SE27 APRIJp, )91# :L iv r 'f\ r XI What Is Being Done to Promote the Principles of Universal Brotherhood in Communities BY SHELBY M. HARRISON DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF SURVEYS AND EXHIBITS, RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION Paper read before the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Religious Education Association, March, 1918 Reprinted from Religious Education, June, 1918 Department of* Surveys and Exhibits Russell Sage Foundation New York City PRICE, 10 CENTS f* ■ 303 ' 12 . W?-*% W WHAT IS BEING DONE TO PROMOTE THE PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL BROTHER- HOOD IN COMMUNITIES Shelby M. Harrison A certain mother put her one-year-old baby to board in one of the charitable institutions of Springfield, Illinois, a few years ago. She was a young woman who had married a man much older than herself from a nearby town. They did not get on well together and the wife took the baby and left for Springfield, where she hoped to get work. But nobody wanted a woman worker’s baby around and the young mother put the child in the institution at the rate of $1.00 a week. Next day she obtained work in a shoe factory at $5.00 a week. When she reached home from her first day’s work she found that the baby had been returned by the institution because it was distressingly ill with syphilis. She appealed to the city phy- sician who prescribed for the infant, but it could not be received at a hospital. She tried to care for it and to do her work at the same time, but this proved impossible. She was therefore obliged to give up her place at the factory. She then appealed to another local institution, which finally, because the baby was badly under- nourished and the mother could not nurse it and work at the same time, took the child in. Although a reconciliation which promised in some measure to lighten the load she was carrying was later effected between husband and wife, her path all through this experience fairly bristled with possible moral and physical dangers — not to mention the fact of her own personal distress. The critical situation in her home, her need of advice and direction with reference to her course, the acceptance of the child by the institution without definite informa- tion about its family, or without a thorough physical examination of the child, the mother’s acceptance of less than a living wage, the fact that there was no place in the city where a syphilitic baby could receive hospital treatment— all of these pieced together a situation in which a fellow community-member needing the friendly 2 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION service which both individuals and the community should supply stood almost alone, while the individual and the community passed by on the other side. Less Than a Living Wage At the same time, in the same city, another type of situation was drifting along apparently without the public’s either knowing or caring about it. In 1914, the five-and-ten-cent stores in Spring- field employed 86 sales girls. Wages among them were very low. The average was from $4.00 to $5.00 per week. One store started new recruits at $4.00; one, at from $3.60 to $4.00; and the third sometimes started them at $3.50. The maximum rate for most positions was $5.00, but a few special tasks, like work at the music counter, which required piano-playing, paid more. All three stores employed only girls who were living at home. “They are better girls and aren’t so apt to go wrong,” explained one manager. Another was more frank : “A girl can clothe herself on what she gets,” he said, “but she can’t pay board without going wrong or stealing. We only want girls who live at home and don’t have to pay board.” As a matter of fact, girls frequently did give way to the temptation to steal — a temptationunade more compelling by their low wages. This happened frequently enough to lead the management at one store to employ a girl at $5.00 per week whose principal duty was to report sales clerks who tried to supplement their wages by appropriating merchandise to their own uses. Preventable Deaths Go Unprevented Turning to a different field of community interest, still other wrongs were evident. In the six years before 1914, for example, over 1,200 Springfield residents died from the common communic- able diseases, and several thousand more were made ill. At least a fourth of the deaths from all causes could be laid to preventable causes, such as the contagions of children, typhoid fever, and venereal diseases. The greatest single agent was tuberculosis, re- RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 3 sponsible for 490 deaths in the six years and for 1 1 per cent of all the deaths in 1913 — a year studied in detail. Over 700 infants under one year of age had died in the six years. Nearly half of these infant deaths resulted from the ordinary preventable causes. The toll was found to be much heavier in the east sections of the city, where Negroes, foreign-born whites, and illiterates lived. They also had the highest birth rates and the highest proportions of children and people of working age; and those were the districts which had called for the largest amounts of charity work. The plain fact was that there people were dying because they were ignorant ; because they were poor ; because they were surrounded by bad sanitary conditions; and because there were not a sufficient number of people in the city who were interested in giving them a proper health service. Deficient Public School Work In the field of public education, the debit side of the ledger had many entries. Although organized education has always been one of our biggest public interests, nevertheless, in the course of time, recognition of this great social necessity in Springfield, as in so many other places, had become lax. Compulsory schooling — the great slogan — had long since lost its force in the city; and attendance in 1914 had come to be only