of Saint Noah after 
 the Deluge was to get drunk. It is impossible to tell 
 when men discovered the intoxicating properties of 
 fermented liquids. The religious myths of Asiatic and 
 European peoples ascribed the invention to their ras- 
 cally gods. When food was coarse and unpalatable, 
 the higher pleasures few and feeble, the nobler interests 
 of life yet undeveloped, it was not strange that animal 
 excitement war, chase, and drunkenness should be 
 sought as relief from the monotony of existence. 
 
 The exhilaration of wine has been the theme of song 
 and story. The blessings of the grape have been 
 praised in sacred books because the purple fruit made 
 glad the heart and helped the poor to forget for the 
 
 hour their poverty. Luther lent the sanction of his great 
 
 . . The V . 01C ? 
 
 name to the moderate indulgence in the use of intoxi- of antiquity. 
 
 cants, and the educated men of his race have generally 
 followed him. To this day the medical profession is 
 divided on the question of the physiological value of 
 alcohol, and this division of expert opinion is naturally 
 reflected in the world of the unlearned. Appetite casts 
 its vote in favor of indulgence when doctors differ, and 
 the opinion of a physician who is given to strong drink 
 is open to suspicion.
 
 282 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 But history shows not only that evils are old but also 
 Antiquity has t hat they are evil and that many harmful usages have 
 
 no casting vote. J J 
 
 been overcome. Slavery was old, but not eternal. 
 Despotism was old, but found its conqueror at last. 
 Hoary antiquity cannot make a hurtful custom respecta- 
 ble. The names of saints cannot adorn a sin. Indeed, 
 the very fact that a custom originated with savages 
 excites the inquiry whether it should not be left to 
 savages. The whole question must be decided by 
 modern science and by modern morality. There may 
 be room for dispute about " Bible wines," but we are in 
 presence of a contemporary enemy and must arm our- 
 selves with the latest kind of weapons. 
 
 In the shrieking multitude it is hard to make the 
 voice heard above the tumult. Perhaps the best way 
 for us is to turn aside into a quiet place and study what 
 has been offered for consideration. No sane man doubts 
 the evils of drunkenness. Statistics may be ever so ex- 
 aggerated but, sifted thoroughly, they leave a terrible 
 residuum of suffering and wrong. The tongue of Gough 
 and Father Mathew, the pen of Dickens, the pencil of 
 Hogarth, eloquent as they were, have not been able to 
 set forth the inexpressible, endless tragedy of the drink 
 traffic. Only those who have suffered from the enslav- 
 ing appetite, or from the insane conduct of its thralls, 
 can ever realize the horrors of rum. Tables of statistics 
 present only commercial considerations, but back of 
 them is the sea of wan faces of the miserable. 
 
 The attempt to reform the drinking customs of the 
 people had its origin in the studies of a physician, a 
 patriot, and a philanthropist, chairman of the Committee 
 on Independence in the Continental Congress of 1776 
 Dr. Benjamin Rush, a name identified with the cause of 
 freedom for white and black. In the year 1785 he pub- 
 
 History of the 
 
 temperance 
 movement in 
 America.
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 283 
 
 lished a pamphlet entitled ' ' The Effects of Ardent 
 Spirits on the Human Mind and Body." While the 
 statistics of that early day may be questioned, there is 
 no doubt that the custom of drinking ardent spirits was Beginning t 
 common, fashionable, and destructive. It was counte- 
 nanced and practiced by the clergy, and it was the dis- 
 graceful exhibitions of hilarity at an ordination which 
 roused the wrath of Dr. Lyman Beecher and moved him 
 to life-long opposition to the evil. 
 
 The early advocates of temperance usually went no 
 further than moderation in the use of distilled liquors, 
 and the substitution of wine and beer for the more fiery 
 stimulants. 
 
 In 1826, "The American Society for the Promotion 
 of Temperance" was organized, which urged total ab- 
 stinence by educational means, but left liberty of action 
 to the individual and permitted the use of alcohol when 
 advised by a physician. 
 
 It was not long before "moral suasion" introduced 
 "legal suasion," since many people had come to believe Legal suasion 
 that the use of alcohol is a violation of moral law, a 
 wrong to society as well as to the individual. / In 1838 
 Massachusetts enacted a law which prohibited the retail 
 sale of spirituous liquors. In 1847 the Supreme Court 
 rendered a decision which has been the foundation of all 
 subsequent legislation, fthis decision was to the effect 
 that any state which deems the retail and internal traffic 
 in ardent spirits injurious to its citizens, and calculated 
 to produce idleness, vice, or debauchery, may regulate 
 or restrain or prohibit that traffic, if it thinks proper.l 
 Later decisions have made clear the right of a state 
 to prohibit not only the retail traffic but even the manu- 
 facture of intoxicants, without compensation for loss to 
 former dealers. All modern legislation goes upon the
 
 284 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 principle that the liquor traffic, if not absolutely wrong, 
 's at least "extra-hazardous," and in need of exception- 
 ally severe and rigorous" regulation, and so not to be 
 treated as a legitimate and honorable business. \ The 
 Washingtonian Movement, based on moral suasion and 
 the total abstinence pledge, without resort to legal 
 action, swept over many communities after 1840.^ 
 Gradually the teaching, influence, and practice of 
 
 Protestants. Protestant churches have become larger factors in the 
 temperance cause. Sermons, discipline, pastoral advice, 
 resolutions of local and national conventions and repre- 
 sentative bodies have been powerful agencies in educa- 
 ting the public and in securing strong laws. It is true 
 that the moderate use of wine and other milder bever- 
 ages is not universally condemned as a sin, but total 
 abstinence is the ideal, and the minister who "tipples" 
 is apt to topple to his fall in social disgrace. 
 
 The Church Temperance Society of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church seeks to unite all friends of temper- 
 ance, total abstinence, advocates of moderation, Prohibi- 
 tionists, and friends of regulation, so far as they can 
 agree upon methods of practical reform. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church is in a position of ex- 
 
 cathoHcs treme difficulty, owing to the nature of its terms of mem- 
 
 bership and the heterogeneous composition of its con- 
 stituency. Many of its members are interested in the 
 liquor business. But there is a respectable number of 
 the clergy who keep alive the honorable fame of Father 
 Mathew. In 1887 the pope wrote a letter to Bishop 
 Ireland which must strengthen the hands of the clergy- 
 men and bishops and laymen who are honestly seeking 
 to combat the evils of intemperance, so sore a scourge 
 among the people of that large and influential body of 
 Christians. 4 The Catholic Total Abstinence Union of
 
 Conflict with Anti- Social Institutions. 285 
 
 America was founded in 1872, and while it refrains from 
 political action it is a very important agency of edu- 
 cation in the principles of temperance. / The same may 
 be said of the charitable Society of St. Vincent of Paul. 
 
 The National Temperance Society anaTTuBlication 
 House was organized in 1865 and is pledged to promote National 
 ' ' total abstinence for the individual and total prohibition society 1 " 
 for the state.'X' It has issued papers and books by the 
 million ; sent missionaries among the freedmen ; sought 
 to urge inquiries and legislation at Washington and at 
 state capitals ; held conferences and conventions in all 
 parts of the country ; promoted the introduction of 
 temperance publications in public schools and into 
 prisons, jails, shops, hospitals, and needy localities ; and 
 has sent volumes of temperance information to colored 
 pastors in the South. 
 
 The Independent Order of Good Templars started 
 upon its career in 1851. Its members are pledged to Templars, 
 practice total abstinence ; to work for prohibition and 
 for all suitable methods of restricting the evils of alco- 
 hol. Women are admitted to membership and office 
 on equality with men. The order has enlisted millions 
 of members and has started many youth in the path of 
 a sober life, and with deep convictions upon the subject 
 of the immorality of intemperance. 
 
 The Sons of Temperance was organized in 1842, and 
 its purposes are expressed in the records : / " To shield 
 its members from the evils of intemperance ; to afford 
 mutual assistance in case of sickness, and to elevate their 
 characters as men. "^X' The Temple of Honor," with its 
 ritual and symbolism, has made successful appeal to 
 those whose imagination sought gratification in the 
 mysteries and allegories of ceremony Mention of other 
 less conspicuous societies must be omitted.
 
 286 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Various societies for the enforcement of existing laws 
 Enforcement have been formed from time to time, of which the Citi- 
 
 oflaw. 
 
 zens' Law and Order League may be taken as a type. 
 It was found that the best laws are neglected unless the 
 officials are steadily reminded and urged to do their 
 duty. The dealers in intoxicants naturally resist the re- 
 strictive measures, and will violate the laws unless there 
 is a steady pressure of public opinion. The motto of the 
 league was ' ' We ask only obedience to law " and the 
 watchword was "Save the boys." The Anti-Saloon 
 League has a similar object. 
 
 It is natural that women should be deeply interested 
 in the temperance cause. If there are any physical or 
 Tbw.c.T.u. fj nanc i a i benefits in the drink traffic they get none of 
 these. The burdens of misery are borne by the inno- 
 cent. American women, as a rule, are total abstainers, 
 but they are great sufferers from the drinking habits of 
 the ' ' lords of creation. ' ' 
 
 The Temperance Crusade which spread over the 
 Central States from Ohio was an outburst of woman's 
 moral indignation against the destroyers of her peace 
 and her hope, against the enemies of her home. With- 
 out a voice in the election of magistrates or in the 
 making of laws these women appealed to God and to 
 conscience. They entered saloons and drug stores, or 
 watched, prayed, and sang hymns in the street. Some 
 said they were inspired prophetesses ; some called them 
 fanatics and fools. The enthusiasm in that form could 
 not last ; but it gave birth to a permanent society of 
 women whose doctrine was thus stated : 
 
 Woman is ordained to lead the vanguard of this great move- 
 ment, until the American public is borne across the abysmal 
 transition from the superstitious notion that alcohol is food to 
 the scientific fact that "alcohol is poison," from the pusillani-
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 287 
 
 mous concession that intemperance is a great evil to the 
 responsible conviction that the liquor traffic is a crime. 
 
 The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union, 
 at present the most conspicuous organization in the 
 temperance movement, was organized in Cleveland, 
 Ohio in 1874. This society, with its varying fortunes 
 and unceasing labor, has impressed its thought upon 
 the world's life. This society has comprehended the 
 many elements which ente|r into the problem, and 
 has seen that the evil must be attacked in its causes. 
 Because the leaders saw that ignorance of the physical 
 effects of alcohol aggravated the danger they have Aimsand 
 persistently sought to introduce instruction on the sub- |nethod - 
 ject in the public schools, in Sunday-schools, families, 
 and in all kinds of publications. Having observed the 
 deleterious effects of nicotine poison on growing boys, 
 they have worked successfully to secure laws prohibiting 
 the sale of cigarettes and other forms of tobacco to 
 minors. They have established industrial homes for 
 girls, and caused the ' ' age of consent " to be raised. 
 The titles of the heads of department will illustrate the 
 breadth of the movement and the largeness of view of 
 the founders : Preventive, Educational, Evangelistic, 
 Social, Legal, Organization. 
 
 Miss Frances E. Willard, founder and for five years 
 
 3 Miss Willard. 
 
 president of the World's Woman's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union, and long president of the general society 
 for the United States, was the author of the motto 
 so characteristic of the motives of good women every- 
 where: "For God and Home and Native Land" 
 religion, maternal and sisterly devotion, and high 
 patriotism. Death has no power to destroy the living 
 forces of her beautiful life. By the impetus of her 
 splendid personality, the vitality of her ideas, and
 
 288 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 the persuasive energy of her published words she 
 continues to speak to mankind. 
 
 An interesting experiment in the treatment of 
 disease without alcohol is found in the National 
 Temperance Hospital. The work of oral teaching 
 is organized by the Women's Lecture Bureau. 
 An auxiliary of considerable influence is the Young 
 Women's Branch, which seeks to work for youth, 
 and to turn social influence and custom in favor of 
 temperance and purity. 
 
 The social purity reform is carried out in organic 
 Social purity. connection with the crusade against alcohol, since these 
 noble women are teaching in all its applications the 
 fundamental religious view that the body is the temple 
 of the Holy Spirit and should not be defiled by drunk- 
 enness, lust, poisons, drugs, or any uncleanness. The 
 influence of an instructed multitude of mothers working 
 by all means, and especially at home, is beyond calcu- 
 lation. It is claimed that "scientific temperance in- 
 struction ' ' is given in all but four states and that 
 1 6,000, coo children have been brought under this in- 
 struction ; 10,000 have been enrolled in Bands of 
 Mercy, and thousands more in Loyal Temperance 
 Legions and Anti-Cigarette Leagues. Millions of pages 
 of temperance literature have been distributed and 
 striking advance has been made in the suppression of 
 obscene literature. 
 
 The organization is committed to woman suffrage 
 
 and to a prohibitory legal policy. The most extrava- 
 
 sua^geand ant language of eulogy cannot express the obligation 
 
 prohibition. o { tne vf OT \d t o these devoted and able women sowell 
 
 as a simple record of their achievements, whose story is 
 
 told in the annual reports and occasional summaries. 
 
 A cable of many strands is far stronger than a rod of
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 289 
 
 the same diameter. We are not shut up to a single 
 
 mode of attack ; artillery, infantry, cavalry, and starva- 
 
 tion are all military forces which a skilful general will the dnnk evil - 
 
 use according to circumstances. The members of 
 
 society who realize the perils of the use of alcohol as a 
 
 beverage have as their allies- education, transformation 
 
 of customs, and governmental control. In fact, a 
 
 reform must necessarily proceed to develop itself in this 
 
 order, until all available troops move in a single mass. 
 
 If we could only get the doctors and physiologists to 
 move harmoniously there would be a shorter campaign. Educatio " 
 Some of the experts are pronounced abstainers and 
 declare that even as medicine alcohol has no use. 
 Many others assert that alcoholic beverages may be 
 used as medicines in sickness or with advantage even in 
 health. All recognize the dangers of excessive use of 
 stimulants, and it is only on this statement that we can 
 honestly and truthfully claim a consensus of medical 
 authority. 
 
 Certain it is that educational methods have made 
 immense progress during the century. It is desirable Successof 
 to apprehend clearly just what ' ' moral suasion ' ' has edu u*J,i nal 
 achieved, because there is a strong tendency among 
 many temperance advocates to lose faith in it, to under- 
 value appeals to reason and experience, in order to 
 prove the necessity of legislation. Moral suasion first 
 raised up a company of reformers and changed beliefs 
 and family customs for hundreds of thousands of people. 
 Reason, instruction, and persuasion induced multitudes 
 of people to become more careful and moderate in their 
 use of stimulants; then followed the total abstinence 
 movement, and later still the effort to restrict or pro- 
 hibit the traffic in liquors. Beliefs are the primary 
 social forces, and so long as the people had no con-
 
 290 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The public 
 schools. 
 
 Allies of the 
 temperance 
 reform. 
 
 Steady brains 
 wante'd. 
 
 victions as to the physical and moral perils of alcoholic 
 beverages they would not modify either custom or law. 
 And beliefs must always sustain a reform after it has 
 been once accepted. Teaching goes deeper than law 
 and human penalties. 
 
