ii!t'!|iVMttHKte«il«ii'!k;i«^ ' ^^1 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Presented by C B. Robinson in memory of his brother EDWARD S. ROBINSON Professor of Psychology Yale University 1927- 1937 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE BAKER &. TAYLOR COMPANY NEW TOHK THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, PUKUOKA, SENDAI THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY SHANGHAI 'T^CL^dtl.^^^^jL.. ^^^-»Tf5^>f;* '""it !¦ 't ( 1 J,.... 1 11 \ 1 i DIXIXG-ROOJI -VT .\,SIIL.VXD Portrait of Culunel Henry Clay, Jr., by Oliver Frazer. Portrait of ilrs. Henry Clay McDowell, by Benoni Irwin HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 19 example, the gas on which man}- depended for heat failed, she planned in her feebleness to supply a needy household with fuel. For many years her health was frail, and the care of her and thought for her were among the constant preoccupations of the daughter. But beside the semipublic life that residence at Ashland involved, there were also charming and abiding friendships with school friends who came to visit, with the poet and artist who delighted in the beauties of Ash land and in the gentle atmosphere of kindliness and appreciation. Among the girl friends there might be named Marion Houston, from New York, now Mrs. Datus Smith, of Pasadena — they heard together Mr. Devine lecture on "Charity Organization Methods" in the early days of the New York School of Philanthropy's summer session; Grace Otis, from a prominent Chicago family, now Mrs. William Sage, who later helped her beg for Lincoln School when she went on the trail of ex-Kentuckians in its behalf and got $1,000 from Mr. Robert Lincoln; Alice Dudley, daughter of the Bishop of Kentucky, who later married Will and died in 1911; Annie Fitzhugh, the poet, who had not yet married William McLean, the painter and sculptor; Katherine Pettit, who later organized the Hindman and Pine Mountain Settlement Schools; the gifted Dangerfield sisters, Elizabeth who is now caretaker for the "super- horse" Man-of-War, and Henderson who is just about to publish an authorized translation of Rostand's works, the result of many years of scholarly work. Among the men were Mr. Wilson, who was then chiefly a poet and had not yet begun to express himself in color as well; John Fox, Jr., who was trying his hand at stories, never 20 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE dreaming that a book of his could outsell any one by his master, James Lane Allen. There were, besides, the innumerable "kin" as they say in Kentucky — the Ballards and Crittendens and Duvals growing older with her, and the beautiful Susie Hart, from Woodford, now Mrs. Johnson Camden, whose daughter, Tevis, later shared the struggle with Governor McCreary and Gover nor Stanley, when the tuberculosis fight seemed to have been won,' and the Shelbys, descendants of the old governor, whose beautiful daughter Susanna had mar ried Dr. Ephraim McDowell — their name, in fact, was legion. These years of girlhood were very happy years. She loved the outdoors, the trees, the far stretches, she loved the memories of the childhood at Woodlake, but she loved books,^' too, and craved the organized quest for ' See below, chap, vii, p. 141. ' Her bookplate is so charmingly associated with her past that it is repro duced. It was designed by a distinguished Chicago architect. The motto on the dial is Semper varians in veritate constans. HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 21 information and instruction, and, for this, the woman's club served as the channel. Like all catholic and democratic spirits, her associa tions were free from the limitations so often imposed by difference in age as they were able to overcome the usual barriers of sex, color, or differing economic oppor tunity. And in her beloved friend and kinswoman, Mrs. Ida Withers Harrison, to whom she was related in closest bonds of affection throughout her life, she found sympathy and companionship. In this understanding with her and Mrs. Harrison in those days was perhaps especially associated Mrs. Mary Gratz Morton, to whom she was related by ties of marriage and intimate family association. She delighted in Mrs. Morton's beauty and wit and to an extent was influenced by Mrs. Morton's guidance in certain public questions. "Soon after her return from the East, she joined the Fortnightly Club," Mrs. Harrison writes, "and at once became a leading spirit in its councils and programs. The Fortnightly was the oldest club in Lexington and one of the oldest in the state. It was purely a study club and sometimes undertook very ambitious lines of study. " She and Mrs. Harrison constituted the Program Committee for the years 1894-95, when the club wanted to study German hterature. The Committee worked over the plans and submitted so ambitious a program, including philosophy as well as pure literature, that the club, somewhat aghast, decided they could do the work if they worked two years instead of one year on it. To the jibes of a local paper that Kant and Hegel and Fichte exceeded the range of a woman's club abihty they retorted that "'twas better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. " 2 2 MADELINE INlcDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE She also gave herself much practice in composition during these years between her return from school and her marriage. Her part in the preparation of the program for the club had led her into the problem of organizing literary materials. She had a great love for beautiful language used with exactness, and she had a rare sense of the value of discipline. An article entitled "Personal Reminiscences of Henry Clay," published in the Century for September, 1895,' shows a fine skill in the selection of material, in objective use of facts, in which she had naturally a personal interest, and in vivid statement. Some of her manuscripts of this period were not published, but were laid aside and served as the basis for later speeches or reports. One in particular, entitled the "Passing of the Home," written first perhaps in 1894, contained the thesis which she later supported vdth such convincing force in her paper entitled "A Mother's Sphere," prepared for the PoUtical Science Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Among the older companions of those days in whose society she always delighted was her aunt, Magdalen, for whom she was named, who made her home for a great part of the time at Ashland. "Aunt Mag," as she was familiarly called by the younger members of the family of all degrees of kinship, was also interested in all kinds of things. She loved beauty in all things, but especially she was interested in architecture and painting. Her health was feeble and, born in 1829, she was no longer young. But she delighted in all the exquisite ways and all the flashing eagerness of her young niece. It ^^'as loving]}^ written of her when she died December 27, 1918: 'L, 765. MISS M.VGOALEX HARVEY McDOWELL, "AUXT MAG' HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 23 During her long life she gave evidence of much genius, of many talents. In a day when it was thought unusual, and by many improper, for a woman to play any part outside the routine of the drawing-room and the kitchen, she blazed the way for women's activities. When women were not admitted to the studios of the artists who taught, she learned to paint, and her pictures were thought worthy to hang even with the products of the masters of the craft. In a time when it was not thought possible that a woman might learn the intricacies of architecture, she designed buildings, small and large, private and public, that won the commendation of the artistic and the trained. There was no question of art, there was no principle of politics or of statecraft that was not of interest to her, nor on which she did not have a definite and firm conviction. There was never a time throughout her long life that she did not give eager interest and glad aid to anyone who appealed to her for sympathy or assistance. But through her long life, spanning almost the history of Kentucky, full of activity, covering all the gamut of human achievement, she never found time to say, or even think, if one may judge thought by words and deeds, an unkind or untruthful thing. If all she ever said of kindred or friend or acquaintance, even of enemy of her country, for she had no enemy of her own,. were repeated to the one of whom it was said it would not cause resentment. With the utter frankness of absolute fearlessness she said to each and to every one what she thought. But as her nature was free from malice, from envy, from uncharitableness, so was her speech free from rancor and her tongue from sting. As there were stored in her heart the experiences of four wars, the greatest of which she lived, as she often expressed the passionate desire to do, to see ended by the victory of civilization, so was there stored in her heart the knowledge gained not through experi ence but given by instinct and heredity, that one carries in one's heart the measure of one's happiness by service to others. In the midst of these delights and companionships, illness fell upon Madge. It was said to be the result of an accident. Whatever the origin, a radical change in 24 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE her habits of life had to be made, and a life subjected to physical restraints had to be anticipated. The change has been described: There was never a suggestion of loss. Memory shows tennis parties where others played and she looked on; dancing parties where she was hostess, but did not dance; and riding parties and rabbit hunts where she drove and others rode. But none might know that she would rather ride than drive, and rather dance than sit, and rather play tennis than serve tea. She made her life full. There were things to learn and books to read and older people to amuse. And the pictures of those days are full of duties done, full of pleasures given and shared, the days of girlhood, and joyous house parties, when the home and the woods where the long shadows fell rang with laughter and with song; with the tinkle of guitar and the music of the voice. And in the house parties, among the guests that came, there were many kinds — the poet and the artist and the story teUer; some of wealth, some without wealth; some whose people had won posi tion, some who made their own position. It was not by rank, nor wealth, nor by reason of what others might have done that she chose her friends. On November 17, 1898, she married Desha Breckin ridge, a young lawyer who had devoted his efforts for the past four years to the political support of his brilliant father, W. C. P. Breckinridge, member of Congress 1885-94 and leader in the "Sound-Money Campaign" of 1896, and had, as the result of this activity, in 1897 abandoned the legal profession for which he had prepared himself and become the editor and owner of the Lexington Herald. Before her marriage she became interested in the different kinds of service the Herald might render. She corresponded with the various publishing houses in the effort to obtain books for review purposes; she wrote reviews or secured reviews from others; and dur- HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 25 ing aU these years the "Book Notes" of the Herald could have stood comparison with similar features in the metro politan journals.' She brought to the paper an interest in beautiful language, in fine composition, and in art in every field. She was keen that it should recognize the claim of all to have beauty a part of daily living. For a time a charming Herald sounding the world's news was the emblem at the head of the paper, designed at her suggestion by Aunt Mag. The Boy later gave way to the Bugle calHng to the daily interest. I Since about igo6-7 these columns have represented largely the critical judgment of Miss Elizabeth Dangerfield. 26 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Quite incidentally the paper testified to these varied interests. The death of an exquisitely modest and beauty- loving person evokes an editorial' that is full not only of appreciation, but of accurate knowledge concerning unsus pected resources of the community in that field — so lovely an essay on the "Passing of an Artist" that it is repro duced to show the breadth of her interest and delicacy of her touch. The death of Miss Bessie Frazer removes from Lexington one more of those persons whose charm of intellect and of personality gave to the society of this section the reputation which for so long it justly enjoyed. Brought up in an atmosphere of art and of literary culture. Miss Frazer was of those who, like the beloved biographer of Prue and I, have "Italy in their hearts." Spending most of her life quietly in her quaint and charming little home in the Blue Grass, she knew more of Italy, of Europe and her treasures than the hundreds of tourists who in the flesh unseeingly tread those sacred soils each year. She was on intimate terms with all the interesting people of fiction, and she gave the same welcome to the masterpieces of yesterday or today that she had given in her youth to the masterpieces of the past. Her conversation was rich with allusion springing from this intimate knowledge of the world of books, and was lightened always with a sense of humor that was perhaps the chief source of what seemed her gift of perpetual youth. But even better than the culture of mind which Miss Frazer possessed, was what has been called "the culture of the heart," a consideration for others, a generous appreciation of talent in others, a forgetfulness of self, a freshness and gentleness, a loveli ness of nature that it is impossible to describe. The daughter of an artist whose memory is stiU green, whose reputation cannot fade in the many Kentucky homes where his works hang, Miss Frazer was herself an artist of no mean abilit}'. She was taught ^Lexington Herald, April 6, 1910. HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 27 by her father, but her bent took a different turn from his and her best work was as an animal painter. The Frazer home, with the old portraits on the walls inside that shine with the youth of genius, and the clustering shrubs and old- fashioned flowers outside that each year clothe it with spring, is a connecting Unk of what seems to us the prosaic Lexington of today, with the Lexington of the past, rich with the memories of great personalities. Ohver Frazer was the pupil and friend of Matthew Jouett, Kentucky's first artist; his wife was Mrs. Jouett's niece, and the close intimacy and affection between the famiUes is attested by the products of Jouett's brush that hang side by side with those of his most brilHant pupil. Oliver Frazer's artistic training, begun in Jouett's studio, was continued abroad. Kentucky was fortunate to have in the earlier days two such portrait painters as Jouett and Frazer who succeeded him, leaving some portraits of the generation which Jouett painted and more of the succeeding generation. Jouett, for instance, had painted a portrait of Henry Clay in his young manhood; Frazer painted a most charming portrait of Mrs. Clay as an old lady, a portrait of Henry Clay and of his wife. Some of his best-known portraits are the ones of the brilliant young states man and orator, Richard Menefee, who married Jouett's daughter, of General Price, Mr. Matthew T. Scott, Mrs. Susan Shelby Fish- back, an exquisite child's portrait of the present Dr. Benjamin Warfield of Princeton, and a group picture of the artist's wife with two of her baby children — one of them the subject of these inade quate words. Hanging with this group in the Frazer home are three portraits of Oliver Frazer — one by himself, rarely beautiful and interesting, one by a later artist admirer, Benoni Irwin, almost as charming, and one by Healy. The latter portrait, with one of Healy by himself, painted for Frazer, are the mementos of a very delightful friendship between these two artists. Healy was sent to this country by Louis Philippe, commissioned to paint for him portraits of General Jackson and of Mr. Clay. In Lexington Healy found a most delightful and congenial society, and most delightful and most brilliant of all he found the artist Oliver Frazer. As a mark of 28 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE admiration and affection he painted the portrait of Frazer above referred to. A certain group of men, many of whose names now live in history, were wont to gather on Sunday afternoon at the home of Major Madison Johnson. It is recounted that on a particu lar Sabbath, Healy failed to put in his appearance. The company adjourned finally to unearth the trouble. They found Healy locked in his studio, refusing to come out even for the companion ship which he found so congenial until he had finished a portrait of himself which he was painting for his friend Oliver Frazer. The little household, graced and brightened by cheerful memories of the past from which the soul of another artist has just gone out, leaving its members sorrowing, cannot remain alwaj-s in the shadow because the very nature of her who is gone was such that the memory of her brings a sense always of youth and of cheerfulness. This experience with the books and papers in general meant a familiarity with the literature of a great number of fields, a contact with the widest range of problems touching the community life, and the early habit of formulating these problems so as to meet the interest and intelligence of the average reader. Her marriage made permanent and public an association that was already a companionship in effort, in service, and in expression. A word more may be added to these meager references to her earlier life, in order to speak of her relation to certain church activities. The family were members of the Episcopal church, and not long after Major McDowell moved to Lexington both Nettie and Madge joined a group of young 'girls in the church who had been organized for "Christian work" by one of the ladies devoted to the parish and the church, Mrs. Maria Hunt Dudley. Nettie became president of the club, and the club at first provided STAIRW.VY .