mildly enforced. This in spite of the fact that the city had a greater proportion of illiteracy in its native white population than any other city of over 30,000 population in Illinois, and that the proportion was increasing. The chief reason for failure to enforce the law seemed to be a general indifference on the part of the entire community — a slipping back from the early ideal of universal education as the corner stone of democracy. But another factor in the slack attendance was the character of much of the school work done. It showed itself when a number of leading citizens were asked to pass an examination on material used in the spelling, arithmetic, geography, and history classes. They failed miserably. The school-book material was of a kind seldom 4 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION or never used in offices, stores or shops, homes or churches of present- day Springfield. Little wonder that much of the work, as in many another city, lacked vitality and failed to grip the interest of the young people or their parents. The result was that both boys and girls dropped out in large numbers, and the boys were the first to go. While some handwork had been introduced into the curriculum, such as sewing, cooking, carpentry, and machine-shop processes, the strictly vocational courses were very limited; and a large part of the handwork was formal, inelastic, and far removed from the problems of real life. This was largely true of the quality of the class-room instruction also. There was too much lesson-getting and lesson-reciting, and too little real study and development of thinking ; and back of that, too little contact by the teachers with the every-day life about them. Neglect of Constructive Possibilities of Play Another kind of education — that through play — was also lagging behind. The old-time games, such as prisoner’s base, run sheep run, duck on the rock, leap frog, bull in the ring, had nearly died out. The only diversions reported by over a fifth of the boys were picture shows, baseball, reading, and kite-flying. Although Springfield people, for the most part, live in detached houses with yards, giving opportunity for home recreations ranging all the way from children’s indoor and outdoor games to home social gatherings, yet in three-fifths of the boys’ homes and in nearly half of the girls’ homes, parties for young people were not held. Nor did social agencies outside of the home fill the need. During a three months’ period only eleven out of the twenty public schools had evening entertainments, lectures, or social gatherings. On an average, only once out of every nine or ten weeks did the schoolhouse play a part in the recreational life of its neighborhood. The Young Women’s Christian Association was doing excellent community work ; but the same could not be said for the Young Men’s; and the churches as a whole had not in any large way taken the lead in providing social life. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 5 Meanwhile, commercial amusements were found at every young elbow. There was a large amount of unsupervised and uncontrolled dancing — much of it carried on in hotels and elsewhere under con- ditions which might be abused. Billiard and pool halls were left to go their own courses ; and private clubs found a way around the state law against prize fights. While only two out of five of the young people in the high school went to dances, four out of five of them attended the theaters. Practically all the high-school students went to the movies, the majority going without older members of the family. Most of the motion-picture theaters maintained fairly satisfactory conditions as to ventilation and cleanliness, but the city ordinances did not provide for regular inspections to see that the moral and sanitary standards required before licensing were maintained afterwards. Of the four regular theaters, only one made a pretense at offering anything more serious than vaudeville, and one was putting on a program and conducting a business which surrounded its patrons with most objectionable temptations to excessive drinking and immorality. In fine, recreational opportunities had changed in a generation. The limitations of city life had tended to substitute more passive diversions for the old-time vigorous play. The development of commercial amusements, moreover, was taking children away from home, and otherwise keeping the family from playing together. Leadership that saw physical, intellectual, and moral values in play was an outstanding need. But even play as a safety valve for the venturesome spirit of youth, play stripped of the moral snares so often set around it, even these negative sides of play had been neglected. Intolerable Correctional Methods This shortcoming had not a little to do with the constant stream of offenders coming up through the police and sheriff’s office, through the jails and other detention places, courts and magistrates’ offices, and on to the prisons and penitentiaries. And there a new set of complications involving physical, moral, and other hazards 6 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION loomed up. In 1914, for example, a considerable proportion of the children who in one way or another had become entangled in the law were brought to the county jail annex for detention. It was a two-story building with barred windows and doors, bare, cold, and insanitary. It was used as detention quarters for young children, both boys and girls, insane persons, those with delirium tremens, and occasionally for an ill person suffering from some other trouble. The confinement of children with such adults was not merely an occasional happening, but the rule. Moreover, the doors of the jail rooms were made of bars, and persons confined in one room could readily see into others on the same floor. Thus many of these children — some of them detained not as delinquents, but merely as poor children — suffered intolerable contact with the insane and those suffering from acute alcoholic diseases, an experience not calculated to strengthen the moral fibre of the youths in custody. Sample Glimpses of Wrongs to be Righted Here are a few sample situations — sample maladjustments and wrongs which amount to community wickedness. They are to be found in most of our American cities. Springfield is cited not because it is any worse than other places (indeed, it is better than many in that it has taken steps to correct some, at least, of the evils described), but because it so nearly represents the average as to be typical.