 For this reason it is wise to introduce instruction in 
 the public schools, in connection with the teaching of 
 human anatomy, physiology, hygiene, and sanitation, 
 in respect to the effect of alcohol, tobacco, and other 
 poisons, upon the various tissues and organs of the 
 body. Moral and religious sanctions enforce the laws 
 of health. Ethics learns of physiology and then issues 
 commands to conscience. 
 
 Perhaps legislation will be found to be only a subor- 
 dinate factor in the promotion of temperance. Eco- 
 nomic changes are going forward in connection with 
 machine industry, the factory system, and modern 
 transportation which will make drunkenness simply 
 impossible. So long as a man worked by himself, at 
 his own bench, with his own tools, he might get drunk 
 without serious disturbance of industry. That con- 
 dition belongs to the past. We are not under the reign 
 of individualism, but of increasing collectivism. 
 
 One of the chief railroad corporations in the world, 
 the Pennsylvania, carries out, with great strictness, its 
 regulation as to the use of intoxicating drinks by its 
 employees. Every one violating the rule is dismissed. 
 This is a matter not of sentiment but of pure, hard 
 business. The company dare not intrust its great 
 property and its daily freight of human lives to men who 
 are liable to be deprived of their reason, the steadiness 
 of whose nerves has been unsettled. A drink of whisky 
 or a glass of beer may bring on a catastrophe costing 
 enormously in life and money. In all this the company
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 291 
 
 acts with that wise business judgment which has brought 
 its success. Our great employers of labor have learned 
 the same lesson. The proprietor of a shipbuilding yard 
 said,* "Many of our men are worth little for an hour or 
 two of the afternoon, because of the beer which they 
 have taken at their lunch./ Another employer said, 
 "That man used to earn $5 a day. He was richly 
 worth it, we were glad to pay it ; but drink gradually 
 impaired the accuracy of his eye, the steadiness of his 
 nerves, the delicacy of his touch ; and now we can give 
 him only a dollar a day, and he is hardly worth that." 
 Not even to moderate drinkers can safely be intrusted 
 the building of ships, on whose exact and faithful con- 
 struction will depend the safety of the ship in the hour 
 of storm and the honor of the nation in the hour of 
 battle. 
 
 Most men want life insurance. But the insurance 
 
 . Life insurance. 
 
 companies require medical examinations and these ex- 
 aminations tend to grow more careful and thorough. 
 The " tobacco heart," the alcoholic pulse and skin, and 
 the beery bloat stand in the way of securing a policy. 
 Mutual benefit societies, trades unions, and all such or- 
 ganizations are learning to enforce sobriety whenever 
 common interests suffer from the unreliable conduct of 
 the drunkard. 
 
 Fashion has changed. Wine is used by many people 
 ' ' in society, ' ' but not by all, and intoxication is a Fashlon - 
 social disgrace. Total abstinence is no longer regarded 
 anywhere as a bar to good-fellowship. Woman's influ- 
 ence is steadily rising all over the civilized world, and it 
 is usually favorable to temperance, if not always to total 
 abstinence. 
 
 Prohibition in actual practice, and apart from pure 
 theory, is simply another method of regulating drinking
 
 292 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Legislation ; 
 prohibitory 
 laws. 
 
 Local option. 
 
 customs. The appetite for stimulants, the organic 
 cravings for excitement, remain and they manifest them- 
 selves. The passion for stimulants is so imperious and 
 general in all European people that it demands satis- 
 faction and calls into existence a body of dealers in- 
 terested in the business of selling alcoholic drinks. The 
 physical craving thus forms a partnership or a con- 
 spiracy with motives of gain, and these two forces enlist 
 all the resources of craving to evade the provisions 
 of law. In many communities, where the use of beer 
 and wine is believed to be innocent, there is a moral 
 revolt against what the people sincerely regard an in- 
 fringement of freedom. Under such conditions prohibi- 
 tion does not destroy the business but modifies* and 
 restricts it in various degrees, not without some unde- 
 sirable consequences. 
 
 On one side it may fairly be claimed that where 
 the great majority of the population have long lived 
 in America, where cities are few and small, and where 
 agitation has led the majority to regard the use of 
 ardent spirits as a moral evil, a prohibitory law may 
 be so enforced as to keep the traffic actually away from 
 some districts and to compel it to hide in large towns. 
 Whether the law really diminishes drunkenness is diffi- 
 cult to affirm because the law is only one of the educa- 
 tive agencies at work in such states. The dark side of 
 the picture ought not to be concealed in our reformatory 
 zeal. Many candid and well-informed witnesses declare 
 that prohibition intensifies the vices of deception, fraud, 
 perjury, social animosity, contempt for legal authority, 
 corruption of courts and juries. 
 
 One way of introducing prohibition is through the 
 local option law which prevails in some states. In favor 
 of this system it is urged that when the commonwealth
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 293 
 
 cannot be brought to enact and enforce a prohibitory 
 policy it ought to permit a community which desires to 
 do so to protect itself against an institution which is 
 hateful to the majority of the people. The best tradi 
 tions of our national history are favorable to town 
 democracy. But this method has a narrow field of 
 usefulness. A town may vote " no license" and yet be 
 abundantly supplied by a city just over a bridge. Some 
 policy at least as wide as a state is demanded, for the 
 evil is national in extent and power. 
 
 In some states the fundamental law or the public 
 opinion will not tolerate legal recognition of the drink Mulct laws, 
 traffic so far as to give a license ; but when a citizen ac- 
 tually ventures to set up his shop the state compels him 
 to pay an annual fine. The motives for this legislation 
 are mixed, but the central and avowed purpose is to 
 hamper and restrict trade which the people cannot at 
 once extinguish. 
 
 Assuming that the license system is accepted by a 
 commonwealth as, on the whole, the most satisfactory 
 legal system of regulating a traffic which it is thought 
 impossible to suppress, the problem of specific measures 
 still remains. In the conclusions of an important recent 
 study President Eliot makes several practical sugges- 
 tions. Licenses should not be granted for more than 
 one year. Under favorable circumstances the law which 
 restricts the number of saloons by the population, as 
 one saloon to 500 or 1,000 inhabitants, has been found 
 to limit the open places of temptation. He commends 
 the law which forbids the presence of a saloon within 
 500 feet of a public park, or within a short distance of a 
 schoolhouse. In some cities the saloons are confined to 
 the business portion and thus kept at a distance from 
 the residences. All this educates the people to regard
 
 294 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Desirable 
 restrictions. 
 
 Government 
 ownership. 
 
 Growth of the 
 liquor traffic 
 in America. 
 
 the saloon as a menace of all good and to become ac- 
 customed to the idea of abolishing it altogether. 
 
 President Eliot summarizes the general restrictions 
 which should be sought as follows : There should be no 
 selling to minors, intoxicated persons, or habitual 
 drunkards. There should be no selling on holidays, 
 when multitudes are idle. Places of entertainment must 
 not be permitted to sell liquor, and no games or sport of 
 any sort should be tolerated in saloons. The place of 
 sale should be open to inspection from the street, so that 
 the force of public opinion may be fully felt by custom- 
 ers and dealers. 
 
 The experiment with the ' ' dispensary ' ' system in 
 South Carolina compels public study of the principle of 
 direct government control of the liquor traffic. The re- 
 sults of the study of the "Committee of Fifty/' how- 
 ever, do not indicate that tfie principle has yet had 
 a fair trial in the Southern States, or in any other in 
 this country. The chief reason for direct control of the 
 traffic by the government is that this will remove the 
 motive of private gain. But so long as the salaries 
 of agents rise and fall with the amount of patronage, 
 so long this principal object will be defeated. 
 
 All these plans have been tried and the custom of 
 drinking has, apparently, grown in America. The in- 
 fluence of immigrants from beer-drinking countries has 
 had its effect. In 1850 the consumption of all kinds of 
 liquors averaged 4.08 gallons per inhabitant ; in 1892 it 
 was 17.04 gallons. During this period the consumption 
 of spirits diminished from 2^ to \y 2 gallons per head, 
 but beer-drinking advanced from 1.58 to 15.10 gallons 
 per head of population. Wine-drinking increased 
 slightly, from 0.27 to 0.44 gallons per head. (Professor 
 Gould.)
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 295 
 
 In sheer despair of enforcing a prohibitory law, and in 
 moral revolt against license system, many friends of TheGothen- 
 
 . burg system. 
 
 temperance are considering thejjicandinavian system, \ 
 not with the expectation of imitating it, but in hope of 
 learning something from it. The essential elements of 
 this system have been carefully studied and stated by 
 Professor E. R. L. Gould, Mr. J. G. Brooks, Mr. John 
 Koren, and others, and they have strongly urged it for 
 adoption. 
 
 A few years ago a bill was introduced into the legisla- 
 ture of Massachusetts authorizing towns to adopt the 
 "Norwegian System," and the measure was defeated 
 chiefly by the liquor interest, by a single vote. It pro- 
 vided that a town might vote to license companies, not 
 more than one to each city or town, under certain regu- 
 lations. All hope of profits is cut off by the provision 
 that after five per cent interest has been paid on capital 
 the profits shall go to the aid of objects of general public 
 benefit and utility, as industrial education, coffee-houses 
 and reading rooms, parks, hospitals, public baths, and 
 sanitary improvements. 
 
 On the basis of Scandinavian experience it is claimed 
 that such a measure would work educationally in the its elements, 
 direction of the extinction of the traffic. No individual 
 is interested in the profits of the business. The state or 
 the town does not, as in the South Carolina law, have a 
 direct profit from the sale. Civil service rules govern 
 the employees and the entire affair is kept out of 
 politics. No liquor is sold to minors and drunkards, 
 because there is no motive to push the sale. It is easy 
 to enforce the restrictions as to hours of closing. It is 
 an essential part of the plan that in evenings halls must 
 be provided for the resort of working people, places for 
 labor exchange and entertainment, where alcoholic
 
 296 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 drinks are unknown. Gambling, loafing, impure litera- 
 ture, and immoral exhibitions are excluded. Distillers 
 and brewers no longer control the saloon as they do in 
 America, and powerful whisky rings, with corruption 
 funds and lobbyists working upon the electorate and 
 upon legislatures, are banished. 
 
 Mrs. Mary A. Livermore represents the rational atti- 
 tude of Prohibitionists toward this reform : 
 
 First, last, and always, I am a Prohibitionist, and I favor the 
 
 Testimonies. Norwegian Bill, because, if rightly understood, its tendency 
 
 will be toward prohibition, and if our good temperance people 
 
 would carefully study the bill I think their objections would 
 
 disappear. 
 
 And the testimony of Mr. Gould will have weight 
 with all who know him and his valuable studies of social 
 conditions in Europe and America : 
 
 S \5 j 
 
 I undertook a mission for the United States Department of 
 
 Labor to Sweden and Norway, for the purpose of studying 
 and reporting upon the methods of controlling the liquor 
 traffic adopted by -those countries. I went there absolutely 
 without prejudice of any sort ; I came away a convert to the 
 system. . . . It is a measure of progressive reform, sound 
 in principle, operating harmoniously with well-defined laws of 
 social advance. ... Its trial will do more than anything 
 else yet suggested to mitigate an intolerable social curse. 
 
 In the present imperfect condition of human nature 
 the Humane Society for the protection of dumb animals 
 society. and of little children from cruelty of thoughtless and 
 
 unfeeling men is a social necessity. There remain in 
 our civilized communities stray savages, ' ' relics ' ' of 
 primitive man, who have not yet realized the meaning of 
 the age, who have not learned that animals have rights 
 and that sentient beings have nerves. We cannot 
 permit these dwarfed natures to act out their impulses 
 any more than we can open the tiger cages of men-
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 297 
 
 ageries. Sympathy which does not defend the speech- 
 less lacks something of meeting the moral claims of this 
 century. The law of the Pentateuch gave the beasts of 
 burden a day of rest, and modern cities have not yet 
 fully attained the level of the best humanity. The local 
 society should secure suitable ordinances and regula- 
 tions, have agents to prosecute persons guilty of cruelty, 
 educate children in chivalry and kindness, and provide 
 means of securing to horses, cattle, and pets reasonable 
 treatment. The reactive influence of this social move- 
 ment is seen in gentle manners in home and school, in 
 kinder treatment of employees, and in more genial 
 customs of street and assembly. 
 
 The most radical reforms are those which touch the 
 domestic circle. In this connection it is a pleasure to 
 mention one of the most efficient and praiseworthy or- The Na u nai 
 ganizations of our age The National League for the pro&ctiotT of' e 
 Protection of the Family, of which Rev. S. W. Dike, theF * mil y- 
 D.D., Auburndale, Mass., is permanent secretary. 
 
 The moral disintegration of the family by conflict, 
 strife, cruelty, and divorce is far more sad and ruinous 
 than the sudden and premature dissolution by the death 
 of parents. Divorces have been increasing in this 
 country at an appalling rate. The statistical exhibit, 
 although unfairly compared with European tables, is, 
 on the best interpretation, enough to make us tremble 
 for our country and our civilization. After all miti- 
 gating considerations are urged we must acknowledge 
 that our nation is seriously in danger of general degra- 
 dation of the marital relation. 
 
 This important League was formed to resist 
 these demoralizing forces. It has proceeded upon these "' metho<i - 
 lines of work investigation, publication, education, 
 legislation, and watching the administration of laws
 
 298 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 affecting the family. It was largely due to the efforts of 
 this society that the United States government, through 
 the Labor Bureau, compiled a monumental report on 
 divorces and divorce legislation, and has passed uniform 
 regulations on the subject for the territories. It is no 
 longer thought wise to urge an amendment to the 
 constitution authorizing Congress to pass a uniform law 
 for all the states, since this would consume many years 
 and, probably, not secure progress. The league is 
 successfully urging the legislatures to raise the standards 
 and improve the laws respecting marriage and divorce. 
 The secretary has rendered a valuable national service 
 by writing and lecturing, and directing public thought 
 The secretary, and action. He constantly urges the preparation of 
 records and the collection of statistics of births, mar- 
 riages, and divorces. He shows the connection between 
 demoralized homes and the increase of juvenile crime. 
 He makes an impressive statement of the fact that 
 parents are the persons primarily responsible for habits 
 of intemperance, and that the home must be made 
 the chief organ of temperance reform. It is to the 
 family more than to school or law that he must look for 
 the most effective influences relating to the control and 
 regulation of the physical appetites, and the conquest of 
 the vices which attend their perversion. He concen- 
 trates public attention on the family as the primary in- 
 stitution for cultivating social impulses, for holding and 
 distributing property, for training in good citizenship, 
 for the most fundamental educational work, and for 
 keeping alive the deepest interest in religious knowledge 
 '' and worship. The name of the society, as all agree, 
 should be changed to correspond to the larger and more 
 positive program of action. Every church should sub- 
 scribe at least five dollars and make the pastor or some
 
 Conflicl with Anti-Social Institutions. 299 
 
 other person a local member of the league. The society 
 could make excellent use of a much larger income than 
 it now enjoys from all sources. The annual reports, 
 which are sent to all members, are important contribu- 
 tions to the literature of divorce reform and domestic 
 amelioration. 
 