\T .VSHLAXD Portrait of Mrs. Henry (Lucretia Hart) Clay. Portrait by Oliver Frazer HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 29 support and education for a little girl, and, when she died, took over the permanent support of a cot in the hospital, then the Protestant Infirmary, now the Good Samaritan Hospital. Nettie was married on April 19, 1892, and moved to Louisville, and the Gleaners met less regularly and allowed their other activities to lapse, maintaining always their support of the cot. In the summer after Madge's marriage, 1899, how ever. Professor Penniman, of Berea College, organized a horseback trip into certain mountain sections, and Madge delighted in the opportunity of learning, if only shghtly, to know her "contemporary ancestors" at first hand. Among other places she visited were Beattyville, the county seat of Lee County, which is on one side of Kentucky River, and Proctor, on the other side — "yon side," as the neighbors say. The diocese of Kentucky, not then divided, had erected in Beattyville a pretty httle stone church and a little schoolhouse ; and in Proctor an old building with long porches and a great yard that had been known as "Hiram McGuire's Farm" when there was horseback travel or boat travel that way had been purchased by Mrs. Frank Hunt, a devout member of the church, given to the diocese, and trans formed into a mission-house for church uses. Madge saw at once the possibility of developing there a social settlement for the service of the people of the whole region. She had seen that there were not only physical resources in the building, but spiritual and human resources as well, in that Miss Lillie Mahan, who had been county superintendent of schools, had already given up her teaching to devote herself to the work of the church under the Board of Missions. 30 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE On her return then she took steps to revive the Glean ers. Its membership was enlarged to take in members from other denominations, and she proposed that they undertake to maintain settlement activities at Proctor during the summer months. Mrs. Henderson Danger- field Norman, who, with her sister Elizabeth, was in the work in those early days and through the years has maintained her interest, writes of Madge's part in the work as follows: .... The other day I went up to Beattyville for a few days' visit, and on the train I met an old Lee County friend who, talking in a reminiscent vein, said to me: "Do you remember the summer the Gleaners first came to Lee County? It sometimes seemed to me every good thing in the County started that summer, or runs back to it somehow or another." It set me thinking of Madge's share in it, and you may like to have the gist of that story After that mountain trip of Madge's she reanimated the Gleaners and organized them for mountain work, keeping up nevertheless the hospital work. You have told me how careful you want to be not to claim for Madge any work that really belonged to another, knowing how literally she "loved herself last" and remembered the work of other people when she had forgotten her own. Certainly I don't mean to belittle the fact that valuable work had been done for the neighbors in Lee County before, as there has been since, but nobody who has shared the Gleaners' work since the spring of 1899 doubts that Madge's was the torch that kindled ours. The Gleaners were reorganized, and Madge became president in 1899. The membership which had been girls of Christ Church parish was enlarged to admit Christian women of all denomi nations (though as a matter of fact its personnel was not greatly changed and its work was under the control of the Bishop and rector as before) Madge kindled and informed her group; she appointed her committees wisely; Clara Dudley, now Mrs. HER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 31 Livingston, was chairman of one of them and carried on her share of the work with the same spirit that had prompted her grandmother Mrs. Hunt to buy the old roadside tavern and to give it to the church for a Mission House, and had made her mother, Mrs. Dudley, organize the Gleaners. Madge, with her brother Will's help, got up an excursion on the Lexington and Eastern Railroad, of which he was general manager, to take the Gleaners to Beatt5rville to "view the prospect o'er." (We felt a little like Moses, because we never reached our kingdom- to-come, but stayed on the ferry boat, fast on a sandbar in the river, and gazed longingly at the Mission House on its hill in Proctor, till train time; but the enthusiasm was created nevertheless.) The following summer, 1900, a band of volunteer workers from the Gleaners stayed at the Ninaweb Inn in Beattyville for a month and opened a kindergarten and conducted other classes and clubs at the schoolhouse in Proctor, crossing and recrossing the river every day. A difficult beginning, and a small one, but the whole countryside responded with grateful co-operation that set at naught in the minds of those who helped that summer the slander that persistently declares that the mountain people are unrespon sive or unappreciative. It was interesting to discover during that first month that already the church workers there knew one unfailing friend, quoted one Bluegrass authority, and her name was Madge McDowell Breckinridge. By the summer of 1901 the Mission House had been so far repaired and set in order that the workers could stay on the Proctor side and hve in the Mission House. That year we had about a hundred guests a day; the kindergarten in that isolated com munity had an average attendance of 89; we had cooking and sewing classes, classes in basketry, clubs for the boys and girls and community gatherings in the evenings, which the neighbors elected to call "singings." And the heart of it all was the chapel, once the dining-room of the tavern. There family prayers were held daily, with morning service if the rector, Mr. Patterson, who is guardian angel to all the county, could be with us. That was twenty years ago. Miss Lillie Mahan has long lived in Florida; this spring the old Mission House was sold, and the 32 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE work has changed in character; but, since Madge was president of the Gleaners until now, some form of community service has been done in Lee County through this agency, which she did not create but which she did reanimate and direct into this channel. Almost every summer from that day to this there has been some intensive church work for the community in Lee County done by the Gleaners from Lexington, working with the church people and other Christian friends of the vicinage. Every year there has been a little extension; a day has been spent at a dozen different points in the county, establishing new contacts; the quilt industry now reaches several counties, and Weavers have been encouraged to persist in their old-fashioned craft; a market has been created for the beautiful mountain quilts; classes in home nursing have alleviated pain and lessened sickness; ambitious young people have been helped to get learning. The work goes on. Madge kept the presidency of the Gleaners only a Uttle while- As so often happened, she kindled that fire and left others to tend it while she went on to kindle new ones. It seems to me part of her essential heroism. She never stayed for rewards. Other people were warmed by her fires while she was in cold places start ing new ones. The Gleaners have no regular meetings now. About ten people, all of the reorganized group of 1899, simply give or secure work or money enough to keep the work going and to meet opportunities as they offer, always under the Bishop's direction. The interesting thing about Madge's connection with the Gleaners seems to me that it is an early example of the principle that animated everything she did. That first bit of Christian work in her little-girUiood was to help another child; then, to help more children, sick ones in the memorial cot. Then, taking the same agency, in her early womanhood, she enlarged its vision and made it a vehicle for help to a small community. Then, she went on into her widening field of service, until, before age touched her, and with all her ardours undimmed, she was ready for promotion into the country where God's work is more splen didly, because more fully, done. M.VJOR McDOWELL A-\D MADGE AT ASHLAXD A CROUP AT ASHLAKD From upper right to left and down: Mrs. McDowell, John Fox. Jr., Robert Burns WilFon. Grace Oti.s, Stites Duval, Marl^'c, Marion Houston, Major McDowell CHAPTER III THE BEGINNING OF HER PUBLIC SERVICE The law is pur schoolmaster. — Gal. iii:24. The date of her marriage was midway in a decade marked by some of the darkest episodes in Kentucky history, 1895-1905. During the early years of the decade there developed a strong antagonism to the "toll" system of maintaining the "turnpikes." And in many neighboring counties " nightriding " became a common method of destroying their value. In Fayette County, in which Lexington is located, there was no nightriding and by a skilful development of new roadways the county authorities were able eventually to purchase the properties at prices very advantageous to the tax payer. But the period was one of uncertainty and con fusion in the local administration. It was during this period that the use of Kentucky soil for the growth of tobacco was being rapidly developed. This meant the introduction into the population, especially in the Blue Grass region, of a new element, the tobacco tenant, and the rise of new problems connected with the marketing of this new crop. The political life here as in many other communities was characterized by features of corrupt organization that was for the time unquestioned by the respectable groups in the community. In the " Sound-Money Campaign " of 1896, for example, in which Colonel Breckinridge was the leader, there had 33 34 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE prevailed in certain districts, among them the Ashland district, conditions of physical threat and peril that resembled warfare. The woman's rights movement had hardly passed beyond the initial stage of protest. Owing to the coura geous and devoted effort of Miss Laura Clay and other heroic spirits, the Kentucky Equal Rights Association had been organized' in 1898-99. The State Federation of Women's Clubs had been formed in 1894 and was gaining a wider hold on the women of the state. But in the begin ning of the year 1899, there could hardly be said to be a widespread woman's movement or a special conscious ness of power among the women's organizations. In February, 1899, there occurred, however, an incident which showed the demoralized condition of the local government and made clear the fact that unless the women of the community could exercise constructive leadership there was little hope in the community of other than criminal lawlessness amounting to anarchy and chaos. One group that was conspicuously above and beyond the law was a gang gathered about a family by the name of McNamara. The father was knovrai as Red McNamara — there were six sons, one of whom, John, was known as "King" McNamara. In the late afternoon of Saturday, February 11, 1899, in one of the most frequented and public spots in Lexing ton, the corner of Main and Upper streets, a very respect able and quiet gentleman, Mr. Jacob Keller, on his way home from work was brutally and without provocation fatally wounded by John, or "King" McNamara. 'Anthony and Harper, History of Woman Sufrage, Vol. IV, chap. xli. THE BEGINNING OF HER PUBLIC SERVICE 35 The murderer gave himself up and was released on a $1,000 bond, which proved afterward to be invalid because of some irregularity in the signature. It was at first thought that Mr. Keller's wound was not serious, but it proved fatal and he died on Monday, the thirteenth. When IVIr. Keller died, McNamara was again arrested and brought before the examining magistrate, and again re leased on a $1,000 bond. At the time of the examining trial the following Saturday, he failed to appear. On the same day his brother, "Squire" W. J. McNamara, shot and seriously wounded an officer of the law. No steps being taken by the authorities either to hold or to apprehend the murderer, a number of women of the community assembled for the purpose not only of arousing a greater interest, but of developing some plan for action. A mass meeting was swiftly planned by representatives of the various women's organizations, and a call was issued on February 19 for a meeting to be held on the afternoon of the twenty-second. The object of this meet ing was stated to be "to protest against the murder of Jacob S. Keller, and to raise a subscription for the purpose of offering a reward." The call for the meeting was signed by representatives of the Woman's Club, the Transylvania Club, and the Women's Christian Temper ance Union. At this meeting, at which moving and convincing appeals in behalf of law and order were made by the most representative members of the community (C. S. Scott, T. T. Foreman, James Todd, John T. Shelby, R. T. Thornton, and Mr. Beauchamp), resolutions were adopted reciting the sequence of critical events that had led to the calling of the meeting and calling for 36 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE contributions toward a special fund with which to supple ment the reward offered by the public authorities for the capture of King McNamara. Those resolutions read: Whereas, On Saturday, February nth, Jacob S. Keller, a citizen of Lexington, was, on the streets of Lexington, shot by John H. McNamara, and from that wound died on the Monday night following; and Whereas, John H. McNamara was within an hour after the first arrest released upon a bond that was defective, if not void, and again on Monday was released on a bond for $1,000.00 and is now a fugitive from justice; and Whereas, We believe this to be but one of a series of crimes which has grown out of an unsound condition of this community; therefore, be it Resolved, That this meeting asks every citizen, without regard to sex or religion, or politics, to contribute as his or her means permits, to offer a reward for the apprehension and delivery to the officers of the law of said John H. McNamara, and that the money so raised be applied to this purpose and to none