* Nor do the samples portray the whole reverse side of this or any other community’s conditions; they are merely a few snap- shots taken almost at random which may help to visualize for a moment the type of present-day community situations which are calling for a new and vigorous application of neighborly service — for a new application of the principles of universal brotherhood. The sample glimpses are set forth at some length because, as already intimated, they make up one of the two essential parts, it seems to me, of any description of the constructive forces at work ‘Illustrations taken from findings of the Springfield Survey. 3 vols. Russell Sage Foundation, New York. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 7 in community life. They help to define the scope of the activities aimed at betterment. They show, moreover, among other things, that much of the distress and wrong of modern life is deeply im- bedded in conditions that are community-wide or wider, that are beyond the power of the individual alone to solve. He is helpless, for example, in safeguarding his health and that of his family unless the community does its part. He is similarly helpless in obtaining proper school facilities, recreational opportunities, and fair working conditions. His course is through organized effort, through the united action of himself and his neighbors, which, since neighbors embrace more than those living next door, means organized effort that is community-wide. The amount of work being carried on in our communities aimed at meeting these broad community needs is of large proportions; and the agencies through which it is being done are literally multi- tudinous. A description of them one by one is hardly practicable here. The most acceptable alternative appears to be a sketch of three types of effort which, in some degree, embody principles and methods used by many others — in some measure, perhaps, by all.- Friendly Service in the Home The first type is that represented by the charity organization society in its service to disorganized families, a form of service which centers in the home. “One chief aim of this work,” to quote from a paragraph or two of principles laid down in Francis H. McLean’s recent survey report on the charities of Springfield, “is the elimination of abnormal conditions of family life and the pro- motion of normal conditions. This obviously implies the belief that conditions can be changed and improved. The idea of any class of people being predestined and hopelessly chained to poverty and misery is repudiated once and for all. When family life is abnormal there must be some reason or reasons for it — reasons for the most part that are ascertainable and which past experience has proved in some measure to be removable. Here, for example, is a family in 8 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION distress because the chief breadwinner has incipient tuberculosis and has been forced to give up his work; there are no savings or other resources, and outside aid is needed. Obviously the key to the situation lies in the father’s restoration to health. As long as there is hope of restored health there is hope for restored family normality. Modern charitable effort, in addition to temporary aid, would be directed toward the father’s recovery ; it would thus help the family to the place where it could take care of itself. “This kind of effort involves much more, of course, than the giving of food, shelter, clothes, and fuel, valuable as these may be as temporary expedients. Direct aid in the form of food and shelter and the like may or may not be important as part of a plan of treat- ment looking toward the ultimate restoring of normal home con- ditions; but if it were the sum of all aid offered it would tend in many, if not most cases, to destroy self-respect and to create a chronic condition of dependency. Direct material aid, for the most part, is merely one means to an end. In the case of the tuberculous father referred to, the family may need to be supplied temporarily with food, shelter, and clothes while the father is under the phy- sician’s care, but this, as already indicated, is incidental to the provision of service to stamp out the tuberculosis infection respon- sible for the family’s disability. The emphasis is therefore placed upon thoughtful service as well as material gifts — service in the form of careful consideration and study of the needs of a family, and working in co-operation with the family and its connections.” This type of service may be described as case work. It inves- tigates the factors that need to be taken into account in working out a family’s problem — it diagnoses the family’s case — and then assists in carrying out the remedy prescribed. But, “to cure a disabled family, as in curing a sick individual, it is essential that the treatment be not interfered with by those who do not know the full facts of the case and the treatment already prescribed. If the social agencies do not work together closely, placing facts at each other’s disposal and co-operating in a unified plan for constructive assistance, there is danger that they may work at cross purposes with each other and to the disadvantage of the RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 9 family they would aid. Thus the attempt to do more than temporize by furnishing daily relief only to those in need requires