 The most efficient instrument of reforms relating to 
 chastity is the family. The newspaper, the lecture, the Social P"" 1 ?- 
 sermon cannot discuss the subject very far without 
 doing more harm than good. All that can be said di- 
 rectly should be told youth, at the proper time, by the 
 parents ; and all that is necessary can be learned from 
 such a book as Martin's "The Human Body," and, for 
 younger minds, Margaret W. Morley's ( l A Song of 
 Life." 
 
 As there are mothers who have not the high ideals or 
 the scientific knowledge which prepare them for this 
 teaching function it has been found useful to hold 
 ' ' Mothers' Meetings ' ' as normal schools of domestic 
 morality. Pure-minded matrons have, in these assem- 
 blies, an opportunity to reach hundreds of children 
 through the mothers. 
 
 The legislative measures for restricting the evils of 
 impurity cannot be adequately treated here. But some 
 elements of law must be mentioned : all pictures, ges- 
 tures, exhibitions, and newspaper articles or advertise- 
 ments which are unfit for children to see should be at 
 least driven out of sight. Young girls exposed to 
 danger should be at once removed from the vicious 
 neighborhood. The corrupters of youth should be 
 hunted down and punished to the utmost limit of 
 severity. 
 
 After all, there is no security save in a purity which is 
 intelligent and not mere innocent ignorance ; in lofty
 
 300 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 ideals, splendid ambitions, useful occupation, reverence 
 for woman next to God, and a devotion to the welfare of 
 society which makes the soul shrink from anti-social acts 
 as from leprosy. 
 
 The vice of gambling can boast antiquity as great 
 
 Gambling. as that of drunkenness. With multitudes of men it is 
 a passion absolutely independent of the liquor habit, 
 and pitilessly consumes them like a fever. Public 
 gambling can be suppressed by the police, if there is a 
 strong local demand for it. The laws are usually suffi- 
 cient for this purpose. Happily the lottery is not 
 intrenched in national law and custom in the United 
 States as it is in France and Germany. The recent 
 victories of reformers over the lottery companies ought 
 to be remembered in hours of discouragement when 
 temporary defeat has befallen the leaders of other re- 
 forms. Every such gain makes the next advance more 
 promising. Slavery is dead. The lottery is dead. 
 Next! 
 
 All other reforms depend greatly on Sabbath customs. 
 
 Sunday rest. A general and profound change of belief has taken 
 place in American thought on this subject during this 
 century. The New England Sabbath is no longer pos- 
 sible or desirable. The legitimate interests of human 
 life are too varied to justify the use of one day in seven 
 precisely as our New England ancestors occupied its 
 hours. The modern system of industry and transporta- 
 tion has compelled the town to feel daily the life of the 
 nation and of the world. The tide of foreign immi- 
 gration has brought among us millions of honest and 
 religious people who hold with the cardinals and 
 Luther, not with Calvin, in respect to the observance 
 of the Lord's Day. To ignore these considerations ia 
 to waste life on a chimera.
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 301 
 
 Experience proves that we can secure a day of rest on 
 the Lord's Day by law. Ordinary industry can be sus- o f u ,a^. ion 
 pended, not absolutely but within reasonable limits, and 
 all employees can be secured thirty-six hours some time 
 in each week in all occupations. On this platform we 
 can unite all parties. 
 
 But a day of rest from ordinary occupations is an op- 
 portunity, not an achievement. When the one demon 
 of grinding toil has been expelled and the house swept 
 and garnished, seven devils are waiting to enter, unless 
 the good genius of the place has invited a house full of 
 good company. Puritanism has much to answer for in 
 diffusing abroad in this country a general impression 
 that Sunday must be a day of boredom and misery, in 
 which diversion is a sin. 
 
 Sunday reformers have not reached even the middle 
 of their social task when they have released the city 
 multitudes from the shop and closed the saloon. The 
 question of what can be done with twelve hours of idle 
 time once a week for 70,000,000 of people is one of the 
 most tremendous problems of our age. Church-going Diversity 
 
 . . 5 of Sunday 
 
 cannot meet the need. The ministry cannot have the thoughts, 
 monopoly of Sunday. Culture requires many special- 
 ized agencies. If we assume merely a negative attitude, 
 and are repressive and prohibitive in our methods, we 
 shall appear to be the enemies of joy and health in the 
 eyes of millions, and we shall misrepresent the Lord of 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 The English custom of having for weary people a 
 "Pleasant Sunday Afternoon" has been introduced Sl HJda" nt 
 into this country, and it is an example of the positive Afternoon.- 
 and beneficent method of reform by displacement. 
 Bright music is the chief element in these meetings. 
 Pictures, cheerful talks, instructive addresses, readings
 
 302 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Needs of 
 workingmen. 
 
 Jesus vs. the 
 Pharisees. 
 
 from the best literature, social converse, a cup of tea, 
 the sympathetic hearing of grievances and troubles and 
 wrongs, hints of a practical way out all within one 
 glad and inspiring hour that is a " Pleasant Sunday 
 Afternoon." It is the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the 
 Mount which makes the prohibition of Sinai unneces- 
 sary. A lamp will drive out darkness where a club 
 of knotted oak would make no impression. 
 
 The great masses of workingmen are honest and have 
 good purposes. They crave recreation. They will 
 have it and they ought to have it. Cramped muscles 
 and repressed faculties cry out in agony for something 
 different from the monotony of the bench and the fur- 
 row. We know what Jesus said of those Pharisaic re- 
 ligionists who were shocked at his doing good on the 
 Sabbath day. His example is still before us. If our 
 ministers and deacons would just leave their fine 
 churches a few Sundays, and move around among 
 the workingmen and rude boys whose homes are 
 absolutely without attractions, they would often gain 
 a new notion of the best way to spend Sunday. The 
 ' ' European Sunday ' ' has many bad features, but the 
 Puritan Sunday at the other extreme is from the stand- 
 point of health, knowledge, beauty, and social order an 
 ideal whose realization would bring national decay. 
 What social welfare requires is neither the Puritan, the 
 Pharisaic, nor the libertine's Sunday, but the Lord's 
 Day, which was ' ' made for man " ; a day so sweet, so 
 calm, so joyous, so full of all beauty in song and picture 
 and story, that the weary millions who have known its 
 pleasures will bless the Giver for its ever-welcome hours. 
 Here and there we find the beginnings of some efforts 
 to realize these dawning ideas. But the paralysis, the 
 superstition, and the apathy of tradition and custom re-
 
 Conflict with Anti-Social Institutions. 303 
 
 strict our freedom of invention and experiment. Mean- 
 time to the multitudes who might be helped Sunday is 
 an unmitigated curse, the occasion of all the debauchery 
 which must go with idleness, and from revolt against a 
 social order which presents many frowns but few smiles. 
 We have as a Christian people yet to learn that joy and 
 hope are better regenerative agencies than scolding and 
 tears.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Christianity 
 the mainspring 
 of progress. 
 
 Relation of 
 the churches 
 to Christianity. 
 
 THE INSTITUTIONS OF IDEALS : THE ANCIENT CON- 
 FEDERACY OF VIRTUE. 
 
 J. R. LOWELL not only explained the interior im- 
 pulses of the anti-slavery movement, but the inspiration 
 of all life-giving enterprises, when he wrote : 
 
 It is not partisanship, it is not fanaticism, that has forced 
 this matter of anti-slavery upon this American people, it is the 
 spirit of Christianity, which appeals from prejudices and predi- 
 lections to the moral consciousness of the individual man ; 
 that spirit as elastic as air, penetrative as heat, invulnerable as 
 sunshine, against which creed after creed and institution after 
 institution have measured their strength and been confounded ; 
 that restless spirit which refuses to crystallize in any sect 
 or form, but persists, a divinely commissioned radical and 
 reconstructor, in trying every generation with a new dilemma 
 between ease and interest on the one hand, and duty on the 
 other. . . . Shall it be said that its kingdom is not of this 
 world ? In one sense, and that the highest, it certainly is 
 not ; but just as certainly Christ never intended those words 
 to be used as a subterfuge by which to escape our responsi- 
 bilities of business and politics. 
 
 Christianity is the life of the Eternal Word in the 
 souls of men, and it thrives and blossoms everywhere. 
 Its clusters of fruit hang by all highways, its springs 
 well up by every path. It can use any institution. Its 
 sky arches over all peoples and kingdoms. It is the 
 moral atmosphere of every living soul. It is the light of 
 every man that cometh into the world. But the church 
 is that human institution whose avowed and conscious 
 purpose it is to teach the highest truth, to keep alive 
 
 304
 
 TTie Institutions of /deals. 305 
 
 the ethical conscience, to awaken the spiritual faculties, 
 to be a living witness by word and deed of the indwell- 
 ing Christ. The church is not to be identified with the 
 perfected kingdom of God, but it is the chief instrument 
 of establishing that blessed reign. 
 
 Assuming that man is naturally a religious being, as 
 he is naturally a musical being, a social being, a reason- The church a 
 
 natural growth. 
 
 ing creature then the church is a legitimate institution. 
 It is not imposed on man, but grows out of man's 
 needs and cravings. It expresses, manifests, and culti- 
 vates faculties which are necessary to human complete- 
 ness, to perfect joy, to rich life. Man is not entirely 
 man till he is "born again," that is, until out of self- 
 consciousness, aesthetic consciousness, moral conscious- 
 ness, has developed a God-consciousness, a sense of 
 dependence on and relation to the Invisible, an obliga- 
 tion to the Eternal Righteousness, a grateful and loving 
 response to Infinite Goodness. The family exists be- 
 cause it expresses certain needs of human life, and it 
 persists through the centuries because it is the most 
 suitable institution for its purposes. The galleries and 
 schools of art have come into being because there is in 
 humanity a taste for beauty. Academies and colleges 
 spring up because man has a divinely implanted desire 
 to learn and comprehend. Court-houses and legal 
 systems are developed out of the human sense of justice rhe mauifcfc . 
 and social requirements of order. The church, in a religious life 
 similar way, has come to exist because man is a creature 
 who holds commerce with the sky ; because he has 
 infinite wants and loves and hopes. All social institu- 
 tions are human, since they manifest human desires, 
 and all are divine because the universe is a manifesta- 
 tion of that mysterious will "we so much wish yet 
 dread to learn/'
 
 306 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 If the church did nothing else but minister to the 
 The specific religious wants of man its existence would be socially 
 the C church. justifiable. Religion has created a magnificent litera- 
 ture of poetry, philosophy, oratory, sacred sentences of 
 wisdom, maxims, and suggestions of unbounded realms 
 of spiritual heritage. It is in the church that men 
 discover a freedom, an expansion, an enfranchisement 
 which are denied them amidst the petty cares and 
 trivial occupations of street and shop. This ' ' literature 
 of power ' ' lives long after the ' ' literature of knowl- 
 edge" has become antiquated. Scientific treatises are 
 soon pushed aside by recent discoveries, but the 
 Psalms, the orations of Isaiah, the Sermon on the 
 Mount, the letters of Paul, have undying influence. 
 Religion has not only a literature, but an art. Its 
 architecture is most sublime; its "storied windows 
 richly dight ' ' are glorious with color and sacred memo- 
 ries ; its symbolism suggests ineffable themes ; its rites 
 bind centuries to eternity, and the living with the 
 mighty dead ; its poetry, heroic and lyric, carries on its 
 broad current the aspirations of the race ; its music of 
 anthems, hymns, songs, psalms, and oratorios is, of 
 itself, worth one day in seven to hear and enjoy. 
 
 But the church does not and cannot minister to the 
 social works of religious wants of men without affecting all life. When 
 its bells chime out to summon the devout to prayer, a 
 hush falls on wheels and hammers, and the solemn 
 vibrations influence every calling. It is this "social 
 work ' ' of the church which is the particular theme of 
 this closing chapter, and especially the forms taken by 
 that work in the United States. When we raise trees 
 for fruit we also, incidentally, have grateful shade and 
 beautiful flowers. So the indirect influences of the 
 church are inseparable from its direct work. These
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 307 
 
 institutions thus created by the religious energies of be- 
 nevolence and justice are too numerous to be tabulated 
 or described. Some of the most significant forms must 
 be selected as types of a remarkable and growing move- 
 ment of our age. 
 
 If we make a survey of human misery and trouble, of 
 
 ... , . Analysis of 
 
 social wrongs and evils, of aspirations and growing social needs, 
 desires, we shall discover that the churches of America 
 are already attempting to minister in every direction, 
 either directly or by means of agencies which they 
 control. 
 
 In the United States the care of defectives is chiefly 
 intrusted to the state. In all commonwealths may be Defectives, 
 found special institutions for the insane, and usually for 
 the blind and for deaf mutes. With the growth of 
 intelligent charity all feeble-minded children are being 
 gathered in schools and farm-homes by public authori- 
 ties. Counties and towns provide asylums for aged and 
 imbecile persons. The churches occasionally hold 
 services in these institutions, and the attitude of the 
 officers to religious visitors is usually very friendly. 
 For prisons chaplains are sometimes employed at the 
 expense of the public. 
 
 Hospitals, general and special, are established in 
 many ways, sometimes by taxation, but often by associa- the sick. 
 tions which represent a denomination or the people of 
 several denominations in cooperation. These associa- 
 tions receive contributions from citizens generally, and 
 where they are not connected with a particular sect but 
 little notice is taken of the creed of the governing body. 
 It is generally understood, however, that the boards of 
 directors or trustees are chosen from the various Chris- 
 tian societies in order to secure funds and to maintain 
 an unsectarian control.
 
 305 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Poor relief. 
 
 Mutual benefit 
 associations. 
 
 The reform 
 societies. 
 
 Modes of 
 
 organization. 
 
 The same thing is true of other forms of relief. Day 
 nurseries, benevolent societies for assisting poor families 
 in their homes, lodging-houses for homeless men, emer- 
 gency relief, districts of associated charities, are fre- 
 quently sustained by united efforts of many churches. 
 
 The fraternal societies of wage-earners who accumu- 
 late funds for assistance in case of sickness, accident, 
 non-employment, and burials, are not usually connected 
 with any denomination among Protestants. These 
 friendly societies, however, almost uniformly have re- 
 ligious rituals, and the members call each other 
 "brother," a custom which has become less common 
 in the churches, especially of cities. The Roman Cath- 
 olics, however, have mutual benefit societies entirely 
 composed of communicants of that body, and those 
 societies are very strong in numbers and income. 
 Very powerful organizations for friendly help exist 
 among the Jews. 
 
 The associations for social reforms, mentioned in the 
 preceding chapter, have no organic relation to the 
 church except those specifically named as under the 
 supervision of the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, or 
 Protestant Episcopal Church. And yet the advocates of 
 temperance, of social purity, of protection of animals 
 and children from cruelty, for the suppression of the 
 lottery and gambling, and all unmoral customs, seek 
 and find in the churches an audience and following. 
 The pulpit and the denominational newspapers are the 
 most independent and outspoken advocates of many re- 
 forms when political motives make the secular news- 
 paper either dumb or antagonistic. 
 