other; and be it further Resolved, That the Governor of Kentucky is hereby urged to increase the reward offered by the State for the capture of John H. McNamara to the limit allowed by law; and be it further Resolved, That this meeting earnestly urges upon those officers of the law with whom rests the power of action to remove from our community the reproach that now rests upon it, to afford us the security to which we are entitled, and to cause those who have so long possessed a conscious immunity from punishment for crime to realize that the law will be enforced rigorously and impartially against all who violate it, and let us further urge that in future a persistent and aggressive fight be made in behalf of justice and honesty, by the good men of the community, who shall be as determined and as unanimous in action as have been the law-breakers heretofore. These were signed by Ida Withers Harrison, Mary T. Scott, and Madeline McDowell Breckinridge. In 1884 In i8Sq In 1893 In 1808 MADGE THE BEGINNING OF HER PUBLIC SERVICE 37 Within the week the thousand dollars desired as a reward and additional funds for meeting the expenses of the committee had been secured from popular subscription. Madge was chairman of the committee, and her presentation of the resolutions on this occasion is probably her first appearance on a public platform other than at a meeting of a women's club. It was the beginning of a career of public effort, which from beginning to end was grounded in the conviction that the orderly processes of the law were essential to all progress, that no apparent advance of public interest was to be sought at the risk of lessening respect for the law, that it is therefore futile to place on the statute books any law too far in advance of public opinion for a reasonably widespread enforce ment of its provisions to be anticipated. With the end of the year 1899 and the beginning of the year 1900 came the Goebel tragedy. William Goebel had for a number of years been a member of the State Senate from Kenton County. In the session of 1898 he introduced an election law known as the Goebel Law, which, according to a saying of Henry Watterson, "was intended to leave nothing to chance."According to the provisions of that law, the legislature, which was then Democratic, elected three men to compose the Board of State Election Commissioners. That Board appointed three men in each county to compose the Board of County Election Commissioners, and they appointed all local election officers. This law aroused bitter opposition but was passed by the legislature, and three Democrats were elected as State Election Commissioners. 38 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Mr. Goebel then became a candidate for the Demo cratic nomination for governor, and was nominated in a convention held in Louisville known as the "Music Hall Convention," presided over by Judge David B. Redwine, after proceedings that aroused great opposition. Democrats who opposed the principle of the Goebel election law and the methods pursued in the Music Hall Convention, later met in Lexington and nominated John Young Brown, one of the most distinguished of the older members of the Democratic party. He had been elected to Congress when less than twenty-five years of age, and had been governor from 1891 to 1895. After a campaign of great bitterness, the Republican nominee. Governor W. S. Taylor, received a plurality of votes cast and was accorded the certificate of election by the State Election Commissioners. Mr. Goebel and his friends refused to accept the decision of the State Board of Commissioners and instituted a contest before the legislature beginning January 15. In this contest the ablest lawyers of the state represented Governor Taylor and Senator Goebel. The Republicans brought to Frankfort thousands of men from the mountain regions of the state, where the Republican party has always been strong, for the purpose of holding a mass meeting to protest against what they denominated the theft of the governorship by the Demo crats, and on January 30, 1900, Senator Goebel, while walking across the yard of the State Capitol, was shot from a window of the Executive Bui ding and fatally wounded. There was of course great excitement, and Governor Taylor called out the troops, who prevented the legislature from meeting in the Capitol and attempted THE BEGINNING OF HER PUBLIC SERVICE 39 to prevent it from meeting at all. A secret meeting of the legislature was held, however, and Senator Goebel was declared elected, and upon his death, Mr. Beckham, who was the nominee with him for lieutenant governor, became governor. By what seemed a miracle, civil war between the adherents of Governor Taylor and Governor Goebel was averted. Governor Taylor, who had been declared by the Democratic Board of Election Commissioners duly elected governor of the state, fled from Frankfort, as did other candidates on the ticket with him. The state was torn by factions. The spirit of lawlessness and violence seemed to prevail, and, as the McNamara tragedy had stirred Lexington, this disaster shocked the whole state. The women of Louisville inaugurated a movement intended to be state-wide. They organized a "Women's Emergency Committee, " and on February 6, 1900, held a mass meeting at which stirring resolutions were adopted. These resolutions recited the disaster and the resulting crisis and called on the political parties to have regard to principles and patriotism and to the moral standards in the private life of a candidate as well as to his public record, demanded greater public control over the carrying of deadly weapons, urged more effective enforcement of the criminal law, and called on women's clubs and philanthropic societies to lay greater stress on the principles and practice of good government. The resolutions read : Resting under the shadow of a great calamity, dishonored by the conduct of recent public affairs, in the hope that the united influence of the women of Kentucky may incite men to arise above party for the honor of statehood, be it 40 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Resolved, That while we recognize the necessity for political parties in a government by the people, we urge that patriotism and principles be placed before party, and that the same standard of conduct governing private life be applied to public duties; and be it further Resolved, That parents, teachers of our schools throughout the Commonwealth, the Federation of Women's Clubs, all philan thropic societies and kindred organizations in Kentucky be urged to co-operate in inculcating principles of good citizenship, and a realization of the obligations relating thereto. Inasmuch as the carrying of deadly weapons is largely respon sible for the moral disorder and resultant crime prevalent in our State; and whereas, the non-enforcement of the statutory laws has rendered them practically inoperative, be it Resolved, That the expression of public opinion, insofar con trollable by this assembly, be such as to enforce the execution of said laws, and to compel the enactment of such penalties as will prevent transgression; and be it further Resolved, That said public opinion call for the enactment of laws providing that he who takes life, except in a lawful discharge of public duty, be thereby disfranchised and rendered ineligible for holding public office. This committee of Louisville women undertook to bring into the movement women in other parts of the state, and on April 17 a similar meeting was held in Lexington. At this meeting again the disturbed con dition of public affairs was pointed out, and the need of a permanent organization of representative citizens in behalf of good government was urged. The following resolutions signed by five prominent women' were adopted and plans were announced for a future meeting at which a permanent organization would be effected. 'Those signing were: Miss Sue S. Scott, Mrs. W. S. Threlkeld, Mrs. Percy Scott, Mrs. W. S. Fulton, and Mrs. Shelby Harbison. THE BEGINNING OF HER PUBLIC SERVICE 41 The condition of affairs in the State of Kentucky demands of its people that they lift up their voices in determined assertion of those principles, which will make for righteousness, peace and prosperity. Beheving that the present disastrous condition of the body pohtic of our State is only the culmination of years of political corruption, disregard of law and general civic righteousness, therefore the purpose of this meeting is to aid in creating a public sentiment, which shall demand in public life as high a standard as that in private life. Whereas we realize the duty and power of womanhood and motherhood to assist in awakening the public conscience: be it Resolved, First, That we protest against bribery and corruption, aU fraud and violence at the polls and that we entreat voters to guard the purity of the ballot box as they would their lives. Second, That in our sense of the sacredness of human life we condemn the common practice of carrying concealed weapons, and of resorting to firearms in the settlement of difficulties as tending to crime, and demand of all officers charged with executing the law, that they enforce it and we urge the enactment of such penalties as will prevent transgression of the law. Third, We beseech parents in the home, and teachers and instructors in our public schools and all institutions of learning to inculcate in our children those principles of true patriotism and civil responsibility, which shall lead them to guard as a most sacred inheritance our free institutions which were purchased for us at so great a cost and which are now threatened with destruc tion. Fourth, Recognizing the great power of the press, we urge that its strongest influence be brought to bear on the purity of the baUot, the sacredness of individual character, the condemnation of lawlessness, and the carrying of concealed weapons. Lastly, We acknowledge for ourselves and urge upon every woman in Kentucky, that so far as public sentiment is concerned, the motherhood of our state is equally responsible with its manhood. Furthermore, that we need from this day as patriots to express our sentiments and to teach the rising generation that pubhc 42 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE opinion is a power formed by individuals, and each one is respon sible for the same; and we pledge ourselves to make every effort in our power for the overthrow of lawlessness and crime, and for the establishment of that social and political purity of righteous ness, which makes good citizenship and exalteth a nation. That further meeting was held on April 24, when steps were taken to organize a civic league. It will appear that Madge was active in promoting that meeting; and to the work of that organization, through which a great field of endeavor was opened up of which there was a slight forecast in 1900, the three following chapters are devoted. At almost the same time, her attention had been called to the critical question of the treatment of poverty in Lexington. The winter of 1900 was a hard winter, and there was suffering among the poor. Moreover, a new city administration had taken office, and the begging members of the community were inclined to try the new officials out. It was the practice of the City Council to appropriate annually a charity fund. The fund of the preceding year had however been exhausted, and by January 3 an emergency rehef situation had developed. Further reference to this situation will be made in a later chapter; here it need only be noted that as the result of meetings called by the mayor the Associated Charities was formed on February 14, and that she was present at those meetings and was concerned until her death with the problems of sound, wise, constructive, and democratic treatment of all who suffered from pecuniary need. And at this time her interests were being aroused along other lines as well. There was the question of the THE BEGINNING OF HER PUBLIC SERVICE 43 care of women students at the university. She had been a student there ten years before and knew something of the problems of the girls who studied there. An effort to provide for them better facilities of a domestic and social as well as academic character was being developed, and she joined with zest in the movement. It will be pointed out that this connected at last with what proved to be a local women's movement. This effort relates itself to her later work to secure the vote for women and must likewise claim a chapter for its treatment. It should, however, be pointed out here, that during these early years she was developing the methods in her work which she used throughout her life. They included, first, such a study of the problem as to give her command of its general aspects and a knowledge of its treatment in other communities. She applied for infor mation and suggestion to those who were attempting to solve the same or analogous problems elsewhere. She wrote to officials and executives of various agencies. She read reports, she learned of those communities in which the most aggressive and skilful attacks were being made on the evil to which her attention had been called. And then she examined all the suggestions and theories in the light of the immediate local situation. Her work had always "its feet on the ground," as it were. It was never remote, unreal, abstract. The best was none too good for her own community, but the community could often not recognize the nature or the volume of the wrong to be overcome or perceive the immediateness of the peril or estimate the gains from acting swiftly. A plan had therefore to be worked out applicable to the particular community, as wide as there was hope 44 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE of gaining acquiescence, no wider; as nearly adequate as was compatible with the higher levels of activity in this community, no more so. It was always into a real situa tion she wished to fit her contribution. She had therefore to develop the educational program, the plans for publicity and propaganda from which later action might be expected. She had a rare gift for straight publicity work, and with that talent went the capacity for arduous, tedious, exhausting work, and a sense of the importance of details that amounts to nothing less than genius. CHAPTER IV THE CIVIC LEAGUE— GENERAL SURVEY OF ITS ACTIVITIES Now, you must note, that the City stood upon a mighty hill: but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease .... though the foundation upon which the City was framed was higher than the clouds. . . . Then I heard in my dream, that all the bells in the City rang again for joy. . . Now, just as the gates were opened, . . I looked in . . and behold the City shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold; . . And after that they shut up the gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself among them. — Bunyan. As has been said, one of the objects of the Women's Emergency Committee was the organization of the com munity .into groups of persons pledged to study the needs of the community, and to such action as would lead to better political conditions. On April 24, 1900, therefore, within a week of the mass meeting, a group of persons came together in the new Fayette courthouse' to organize a civic league. Dr. Lyman Todd, a distinguished member of the medical pro fession, caUed the meeting to order. Mr. Samuel M. Wilson, a leading younger member of the bar, was selected as chairman, and Desha Breckinridge as secretary of the meeting. After further statements with reference to the need for such an organization and its possibilities of service,'' a committee on constitution^ and a committee ' The first case tried in this building had been called Monday, the pre ceding February s- ' Professor R. N. Roark, of the University of Kentucky, Colonel W. R. Milward, Major McClellan, and Mrs. Breckinridge were among the speakers. 3 They were Professor Roark, Dr. Fulton, Miss Linda Neville, Mrs. A. M. Harrison, and Miss Mary McClellan. 45 46 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE on membership' were appointed. A week later, May i,^ the constitution and by-laws were adopted, officers were elected,^ and committees appointed for permanent work. The objects of the organization were stated'' in the constitution to be: I. To aid in collecting and disseminating facts re garding the rights and duties of citizens. 