of the agencies that they no longer regard themselves as at liberty to work independently of their colleagues, or to work in the dark without inquiring carefully and so discovering all that may be known by others about a family. ... In earlier years, when communi- cation was not so easy, individual effort may have offered the best means of providing for all needs ; but today the agencies must regard themselves as part of a whole community’s equipment for social service, ready to render co-operative and special service in the larger scheme of helping families out of abnormal conditions and into as full living as may be.” Such is the ideal which organized charity, through its family work (the phase of its activities under discussion here), seeks to reach. Not all of its societies succeed, but, whatever the fact as to that, its work among families — its friendly effort to help people to help themselves — illustrates a form of service along the lines of which many other organizations are active. Among them may be listed such agencies as visiting-nurse associations, juvenile protective leagues, city departments of public welfare, public outdoor relief departments, school attendance bureaus, hospital social-service de- partments, children’s institutions, child-welfare associations, day nurseries, child-placing agencies, committees for mental hygiene, churches, children’s courts, reform schools, parole bureaus of prison departments, tuberculosis associations, baby-health stations, and on through a long list. A New Social Value Placed Upon Talk and Discussion The second type of service being promoted on a community-wide basis to meet such needs as have been indicated is that afforded by those public forums which are open to the discussion of social and Civic issues. They include the pulpit and the press, both of which, through their contributions still are sadly inadequate, nevertheless are giving thought and space to social and civic matters to a degree never before known. But many other platforms have been set up in IO RELIGIOUS EDUCATION recent years also. Important among them are women’s clubs, where the study of Browning and Tennyson has been forced to share at least equal honors with questions of safe milk, disposal of garbage, promotion of health-education, clean streets, and the like. Civic clubs of a dozen names and shades of interest have sprung up in many places for the avowed purpose of providing a common meeting- ground for citizens interested in promoting the public good; and the school social-center movement, which includes the use of the school buildings for afternoon and evening clubs, mothers’ organi- zations, parent-teachers’ associations, lectures, public meeting, de- bates, and the like, has made rapid strides in the last few years. The full list is long. It includes public commons; college lectures and extension courses; academies of medicine, and of political and social science ; social settlements ; labor unions ; consumers’ leagues ; chambers of commerce; municipal leagues; institutes and special study classes; city, state, and national conventions and conferences on education, health, labor, charities, corrections, etc. ; public exhi- bitions, expositions, exhibits and museums ; and many other centers of public discussion and of dissemination of information. All of these put a new valuation upon talk and discussion as an agency for community advance. They recognize that progress in the every-day conditions of life is dependent upon progress in thought , upon the spread of ideas, upon the application to old con- ceptions of new information and fact, and upon the maintaining of an open mind upon all questions that cannot be safely regarded as conclusively and unmistakably settled for all time. To these centers where facts and ideas are exchanged and pooled and tested, an illustrative group of which have been enumerated, must be credited a part, at least, in many or most of the forward steps taken by our communities. Social Research and Teaching A third type of community service is the social or community survey. In its final analysis it has two parts : it is an implement of research or investigation, and it is an educational measure. As an RELIGIOUS EDUCATION II implement of investigation it is an attempt in the field of civic and social reform to do merely what the civil engineer does before he starts to lay out a railroad, what the sanitarian does before he starts a campaign against malaria, what the scientific physician does before he treats a case. It is, in short, a method by which tested information, the pertinent facts, are substituted for conjecture or mere guess in deciding on policies and laying out community-wide programs of improvement. But when the facts have been gathered and analyzed, when conclusions have been drawn as to what they mean, and recommenda- tions for improvement have been worked out, findings, conclusions, and recommendations need to be presented to the public. The survey then becomes an educational measure. It goes on the theory that the best interests of democracy demand that the community be in- formed upon community matters, and thereby be provided with a basis for intelligent public opinion. It would thus be a school whose teaching is not confined to children and youth, but which aims to get its facts and message, expressed as simply as possible, before the whole people. To this end it utilizes as many channels of education as possible. If the information and knowledge it has obtained are to become a part of the common experience of the community, moreover, it recognizes that the individual or organization who would speak to millions nowadays has great competition. With the rapidly multi- plying inroads and drafts upon the individual’s leisure time, the social surveyor must put his message in a way that is both interesting and quick, and easy to understand. The daily press, the graphic exhibit, the illustrated periodical, the public address and entertain- ment, the