 Perhaps the following are the most common and 
 characteristic methods of organizing religious people for 
 social service in the United States : the local church,
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 309 
 
 the denominational mission society, the incorporated as- 
 sociation composed of members of all churches, the 
 national young people's societies, orders, or sisterhoods, 
 and coordinating agencies of integration. 
 
 It has been found by experience that the work of a 
 local church, planted in a community, should minister to 
 the whole complex nature of human beings. It seems 
 certain that the wonderful success of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association has had much to do with the 
 recent and remarkable modifications of local church 
 service, especially in the crowded parts of cities, where 
 home life is so meager and the conditions of existence 
 are so trying. 
 
 Without any sort of agreement or general plan, 
 simply in response to local demands, many pastors and 
 churches have undertaken various forms of ministry to 
 their neighbors and constituency. Within a few years 
 the principal aims and motives of these churches have 
 found distinct expression and formulation in the mani- 
 festo of the "Open and Institutional Church League." 
 
 The open and institutional church depends upon the de- 
 velopment of a certain spirit, rather than upon the aggreea- Platform of the 
 . f . , ,. Open and Insti- 
 tiun of special appliances and methods. tutional Church 
 
 Inasmuch as Christ came not to be ministered unto, but to Lca s ue - 
 minister, the open and institutional church, filled and moved 
 by his spirit of ministering love, seeks to become the center 
 and source of all beneficent and philanthropic effort, and to 
 take the leading part in every movement which has for its end 
 the alleviation of human suffering, the elevation of man, and 
 the betterment of the world. 
 
 Thus the open and institutional church is known by its 
 spirit of ministration rather than by any specific methods of 
 expressing that spirit ; it stands for open church doors for 
 every day and all the day, free seats, a plurality of Christian 
 workers, the personal activity of all churcli members, a min- 
 istry to all the community through educational, reformatory,
 
 3 io 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Methods of 
 Ihe institu- 
 tional church. 
 
 The ministry 
 of health. 
 
 and philanthropic channels, to the end that men may be wo$ 
 to Christ and his service, that the church may be brought back 
 to the simplicity and comprehensiveness of its primitive life, 
 until it can be said of every community, "The Kingdom of 
 Heaven is within you " and " Christ is all and in all." 
 
 It is almost dangerous to describe the external 
 machinery and appliances of a modern institutional 
 church, because people are sorely tempted to copy the 
 form while they miss the spirit and aim of the move- 
 ment. This is fatal to genuine life, and all slavish 
 imitation produces reaction and disgust. It should be 
 remembered that all really useful churches of this type 
 have slowly grown into their present forms ; that they 
 have carefully studied the physical, educational, moral, 
 and religious needs of the parish and then sought the 
 most direct and inexpensive method of meeting the 
 demand. No two of these churches are alike. There 
 is a wonderful variety in their plans. Let us select a 
 few illustrations of devices and explain them by the 
 social conditions surrounding the urban churches. In 
 order to make a somewhat systematic presentation we 
 must select and put together features of several well- 
 known societies. 
 
 An intelligent and practical pastor finds his lot of 
 duty cast in a neighborhood where the rate of mortality, 
 especially among infants, is very high. As he visits the 
 people and becomes intimate with their life and habits 
 he discovers the causes. In college he was trained in 
 modern physical science, and his powers of observation 
 and reasoning are acute. Knowledge burdens him with 
 a sense of responsibility. He dare not ascribe to "Prov- 
 idence" the disease, misery, and mourning which he 
 knows are due to ignorance, crowding, bad cooking, 
 decayed food, bacteria, filth, and darkness. A medieval
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 311 
 
 monk, with a purely classical culture, would not have 
 thought of these things ; but a modern pastor has at 
 least a smattering of chemistry and microscopy, and his 
 conscience has modern contents. 
 
 If the city did its duty, perhaps, or the state, these 
 evils would not exist. Meantime this knight of the 
 nineteenth century must fight alone against darkness 
 and disease. The babies are fed impure milk. He and 
 his wife know about Pasteurized milk and they supply 
 it. There are no bathrooms in the houses, and the 
 stench of unwashed bodies and bedding is shocking 
 to the visitors. What can be done ? Wait for the slow 
 
 Methods. 
 
 action of a municipality? No. There is a room in the 
 church basement which, with a little expense, can be 
 fitted up with spray baths for ten or twenty persons at a 
 time, and the pennies paid will almost meet the expense. 
 The clerks and factory hands suffer from cramped posi- 
 tions and confinement. They need a gymnasium. They 
 cannot afford to go to a swell club. It is easy to set the 
 chairs aside in the prayer-meeting room and have dumb- 
 bells and Indian clubs ready for use. Boxing and 
 wrestling do not require much apparatus, and a room 
 can soon be cleared for developing athletes. 
 
 The boys are in danger of physical and moral ruin 
 unless they have suitable physical drill. There is a 
 young man who has belonged to a military company, 
 knows the manual of arms, and is pining for a field 
 of usefulness. He will turn agnostic in six months if he 
 merely listens to sermons and psalms. Give him the 
 mission of saving twenty boys in a brigade and he works 
 out his own salvation, even without fear and trembling. 
 
 This pastor discovers that poor women in his parish 
 are begging because young children keep them all day 
 from work. He has heard of the creche, named origi-
 
 3 I2 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Bethlehem 
 erdle. 
 
 Industrial 
 training. 
 
 nally from the Bethlehem manger crib, and he asks some 
 of his well-to-do friends to rent a room, hire a nurse, 
 and provide care for these infants whose mothers are 
 obliged to go out to wash or weave during the day. 
 Thus the baby's life is saved, the family is preserved 
 from pauperism, and the mother is taught the scientific 
 care of infants. 
 
 Some of the little fellows, between the ages of three 
 and six years, are proper subjects for a kindergarten, 
 but this is a luxury for rich folks. Not so. A wealthy- 
 lady is glad to furnish a room. A circle of King's 
 Daughters in an uptown fashionable church will pay the 
 salary of a teacher out of their pin-money. The thing is 
 done. The poor children enjoy the luxury of the rich. 
 Father Froebel comes to make them turn work into 
 play and learning into song. Pianos are cheap, and the 
 young souls are developed into musical critics. Harsh 
 noises come to be disagreeable to them. They learn 
 that a gentle voice is an excellent thing. Weary fathers 
 are refreshed and delighted in the evening to hear the 
 simple sweet melodies learned in the children's garden. 
 Christian teachers have cunningly woven into the 
 poetry a canticle of the glad tidings, and the midgets 
 become missionaries to drinking fathers. Purgatory is 
 driven back by song. 
 
 The girls do not know how to sew and darn and 
 mend. Will this pastor wait for an angel or a school 
 board to instruct them ? Rather will he bring an angel 
 from some earthly mansion, some young people's 
 society, to teach these eager girls the useful arts. And 
 what does this signify ? Garments are more tidy, habits 
 of order prevail, the earnings of the father are doubled 
 in purchasing power. At the same time the girls learn 
 beautiful songs ; they see the gracious and refined man-
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 313 
 
 ners of the young ladies ; they imitate the gentle ways ; 
 they discover that wealth is not heartless, that the good 
 God has not forgotten them. 
 
 Then come the cooking schools. They are not a 
 luxury, but rather a necessity. These people are fresh 
 from Italy and do not know how to prepare American 
 foods. There are some from Ireland, and many Ameri- 
 cans who are in a similar plight. In a few years those 
 same girls will respond to our advertisements for domes- 
 tic help, for cooks, and they will come asking the wages 
 of experts. Let us help them in their own neighbor- 
 hoods, for their own sake and for ours. The institu- 
 tional church, finding no provision for this social want, 
 opens another room in the basement, employs a teacher, 
 and she proclaims a gospel of healthy diet, with all 
 other gospel which a wise Christian woman carries along 
 with her, whatever she is doing. 
 
 The poor are like the rich they will save if it is not 
 
 rr.i i , i Economic 
 
 too inconvenient. The pastor sees boys shooting device* 
 craps," making themselves gamblers. His daily walks 
 and talks reveal a thousand wastes where waste means 
 woe. There is no penny postal system in this country 
 more's the pity ! Even if we had a postal savings 
 bank these people would not form a habit of going to it 
 without tuition. The institutional church opens a penny 
 provident fund. It collects the pennies of the children. 
 Its visitors go from house to house preaching the doc- 
 trine of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard." New 
 habits of thrift are formed, and the foundations of inde- 
 pendence are laid. 
 
 We may use an English example of what many 
 pastors could do in America. In a small town like \%$g 
 Berkhamsted, in Hertfordshire, a distributive union of 
 330 families already own, after a few years' effort, a joint
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 Labor con- 
 ferences. 
 
 Themes for 
 discussion. 
 
 capital of ^3,000 ($15,000). At the village of Childe 
 Okeford, in Dorset, the Rev. T. G. Beymer commenced 
 in 1883 a cooperative village store. In two months it 
 had repaid the loan of initial capital of ^200 ($1,000). 
 Debt has been gradually abolished. The stimulating 
 principle of the nest-egg has been learned by the poor. 
 Wages are being more wisely spent. A beneficial 
 change is passing over the cottages. On the continent 
 of Europe many similar examples could be found, where 
 the pastors have set up Raiffeisen banks, driven out 
 usury, and won back the dull, hopeless, discouraged 
 peasants to thrift and religion. 
 
 Pastors, employers, and professional people cannot 
 join trades unions, but they might extend friendly 
 acquaintance among wage-workers by joining the 
 fraternal lodges, cooperative banks, and mutual benefit 
 clubs to which the working people belong. This is 
 already done by many sagacious Christian leaders. 
 Politicians know the value of such connections, and 
 sometimes use them for selfish ends. 
 
 There are many troublesome questions which ought 
 to be discussed before religious people by representa- 
 tives of the trades unions, in order that professional men 
 may realize the sufferings and the aspirations of the 
 unions. Such problems are the tenement-house reform, 
 the sweating system, eviction laws and their harsh ad- 
 ministration, the housing of janitors in apartment 
 houses, conciliation and arbitration in trade disputes, 
 the treatment of children and youth in factories, and the 
 wages of women. It is often a great relief to pent-up 
 feelings of sorrow or of wrong if they can find a sympa- 
 thetic hearing, even if the hearer can do nothing but 
 listen. On the other hand, benevolent and honorable 
 employers would frequently mitigate evils if brought to
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 315 
 
 iheir attention. The church parlor is a good place for 
 such conferences ; but the officers of the church must 
 know how to keep their tempers when the mouthpieces 
 of the trades unions and of socialism vent their epithets 
 of abuse. We should remember that this invective, 
 however coarse, is not altogether without justification, 
 and we must be patient till the noisy torrent runs clear. 
 
 Our open church believes in a complete manhood, in 
 a full development of faculty. It is not blind to the sociability, 
 craving for fellowship. Its minister does not stand in 
 the street asking men to come out of the warm saloon 
 and shiver with him on . % e pavement. He invites them 
 to rooms where they wi. find a purer air, games, recrea- 
 tions, magic lantern shows, concerts, "soft drinks" 
 rather than hard cider and bad whisky. If they must 
 smoke, he has a room where they can go and choke to 
 their hearts' content. He will chat with them there, 
 a comrade and friend. He will make them feel at home 
 and tell their story. Next Sunday they will get back 
 their own vocabulary in a sermon, but it will be trans- 
 figured, glorified. 
 
 The institutional church may find opportunities of 
 ministering to the hunger for knowledge and beauty. It 
 has a reading-room, rival of the public dramshop, and 
 a good deal better. Not too fine, lest a hod carrier 
 with lime on his shoes may not feel at home as he drops 
 in on his way home. '. here are many illustrated papers. 
 The place is still. Courtesy prevails. No policeman is 
 called in, because there is a sense of gratitude and fair 
 play in these rough, strong men. 
 
 They will listen to lectures, but the speaker must have 
 a genius for illustration and humor, and he must have 
 a stereopticon. These men will crowd the hall and fol- 
 low you the world over and up among the stars, if you
 
 316 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 lead them with pictures. But they cannot endure prose. 
 
 f e uest in They want poetry. Of plain, hard matter-of-fact they 
 
 have enough all day, all the years. They will hear of 
 religion, too, any night of the week, if it comes down 
 into life, and is not separated from experience. All 
 shams and pretense they detect, abhor, and punish on 
 the spot. Noble sentiment will be applauded. Music 
 will soothe or stir them. They can be made to see the 
 difference between good drawing and caricature in 
 painting. Catch them young and they will learn to 
 render classic music. The open church has musical 
 classes. It is a schoolhouse for those who have no 
 other school. It has a library of choice books, if the 
 public library is too far away or does not fully meet the 
 requirements of the people. All things to all men that 
 it may by all means save some this is the principle of a 
 divine pedagogy. 
 
 The open church has for its ideal daily services for 
 prayer and teaching. On Sunday seats are free. Sup- 
 
 Worsiuyand port comes from voluntary contributions, gifts, or 
 
 evangelism. _ ,.,.,, , i 
 
 endowments. In this kind of work rented pews are 
 empty pews. A noble business man of Boston vowed 
 when he was young and poor that, if he became rich, 
 he would see to it that the poor had in at least one 
 church as good music as the rich. He did become 
 wealthy and did not forget his vow. In the institutional 
 church of which he is a member and a benefactor may 
 be heard some of the best voices of the city. Not all 
 such churches can command equal income, but all aim 
 to make the service of worship splendid, attractive, fre^ 
 and sincere. 
 
 The evangelistic, missionary spirit is intense in these 
 churches. It is not "secularized" by the numerous 
 forms of ministry. On the contrary, these agencies
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 317 
 
 tend to the supreme end of the church, all contribute to 
 the highest good. 
 
 But the open church is more than an attraction, it is 
 a mission. It goes out into the highways and byways 
 of the city, and carries its message to the indifferent 
 and the hostile. It multiplies pastors and visitors. Its 
 corps of trained nurses or deaconesses has free access to 
 humble rooms when sickness and sorrow prepare the 
 heart for the heavenly call. Happily we are now intro- 
 ducing into America that method of woman's ministry 
 which Pastor Fliedner made so famous at Kaiserswerth 
 in the German Fatherland. In connection with the 
 institutional church movement these trained nurses are 
 having already an unlimited field of usefulness. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most characteristic social institu- 
 tions of the American church is the Young Men's THY.M. c. A. 
 Christian Association. It is founded on a distinct and 
 articulate recognition of the fact that man is a complex 
 being, having many interdependent wants, and the fact 
 that man is an organic unity. Every member of the 
 body is connected by a muscular and nervous and bony 
 system with every other member. Body and intellect 
 act and react on each other. Morality and religion are 
 influenced by the studies, the work, the recreations of 
 men, and in turn react on all that one does and thinks 
 and wills. It is a clear vision of this deep law of the 
 organic unity of the individual which created the 
 method of the Young Men's Christian Association, and 
 the idea has become more clear and fixed with experi- 
 ence. 
 
 If we enter the building of a completely developed 
 Y. M. C. A., where the central principles are fully ex- ! 
 pressed, we shall find three fairly distinct lines of work 
 the gymnasium and bath for the body, the night classes
 
 318 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 for the intellectual life, the Bible classes and evangelistic 
 services for the religious nature. 
 