2. To aid in arousing the sense of loyalty to the body politic. 3. To take such active steps in the interest of the citizen as at any time may seem advisable. Already eighty persons, among the most influential and able members of the community, had agreed to join the organization. Obviously during the first months of life, the League would be called on to meet the problem of selecting among the great variety of lines open to it, as well as to determine what methods it would pursue. The education of the ' Mr. Samuel Wilson, Mr. C. Suydam Scott, and Mrs. Desha Breckinridge. ' Mrs. Suydam Scott, chairman, Mrs. Breckinridge, secretary. 3 Samuel Wilson, president; Dr. E. M. Wiley, vice-president; Mary McClellan, secretary; Charles H. Berryman, treasurer; Professor Roark, iliss Neville, and Mrs. Breckinridge, members of the Executive Committee. ' When the League was incorporated ten years later (June 28, 1910) these objects were more elaborately stated : I. To aid in collecting and disseminating facts regarding the rights and duties of citizens. 2. To promote, assist and carry on such lines of work as will tend to the upbuilding and betterment of civic, social, and educational conditions. 3. In aid but not in derogation of the general objects above set forth it shall have the right to organize and conduct playgrounds and encourage the formation of committees and associations for the promotion of better schools, and the improvement of school yards and gardens and to form organizations among the children of Lexington and Fayette County to be known as Junior Civic Leagues. **^'j^^Ma.^ THE VISITINC \ENEZUEL.VN I)I';LEG.Vn()N .VT .VSIIL.VXD, M.VY 8, 1921 The members are being sliown thoroughbred liorses bred by Mr. Tliomas C. McDowell THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 47 community in principles of good government and instruc tion as to the needs of Lexington were among the obvious tasks of such an organization. The arrangements for lectures by persons distinguished in special fields of pohtical and social work has therefore been one of the constant efforts of the League as the resources of the organization have allowed. Beginning with the problem of "Good Government Clubs,"' the list of lecturers im ported has included Miss Jane Addams and Judge Ben B. Lindsey in connection with the movement to establish a juvenile court, Owen Lovejoy, and Mrs. Florence KeUey in connection with child labor legislation, Mrs. Wells from Los Angeles in connection with thfe effort to secure better conditions for women offenders, Mr. Charles Zueblin for a course of lectures on "Problems of Municipal Organization." Perhaps a word may be said here about her hospitality in these later days. In the earlier times Ashland had received the guests who came from far and wide, and Ashland was still available under the gentle ministrations of Mrs. Bullock, who still presides over that noble dwell ing. But at 337 Linden Walk, a street in a "new develop ment" to the southeast of the city, had been erected a little home, into which Madge moved in 1904. It was a small house in a large yard, in which grow the shrubs and trees and flowers and vines she planted. Here she brought the guests who- came in the later days and as has been said so "entertained them that they felt them selves for the time a part of the community and the com munity felt for the time joint ownership in them." These visits frequently planned and so arranged meant ' May 29, igoo: F. W. Hartwell, Louisville. 48 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE constant channels of communication established between the visitors and other groups and other individuals in the community than those especially interested in the cause for which the visitor had come — the juvenile court, or school attendance, or child labor, or suffrage. The importation was often possible only by co-operation with another organization — the Woman's Club, the Y.W.C.A., the University — rarely, in fact, was the inter est represented an exclusive interest, and many groups participated and shared. But "political education," "education for citizenship," as it is glibly described, is always apt to be vague and unreal unless directed to the accomplishment of a more definite end than "improving political conditions"; and the League with a sense for reality that has character ized all its work began its second year of effort by attempt ing to meet a definite need of the community. That first need was the need of the children of Lexington for a place in which to learn to play and to practice the art of playing. At the first meeting, then, of its second year of life' the subject of the need of the children of Lexington, and especially of the children of Irishtown, for play spaces were set forth; an offer by Mr. R. P. StoU of a lot of Manchester Street adjoining the Tarr Dis tillery, known as "Distillery Lot," for use as a play ground was presented by Mrs. Breckinridge.^ It was decided to accept the offer, and Mrs. Breckinridge and Miss McClellan were appointed a committee to confer ' April i8, igoi. * She had learned to know the needs of these children through the McNamara case and also through her work with the Charities. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 49 with the Woman's Club and to obtain, if possible, the co-operation of that organization in the undertaking. "Distillery Lot" was in the midst of an area variously known as "Davis' Addition," or "Irishtown." Politically it was described as "Bloody B." As she wrote of it later: It was a precinct which with pain and travail, with violence and bloodguilt, always turned in the Democratic majority found necessary in close elections, a precinct whose voters looked to the city and county authorities for fitful employment on the roads or the streets, or as constable or policeman. "Irishtown" had been about equally corrupted by politics and by charity; there were famihes that had been beggars for generations. But there were also ambitious, hard-working families whose only crime was poverty. It bore all the marks of community neglect. Streets were unpaved, drainage was lacking, waste was accumulated, the two-, three-, and four-room houses were close together and crowded within; there was no fire protection, and the water supply and toilet facilities were wholly inadequate. The monthly rent was from $2.50 to $7.50 according to the location and the number of rooms. The population was both white and colored; a large portion of the adult population was illiterate; the men were generally of the unskilled laborer type; and the women had little incentive to nice household ways, even if they had possessed the domestic arts. And over all poured the smoke and stench from the distillery. Physically, pohtically, and socially there was probably no sorer spot in Lexington. It was into this neighborhood that the new organization walked, offering its gift of children's play. For at the next meeting a per manent committee on playgrounds was appointed and the co-operation of the Woman's Club was announced; 50 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE and during the summer of 1901 the first playground was maintained by these two organizations for ten weeks, June 17-August 31, at an expense of $275. It will not be possible to narrate in detail the develop ment of the playground equipment of Lexington. In 1920, there were maintained at the expense of the city five playgrounds, two vacant-lot play spaces, and play activities in connection with three children's institutions. Two of the playgrounds. Woodland and Duncan, are in beautifully wooded park areas, the former a nine teen-acre, the latter a five-acre tract; one of the parks, Douglass, a twenty-acre tract, and one of the vacant-lot spaces serve colored neighborhoods. There were twelve persons employed in directing and supervising activities. There was an average daily attendance of 1,095.' The city appropriates $2,500 for the summer work; there are contributions from private sources and certain small charges for some of the activities; and the whole under taking is under the supervision of a committee of the Civic League, of which the city commissioner of public works is likewise a member. This playground equipment vdth its provision for daily care, supervision, and training of the children through the summer months, its contests, its pageants, its bathing-pool in Woodland, is one issue from the IrishtoviTi experiment in 1901; for in 1902, as the Dis tillery Lot was not available and the playground had to be moved, the city authorities became interested, and so the development went on. But the playgrounds of the city were not the only result. There was another growth in the community in which the effort had been begun. ' \A'ithout counting the children in the institutions. WHERE THE "IRISHTOWN" CHILUKEX PLAYED IN' 1901 A VIEW OF IRISHTOWN IN 1901 THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 51 In the following summer (1902), although there could not be a plaj'ground in Irishtown, there was a vacation school; then, in the autumn, the education authorities ga^¦e Irishtown a kindergarten, and so began the West End school, which is now the Abraham Lincoln School and Social Center. But the results of that effort must be the subject of a separate chapter, for there a "dream came true." Probably her first request to a public body made by personal application is described' in the following report of a Board of Education meeting — securing the con tinuance of this work. At a meeting of the School Board last night Mrs. George Draper Kelly and Mrs. Desha Breckinridge appeared and asked the mem bers to make arrangements to carry on the work next year. The ladies asked for $350. Some members of the board, who have become interested in the work, thought that enough money should be appropriated to carry on the new department without any probability of a discontinuation before June, and the sum of $400 was appropriated. The members of the board are almost unanimous in the opinion that this department is very much needed and were more than will ing to help the work along. The work heretofore has been in charge of several ladies, who have interested themselves in the work and who have secured the consent of the School Board to use the kinder garten building. It will now be in charge of the board itself. The ladies are anxious to interest the board still further and hope to have industrial departments in all the public schools and specially pre pared rooms and equipments in the new school buildings. The board virtually promised to give Irishtown a new school building. They were two lovely young matrons, and they got even more than they asked. That was never a common experience with her. ' Lexington Herald, December 5, 1902. 52 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE While it is not possible to review the early struggles of the League in detail, certain facts are of interest in these early "minutes." The organization did not meet regularly at first; then it was found best to try monthly meetings on an appointed day. It is not always clear when elections were held or who were officers, but it is always evident that Madge was "on the job." In a report to the National Community Service, the present president of the League explains the situation in this way: Mrs. Desha Breckinridge was the leading spirit for these two decades, and on occasion rallied the entire community in the interest of the enterprises listed: consequently the Civic League never did develop into a very close form of organization, although there were a number of standing committees created each year.' With the playground work went, from the first, beautification of school grounds and vacant spaces,^ the planting of trees and vines, for which the city was induced to care. From this developed in 1904 the encouragement of school gardens, the distribution of seeds by selling penny packages,^ the offering of prizes, after inspection, for the care of yards, a city spring cleaning day, and agitation for the City Clean and Beautiful. Whenever the problem of children in poorer neighbor hoods is attacked, the question of school attendance arises. Kentucky had already a law ostensibly requiring the attendance of children at school between the ages of ¦ Lexington Herald, April 24, ig2r. ^ Professor Mathews spoke of this on April 6, 1904, and a committee of which he was chairman, was appointed. 3 In 1917 the number of packages sold to white and colored children alike was about 10,000, all put up by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Justice! THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 53 seven and fourteen. It was for a very short period, and there was no adequate provision for enforcing the law; and the need of securing new legislation on this subject was presented to the League in 1903,' when a committee, consisting of Professor Roark and Rev. Burris A. Jenkins, now of Kansas City, was appointed to look into the matter. xA.t a meeting held June 5, the drafting of a law which had received the indorsement of the Kentucky Education Association was announced. An appeal from the state factory inspector for co-operation in obtaining a better child labor law was also read at this meeting. The legis lation resulting in part from the activities of the League will be dealt with in a separate chapter. If the testimony of those still living is to be trusted, hers was the passionate effort that pushed into being the compulsory attendance and child labor laws, together with the juvenile court law. However, before doing this, a brief resume will be given of the activities of the Civic League. The organization was somewhat unusual in that it was composed of both men and women. In 1909 it joined the State Federation of Women's Clubs, and was thus the first of several organizat ons through which men have come into organic relationship to that great body of organized women. The Board of Directors was composed of both men and women until 1918, when under the stress of continued war conditions a board wholly of women, a "war board," was elected. A word may be said perhaps at this time with reference to the attitude of the organization to the question of the colored child. It has been pointed out that in Irishtown there was a mixed colored and white population. The ' February 23, 1903. 54 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE policy of the League again in this respect was character ized by reality and not by theory or the doctrinaire. All that could be got for the children was to be claimed and obtained. But the possible was not to be laid on the altar of the chimerical, and the playground in Irishtown and the later school were for white children. The effort in behalf of the colored children was to get for them what could be got, and by chance perhaps it came about that the colored children had a truant officer before the white children were provided for. At the first meeting of the autumn of 1904' this accomplishment was announced. And it was so with the provision of kindergarten facili ties, the introduction of manual training into the colored schools, the sale of garden seeds, the yard-improvement work. She was greatly interested in the problems of race relationship, but in her public work she was governed by two principles in this matter: first, that every human being should live under the conditions making possible reasonably favorable development; second, the possible good of the present should not be sacrificed to the chi merical good of the future. And so it was not surprising that on the day that her death became known the colored people, among the first, made public testimony to the service they had enjoyed at her hands in community development. "First we bum and then we steal" is the sequence with neglected children. The discovery of truancy leads to the discovery of delinquency. It is interesting that at the meeting of the Civic League at which provision of truant authorities seemed within grasp, the necessity of ' September 24, 1904. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 55 taking the next step and creating a juvenile court was discussed. In those days the words "juvenile court" meant to most persons Judge Ben Lindsey, of Denver, whose genius for getting at the heart of the boy and the boy's problem had received a national recognition; and, early in the year 1905,' plans were laid for him to visit Lex ington. Those plans were not carried out until the fol lowing winter, however, when a visit from him was so timed as to strengthen the pleas made before the legisla ture of 1906 for a juvenile court law whose provisions, summarized in the following chapter, were enacted into law at that session. Questions that were subjects of controversy then are settled questions today. The development of the juvenile court work, like that under the other laws initiated by the League, is a part of the accepted social program of all progressive communities.^ In 1906, however, there were few states, no southern states, in which such legislation had been enacted. To bring Kentucky first into the group of communities taking an advanced position on subjects of child welfare was to do in the field of social relationship pioneer work corresponding to the political and physical pioneering of Judge Samuel McDowell and of Madge's physician ancestors. "What Kentuckians have done Kentuckians can do"; of that she was convinced, and she was therefore never daunted. To the co-operation with charitable case-work agen cies which grew out of initiating the juvenile court law, ' January 17. ' See United States Children's Bureau Publication No. yo for a summary of the legislation on this subject in force in 1920, and No. 65 for a study of the juvenile court systems of the various states. 56 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE reference will be made in a later chapter; and to the subject of securing that law's enforcement and of develop ing resources under it should be devoted, if there were but space, a chapter by itself. During the winter of 1903-4 she was compelled to yield to her old enemy and to go west for her health. Both she and her mother were ill, and they spent a number of months in the High Oaks Sanatorium in Denver. While she was there, she learned at first hand of Judge Lindsey' s work in the Juvenile Court, she looked into the workings of woman's suffrage, and she mastered, one might say, the problem of tuberculosis as an aspect of public-health organization. From Denver she sent back to the Herald letters and articles on all these subjects containing delightful as well as comprehensive statements. One of the most touching and revealing experiences of her life occurred during that winter when she suffered what appeared to be a paralysis of the right arm. The trouble proved to be temporary and was later overcome, but not before she had learned to use the t}^ewriter with her left hand so that she could continue to send back reports concerning conditions and agencies in Colorado from which she thought Lexington might profit. This had meant the opportunity to learn of the work done in Denver at first hand. It had also meant a new reaUzation of the significance of tuberculosis to the life and economic well-being of the state. On her return the subject of tuberculosis in its public-health aspects was presented to the League, with a plan for a course of lectures by persons of authority on that subject in the community. This plan was carried through during the following winter. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 57 So great and so specialized, however, was the task indicated by this slight excursion into the field of public- health developments that it was very shortly decided to promote the organization of a new society especially devoted to the task of combating the white plague in Kentucky. The Anti-Tuberculosis Society was therefore founded in December, 1905, and to its work a later chap ter will be devoted. The year 1906 was a rich year in the results that are now a part of Lexington's habit of life. The old activities of the League were continued, and a new source of interest, support, and co-operation was sought in the younger members of the community. A "junior" membership was provided for, and Madge devoted a great deal of time and energy to the organization of junior leagues. This involved speaking at the various schools of the city, especially the public high schools and presenting civic questions in such a form as to awaken the interests of boys and girls. The city administration (it was during Mayor Thomas A. Combs's administration) was at this time peculiarly responsive to civic appeals, and a new policy of enforcing the law with reference to selling liquor on Sunday was inaugurated. This brought to the community the question of providing Sunday occupation and recreation. The League proposed and undertook to provide interesting programs on Sunday afternoons at the Public Library and band concerts in Woodland Park. The League also took up at this time the subject of industrial education and attempted to bring it vigor ously to the attention of the community. The matter of school attendance had been the first school problem taken up. But school attendance is a problem of many 58 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE factors. There may be a lack of facilities — that meant the new school in Irishtown. There may be lack of un derstanding on the part of the parents — that meant the social work in Irishtown. There may be indifference to the law — that meant the compulsory attendance law. There may be a competing interest — the job — that meant effective child labor legislation and its enforcement. There may be a definite lack on the part of the school in supplying the educational matter the children need. The neglect of the hand and failure to take notice of the prospective job were weaknesses characteristic of many school systems in 1906. The League pursued the policy of pointing out the weakness, recommending the remedy, and sharing the cost of applying the remedy. June 4, 1906, it was decided to contribute toward the expense of a manual- training course in the schools: and the next winter. Miss E. E. Langley, who was doing brilliant work in this field at the University of Chicago, was brought for a visit to the city that her advice and suggestions might be available to the school authorities, both white and colored, and to the League. In his report for the following year, Superintendent Cassidy made grateful acknowledgment of this service. He said in his annual report : I am glad that I do not have to ask this year that manual training be put in the Lexington schools. I have made a plea for it every time an opportunity offered for the last four years, and I am rejoiced that I can henceforth speak of manual training as a growing part of our school system. This important phase of education will be inaugurated in September, with Misses Hubbard and Tuttle, of the School of Education, Chicago University, as Supervisors. Both of them come highly recommended, and I have great confi dence that the work will be a success from the start, and that its THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 59 growth will be commensurate with its importance. But it should be understood now, lest the results of this phase of education should be disappointing to some, that the main purpose of manual training is not to send out skilled mechanics from the shops, or finished cooks and dressmakers from the department of household arts. While it is true that boys will be given some insight into the funda mental facts, principles and processes of doing things with tools, and girls intelligent conceptions of the proper care and direction of a weU regulated home, neither skilled mechanics nor trained house keepers will be turned out. But the work is educative. It gives opportunity for boys and girls to exercise their physical activities, and to express their individuahty through some form of hand-work. It gives pupils a sense of reality that emphasizes their entire school life. It gives an opportunity to make a practical application of drawing, mathematics and science. In fact, it is not an inde pendent and separate phase of education, but it is an important and integral part of the whole scheme. To achieve the best results it must be correlated with the knowledge gained from the books. Indeed, it is through manual training that book-knowledge is vivified and made practical. But it does more. It frequently gives a stimulus to the boy and girl who do not like to study; offering as it does to them an opportunity to show a kind of ability that can not be demonstrated in the class-room. Above all, I think, it impresses youth with the importance and dignity of work. Under it, they do not go through school with the impression that they are getting an education to avoid work; but by being constantly associated with it they learn to love and respect it; and, finally, they are confirmed in the belief that the more knowledge they acquire the better position they will take and keep in the world's great field of labor. In securing manual training for the schools of Lexington, great credit must be given to the Civic League, Mrs. Desha Breckinridge, and Miss E. E. Langley, of the School of Education, Chicago Uni versity, and to our Mayor, Hon. Thomas A. Combs. They have now the gratitude of aU who are interested in this phase of education, and this gratitude will increase and broaden as the work grows, as it will, to the proportions of usefulness that its importance merits.' ¦ Annual Report of the Public Schools of Lexington, Ky., June jo, iQiy, p. 16. 6o MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE The year 1907 brought forward the subject of medical inspection;' and the establishment of a clinic by the West End Women's Club, an organization of women living in the neighborhood of the West End (Irishtown) School, was assisted by the League. The development of this into the "open air school," etc., will be described at a later point. The League never forgot, however, the original objects for which it had been organized, namely that of improving conditions of city life in general as contrasted with the more specialized interests of the child as mani fested in playground, school, and juvenile-court activi ties; attention was therefore given^ to the subject of the care and oiling of the streets, the celebration of a spring cleaning day for the whole city, and the removal of bill boards that marred the beautiful speedway on East Main Street, which had been named, for Major McDowell, the McDowell Speedway. In the summer of 1908 the school authorities made provision for a new school building in Irishtown and appropriated $10,000 for that purpose. Measured by the cost of other school buildings this was not a niggardly appropriation. The superintendent had, however, recom mended that $15,000 be the sum allowed. He said: Some years ago some good women of Lexington, led by Mrs. Desha Breckinridge, established a settlement school in the West End, or what is better known as "Irishtown." Why it is called "Irishtown" is uncertain. Such is evidently a misnomer, since it is claimed by those who know that there is only one Irish family in this community. However this may be, the wisdom of establishing this school was manifest from the first. For some time it was only a kindergarten and was maintained by private ' April 8. * Jlay 7, 1907. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 6i means. It was then taught in a one-room cottage on Manchester Street. At length the Board of Education was induced to take charge of it and maintain it. It was moved from its original quarters into a three-room brick cottage on the same street, where there are a kindergarten and four grades. Besides erecting a one- room building, which will revert to the owners of the lot when ceased to be used by the Board of Education, two other buildings are rented. Aside from the loss in rent, the school facilities are about as bad as can be imagined. They are neither adequate to the comfort of the pupils nor to increasing their self-respect. Aside from giving means for building a high school, the recent bond issue of seventy-five thousand dollars makes it possible to give this important locality a good school building. Not less than fif teen thousand dollars should be set aside for this purpose. The ladies who were mainly instrumental in the establishment of the school are still, and naturally so, greatly interested in its welfare. Not only is the leader in the movement enough interested to offer to devote her time and energy to attempting to raise a sum of money equal to that set apart by the Board of Education, but she is anxious to have the school maintained in a manner adapted to the peculiar needs of the children who will attend it. The erection of such a school as is contemplated in this locality, and its main tenance along the fines most desirable for it will not only be of incalculable benefit to that community, but to the city as well. An adequate building in this locality, and the putting of another story on the Arhngton School, will give the white children of Lexington exceUent school facilities.' It was obvious to the League that no ordinary school building could serve that neighborhood as it needed to be served, or provide the facilities with which the League would be able to render that service. An original plan of co-operation between the League and the school authorities was therefore proposed and accepted. How the plan was carried out and the Abraham Lincoln ' Annual Report of the Public Schools of Lexington, Ky., June 30, ic/oS, pp. 14-15- 62 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE School established is described in a separate chapter, and the following narrative will be limited to the activi ties of the League other than those closely related to the Lincoln School experience. In order to undertake the responsibilities foreseen under this plan, however, the League at this time incorporated under the laws of Kentucky. In 1 910 the League was perhaps especially interested in improving the general character and ability represented on the Board of Education. Under the school law pre vailing at that time the Board consisted of twelve mem bers, two elected from each ward. Under this law it was a common practice, one that occasioned no comment, for persons to seek positions on the Board for the purpose of obtaining the patronage of the teachers, if they were merchants, or of securing contracts from the Board. In 1910, the Civic League therefore indorsed two women candidates, of very high character, who had been nominated by the Republican party,' and again in 191 1, a ticket that might be described as a "fusion" ticket, was indorsed. But it had become clear that the structure of the Board was itself an important factor in its deficiencies. The size and the method of selection prevented the ablest and most public-spirited from serving and also rendered it difficult to locate and fix responsibilit}^ Louisville had got a "small-school board laM^" in 1910,^ and after a very thorough study of the recent thought on this subject the League decided to urge a statute under which the number of members of the Board in Lexington ¦ Miss Linda Neville and Miss Margaret Brown. They were both very able active members of the League, both college graduates, and both among the numerous "kin" to whom reference was made in chap. ii. ' Acts oj igio, chap. 2. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 63 would be reduced to five, selected from the city at large to serv^e for terms of four years, nominations to be made by petition, the ballots to be without party emblem. The League indorsed the proposed measure on June 23, 191 1, and the act was passed by the following legislature.' The following account of the effort to secure this law shows something of the volume and thoroughness of the League's legislative work: Alembers of the Civic League of Lexington are feehng much gratified at the passing of the new school law for the cities of the second class. At the session of the Legislature two years ago an effort was made by the Civic League without success to get such a bill through. In June of last year a public meeting was called, at which there was a discussion of the law in force in Louisville and in other cities, after which it was proposed to model the Lexington law. A committee of the Civic League was appointed, of which Dr. George P. Sprague was chairman, with instructions to call a conference from the other second class cities that they might together agree on the bill, and also to bring to it some persons from Louisville to give the new committee the benefit of that city's experience. In the autumn a second public meeting was held, addressed by Superintendent Holland of the Louisville Public Schools and Dr. I. N. Bloom of the Louisville School Board. Previous to this meet ing a conference was held with these gentlemen and with eight or ten representatives from Covington and Newport and as many more Lexington members of the Civic League. This conference was followed by two others, one in Covington and one in Frankfort, at which the Representatives in the Legislature from the second class cities were present. The bill, as agreed on, was acceptable to all parties; it was presented in the House by Mr. Price of Covington, and in the Senate by Senator William V. Eaton of Paducah. These gentlemen showed real interest in the measure, and the successful outcome is entirely due to their efforts. ' Acts of IQ12, chap. 137. 64 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Certain amendments not desired by the Joint Committee from the four second class cities were put into the bill in the Legislature, both the maximum and minimum tax rate were much reduced. A clause that all employes shall hold their office for the f uU term for which they have been elected ties the hands of the new school board in this city and in Covington, at least — we are not informed as to the other two cities — for two years and a half after the new school board takes charge as to the offices of Superintendent of Schools and Business Director. The Business Director will fulfil the duties of the present Clerk of the School Board, and in addition will take charge of most of the repairing of buildings and keeping up the material equipment of the school system. It would have been preferable that the new Board, though in each city it might have chosen a Superintendent and Business Director and present Superintendent and Clerk, should have been free to choose officers for themselves. However, the law in its main features is so great an improve ment over the present system that it is not worth while to cavil at the defects that had to be accepted. Probably the most impor tant single feature is that the school ticket hereafter will bear no party emblem. It will have "School Ticket" at the head and the names of the candidates will be arranged in alphabetical order, and the voter must stamp opposite the names of those candidates whom he desires to elect. Politics is thus eliminated from the school elections, and a virtual educational qualification of the best kind is established. That the numbering of candidates may not be able to take the place of the party emblem for instructing ilhter- ate voters, it is provided that the order in which the candidates' names are printed on the ballot shall be changed on each fifty ballots printed, the books of ballots being bound so as to give as nearly equal a number beginning with the name of each candidate- as possible. The School Board members are chosen from the city at large. They serve for four years. Only five are to be elected the first year; the elections will be held every two years and at the subse quent elections the number chosen will be three and two members alternately. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 65 With so small a number of persons to be chosen, with the city at large to choose from, it seems reasona;ble to expect that only persons of known intelligence, capacity and probity will be able to carry an election. The day of the dark horse is over. There is incorporated in the law an oath of office for School Board members similar to the one to which St. Louis attributes much of the improvement in her school system under the new Small School Board law: Each member is required to swear that in choosing employes for the schools he will consider fitness and capacity only and will be guided by no other consideration. This oath acts as a protection to the School Board member who is solicited by his near friends or relatives to give places to those whose chief claim is that they need the salary. The spirit that breathes throughout the law is that the schools are to be administered for the best interests of the children, and that standards of high efficiency are to transcend all personal con siderations. With the addition also of the literate women of the city to the school electorate, it seems that this new school law wiU probably mean the entrance upon an era of marked improvement in our pubhc school system.' After the passage of the law the League sought the co-operation of the Woman's Club and the Board of Education in securing an efficient ticket, and a ticket was finally put into the field with the League's indorse ment. On it were induced to run two women and three men of whom it could be said "no candidate has any interest except the good of the schools, .... any desire for a position on the Board except to render service. " Of the five, three — ^Professor C. C. Freeman, a professor at Transylvania University, Professor C. R. Melcher, of the University of Kentucky faculty, and Miss Neville, who had been elected two years before — had devoted their fives to the cause of education. As to the other two, Mrs. C. B. Lowry was one of those ^Lexington Herald, March 18, 1912. 66 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE elected the previous year and had served with unusual distinction, and Mr. Norwood, a successful business man, had often manifested his interest in educational problems. The ticket was not allowed to occupy the field with out opposition. A ticket known as the "patrons'" ticket was put in the field, though who the "patrons" were was never made known. Although two of the Civic League candidates, Professor Freeman and Professor Melcher, were named on this ticket, it might have been well called the "politicians' " ticket. In spite of this opposition, however, a triumphant cam paign' was waged and an overwhelming victory obtained. Miss Linda Neville led the ticket, polling nearly three thousand votes. Were Miss Neville's public services to be adequately described, they would require a volume; and I must make grateful reference to her highly original work in uncovering shocking conditions in the Kentucky Mountains that have attracted the attention of the state and federal Public Health Service and resulted not only in the wide awakening of interest in creating better conditions, but in the restoration of sight to many who would otherwise have been permanently blind. At this same election the question of two bond issues, one for $50,000 for the purchase of one' of the beautiful estates especially suited for park and playground purposes, now Woodland Park, and one for the extension and completion of the sewer system, were submitted to the voters and carried. The League had held mass meetings ' Over 39,000 pieces of literature were distributed, mass meetings were held, polls were guarded, etc. 14 •z.QOo ooo THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 67 or special open sessions presided over and addressed by leading business men of the city in behalf of these measures, and they were indeed substantially a part of the League program. This year (1912) likewise. saw the penny-lunch scheme undertaken and help given the parent-teacher organizations, who became responsible for carrying out the penny-lunch scheme in the various schools. At a meeting on September 23, associations of this kind, organized in connection with two colored schools, asked the aid of the League. Through the efforts of the League, too, a contribution of $300 had been secured from the Slater Fund for the Public Schools, a gift that was renewed for the two following years. What might be called the "new problem" of the League for this year was that of better protection for girls in the city and better care of women and girl offenders. Mrs. Alice Stebbins WeUs, the celebrated "city mother" and policewoman from Los Angeles, was brought to Lexington for a lecture, the conditions under which women were detained in the county jail were called to the attention of the county authorities and of the community, and the appointment of a jail matron was urged. The following letter illustrates the relations between the League and public officials wherever the co-operation of those officials could be obtained. There was no attitude of futile criticism or partisan hostihty, but a genuine concern, when it seemed possible to attack an evil in a constructive manner, to propose the method of attack and to furnish intelligent and positive suggestion for the remedy. 68 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE November ii, 1912 My dear Judge Scott: In accordance with our agreement of yesterday, our com mittee now submits in writing its suggestion for improvements in the County Jail. We would suggest first, that the clothes of each prisoner enter ing the jail, be taken from him and fumigated, and that after wards he be made to wash and clean them, and get them into as good condition as possible against the time of his departure. That after being given a shower bath he be supphed with other clothing for the time of his imprisonment. A daily shower bath, and change of clothing at proper intervals, and the use of night clothing seem minimum lessons in ordinary cleanliness which every prisoner at the jail should certainly be given. Further, that every bed be supplied with cotton sheets. That those be washed at proper intervals, and no prisoner allowed to use the sheets used by any other prisoner without laundering. Also that the blankets should be washed at frequent intervals. In order to insure clean beds, we suggest that the plan used at the Wayfarer's Rest in Louisville be followed. Clean bed ticks are filled with clean straw, and when these become soiled they are emptied out, the straw burned, and the tick washed again. If regular mattresses are used, they should certainly be sewed up in cotton cases, which are changed with a change of prisoners, and washed at frequent intervals. We deplore, as we know that you do, the fact that it is impos sible to give the prisoners out-of-door work and exercise ; we believe that in the future the jail should be on a small farm in the country. But in the meantime some exercise and industrial training could be procured by having the prisoners do the washing and the other work of the institution. The conditions of dirt and idleness at present furnished, certainly constitute as bad training as we could possibly furnish these delinquent citizens. Surely the so-called hospital ward ought to be kept absolutely clean instead of being in the deplorable condition in which it now is. We suggest that seats be placed in the woman's ward. If chairs are a temptation to fighting in the present unsupervised THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 69 state, at least iron park benches, screwed to the floor, could be pro vided. We hope that in the coming year the Fiscal Court may see its way clear to provide a matron for the jail. Access to the woman's ward ought to be possible to women only. This is the rule in all properly conducted, modern penal institutions of any kind, and while under fortunate circumstances no tragedy has occurred, we should not presume that these fortunate circumstances wiU always exist. If a matron is secured, probably some joint arrange ment between county and city can be effected for confining all women prisoners at the jail. In the meantime, however, we suggest that the' keys to the women's wards should not be in the possession of anyone except the jailor. At present food is carried to the women prisoners by negro men, who have access to the ward, and there is some further communication between the women and the men prisoners. The food of the jail seems wholesome and good, but there were too many flies about the kitchen for modern sanitary notions. We suggest that in considering improvements at the jail, in making up next year's budget, fly screening be provided for. Hoping that these suggestions may be helpful, and that they wiU be received in the spirit in which they are made — we feel quite sure that they wiU be, by your Honor, from the evidence you have abeady given of your desire to improve things — we remain Respectfully yours, Linda Neville Madeline McD. Breckinridge Henry S. Breckinridge' Sometimes the accomplishment of an object required work extending over several years. The effort to secure safer conditions for girls came to fruition in the appoint ment of a police matron only in 191 7. In November, 1914, as the result of the combined effort of the important ' He resigned the presidency of the League shortly after this to become assistant secretary of war in President Wilson's first administration. 70 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE organizations of the city, a vice commission of ten persons was created "to investigate conditions of commercialized vice in Lexington, to ask the meaning of facts ascertained and to suggest a remedy for conditions widely recognized as needing cure." On that commission sat two leading clergymen, two pubUc-spirited physicians, two lawyers, two business men, and two women — one, Mrs. Harrison to whom reference has already been made, and the other Mrs. George R. Hunt, a member of the board of the Orphans' Association and of the Industrial School. That commission reported in June, 1915,' and recom mended among other constructive policies, (i) the estab lishment, preferably by the state, but if not by the state, by the city and county jointly, of a farm colony for the treatment of women taken from lives of prostitution; (2) stricter state legislation defining and punishing offenses both of men and of women; (3) the enactment of an "injunction and abatement" law; (4) the passage of ordinances by the city authorities dealing with the con trol of vice conditions in the city. Following upon that report a number of statutes were enacted and a number of ordinances passed. For example, an act defining and prohibiting pandering was enacted by the legislature in 1916,^ an " abatement and injunction" law was passed in 1918,^ and a bureau of venereal diseases was created in the State Board of Health in 1920.'' But progress in this field of social advance is very slow and difficult, and to obtain the services of a pohce matron ' Lexington Herald, June 15, 1915. 'Acts oj Kentucky, 1916, chap. 49. ^ Ibid., 1918, chap. 61. *Ibid., 1920, chap. 120, sec. 3. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 71 required a long time and great effort. In 191 5 and 1916 much effort was directed toward this end. Mass meetings and open sessions of the League were held, a committee was appointed to confer with the mayor, and finally the commissioners appropriated the necessary funds, and the mayor appointed as a committee to nominate a suitable candidate Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Breckinridge, and Miss Neville, who had been delegated by the groups interested to put the subject before him. They sent in their recom mendation on February 12, 191 7,' and their nominee Mrs. Egbert, still holds the position. Madge was greatly interested in the movement to re form the laws dealing with vice and to establish agencies for the care of the victims of vice, but she was unwilhng ever to forget that the failure "to give the play instinct a chance" was one of the great sources of vice; and so at the time that she was urging these measures on the city administration, she was likewise pushing the exten sion of play facilities. In connection with this combination of community tasks and with her efforts to develop "model" play facilities at Lincoln School, she wrote: Some years ago when the mayor was being urged to enforce the law closing the saloons on Sunday, the promise was made by a group of Civic League people that if the saloons were closed they would do their utmost to "open something else, " in order that the people might have somewhere to go on Sunday afternoons and evenings for recreation that would be healthful and not morally dangerous. This was before the day of the "movies." As a result of this movement, the Library Board petitioned to open the hbrary after church hours. It has been open ever since. Dur ing a season the Civic League brought speakers and readers who gave pubhc lectures and readings in the Hbrary Sunday afternoons. '¦Lexington Herald, February 14, 1917. 