motion-picture screen, as well as the printed pamphlet and book report, all are utilized; and utilized, moreover, with as great a command as possible of the technique of these different publicity mediums. In the last decade the social-survey idea has spread enormously. Vital as the idea was in itself, it also doubtless drew some of its momentum from the collateral movements in certain public and 12 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION private agencies which during a number of years have been emphasiz- ing scientific inquiries into social conditions as a part of their routine. Among these are the United States Bureau of Education, the United States Children’s Bureau, and the Federal Public Health Service, state and city boards of health, civic federations, churches, home and foreign missionary societies, Sunday school associations, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, social service commissions, chambers of commerce, child labor committees, tax associations, women’s clubs, civic improvement societies, vice commissions, city boards of public welfare, state boards of charities, private charitable societies, recreation associations, committees of private citizens, many colleges and universities, and a few periodicals, public libraries, and normal schools — not to mention a number of the philanthropic foundations. This use of investigation and survey as an agency for social betterment is also seen in the contemporaneous creation of bureaus’ of municipal research, and of large numbers of city, state, and federal commissions on economy and efficiency. Universal Brotherhood in These Services Here, then, among the many different agencies for community service are three general types : first, a service which unites, as far as possible, all of the resources of the community in meeting the needs of the individual or the individual family, which provides a careful diagnosis with co-operative and friendly treatment of case upon case of abnormal family life; second, a service which leads into new paths of social advancement and community improvement through the exchange of ideas and the spread of enlightened and progressive thought; and third, a community service which would bring all of the benefits of science and practical experience to bear upon social conditions, and, through careful analysis of complex situations and effective presentation to the public of findings and recommendations, endeavor not only to correct the wrongs, but to quicken the constructive forces that show promise. The three types RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 13 are representative of many other social and civic agencies which are trying to unite the community in a service, not for the few, but for the many, agencies which are everywhere in the modern community trying to eliminate those economic, industrial, and social conditions which, as Bishop Charles D. Williams points out in one of his recent books, “are making the Christian life practically impossible.” Finally, the conclusion becomes apparent that these are among the important types of work being carried on to promote the prin- ciples of universal brotherhood in communities; for the principles of universal brotherhood mean love of neighbors, and that in turn, when translated into action, means service to neighbors. They are types of endeavor invented to give one community member a means of discharging his duty to other community members. And just as the word neighbor has a broader interpretation than the person next door, so this service can and does and should go farther than the borders of the neighborhood or of the community or of the city. Its limits are only the ends of the earth. The world appears to be so adjusted that those who would serve their distant neighbors, who would make their own practice of the principles of universal brotherhood reach all peoples and all lands can do so by practicing the principles of universal brotherhood close at hand — in the locality, in their own community. Let those, then, who would love their neighbors near and far effectively — who would express their love in a way that is more than sounding brass or a clanging cymbal — let them, whether they are travelers down from Jerusalem to Jericho or sojourners in Bethlehem, Butte, or Bisbee, let them labor, by the simple means of friendly personal service and of educating the community, to stamp out injustice, ignorance, neglect, public indifference, disease, institutional inefficiency, brutal- ity, aggression and all the other enemies of the highest self-develop- ment and self-expression of their fellow-men ; and the results of their efforts will register not only at home, but to the circumference of society. The Springfield Survey Springfield, Illinois Sectional Reports Public Schools of Springfield. Leonard P. Ayres, Ph. D. 152 pages, 68 illustrations . 25 cents Care of Mental Defectives, the Insane and Alcoholics in Springfield. W. L. Treadway, M. D. 46 pages, 14 illus- trations . . . . .15 cents Recreation in Springfield. Lee F. Hanmer and Clarence A. Perry . 133 pages, 53 illustrations . . 25 cents Housing in Springfield. John Ihlder. 24 pages, 15 illustra- tions ..... . 15 cents Charities of Springfield. Francis H. McLean. 185 pages, 11 illustrations . . . . 25 cents Industrial Conditions in Springfield. Louise C. Odencrantz and Zenas L. Potter . 173 pages, 18 illustrations . 25 cents Public Health in Springfield. Franz Schneider , Jr. 159 pages, 64 illustrations . . .25 cents Correctional System of Springfield. Zenas L. Potter. 185 pages, 32 illustrations . . .25 cents City and County Administration in Springfield. D. 0. Decker .... 25 cents Springfield: The Survey Summed Up. (In preparation.) Shelby M. Harrison . In addition to the separate reports listed above, a library edition of three cloth-bound volumes will be available shortly. Vols. I and II are now ready. Price $4.00 for the set. 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