 The relation of these societies to the churches is very 
 intimate. The voting members must be also members 
 of some ' ' evangelical ' ' church, and the constitution re- 
 quires that the officers shall represent the ' ' evangelical ' ' 
 creeds. Associate members, who need not be church 
 members, have all privileges except voting and control. 
 
 The ' ' liberal ' ' churches, having strong objections to 
 these restrictions, have established similar associations 
 of their own in some of the cities, and in connection 
 with particular churches have developed ' ' institutional ' ' 
 agencies which perform the same functions as those just 
 described. 
 
 Recognizing the beneficial influence of the associa- 
 
 ThcY. W.C.A. tions for young men, a strong effort has been made to 
 
 furnish corresponding advantages for young women. 
 
 The essential features of these institutions have been 
 
 indicated in a previous chapter (Chapter III.). 
 
 The Salvation Army was established in 1861 by 
 William Booth, and set up its banners in America in 
 
 The Salvation _ ... ., , 
 
 Army and the 1879. It presents, like all popular movements, many 
 
 American . , ... .. , , , , . .. 
 
 Volunteers. points for criticism. Artists declare that their music is 
 intolerable ; sermonizers insist that their exhortations 
 violate the canons of sacred rhetoric ; devotees of 
 fashion are confident that the lassies show bad taste in 
 bonnets ; philosophers and theologians consider their 
 teaching beneath contempt ; people who boast of their 
 humility dislike such a parade of religion ; reverent 
 worshipers are shocked at their parodies of sacred 
 song and their rude familiarity with Deity; patriotism 
 cries out against the despotic military policy which 
 holds the officers in the grip of austere discipline and 
 yet the army moves on.
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 319 
 
 The unfortunate division of 1896 reminds one of the 
 days when sects arose over doctrines or rules, and yet 
 the two bodies move forward to the same end by some- 
 what different methods. 
 
 No one can foretell the issue ; no mortal can predict 
 the consequences of their sensational methods. But 
 this much is certain : the Salvation Army has compelled 
 the members of the churches to consider the problems 
 of the "submerged twentieth," to see that the con- 
 ventional ways and places are not adequate ; that 
 multitudes are alienated from the church who might be 
 helped ; that they who touch the soul must minister to 
 the body, as Jesus did ; that while many able ministers 
 preach on Sunday evenings to almost empty houses, 
 they might, by going to halls and theaters, speak to 
 thousands. No man has a right to criticise these rude 
 workmen so long as he makes no attempt in the same 
 field. 
 
 In our cities there are men whose clothing, habits, 
 speech, culture, and history exclude them from the Evangelism 
 regular churches. The ' ' rescue mission ' ' has a field wa'ndfrlnl and 
 for itself, but the more varied ' ' institutional church ' ' 
 is far more hopeful. Experience soon shows us that a 
 man may be sincerely ' ' converted ' ' and yet sink back 
 into bad habits unless he is helped to work and higher 
 companionship. 
 
 The specialized forms of ministry demand specialized 
 training schools. The Lutherans and Catholics have Training o 
 led the way in establishing schools for training deacon- rctivi e ties for 
 esses and sisters for the care of the sick. But other 
 denominations are rapidly following their example. The 
 Y. M. C. A. has established classes for training the 
 "secretaries" who are charged with the multifarious 
 duties of superintending the work for young men.
 
 320 
 
 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 The King's 
 Daughters 
 and Sons. 
 
 "In His 
 Name. 
 
 Various institutes and training schools have been 
 founded for discovering and developing the gifts of 
 persons who will become assistants of pastors, evan- 
 gelists, leaders of rescue missions, colporteurs, and 
 Sunday-school superintendents. 
 
 Among unsectarian organizations few have had a 
 more rapid growth or are doing a nobler work than the 
 International Order of the King's Daughters and Sons. 
 Started eleven years ago by ten women, in New York 
 City, it has increased until its members are found all 
 over the world. In 1891 "International" was legally 
 added to its title. Its purposes are ' ' to develop 
 spiritual life and to stimulate Christian activities," and 
 all who accept these aims and purposes, and who ' ' hold 
 themselves responsible to the King, our Lord and 
 Savior Jesus Christ," are welcome to its membership. 
 
 As its name indicates, the order accepts and teaches 
 the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Its 
 first work is to strive to win the individual heart for 
 Christ, so that the individual life may be governed and 
 guided by his spirit. "Within its ranks are found not 
 only the little child and the wayworn pilgrim, but some 
 of the noblest men and women who, in the church, the 
 state, the university, and the business world, to-day are 
 shaping the policy and guiding the affairs of the 
 nation." The King's Daughters and Sons, for the 
 love of Christ, and "In His Name," are ministering to 
 the souls and bodies of men ; "building churches ; pay- 
 ing mortgages on those already built ; educating the 
 young men and women for the ministry and for the 
 foreign mission field ; taking care of orphans and 
 widows, of the old and the sick ; building hospitals and 
 infirmaries ; sending trained nurses to the homes of the 
 poor ; and following the sailors with evidences of loving
 
 TTte Institutions of Ideals. 321 
 
 care." Nearly 400,000 have taken the silver cross as 
 the outward symbol of their pledge of love and service, 
 and more than one thousand different lines of work 
 upon which they have entered are recorded at the head- 
 quarters of the order. 
 
 The remarkable growth of the church societies of 
 young people, under the inspiration of the Young 
 People's Society of Christian Endeavor, is a social factor 
 of the first order. Its ministry to the religious life is its 
 chief glory ; but religion means to these hosts of edu- 
 cated youth a living out of the Golden Rule. Hence 
 we see that those organizations are pushing the work of 
 education, Sunday-schools, rational entertainments, in- 
 dustrial classes, temperance reforms, defense of the day 
 of rest, political purity, and all the movements for 
 social betterment. 
 
 If one desires to see how general and real the devo- 
 tion to religious life is in the United States he must 
 study the Sunday-school. According to statistics pub- 
 lished in 1896 we had 142,089 schools, 1,476,369 teach- 
 ers, 11,556,806 pupils, and there had been a gain in 
 three years of 1,337,967 in the grand total. In Canada 
 there were 55,050 teachers and 467,292 pupils. This 
 institution is absolutely voluntary, and, with very few 
 exceptions, all these teachers serve without pay. In no 
 country in the world is the Sunday-school so well 
 equipped and so enthusiastically supported as in 
 America. The general organization of this movement 
 includes a committee in each township, a county com- 
 mittee, a state convention, a national and international 
 convention, and, to crown all, a world's Sunday-school 
 convention. Who can measure the social importance 
 of this vast army of students of righteousness, banded 
 together by common beliefs, hopes, and affections ?
 
 322 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 It has long been felt that the church ought to return 
 ihe e famn r y h and mora l inspiration to the institution out of which all 
 other institutions grow the family. Dr. Dike has 
 made this idea central in the league of which he is 
 secretary. About 1881 a movement was promoted by 
 Dr. W. A. Duncan which deserves the attention of all 
 philanthropists " The Home Department of the Sunday- 
 school." Many persons are not church-goers, the in- 
 valid, the aged, those too poor to provide suitable cloth- 
 ing, and those who are indifferent. Such persons are 
 visited by an agent of the church school and invited to 
 sign a card which pledges them to study the lesson at 
 home, unless prevented by some good cause. They are 
 furnished with lesson helps and enrolled as members. 
 Traveling men in this way keep up their connection 
 with the school while on their journeys. A family in 
 the far West, on prairie or deep in the forest, is a living 
 member of the old church in Connecticut. A domestic 
 servant saw boys stealing fruit in a garden, invited them 
 to her kitchen, and formed them into a class. Thus the 
 two most ancient institutions of society, family and sanc- 
 tuary, are closely united and are made reciprocally help- 
 ful. The home department is full of promise of further 
 development of this prolific idea that the family is 
 central in all educational work. 
 
 The disposition to subordinate self to social good, 
 Coordinating to make partisan and denominational interests serve 
 human welfare, has created agencies of coordination and 
 cooperation. In many communities there are local 
 societies, ministers' meetings, civic federations, Chris- 
 tian citizenship leagues and others which act in various 
 ways as organs for the religious and reforming convic- 
 tions which are held in common. 
 
 Denominational societies on a voluntary basis are
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 323 
 
 formed for the prosecution of various kinds of missions 
 and church extensions, as city mission societies, state 
 conventions, national missionary societies, and publica- 
 tion houses. Each denomination provides for the en- 
 largement of its Sunday-school work in new places, 
 largely in connection with the organs of publication. 
 The Evangelical Alliance has no legislative powers 
 and seeks no control over the churches. Its mission is National union 
 
 .... ... societies. 
 
 to promote unity of feeling, thought, and action in that 
 large field where differences of creed have no place. Its 
 discussions, to which men of all churches have con- 
 tributed, have helped to concentrate attention upon 
 "practical Christianity," to show the church at large 
 where its ministry was most needed, to organize the best 
 thinking upon those problems, and so to promote econ- 
 omy of force and secure liberality of action and generos- 
 ity of sacrifice. There seems to be a place for it like 
 that of the central committee of the inner mission in the 
 German state church. The time is approaching when 
 at least all Protestants will unite in a systematic way to 
 consolidate and direct their philanthropic endeavors. 
 Unity of creed is out of the question, but real spiritual 
 and practical union is already locally realized in a hun- 
 dred ways. The Evangelical Alliance appears to be the 
 best organization for advancing this desirable unification 
 of all the church forces which make for charity and 
 righteousness. 
 
 The Convention of Christian Workers is composed 
 
 . . n . i i Convention 
 
 chiefly of persons who are deeply interested in rescue of Christian 
 
 ...... , Workers. 
 
 mission work in this country. Its members are in touch 
 with the vagrant and unsteady classes of our cities, and 
 they have offered many examples of heroic sacrifice. 
 
 The American Sunday-school Union was organized in 
 1824. Some conception of its work may be formed from
 
 324 
 
 Social Spirit in America. 
 
 open church 
 
 League. 
 
 Multiplication 
 
 of organs. 
 
 the fact that in three years (1884-87) this old society 
 brought 185,034 children into 4,947 new Sunday- 
 schools ; aided 4,825 other schools ; visited 92,584 
 families ; supplied 45,019 destitute persons with the 
 Scriptures ; and held 27,247 religious meetings. 
 
 The Open and Institutional Church League, already 
 mentioned, has for its object a band of union between 
 churches of this type and the extension of their 
 principles. 
 
 It is impossible to name in this place all the institu- 
 tions which the churches have, directly or indirectly, 
 created for the amelioration of human life, for aiding to 
 make man's life complete and perfect in body, mind, 
 and spirit, to bring all men into fraternal and equitable 
 relations. What has been mentioned is but an im- 
 perfect suggestion and illustration of the luxuriant and 
 generous outgrowth of the social spirit at work in the 
 churches. It is not claimed that these societies are 
 doing their whole duty. They fall far short of it. But 
 the springs of vitality are in them ; they produce foliage 
 and fruit ; and they give promise of better things. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Many have complained that the societies auxiliary to 
 the church are too numerous ; that too much time, 
 energy, and money are expended upon them in propor- 
 
 . \, , . 
 
 tion to the work accomplished ; that machinery con- 
 sumes the power without corresponding product ; and 
 that the church itself is lost out of sight. There is 
 some ground for this criticism, and it suggests an ex- 
 planation and a measure of relief. 
 
 The explanation of these societies lies chiefly in the 
 following facts : that these improvements always begin 
 with a devoted, self-sacrificing, and far-seeing minority
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 325 
 
 which dares not wait for the majority before it launches 
 its enterprise. Why did the anti-slavery societies 
 organize outside the churches? Because the churches 
 persecuted or misunderstood them, and clothed them in Pioneers oi 
 
 progress. 
 
 wet blankets. Why did the temperance societies 
 organize separately ? Because the churches could not 
 be brought to support the movement, and because the 
 combined membership of all workers of all denomina- 
 tions was necessary to success. Why did the foreign 
 and home missionary societies develop independently of 
 ecclesiastical machinery ? Because, in some denomina- 
 tions at least, only a minority was favorable to missions, 
 and the great majority was indifferent or hostile. In 
 the same way the Sunday-school movement has been 
 compelled to erect its own machinery and pursue its 
 own path. The majority must be won to a new cause 
 by examples of success more than by verbal arguments. 
 Nearly all our charitable institutions depend on a com- 
 paratively small minority of members for support. 
 There never was an age when there was not a social 
 necessity for the organization of societies auxiliary to 
 the church, friendly to its interests and aims, yet some- 
 what self-supporting and self-governing. When the 
 prophetic minority has demonstrated the value of its 
 work the church as a body may safely adopt it as its 
 own. This seems to be the most practical method of 
 forward movements. 
 
 The church is not and cannot be exempt from the 
 universal laws of organic and social evolution. Prog- 
 ress in life implies specialization and multiplication of 
 organs and functions. The egg of a bird is at first a 
 homogeneous mass and no particular organ is dis- 
 coverable. During the process of brooding the various 
 parts of the bird manifest themselves in special forms,
 
 326 The Social Spirit in America. 
 
 and when the shell is broken the creature is equipped 
 
 for its various functions, marvelously complex. The 
 
 low forms of life, as the jelly fish, have no particular 
 
 Higheriife hands or eyes, while the highest forms are endlessly 
 
 multiplies ' ... 
 
 machinery. diversified. Savage society is simple, while civilized 
 society is complicated. The primitive church was a 
 single cell, while the modern church has a thousand 
 modes of manifesting its increasing life. ' ' God fulfils 
 himself in many ways." We can no more force the 
 church back into its pioneer form than we can force a 
 developed oak back into the narrow husk and unde- 
 veloped germ of the acorn. Life branches endlessly ; 
 death carries us back to the original monotony of dust. 
 Sacred institutions if studied in the light of sociology 
 will be seen to conform to the divine laws of develop- 
 ment. The multiplication of agencies corresponds to 
 the wealth of internal gifts and graces and to the multi- 
 form demands of a complex and advanced social 
 environment. This variety should not frighten or 
 annoy us, for it is a proof of abundant vitality. 
 
 The measure of relief grows out of the social situa- 
 Economy tion. Specialization must be accompanied by integra- 
 
 organflkuon? r tion. As far as the local church or the denomination 
 comes to approve a measure, after the experimental 
 stage is passed, it can provide for its regulation. Take 
 an example. The local church in a certain large town 
 agrees by vote of its members or authorized officers 
 that it should favor and support the following objects : 
 foreign, home, state, and city missions ; the religious 
 education of the children and youth by appropriate 
 graded methods ; ten different forms of charity to the 
 dependent poor ; two forms of work for criminals ; the 
 temperance, social purity, and rest day reforms ; 
 municipal and electoral reform. This church appoints
 
 The Institutions of Ideals. 327 
 
 a committee for each of these interests ; requires them 
 to study a particular social work, to promote, to raise 
 money for it, to secure assistants in its personal work, 
 and to report all to the church. This would mean Regulation, 
 integration and regulation. It would not take the 
 place of experimental efforts of the pioneers and path- 
 finders, and it would not suppress adventurous souls. 
 In some such way the most worthy causes would re- 
 ceive official recognition and the wild schemes of eccen- 
 tric sentimentalists who "mistake activity for useful- 
 ness ' ' would be obliged to give good reasons for their 
 claims. By cooperation with the Society for Organizing 
 Charities, each church would come into an arrangement 
 for the whole community. The ideal will be reached 
 only when all Christians regard the community as a 
 single parish, with one united plan of service. But this 
 ideal can be realized only by tentative and gradual ap- 
 proach. We are under the most solemn obligations to 
 work in this direction. We should seek to be one 
 ' ' that the world may believe. ' ' We must practice the 
 divine economy even in working miracles: "Gather 
 up the fragments, that nothing be lost." 
 