72 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE At the same time, money was raised to inaugurate band con certs for Sunday afternoons in Woodland Park. These have proven so successful and are so fully approved by the community that there has never been any thought of discontinuing them any more than of closing up the library on Sunday afternoon. They are now financed by the city. Duncan Park has also its concerts, and the Commissioner of Public Property has just begun to furnish them for the colored park. This is really the first opportunity furnished the colored people for recreation under proper conditions. In their case, since for domestic servants and many day laborers Sunday is their only free day, it is the more important that there should be an attraction offered to encourage out-of-door meeting that day. The new Booker Washington school with its shower baths and its audi torium, furnishes to the colored race an opportunity for association under proper and advantageous conditions, second only to the park — if it is second to it- — for it may be used not only in summer, but throughout the winter months. Shortly before the Lincoln "model" school was built two large schools for white pupils were built in Lexington without any pro vision for domestic science, carpenter work, without auditoriums, shower baths or swimming pool. It is a proof that the "model" has had its effect, as the Civic League in urging the Lincoln School said it would, that it is impossible now for the School Board to build a school even for colored pupils without room and equip ment for domestic science and manual training, without an audi torium and shower baths, and without wishing it could build a swimming pool. A group of people in Lexington is working in a determined and intelligent way at the vice problem ; another group is working with untiring zeal at restriction and prohibition of the evils attending the liquor traffic. Indispensable as are these efforts, they must be sup plemented by further effort, along constructive lines. This is the work that for twelve years the Civic League has been doing. It has been trying to provide some outlet to the human instinct for social congregating and for recreation. When the Civic League began its work there were no parks, no adequate or equipped playgrounds to any public school, no school houses open for the use of the g3 THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 73 people. The Civic League put its first playground on Woodland Park before it was bought by the city and urged the purchase. It put a playground on the Upper Street playground opposite the State College while it was stiU a dumpground, and urged the City Council to cease selling lots from that piece of land. Some day soon, following the Ohnstead plan, the Upper Street property will form another most useful little interior park. The Civic League worked untiringly for the bond issue to secure Duncan Park and the colored parks. Since the "model" school was built the Civic League has main tained social work, outside of school hours, summer and winter in that building. It has proven that a pubhc school may be the social center of a commimity that has no other such center, that it can become the pulsing heart of a healthful social life among old and yoimg who dwell in its neighborhood. For three years and a half this social work has been maintained on funds collected outside of Lexington. The Civic League is now appealing to the people of this community, since the value of the experiment is demonstrated, to support the social work in Lincoln School and to open the other public schools for this purpose in com munities where the experiment may be self-supporting. It has proposed to the School Board to eiriploy, jointly with its play ground committee, a social supervisor for the public schools. The members of the School Board are in the heartiest sympathy with the plan and will co-operate with the Civic League if finances permit. The man who said "Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who writes its history" sounded the keynote of the mod ern interest in proper recreational opportunity for the people. If we can free the play instinct common to all humanity young and old from commercial exploitation and immoral influence, if we can only provide the opportunity for the normal human being to be good and happy at the same time, for this is what he wants to be, we shall need to bother far less about the question of public morals.' While, however, Madge always remembered the pre ventive and constructive uses of play, she was deeply ' Lexington Herald, July 23, 19 16. 74 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE aroused by the general social hygiene movement. In every relationship in which she was able to serve — through the Civic League, her suffrage associations, or in her phil anthropic relationships — she sought to encourage saner and more sympathetic views on these difficult questions. Her paper on the "New Hope"' was another of the ex pressions of her faith in the essential dignity and decency of human nature. But to return to the year 1913, in addition to the regu lar activities an effort was made to arouse an interest in physical training in the schools."" The need for adult pro bation officers was pointed out at this time, the creation of a tuberculosis district under the statute enacted in 191 2 was indorsed,^ and the problem of housing in Lexington taken up. Hopes were cherished then that in an area near the Lincoln School an experiment might be tried by the League in building cottages for workingmen's families that might be to other housing developments what the Irishtown school had become for the schools of the city and of the state. A committee was appointed to act with similar committees of the Commercial Club and the city administration in furthering such plans. If the war had not come . . . . ! The child labor law of 1906 had become out of date, and the session of 19 14 saw that act brought down to date. The National Child Labor Committee sent repre- ' Proceedings oj the National Conjerence oj Social Work, 1914, p. 217. ' January 13. 3 January 2, 1914. See below, p. 141. Acts oj igi2, chap. 12. The Louisville Society had established a sanatorium, and the legislature granted $25,000 together with an annual allowance of $5,400 and seemed to lay down conditions under which other sanatoria established by private initiative might receive a similar grant. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 75 sentatiAcs to joint meetings' held with the League in furtherance of this legislation. The autumn brought a renewed campaign in behalf of an efficient board of education. The recent story of the Civic League has, of course, resembled that of other civic and social organizations, in that the pressure of war activities, war charities, and war excitements has drained the interest of the community and rendered work very difficult. It was as much as most organizations could do to keep alive and maintain their standards. However, in 191 5 the League not only continued to develop the work at Lincoln School, but purchased additional property for the Lincoln School playground, which was deeded to the Board of Education, and although this was hardly the time for taking on new tasks, the attention of the School Board was called to two extensions of the school re sources that seemed important. The provision and wider use of facihties for visual education were urged, and at a joint meeting^ with the Board the purchase of moving-picture machines for all the schools of the city was discussed. Later the League bought a machine for Lincoln School, and the authorities have, in 1921, agreed to bear half the cost of building the structure necessary for its use. At the meeting of March 24, 1916, the Board was also urged to provide supervision for play during the entire year as well as to maintain the playgrounds during stated portions of the summer months. The year 191 7 saw certain advances made. A bathing- pool for colored children was obtained, and the Lincoln ' March 24, 1914. ' March 24, 1916. 76 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE School record shows' five new lots bought and interesting work done in providing recreational opportunities for the soldiers stationed at Camp Stanley.^ The following year, similar work was conducted at the university under the auspices of the War Camp Community Service. Reference has already been made to the interest of the League in both the educational and the recreational needs of colored young persons. In 191 7 the Board of Education both paid the salary of a recreational director in two colored schools and opened a new schooP for colored children, in which there were an auditorium and shower baths. The report of the play director gives interesting evidence of the eagerness with which these new facilities were taken advantage of by the colored children. The following year, 191 8, this eff'ort was extended to include adults, the approach being through community singing. A meeting was held with representatives of colored organizations on recreation for colored children, and the following week'' on the developing of community singing in colored schools. In 1918 the Community Service Incorporated, or War Camp Community Service, as it was kno^vn at an earlier date, came into the city, arousing possibly a new interest in the problem of the leisure-time activities of young persons. Cordial relations between its workers and the League were welcomed by both sides. Madge became an officer of the new organization, Mr. Raymond Fosdick was induced to come to Lexington to explain 'June IS, 1917. 'Lexington Herald, December 9, 1917, and November 26, 1918. 3 September 18, 1917. ¦'September 26, 1918. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 77 the new work, and there was the closest co-operation between the two groups. In 1919 the subject of a permanent consolidation of the two was discussed and the merging of the League in the Community Service was proposed. That proved to be impossible, however, because of the funds held by the League in trust for various purposes. The final action, therefore, has been for the Community Service to yield its name, and a new organization under the name of the Civic League of Fayette County has been formed. Under this consolidated organization, efforts are being pushed in two new direc tions — the extension to county schools of activities developed before only in the city schools, and the organi zation of "institutes" or brief courses for the training of workers in recreational technique. A word should be said with reference to the League finances. It has rehed for general work on annual mem bership fees and contributions. These make up what is called the general fund of the League. In addition to this, the League handles several other funds given for special purposes. There is the Playground Fund, which is merely the annual appropriation made by the city to the League for playground purposes. The Commissioner of Public Property sits with the committee of the League when acting upon the use of this appropriation, which is increased by certain receipts for the use of some of the facilities. For example, a small fee is charged for the use by older boys and men of the swimming-pool at Lincoln School, and during the season of 1920 this charge netted the tidy sum of $300. The city appro priation is devoted almost wholly to salaries of play ground workers or expenses of maintenance other than 78 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE equipment. The League also administers the "Anthony Dye Fund," a fund of $10,000 given for the social activi ties connected with Lincoln School, and the Otis S. Tenney Memorial Fund, given by Mrs. Joseph B. Russell, of Cambridge, toward the establishment and mainte nance of a "model" playground in memory of her father, Mr. Otis S. Tenney, a very widely beloved citizen of Lexington who had recently died. There are, of course, from time to time special funds. For example, when Madge died, some of those who loved her instead of sending flowers sent money for feeding the children in the open-air school. Over $400 was given for this purpose. Lexington is about to try the "federation" plan with its social agencies, and a social-welfare league is in pro cess of organizing. The Civic League is one of the organi zations that has gone into the Federation. The sum of $100,000 is being asked by the Federation, and the League is promised one-tenth of the amount raised by this new common effort. Reference should perhaps be made by name to some of those who have at various times been conspicuous and devoted in the organization and work of the League; Clarence Williamson, Charles H. Berryman, Allan P. Gilmour, Henry T. Duncan, J. Nathan Elliott, are among the names of men to whom the effective character of the League's work was partly due. In addition to the men who held positions on the Board of Directors and paid membership fees to the organization there were many who responded with service from without. Conspicuous among those on whom she THE CIVIC LEAGUE— ITS ACTIVITIES 79 relied for sympathy, co-operation, and support were Mr. Combs, Colonel John R. Allen, Dr. E. B. Bradley, Mr. Paul Justice. Miss Sarah McGarvey, Mrs. Margaret Preston Johnston, Mrs. Lucy Webb Justice, Miss Linda Neville, Miss Mary Nealy McClellan, Mrs. Edward L. Hutchin son, are names of women found in the records from the beginning to the present time. They have taken up the burden of "carrying on." CHAPTER V THE CIVIC LEAGUE— SOCIAL LEGISLATION Give to us our freedom; give to us our rights. — Polish National Song. The activities of the League have in general been reviewed, but it seems necessary to separate from the main thread of the narrative the legislative enterprise for which the League specially stood, which laid new duties and provided for new functions in connection with education, juvenile courts, and State Labor Department officials. These were (i) compulsory school attendance laws; (2) juvenile court and contributing-to-dehnquency laws; (3) child labor laws; and (4) legislation changing the structure of the boards of education in cities of the second class, of which Lexington was one.' This legislative activity began in 1902, when plans for the strengthening of the compulsory attendance law were made, and has extended to the present time. In 1918 for example, the child labor law was completely revised and modernized, and a compulsory attendance law for deaf children was obtained;^ but the League was especially active in secur ing these measures between 1902 and 1914. During this period, Madge was likewise engaged in securing tuberculosis legislation, other school laws, and the school suffrage for women, but these objects were sought in other organizations and will be discussed in another connection. ' Covington, Newport, and Paducah are the other three. ' Acts oj igi8, chaps. 46 and 102. 