 But economy is not synonymous with niggardliness. 
 The Great Giver has enriched the people of the United 
 States beyond all other nations of the earth. Our 
 material and mechanical resources, our mercantile and 
 agricultural wealth, surpass the fables of fairyland. 
 We are called upon to develop our social institutions, 
 to serve therewith our Maker and our fellowmen ; to ask" of u*. 
 make them effective instruments of the perfection of 
 our citizens ; to offer them as a worthy contribution to 
 the world-wide movement of human progress whose 
 ideal and consummation is in that holy and happy 
 society which Jesus called "The Kingdom of God."
 
 APPENDIX
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTES ON THE CHAPTERS. 
 
 THE object of these notes is to give brief hints for 
 those who desire to follow the special subject of the 
 chapter with further reading and investigation. A few 
 titles of books and articles are given for reading, and 
 these will frequently guide to full bibliographies, and 
 will give the addresses of institutions. 
 
 A select list of typical institutions is added for those 
 who wish to visit them or to secure their reports. It 
 ought to be remembered that the people who are at work 
 in these institutions are busy and often weary ; and no 
 one should take their time or energy without serious 
 reason. It is a shame and a sin to disturb and tax 
 philanthropic workers in order to gratify an idle curi- 
 osity, the caprice of a mere sightseer. 
 
 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 A. W. Small and G. E. Vincent : An Introduction to 
 
 the Study of Society. 
 
 Arthur Fairbanks : Introduction to Sociology. 
 J. S. Mackenzie : An Introduction to Social Philosophy. 
 
 Second edition. 
 
 F. H. Giddings : The Principles of Sociology. 
 C. D. Wright: Practical Sociology. 
 
 331
 
 332 Appendix. 
 
 CHAPTER II. HOME-MAKING AS A SOCIAL ART. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 C. F. and C. F. B. Thwing : The Family. 
 Helen Campbell : Household Economics. 
 Lucy Maynard Salmon : Domestic Service. 
 R. A. Woods and others : The Poor in Great Cities. 
 Marion Talbot and Ellen S. Richards : Household 
 Sanitation. 
 
 The Le Play Method of Social Observation, translated 
 by C. A. Ellwood, in American Journal of Soci- 
 ology r , March, 1897. 
 
 Hull House Maps and Papers, by Residents of Hull 
 House. 
 
 CHAPTER III. FRIENDLY CIRCLES OF WOMEN 
 WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 C. D. Wright : The Industrial Evolution of the United 
 States (Chap. XVI.). 
 
 J. A. Hobson : Evolution of Modern Capitalism. 
 
 Maude Stanley : Chibsfor Working Girls. 
 
 Helen Campbell : Prisoners of Poverty ; Women Wage- 
 Earners. 
 
 Anna Nathan Meyer : Woman's Work in America. 
 
 Working Women in Large Cities, Department of 
 Labor Report, 1889. 
 
 Reports of State Factory Inspectors and Bureaus of 
 Labor. 
 
 Reports of Working Women' s Society, New York. 
 
 The Consumers' League, New York City, Mrs Jose- 
 phine Shaw Lowell, President.
 
 Appendix. 333 
 
 / 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 In all cities may be found clubs for women and girls 
 in connection with settlements, missions, institutional 
 churches, kindergartens, and the Y. W. C. A. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. BETTER HOUSES FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 E. R. L. Gould : The Housing of the Working People; 
 
 Eighth Special Report of the Commissioner of 
 
 Labor, Washington, 1895. 
 Review of Reviews, December, 1896, p. 693. 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 City and Suburban Homes Co., New York City, E. 
 
 R. L. Gould, President. 
 Improved Dwellings Co., of Brooklyn. 
 Boston Cooperative Building Co. 
 Local Building and Loan Associations in all parts of the 
 
 United States. 
 
 CHAPTER V. PUBLIC HEALTH. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 G. E. Waring : Sanitary Drainage of Houses and 
 
 Towns, and other works. 
 L. C. Parkes : Hygiene of Public Health. 
 J. F. J. Sykes : Public Health Problems. 
 W. H. Tolman : Report on Public Baths and Public 
 
 Comfort Stations. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. GOOD ROADS AND COMMUNICATION. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 Roy Stone : New Roads and Road I^aws.
 
 334 Appendix. 
 
 Publications of League of American Wheelmen. 
 Bulletins of Wisconsin Farmers' Institutes, 1896. 
 Year Book of United States Department of Agriculture, 
 1894, pp. 501, 513. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. THE SOCIALIZED CITIZEN. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 H. Spencer : Principles of Sociology, Vol. III., Part 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ' ' A Free Lance ' ' : Toward Utopia. 
 R. Grant : The Art of Living. 
 E. Kelley : Evolution and Effort. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. WHAT GOOD EMPLOYERS ARE 
 DOING. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 D. Pidgeon : Old World Questions and New World 
 Answers. 
 
 N. P. Gilman : Profit Sharing ; Socialism and the 
 American Spirit; A Dividend to Labor. 
 
 Paul Monroe : "An American System of Labor Pen- 
 sions and Insurance," in American Journal of So- 
 ciology, January, 1897. 
 
 O. D. Ashley: "Railways and Their Employees," 
 The Railway Age, Chicago. 
 
 W. Gladden : Working People and Their Employers. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. ORGANIZATIONS OF WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 R. T. Ely : The Labor Movement in America. 
 A. T. Hadley : Economics.
 
 Appendix. 335 
 
 F. J. Stimson : Handbook of the Labor Laws of the 
 
 United States. 
 
 H. Myrick : How to Cooperate. 
 H. W. Wolff : People's Banks. 
 E. B. Andrews : The Last Quarter Century in the 
 
 United States. 
 Beatrice Potter : The Cooperative Movement in Great 
 
 Britain. 
 
 Articles on " Fraternal Insurance," Johnson' s Universal 
 Cyclopedia. Edition 1895. 
 
 Bulletins of Labor, No. 6. 
 
 Ninth Annual Report of the United States Commis- 
 sioner of Labor, on the Building and Loan Associa- 
 tions of the United States. 
 
 Reports of Provident Loan Associations in Boston and 
 New York. 
 
 CHAPTER X. ECONOMIC COOPERATION OF THE 
 
 COMMUNITY. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 R. T. Ely : Socialism and Social Reform. 
 A. Shaw : Municipal Government in Continental Europe; 
 Municipal Government in Great Britain. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. POLITICAL REFORMS. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 J. Fiske : Civil Government. 
 
 W. Wilson : The State. 
 
 W. H. Tolman : Municipal Reform Movements. 
 
 J. R. Commons : Proportional Representation. 
 
 National Conference for Good City Government. (Re- 
 port for 1894 has bibliography.)
 
 336 Appendix. 
 
 Publications of National Civil Service Reform League. 
 Reports of Civil Service Commissioners. 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 National Civil Service Reform League, National Mu- 
 nicipal League. 
 
 American Proportional Representation League, Stough- 
 ton Cooley, Chicago, Secretary. 
 
 Civic Federation, of Chicago, and many similar local 
 societies. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN THE STATE 
 SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 G. S. Hall : Bibliography of Education. 
 C. H. Ham and C. M. Woodward : Works on Manual 
 Training. 
 
 Reports of United States Commissioner of Education, 
 Washington (very valuable). 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Small parties of citizens may visit public schools with 
 advantage if they are prepared by reading and experi- 
 ence, and if they are accompanied by a competent 
 teacher or superintendent. 
 
 Manual training schools in Philadelphia, Cleveland, 
 Toledo, Chicago, and other cities. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Miss Jane Addams and others : Philanthropy and Social 
 Progress.
 
 Appendix. 33; 
 
 J. H. Vincent : The Chautauqua Movement. 
 
 Mrs. F. H. Montgomery: Bibliography of Settlements 
 (4th ed.) 
 
 Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 
 1894-5, on Chautauqua, article by H. B. Adams. 
 
 National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1896 
 (Social settlements). 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Chautauqua : Office of Bishop John H. Vincent, 
 Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Vacation Schools : Office, Room 105 E. Twenty- 
 second Street, New York ; Superintendent of Schools, 
 Chicago. 
 
 Social settlements are found in all the large cities. 
 
 National Household Economic Association, Dr. Mary 
 
 E. Green, Charlotte, Mich., President. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. SOCIALIZED BEAUTY AND 
 RECREATIONS. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 N. H. Eggleston : Home and Its Surroundings. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 1896-7, articles by Miss Mary C. 
 
 Robins. 
 Leaflets published by the Civic Club, Philadelphia. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. CHARITY AND CORRECTION. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 A. G. Warner : American Charities. 
 
 F. H. Wines : Punishment and Reformation. 
 
 C. R. Henderson : Dependents, Defectives, and Delin- 
 quents. 
 W. D. Morrison : Juvenile Offenders.
 
 338 Appendix. 
 
 Reports of National Conference of Charities and Correc- 
 tion, G. H. Ellis, Boston. 
 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 In each city is published a list of all charitable insti- 
 tutions, in the directory or in a special volume. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN CONFLICT 
 WITH ANTI-SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 F. H. Wines and J. Koren : The Liquor Problem, 1897. 
 H. W. Blair : The Temperance Movement, 1888. 
 W. F. Crafts : Practical Christian Sociology (many 
 interesting notes and references). 
 
 Temperance : Cyclopedia of Temperance. 
 
 Report of Commissioner of Education, 1894.-$, on Sci- 
 entific Temperance Instruction in the Public Schools, 
 p. 1829. 
 
 Divorce Reform : Reports of National League for the 
 Protection of the Family. 
 
 Report of Commissioner of Labor, 1889, on Marriage 
 and Divorce. 
 
 Society for the Suppression of Vice (Anthony Corn- 
 stock); the Times Building, New York. 
 
 Social Purity : Publications of White Cross League and 
 W. C. T. U. 
 
 The American Purity Alliance. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. THE INSTITUTIONS OF IDEALS. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 B. G. W. Mead : Modern Methods of Church Work, 
 1897.
 
 Appendix. 339 
 
 J. Strong : The New Era. 
 
 W. Gladden : Ruling Ideas of t/ie Present Age. 
 
 J. R. Commons : Social Reform and the Church. 
 
 W. DeWitt Hyde : Outlines of Social Theology. 
 
 G. Hodges : Faith and Social Service. 
 
 Lyman Abbott : Christianity and Social Problems. 
 
 H. K. Carroll : Religious Forces in the United States. 
 
 D. Dorchester: Christianity in the United States. 
 Edition 1895. 
 
 H. S. Ninde and others : Young Men' s Christian Asso- 
 ciation, A Handbook. 
 
 E. W. Donald : The Expansion of Religion. 
 
 Christianity Practically Applied ; being reports of the 
 Evangelical Alliance, 1893. See other volumes of 
 these proceedings. 
 
 The Open Church, quarterly ; 50 cents a year ; organ of 
 the Institutional Church Movement. 
 
 The Year Books and Reports of Institutional Churches; 
 see lists in Open Church and in Forward Move- 
 ments; the latter published at 4 cents by The Con- 
 gregationalist, Boston. 
 
 ADDITIONAL TITLES. 
 
 J. Koven: Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem. 
 
 E. Judson: The Institutional Church. 
 
 C. R. Henderson: Social Settlements. 
 
 The Commons (periodical), Chicago. 
 
 W. F. Willoughby: Working men' & Insurance. 
 
 B. H. Meyer: Substitutes for the Saloon (chapters 
 on Fraternal Insurance.) 
 
 H. W. Thurston: Economics and Industrial His- 
 tory for Secondary Schools. 
 
 Municipal Affairs (periodical). 
 
 H. B. Adams: Tht Church and Popular Education .
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER II., PAGE 32. 
 HOUSEKEEPING RECORDS OF EXPENSES. 
 
 FORM A. 
 Form of an Account Book to be kept by the Housekeeper : 
 the Day Book. 
 
 DAY BOOK. 
 
 On 
 
 Hand. 
 
 Dale. 
 
 ITEMS. 
 
 Receipts. 
 
 Expendi- 
 tures. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 DIRECTIONS. i. Give quantity as exactly as possible 
 with the "Items." 2. Under " Receipts" state the source 
 of income ; as wages, rent, interest, gifts.
 
 
 Potatoes. 
 
 
 Other 
 Vegetables. 
 
 
 Fresk Fruit. 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 Jam and 
 Syrup. 
 
 
 D 
 
 
 Meals out. 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 Alcoholic 
 J>t-int!. 
 
 Conti 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 Flour and 
 Crackers. 
 
 
 If 
 
 
 Butter. 
 
 
 fl 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 to 
 
 
 Fish and 
 Poultry. 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 1 
 
 5' 
 
 i 
 
 > 
 
 ft O 
 
 CU xT 
 
 1 s 
 
 rt 
 
 1
 
 E 
 ti 
 
 o 
 
 UH 
 
 * 
 
 15 
 ]$ 
 
 -Sr* 
 ?
 
 FORM C. 
 THE POSSESSIONS OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 DATE, 
 
 PROPERTY. 
 
 I. List of Securities, Stocks, Bonds, 
 Notes, etc 
 
 II. Furniture, Silverware, Ornaments, 
 Books, Musical Instruments, and 
 Music Books 
 
 III. Bedding and Clothing. 
 
 Bedding 
 
 White Goods 
 
 Clothing 
 
 IV. Supplies. 
 
 Household Supplies 
 
 Fuel . 
 
 V. Amounts Due on Open Accounts . . . 
 VI. Cash on Hand, or Equivalent . . . . 
 
 DEBTS AND LIABILITIES. 
 
 VII. Debts. 
 
 On Open Accounts 
 
 On Interest 
 
 VIII. Liabilities. 
 Taxes . . 
 Insurance 
 
 NOTE. By subtracting the sum of VII. and VIII. from 
 the sum of I.-VI., one has the actual value of property over 
 debts and liabilities. 
 
 For further explanations of the use of these accounts, see 
 American Journal of Sociology, March, 1897, page 662. The 
 author would be pleased to correspond with families who are 
 willing to keep such accounts and give the use of them for 
 scientific purposes, without publishing names.
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER IX., PAGE 152. 
 
 MEMBERSHIP OF NEW ENGLAND COOPERATIVE 
 
 SOCIETIES. 
 
 Name of Society. 
 
 location. 
 
 Mem- 
 ber- 
 ship. 
 
 Sovereigns' Trading Co. . . . 
 Lewiston Cooperative Society . 
 Lisbon Falls Cooperative Ass'n 
 Sabattus Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Farmers' and Mechanics' Ex- 
 change 
 
 New Britain, Conn. . . 
 Lewiston, Maine . . . 
 Lisbon Falls, Maine . . 
 Sabattus, Maine. . . . 
 
 Brattleboro, Vt 
 Pawtucket, R. I. . . . 
 
 200 
 
 125 
 275 
 125 
 
 509 
 174 
 
 262 
 1909 
 185 
 398 
 
 184 
 
 201 
 
 123 
 82 
 2850 
 
 732 
 169 
 
 4IO 
 
 1 88 
 
 20 
 1130 
 196 
 
 45 
 60 
 60 
 
 80 
 
 Woodlawn Cooperative Ass'n 
 First Swedish Cooperative Store 
 Co 
 
 Quinsigamond, Worces- 
 ter, Mass 
 
 Harvard Cooperative Society . 
 Cambridge Cooperative Society 
 Riverside Cooperative Ass'n . 
 Hampden County Cooperative 
 Ass'n 
 
 Cambridge, Mass. . . . 
 Cambridge, Mass. . . . 
 Maynard, Mass 
 
 Springfield, Mass .... 
 
 Worcester, Mass. . . . 
 Silver Lake, Kingston, 
 Mass 
 
 Knights of Labor Cooperative 
 Boot and Shoe Ass'n . . . 
 Cooperative Store Co 
 
 Plymouth Rock Cooperative Co. 
 Arlington Cooperative Ass'n . 
 Lawrence Equitable Coopera- 
 tive Society 
 
 Plymouth, Mass. . . . 
 Lawrence, Mass. . . . 
 
 Lawrence, Mass. . . . 
 Lawrence, Mass. . . . 
 New Bedford, Mass. . . 
 Beverly, Mass 
 
 German Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Industrial Cooperative Ass'n . 
 Beverly Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Dorchester Cooperative Ass'n 
 Lowell Cooperative Ass'n . . . 
 West Warren Cooperative Ass'n 
 Haverhill Cooperative Society 
 Lynn Cooperative Society. . . 
 Rockland Cooperative Society 
 The Hub Cooperative Em- 
 porium 
 
 Dorchester, Mass. . . . 
 Lowell, Mass 
 
 West Warren, Mass. . . 
 Haverhill, Mass .... 
 Lynn, Mass 
 
 Rockland, Mass. . . . 
 Boston, Mass 
 
 Total membership .... 
 
 10692 
 

 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER IX., PAGE 152. 
 
 MEMBERSHIP OF COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES OUTSIDE OF 
 NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 Name of Society. 
 
 Location. 
 
 Mem- 
 ber- 
 ship. 
 
 Trenton Cooperative Society . 
 \ lammonton Fruit Growers' 
 Union and Cooperative 
 Society 
 
 Trenton, N. J 
 
 465 
 
 646 
 
 54 
 253 
 175 
 114 
 
 217 
 300 
 150 
 350 
 
 294 
 300 
 
 165 
 378 
 900 
 
 108 
 97 
 154 
 217 
 
 600 
 
 102 
 50 
 26 
 
 Hammonton, N. J. . . 
 
 Vineland, N. J. . . 
 Dover, N. J 
 Raritan, N.J 
 Phillipsburg, N. J. . . . 
 
 Jamestown, N. J. . . . 
 
 Yineland Fruit Growers' Union 
 and Cooperative Society . 
 Sovereigns' Cooperative Ass'n 
 Raritan Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Cooperative Association No. i 
 Jamestown Cooperative Supply 
 Co 
 
 Integral Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Allegan Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Ishpeming Cooperative Society 
 Zumbrota Mercantile and Ele- 
 vator Co 
 
 Pittsburg, Pa 
 
 Allegan, Mich 
 
 Ishpeming, Mich. . . . 
 
 Zumbrota, Minn. . . . 
 Galveston, Texas . . . 
 
 Eureka, Kans 
 
 Texas Cooperative Ass'n . . . 
 Greenwood County Cooperative 
 Ass'n 
 
 Lyon County Alliance Exchange 
 Co 
 
 Emporia, Kans 
 Olathe, Kans 
 
 Overbrook, Kans. . . . 
 Green, Kans 
 
 Johnson County Cooperative 
 Ass'n 
 
 Osage County Cooperative 
 Ass'n 
 
 The Alliance Cooperative Ass'n 
 Wakefield Cooperative Ass'n . 
 Patrons' Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 Zion's Cooperative Mercantile 
 Institution 
 
 Wakefield, Kans. . . . 
 Cadmus, Kans 
 
 Salt Lake City, Utah. . 
 
 Los Angeles, Cal. . . . 
 Santa Paula, Cal. . . . 
 Poplar, Cal 
 
 Socialists' Cooperative Store 
 and Productive Ass'n . . . 
 Santa Paula Cooperative Ass'n 
 Poplar Cooperative Ass'n . . 
 
 Total membership .... 
 
 
 6lI5 
 
 

 
 INDEX. 
 
 Absentee, landlords, 65. 
 
 Accounts, family, 32, appendix. 
 
 Addams, Jane, 234. 
 
 Esthetic element of welfare, 37, 199, 
 240, 3i5- 
 
 Air, foul and pure, 77. 
 
 American Sunday-school Union, 333. 
 
 American Volunteers, 318. 
 
 Amusements, 244. 
 
 Arbitration, 159. 
 
 Arnold, T., 205, 232. 
 
 Art, 240, 247. 
 
 Ashley, O. D. f 130. 
 
 Association of Working Girls' Socie- 
 ties, 53. 
 
 Associations, voluntary, 19. 
 
 Australian ballot, 186. 
 
 Baths, 83. 
 
 Beauty, 241. 
 
 Beliefs, a social force, 9. 
 
 Bemis, E. W., 152. 
 
 Boarding-houses, 46. 
 
 Body, the, its dignity, 79. 
 
 Booth-Tucker, Commander, 260. 
 
 Broadus, J. A., 195. 
 
 Brooks, J. G., 295. 
 
 Building societies, 67, 153. 
 
 Cairnes.J. E., 257. 
 
 Calling lists, 39. 
 
 Carnegie, Andrew, 121. 
 
 Carse, Matilda B., 287. 
 
 Catholic Total Abstinence Union, 284. 
 
 Chad wick, E., 126, 243. 
 
 Chandler, Senator, 253. 
 
 Channing, W. E., 132, 158. 
 
 Character, 112. 
 
 Charity, methods, 271, 275, 308, 327. 
 
 Chautauqua, 220. 
 
 Chicago, water, 76. 
 
 Child labor, 126. 
 
 Children, working, 162, 267; de- 
 pendent, 265, 268. 
 
 Christianity, 304. 
 
 Church Temperance Society, 284. 
 Churches, 304. 
 
 Citizens' Law and Order League, 286. 
 City and Suburban Homes Company, 
 
 67. 
 
 Civil service reform, 179. 
 Civilization, its nature, 20. 
 Clubs, 38, 143, 226. 
 Commons, J. R., 188. 
 Communication, 96. 
 Compulsory education, 164, 213, 267. 
 Conciliation, 159. 
 Conduct and theory, 9. 
 Consumers' League, 49. 
 Convention of Christian Workers, 
 
 323- 
 
 Cooking, 32. 
 
 Cooperation in housekeeping, 33. 
 Cooperation, Rochdale type, 147 ; in 
 
 banking, 153. 
 
 Corrupt Practices Act, 184. 
 County fairs, 37. 
 Culture, 132. 
 
 Death-rate, the, 60. 
 Debatable questions, 19. 
 Decorative Art Society, 37. 
 Defective children, 203, 265. 
 Degenerates, 30. 
 Democracy, 192. 
 
 Development of family, 24 ; of indus- 
 try, 103. 
 
 Dike.S.W., 201,297. 
 Disease, cost of, 72. 
 Divorce, 31. 
 
 Dodge, Grace H., 31, 57. 
 Domestic science, 203. 
 Drama, the, 246. 
 Dress, 33. 
 
 Drink evil, the, 281. 
 Duncan, W. A. ,322. 
 Dtiruy, George, 278. 
 Dwellings, defect* of, 27, 59. 
 
 347
 
 Index. 
 
 Education, voluntary organization of, 
 207 ; higher state of, 214 ; mission- 
 ary, 237. 
 
 Electoral reform, 182. 
 
 Electric roads, 95. 
 
 Eliot, President, 294. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 191. 
 
 Employers, 117. 
 
 Employment bureaus, 167. 
 
 Environments, 264. 
 
 Ethical teaching, 214. 
 
 Evangelical Alliance, 323. 
 
 Evangelism, 319. 
 
 Evans, Margaret J., 255. 
 
 Extension, High School, 208. 
 
 Factory laws, 162. 
 
 Fairchild, C. G., 63. 
 
 Fairs, county, 37. 
 
 Family, the, 23. 
 
 Farm colonies, 273. 
 
 Farmers' reading circles, 227. 
 
 Findlay.J.J., 193. 
 
 Fiske, John, 186, 189, 225. 
 
 Fitch, J. G., 225. 
 
 Food, 76. 
 
 Franchises, 168. 
 
 Friendly visitors, 81, 276. 
 
 Gambling, 300. 
 
 Garfield, President, 193. 
 
 Giddings, F. H., 256. 
 
 Gilman, N. P., 102. 
 
 "Ginx's Baby," 105. 
 
 Girls' Friendly Society, 47 ; clubs, 
 52- 
 
 Godkin, E. L., 108. 
 
 Good roads, 88. 
 
 Gothenburg system, the, 295. 
 
 Gould, E. R. L., 79, 80, 295. 
 
 Government, ministrant functions of, 
 170, 176. 
 
 " Grubb, Mrs.," 40. 
 
 Hale, E. E., 225. 
 
 Harland, Marion, 58. 
 
 Harris, W. T., 196. 
 
 Health, public, 72. 
 
 Hegeman, President, 221. 
 
 Heredity, 74. 
 
 High School Extension, 208. 
 
 Hill, Octavia, 35, 62. 
 
 Home Department of the Sunday- 
 school, 322. 
 
 Home, essentials of, 29 ; and school, 
 
 195; libraries, 233. 
 Hospital, the, 231. 
 Household economics, 227. 
 Housekeeping, cooperative, 33. 
 Houses on farms, 69. 
 Housing of the poor, 26, 59. 
 Howe, Julia Ward, 58. 
 Humane Society, 296. 
 Ideals, 191. 
 
 Improvements, how they begin, 18. 
 Independent Order of Good Templan, 
 
 285. 
 
 Independent, The, 238. 
 Individualism, 104. 
 Initiative, the, 187. 
 Insane, the, 270. 
 Institutional churches, 309. 
 Institutions a growth, 15. 
 Insurance, 73, 144, 291. 
 Intemperance, 30. 
 Interests of society, 12. 
 "Jane Club," the, 56. 
 Jenks,J.W.,i8s. 
 Jevons, W. S., 244, 250. 
 Johnson, G. E., 244. 
 Juvenile offenders, 29. 
 Keller, Helen, 265. 
 Kindergartens, 211. 
 King's Daughters and Sons, 46, 330. 
 Koren.John, 295. 
 Labor bureaus, 272. 
 Labor conferences, 314. 
 Labor movement, 137. 
 Landlord missionaries, 62. 
 Landscape gardening, 248. 
 Lanier, Sidney, 243. 
 Laundries, public, 84. 
 Lavatories, public, 84. 
 Lecky, W. H., 187, 257. 
 Lecture courses, 209. 
 Libraries, 215, 233. 
 License laws, 293. 
 
 Little Mothers' Aid Association, 47. 
 Local option, 292. 
 Lodges, 143. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 240, 245, 304. 
 Luxury, 34, 114, 256. 
 MacAlister, James, 201. 
 Machinery, social effects, 228. 
 MacVeagh, Franklin, 183.
 
 Index. 
 
 349 
 
 Mai thus, in. 
 
 Mann, Horace, 125. 
 
 Manny, F. A., 208. 
 
 Manual training, 210. 
 
 Martin's " Human Body," 399. 
 
 Meliorism, 105. 
 
 Milk, 85. 
 
 Mill.J.S., no. 
 
 Morals, teaching, 314. 
 
 More, T. (Utopia), 229. 
 
 Morley, Margaret W., 299. 
 
 Morris, W., 259. 
 
 Mothers, in^ctories, 28 ; duties, 34. 
 
 Mothers' Urnon, the, 43. 
 
 Motives, of action, 12. 
 
 Mott, A. J., 204. 
 
 Mount, J. A., 229. 
 
 Municipal institutions, 172. 
 
 Municipal reforms, 182. 
 
 Music, 245. 
 
 Mutual benefit societies, 143. 
 
 National Conference of Charities and 
 
 Corrections, 279. 
 National Divorce Reform League, 
 
 397- 
 
 National Household Economic Asso- 
 ciation, 227. 
 
 National League for Good Roads, 
 
 253- 
 
 National Temperance Society, 285. 
 Natural laws in economic world, 100. 
 Nelson, N. O., 120. 
 New England manufactory, 124. 
 Newspapers, 175. 
 Noon rest for girls, 46. 
 Open and Institution ml Church 
 
 League, 309, 324. 
 Open church, the, 309. 
 Orphans, 268. 
 
 Parker, Superintendent, 205. 
 Parks, 250. 
 
 Parochial schools, 219. 
 Parties, political, 176. 
 Pauperism, 261. 
 Pawnshops, 172. 
 Peabody, George, 238. 
 People's Banks, 158. 
 Picot, George, 229. 
 Pidgeon, D., 124. 
 Play, 244. 
 " Pleasant Sunday Afternoon," 301. 
 
 Political economy, 101. 
 Political reforms, 174. 
 Politics and health, 82, 86. 
 Popularizing science, 231. 
 Population, problems of, no. 
 Postal saving banks, 171. 
 Post-office, 97. 
 " Potato patch," 274. 
 Prairie scenery, 251. 
 Preventive charity, 263. 
 Prisoners, to work roads, 93. 
 Problems, 19. 
 Profit-sharing, 131, 133. 
 Progress, 86. 
 Prohibition, 292. 
 
 Proportional representation, 187. 
 Protective agencies, 48, 161. 
 Provident measures, 129. 
 Public opinion, 129. 
 Public schools, 196, 296. 
 Pullman, 66, 252. 
 Raiffeisen banks, 155, 314. 
 Referendum, the, 187. 
 Reforms, 17. 
 
 Religion, a social force, 9; at home, 
 42 ; in schools, 213 ; teaching, 220, 304. 
 Rent, collecting, 64. 
 Roads, 88, 253. 
 Robins, Mary C., 348. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 140. 
 Rural schools, 206. 
 Rural villages, 70. 
 Rush, Benjamin, 282. 
 Rusk, Jerry, 229. 
 Ruskin, John, 62, 116. 
 Salvation Army, 318. 
 Sanitary aid societies, 73. 
 Schaffle, 9. 
 Schools, 191. 
 Schurz, Carl, 180. 
 Self-interest, 14. 
 Sellers, Edith, 48. 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 198. 
 Sidewalks, 91. 
 Slater, J. P., 237. 
 Sloyd, 2ii. 
 Slums, the, 60. 
 Smith, r.oldwin, 115, 337. 
 Social purity, 388, 399. 
 Social selection, 78. 
 Social settlements, 334.
 
 350 
 
 Index. 
 
 Socialists, 104, 173. 
 
 Sociologists, duty to society, 9. 
 
 Sociology, relation to theology, n. 
 
 Sons of Temperance, 285. 
 
 Sooth, R., 191. 
 
 Spahr, C. B., 169. 
 
 Specialization in philanthropy, 21. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 100. 
 
 Spendthrifts, 358. 
 
 Spoils system, 82. 
 
 Standards of conduct, 25. 
 
 Starr, Ellen, 199. 
 
 Strikes, 140. 
 
 Struggle, value of, 15. 
 
 Suburban homes, 65. 
 
 Sunday rest, 300. 
 
 Sunday-school, the, 321. 
 
 Sweating, 166. 
 
 Taxing power, 170. 
 
 Telegraph, the, 96. 
 
 Temperance movement, the. 282. 
 
 Theater, 246. 
 
 Theory and conduct, 9. 
 
 Thrift, 109. 
 
 Towns, plans for, 66, 250. 
 
 Trade schools, 209. 
 
 Trades unions, 138. 
 
 Tramps, 83, 271. 
 
 Transportation, 95. 
 
 Trusts, 167. 
 
 Twain, Mark, 240. 
 
 Unemployed, the, 107. 
 
 University Extension, 229. 
 
 University settlements, 234. 
 
 Unsocial Club of Women, the, 38, 
 
 Vacation schools, 238. 
 
 Variety of wants, 12. 
 
 Village improvement societies, 254. 
 
 Wages, 123, 127, 134. 
 
 Ward, L. F., 260. 
 
 Washington, B. T., 237. 
 
 Water supply, 75, 81. 
 
 Wealth, duties of, i'3,^J- 
 
 White, A. D., 115. 
 
 White, Henry, 166. 
 
 Wiggin, Mrs. Kate, 40, 47. 
 
 Willard, Frances E., 287. 
 
 Woman's National Christian Tem- 
 perance Union, 287. 
 
 Women of leisure, 41 ; wage-earners, 
 44 ; clubs, 255, 266. 
 
 Women workers, 164. 
 
 Woodward, C. M., an. 
 
 Working Women's Social Club, 55. 
 
 Wright, C. D., 44, 154- 
 
 Young Men's Christian Association, 
 
 3<>9 37- 
 
 Young people, societies of, 321. 
 
 Young Woman's Christian Associa- 
 tion, 45, 318.
 
 SUPPLEMENT. 
 
 THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN AMERICA. 
 
 SYLLABUS FOR STUDENTS AND INSTITUTES. 
 
 The readers of this book may find that they are divided into 
 three classes: those who come to the subject for the first time 
 and find it difficult, those who have given some study to the 
 topics and are ready for more systematic consideration, and 
 those who will find the treatment in this volume too elementary 
 and yet wish to discuss the same topics with fellow teachers. 
 
 For all persons in these classes the suggestions which follow 
 may' be found useful. There is an analysis of the text and 
 then questions for study. These questions can be answered, 
 (i) from a careful reading of the text, (2) from observation of 
 the facts'to which attention is called, (3) from reading of ether 
 books. The questions are of these three kinds, and in this 
 order, and they are distinguished by numbers (i), (2), (3). In 
 the Appendix is found a list of works for future reading, if the 
 student has time, opportunity, and inclination. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Theoretical social science describes and explains, tracing 
 facts to causes. Practical social science studies the ends of 
 action and the means of attaining ends. 
 
 Religious beliefs are social facts and causes. The "social 
 spirit" is the will to help humanity. Sociology is not theology, 
 but it considers all facts and puts creeds to the test of 
 usefulness. 
 
 The interests and motives which create social institutions: 
 hunger, love, artistic feelings, scientific curiosity, desire for 
 fellowship with our kind, conscience, religion.
 
 352 Supplement. 
 
 We are born into a world of social institutions, family, school, 
 neighborhood, industrial order, government, law, church. 
 Social institutions have had a history, a development. 
 
 The various aspects of social life are studied in the social 
 sciences economics, political science, jurisprudence and 
 sociology. 
 
 The special subject of this book is the social movement, 
 conscious and organized efforts to promote human welfare. 
 
 There are three types of voluntary associations. Unions 
 for mutual benefit, unions of public spirit, and unions of 
 philanthropy. Functions of voluntary associations. "Social 
 problems." 
 
 Specialization and unity in philanthropy. 
 
 Let not the reader be alarmed by the word sociology. As a 
 man may do very good work as a gardener or fanner without 
 becoming a learned botanist, so an intelligent and honest 
 citizen may serve his town, commonwealth, and nation without 
 being an expert economist or sociologist. Yet the more 
 knowledge the teacher or other citizen has of social science 
 the better work he can do. The present volume is intended to 
 put in clear, direct, and interesting form two lines of social 
 thought: (i) What do all human beings need in order that 
 they may live full, rich human lives? (2) By what associations 
 and methods can men combine effort- to secure for themselves 
 all that they need for an abounding and complete life? Let 
 the reader keep those two ideas in mind, as the author did, in 
 the study of every page and line, and the book will help to give 
 insight and understanding of social facts, forces, and 
 institutions. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Can you enlarge or correct the definition of the objects 
 of human association (pp. 12-13) ? Is there a distinction be- 
 tween "selfishness" and "the interests of self? 
 
 What human interests are served by the family? By the 
 school? Describe the difference between habit, custom, 
 fashion, manners, law. Criticize Lord Russell's definition of 
 civilization. (Compare our pp. 12-13.) 
 
 (2) Give examples from your own knowledge of each of 
 the types of association (p. re). Describe the origin and first 
 efforts of some local association, club, lodge, society. Criticize 
 their methods and effects, and give your reasons.
 
 Supplement. 353 
 
 (3) You may compare any statements of the text with those 
 of any other writer on the same subject (See Bibliography 
 to Chapter I.) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOME-MAKING AS A SOCIAL ART. 
 
 Definition of the family. Functions of the family. Historical 
 forms. Standards of domestic conduct. Defects in domestic 
 life. Dependence of the home on the community. Modes of 
 amelioration : accounts, instruction, excess of luxury corrected 
 by good taste, societies for aesthetic improvement of homes, 
 household religion. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) What human interests are served by the family? How 
 can we test domestic conduct? By what rules? How does 
 extreme poverty injure the home? What are the effects of 
 extravagance? What are causes of divorce? 
 
 (2) Report results of your observation of families in respect 
 to any point mentioned in the text. 
 
 (3) Report the result of any reading on the subject. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRIENDLY CIRCLES OF WOMEN WAGE- EARNERS. 
 Social industry of women and consequences, benefits and 
 evils. Modes of help: patronage, mutual benefit associations. 
 Consumers League. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) How has factory industry changed employments of 
 women? Illustrate. Why have associations? Describe the Y. 
 W. C. A., the Girls' Friendly Society, the Consumers' League, 
 Working Girls' Societies their objects, organization, and 
 methods. 
 
 (2) Describe any local association of women or for women 
 who work for wages. What is done for ''domestic employees"? 
 
 (3) Report any new points found in magazines or books. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BETTER HOUSES FOR THE PKOK.B. 
 
 The ends served by a house. Evils of crowded habitations. 
 Injury from defective dwellings. Methods of betterment. The 
 rural dwelling.
 
 354 Supplement. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Describe the object and methods of "landlord mission- 
 aries." What can a city government do to help? 
 
 (2) Describe defects of dwellings which you have examined. 
 
 (3) Give the main points of any article or discussion read. 
 Note additions to thought of text. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 PUBLIC HEALTH. 
 
 Cost of disease. Causes of ill-health. Sanitary aid societies. 
 Public agencies. Progress. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Explain important causes of common diseases. Show 
 the necessity for legal action. Trace the connection between 
 corrupt politics and dirty streets. 
 
 (2) Give the results of your own observations on the causes 
 of disease in your community and the efforts to prevent 
 sickness. Ask a physician to give his views. Criticize the 
 schoolhouse from this point of view. 
 
 (3) Record results of other reading. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GOOD ROADS AND COMMUNICATION. 
 
 The function of roads. Economy of good roads. Modes of 
 improvement. New inventions. Social value of telegraph, 
 telephone, postoffice, signal service. 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Give abstract of the chapter. 
 
 (2) Describe the system of telephone and postal service in 
 your county and give examples of effects on social conduct. 
 
 What is your county doing to improve roads? Write an 
 editorial of five hundred words on the subject of good roads. 
 Describe the difficulties in the way of improving roads. 
 
 (3) Make abstracts of reading. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE SOCIALIZED CITIZEN. 
 
 Natural law in the economic world. Individualism. Com- 
 munity action. Power of the individual to help himself. 
 Character. Luxury. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 (i) Define "luxury." Criticize the teaching of the text. Find
 
 Supplement. 355 
 
 all the fault with it you can. Illustrate the idea that a man 
 serves society in serving himself. 
 
 (2) Give results of your observation of effects of laziness 
 and drink. 
 
 (3) Correct and enlarge the views of the text by further 
 reading. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHAT GOOD EMPLOYERS ARE DOING. 
 
 Power and responsibility of wealthy men and business 
 managers. Improved character. Wages. Factory conditions. 
 Inspectors. Methods of paying wages. Thrift. Means of cul- 
 ture. Profit sharing. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Can an employer raise wages? Illustrate the influence 
 of kindness and good taste in a factory. Define profit sharing, 
 and state arguments for and against it. 
 
 (2) Describe some instance of the good will of employers 
 on farms or in shops. 
 
 (3) Ideas gathered from other reading on wages and duties 
 of employers. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ORGANIZATIONS OF WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 The industrial group, its rise and needs. Trades unions: 
 demand for, history, strikes, aim, methods, legal status. 
 Societies for mutual benefit: insurance in case of accident, 
 sickness, old age, unemployment, death. Cooperative societies. 
 Building and loan associations. Mutual banking. 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) State argument for trades unions. State the conditions 
 of safe "life insurance." 
 
 (2) Describe the purpose, organization, methods and results 
 of a building and loan association, or of any society of wage- 
 earners tor common benefit Tell the story of John Mitchell 
 and state your opinion of his conduct of the "anthracite 
 strike." 
 
 (3) Make abstract of further readings on the topics and 
 discuss the subject with others, then write out your own 
 opinion. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ECONOMIC COOPERATION OF THE COMMUNITY. 
 Need of community action. Methods of conciliation and
 
 3 56 Supplement. 
 
 arbitration. Protective laws. Child labor. Compulsory educa- 
 tion. Factory regulations. Control of larger corporations. 
 Savings banks. Municipal help. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Why do we need boards of conciliation and arbitration? 
 Why does the state regulate child labor in factories? Describe 
 modes of control of trusts. 
 
 (2) Have you observed any evil effects of industrial and 
 commercial combinations? What? What convenient forms 
 of saving and investment have you in your county? 
 
 (3) Compare this discussion with others in newspapers and 
 books read, and write out the differences. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 POLITICAL REFORMS. 
 
 The functions of government. Parties. National aims. Civil 
 service reform. Municipal reform. The Corrupt Practices Act. 
 The Australian ballot. Referendum. Initiative and proper- 
 tic nal representation. Legalized primary. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) What are the chief functions of a government? What 
 is the use of a party? What are the principles of the "merit 
 system"? What is a "primary election"? 
 
 (2) Describe a "caucus" after attending one or asking an 
 active politician. What are evils of the ' 'spoils system"? 
 
 (3) Compare the text with other statements. Draw up an 
 outline of the government of your state. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Ideals of education. Democracy and school. Home and 
 school. Moral influence of the school. The schoolhouse and 
 domestic art Rural schools. Extension courses. Trade instruc- 
 tion. Ethical teaching. Libraries. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Evidences of interest in education in America. How 
 can adult education be promoted? Why have state schools? 
 
 (2) What provisions are made for free libraries in your 
 community? Is there a general desire to have good libraries? 
 What efforts are made by citizens to help the public schools?
 
 Supplement. 357 
 
 Arguments for and against transportation of children and 
 concentration of schools in the country. 
 
 (3) Discuss with others topics on which you have doubts and 
 in which you have interest. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS OF EDUCATION. 
 Examples of voluntary movements. Parochial schools. 
 Chautauqua. Women's clubs. Farmers' associations. Univer- 
 sity extension. Home libraries. Settlements. Missionary edu- 
 cation. Vacation schools. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (r) Why should there be any need of educational work out- 
 side the public school system? Why are parochial schools 
 supported? 
 
 (2) Describe a Farmers' Institute, or a local club for aesthetic 
 or intellectual improvement. Examine and criticize the topics 
 of a women's club. 
 
 (3) Contrast the opinions of the text with those suggested 
 elsewhere. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SOCIALIZED BEAUTY AND RECREATION. 
 
 Beauty a human need. Uses of play. The arts. Methods and 
 agencies illustrated. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) What is the physical need of play? Is beauty useful? 
 Does art help morality? Why are Americans deficient in the 
 arts? 
 
 (2) Are there any attempts to decorate grounds and public 
 buildings in your neighborhood? Point out defects. 
 
 (3) Discuss some article with other persons. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 CHARITY AND CORRECTION. 
 
 Pauperism. Prevention. Relief. Juvenile delinquents. 
 Defectives. Charity organization. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (i) State causes of pauperism and crime. What is the 
 National Conference of Charities and Corrections?
 
 35$ Supplement. 
 
 (2) Describe the relief work in your county and make an 
 abstract of the law of public relief. Inspect and criticize your 
 jail and your poorhouse. 
 
 (3) Compare the judgments expressed in the text with 
 others read. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN CONFLICT WITH ANTI-SOCIAL 
 INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 The drink evil and social regulations. Social purity. 
 Cruelty. Divorce. Gambling. Abuse of Sunday. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 (1) Criticize the expression ' 'healthy hate. " Is the antiquity 
 of a social custom proof that it is good? What makes a custom 
 bad? Describe the "Gothenberg system." 
 
 (2) What is the law regulating saloons in your state? 
 
 (3) Make abstracts and criticisms of articles and books read 
 pn the subject. Discuss, temperately, the subject with your 
 neighbors. "Truth is daughter of time and discussion. " 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE INSTITUTIONS OF IDEALS: THE ANCIENT CONFEDERACY OF 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 The social spirit rises into religion. Religion in man creates 
 the church. Ministrations of the church to social needs. The 
 Salvation Army and Volunteers. Associations. Sunday School. 
 Federation. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 ' (i) Is education complete which ignores religion, religious 
 literature, religious music, religious institutions? Can the 
 public school help? How? 
 
 (2) Is there any religious element in the text-books, songs, 
 and personal conversation of teachers in public schools? 
 What are the positions taken and the arguments used? Could 
 morality be taught in schools without religion? What are the 
 churches of your county doing for the spiritual life of the 
 people? How can they improve their methods? 
 
 (3) The National Educational Association in 1902 discussed 
 the Bible as literature, Read report and discuss,
 
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