80 THE CIVIC LEAGUE— SOCIAL LEGISLATION 8i It is obviously impossible either to review these various statutes in detail or to convey an adequate idea of the volume of work, the unwearied effort, the extraordinary intelligence, the courageous return after apparent defeat, the brilliancy of statement, the pathos of the appeal in behalf of Kentucky's children that marked her activities during these years. A statement written afterward by Mr. Flexner, with whom she dehghted to work, on whose learning and experience she drew confidently and with assurance, knowing that to him, too, Kentucky and its children were very dear, dwells upon these characteristics of her hfe-work. To Mr. Bernard Flexner, formerly of the Louisville Bar, now of the New York Bar, and also of the American Red Cross Relief Commission to Roumania, all who care for a world in which all children shall have the chance for free and joyous and protected childhood are under deep obhgation. He has been willing out of his leisure time to untangle the intricacies of the constitu tional and historical limitations in which the problems of reconstructing the judicial system in behalf of more humane and inteUigent methods seemed to be involved and has been able to point the way in which such altera tions might be hopefully undertaken. Of her work in these earher years he writes: I wish that I might express to you how great a loss is caused by her death not only to Kentucky, but to the entire country. There are few places that have not felt the impress of her noble effort for community betterment. The range of her activities admitted no bounds. Education, suffrage, public health, the courts, better working conditions for men, women and children, without regard to race, were one to her. They were social injustices, wrongs to be righted, and she would help to the uttermost Hmit regardless of 82 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE the cost to her health. If she would not count the cost to her self, neither would she permit others to do so. Time and again, in the face of overwhelming discouragement, her vision and her intrepid spirit made it possible to save a situation and turn defeat into victory. Her unselfish devotion to a life of public service was not only an inspiration to all who came within her influence, but it will be a precious memory as well. Many of the questions that were subjects of serious controversy and difficulty at that time have been settled, as it were, and there is no reason why the detailed history of the developing code should be reviewed in detail here. The problems of initiating the new protective measures will be briefly stated, for the purpose of revealing some thing of her share in this new movement. The legislative program in behalf of the children of the state, then, was inaugurated in 1902, when the Civic League appointed a committee consisting of two distinguished gentlemen. Professor R. N. Roark, of the University of Kentucky faculty, and Rev. Burris A. Jenkins, to report upon the compulsory attendance law then in force, or rather then on the statute books. That law required children to attend school during a short session — eight weeks continuously; children whose parents could show that they could not afi'ord to clothe their families in a manner suitable for school attendance were exempted, with other commonly exempted groups, such as the mentally and physically incapable; and while a penalty was prescribed, no special provision was made for the enforcement of the statute, which was left to the president of the school board, or to the school trustees. It was obviously a law offering no protection to such children as those in the Irishtown neighborhood. The THE CIVIC LEAGUE— SOCIAL LEGISLATION 83 drafting of an effective law, then, was her first task, and this was done. The legislature of 1904' enacted a law much stronger than the preceding one, applying to cities of the first, second, third, and fourth classes,' requiring that children between the ages of seven and fourteen years should attend school during the entire session (not to be less than five months) .' Poverty was no longer an exemption : special truant officers were pro vided for, one for each three thousand pupils, but the salaries were to come from the local treasury. Securing the law was only a beginning. There was the question of inducing the authorities to provide the salary and of providing the right person for the position of truant officer. As soon as an efficient officer could be . secured, Mr. R. J. O'Mahony, the salary was provided from private sources until the Board appropriated the necessary amount. It is interesting, moreover, to notice that the colored schools were provided for before the white schools, because a suitable colored officer was more quickly found. It is now well recognized that a good attendance law is an admirable device for enforcing a child labor law and for protecting children against premature employ ment. On the other hand, a good child labor law is almost essential to the enforcement of regular attendance. If the child may not lawfully seek employment, one great source of difficulty in obtaining the co-operation ' March 22, 1904. Laws oj Kentucky, 1904, chap. 94, p. 200. ' LouisviUe is the only city of the first class; Lexington, Newport, Cov ington, and Paducah are in the second class. 3 This law has been developed and amended at almost every session. since that date. See Acts oj igo8, chap. 68, p. 198; Acts oj igio, chap. 80, p. 233; Acts oj igi2, cliap. 96, p. 279; Acts oj igi6, chap. i2r, p. 709. 84 "MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE of the parent is removed. The State Labor Department had been quick to seek the co-operation of the Civic League in obtaining protection for working children. There was at the time no other law prohibiting the labor of children than the familiar item in the law forbidding cruelty to children. The first Kentucky child labor law came, therefore, in 1906.' This, like the attendance law, represented the best that could be obtained at that time and prohibited the employment of children under fourteen in factories, mills, workshops, or mines, limited the hours of children between fourteen and sixteen to ten a day, between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., prohibited their employment at certain dangerous occupa-' tions, set certain standards of sanitary care of the places of employment. The act was weak at many points. Poverty again exempted the parent or the child from its application, the vacation time of the public school was not included, vegetable- and tobacco-preparing estabhsh- ments were not included, and the requirements for proof of age were very slack. It meant, however, that the great first step had been taken, and efficient enforce ment and comprehensive application were matters of time and aroused public interest. The legislation that was perhaps most difficult in some ways and that presented the most complicated questions was that generally known as juvenile court legislation. Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver, had awakened a wide interest in the subject; Judge Julian W. Mack, ' Acts oj igo6, chap. 52, p. 296. For the successive revisions see the Acts oj igo8, chap. 66, p. 172; Acts oj igio, chap. 85, p. 256; Acts oj igi4, chap. 72, p. 212; Acts oj igi6, chap. 23, p. 160. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— SOCIAL LEGISLATION 85 at Chicago, was doing brilliant things in working out questions of method and organization; and Mr. Flexner was developing the historical and legal theory with which the assent of the bar and the co-operation of judges might be secured for what appeared a radical manipula tion of the judicial organization, but was, in fact, merely recurring to ancient, equitable, and humane doctrines regarding the right of the state to interfere on proper occasions between parent and child and to deal with youthful offenders rather as delinquent children than as young criminals. Two statutes are required to deal -with the situation; one creating new penalties for parents or guardians who bring their children or wards into conditions of dependency or delinquency, and one pro viding for children already in peril. Two such acts drafted by Mr. Flexner' were passed by the legislature of 1906^ and marked the beginning of a series of such enactments in behalf of helpless children. It win appear in a later chapter that under these statutes a very close co-operation between public and private agencies was developed in behalf of truant and neglected children. Here perhaps it is enough to call attention to the fact that the ages of children included in the act were as high as those attempted by any act, seventeen for boys and eighteen for girls, that probation officers were provided for, and that in the amended act of 1908 was included the plan for an advisory board to ' The name of the late Mr. Albert S. Brandeis, of Louisville, should also be gratefully mentioned in connection with Kentucky statutes. ' Contributory to Delinquency Acts, Acts oj igo6, chap. 54, p. 302; Acts oj igoS, chap. 60, p. 152; Acts oj igio, chap. 76, p. 226. Juvenile Court Laws, Acts oj igo6, chap. 64, p. 322; Acts oj igo8, chap. 67, p. 181; Acts oj igio, chap. 77, p. 228; Acts oj igi2, chap. 25, p. 446. 86 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE be appointed by the court consisting of from six to ten reliable persons who should assist in developing resources, arousing interest, selecting probation officers, etc' The support of these acts by the charitable and corrective societies of the five cities to which they applied had been first assured and their indorsement by practical students of crime, and its treatment, had been obtained. They were presented in the lower house of the legislature by Representative Klair, who had in 1902 taken away the school suffrage from the women of Lexington. They were said by Madge to be so drawn as to provide the officers of the law with the privilege of drawing a well-defined distinction between the treatment of first offenders of immature years and hardened criminals. The Juvenile Court law took into consideration the power of heredity and environment as factors in crime, and sought to open a way of escape to those willing to avail themselves of it. It was a corrective rather than a punitive measure. Its purpose was to make good citizens out of poor material; to lend a hand where help is needed; to protect the weak against enforced association with the vicious ; to give to childhood its right to another chance. The value of such a law had been proved by its practical operation in other States. There was in it less of sentiment than sense. If it was passed, children arrested for the first time would either be kept separate from other prisoners in the jails or be intrusted to the care of charitable institutions. When their cases were called they would be given a private hearing before the County Judge who would have been placed in possession of their family and personal history as it had been learned by an officer of the court appointed especially for that purpose. The decision of the court would be dictated not by the desire to punish, but to save, whenever possible. Where the offense was a minor " This had been a plan cherished and urged by those interested in the development of the Juvenile Court in Los Angeles. In her copy of the Acts oj igo8 are lists of names of ladies who might serve. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— SOCIAL LEGISLATION 87 one the child would be given its liberty, with the understand ing that it was to report at fixed times, in order that the court might keep in touch with it. Where the offense was of more serious character, restrictive measures would be taken, but the restriction would not be such as to brand the offender as hopeless. The bill offered to Louisville, Lexington, Newport, Covington and Paducah an effective aid to good citizenship. The General Assembly would do them good service in enabling them to experi ence it. She saw to it that these laws were explained by this kind of editorial comment in all the communities affected by the acts. It is in fact impossible to convey an adequate idea of the labor embodied in securing the enactment of these laws. Women had the intelligence with reference to the miserable state in which the children were, they had a woman's sense of responsibihty for the weak and feeble members of the community, they knew the misery of mothers who suffered; but women did not then have the franchise. It was perhaps one source of her power that she felt so keenly the needless suffering of mothers as mothers, when children were surrounded by conditions hostile to their joyous growth. Moreover, there was an element of difficulty not always confronting those who seek measures of this kind that should, of course, be state-wide in their appli cation. This difficulty was the classification of cities, to which reference has already been made. There was an advantage in the fact that Louisville, the city of the first class and influential in the legislature, would some times get a measure first and try it out, as it were. On the other hand, the interests of Louisville might appear 88 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE to conflict with those of other communities, and the smaUer ones might find themselves postponed and neglected. Then, too, the fact that legislation applicable to Lexington apphed also to the three other cities named, Covington, Newport, and Paducah, meant that the co operation and support of persons influential in these cities had to be obtained in detail. It was not enough that they did not oppose. They had positively to acquiesce. Otherwise the passage of the act was impossible. These elements in the situation rendered it more difficult than similar efforts would be in a state where such legis lation is general in its application. There, the difficulties of overcoming the hostility of the interests concerned to maintain conditions hostile to children — the employer of child labor, the corrupt or indifferent school authority, all those whose very existence spell neglected and ex ploited childhood — are sufficiently great, but the problem in Kentucky was even more comphcated and more obstinate. It is only to be hoped that the additional work of a preliminary character required, may have meant a wider understanding and a more swiftly efficient enforcing of these acts. On that point, of course, nothing definite can be said. But by means of the juvenile court machinery and under the contributing-to-delinquency laws it became possible for women to obtain access to the court. Degraded homes might, if the judge had respect for the law, be dealt with and conditions giving rise to delinquency on the part of either boys or girls were, so far as the law was concerned, given the character of a public iiuisance. There was stiU the necessity of developing resources M.AJOR HEXRY CLAY ilcDOWLLL THE CIVIC LEAGUE— SOCIAL LEGISLATION 89 for which the local treasury had to pay. But the first step, which always costs so heavily, had been taken. At the session of 1910, a Bureau of Vital Statistics was provided for,' the first in any southern state. During these years, too, the State Federation of Women's Clubs was urging its measure in behalf of school suffrage for women, which was enacted in 191 2,'' and other school- improvement measures. They will, however, be referred to in another chapter. The foregoing statement is a bald outline of the legislative program to which the Civic League made its contribution. The original attack on the problem of play for the children of Irishtown led to the development of the playground and park system of which Lexington is proud. It led into many other paths as well. " A little child shall lead thein" promised the prophet of old. Truly is the promise fulfilled in the experience of every honest person who is willing to foUow. Into every diffi culty confronting the modern community — poverty, vice, greed, seffishness, indifference — into these strong holds of reaction, lethargy, and positive exploitation win the pathway point. And Madge was clear that in the hand of the child she could find the clue — and, having found, she must follow! To complete the story we should not only go through the efforts to secure the enactment of these statutes, but suffer with her the labor involved in obtaining their enforcement. She visited the places where children toiled, and she told their story. She studied the records of other efforts. She pleaded for co-operation, she explained ' Acts oj igio, chap. 37, p. 96. See Acts oj igi2, chap. 24, p. 117. ' Acts oj igi2, chap. 47, p. 193. See also Acts oj 1918, chap. 146, p. 646. 90 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE why it should be, and then how it was. She gave of her own and begged from others the necessary funds. She hunted out the people who might be able to do the various jobs called for under the new laws. She helped those who undertook the tasks to find their way in their new responsi bilities, and she prepared for the next step in advance. It was impossible for her to become accustomed to the contrast between the protestations of an ostensibly Christian community that its civilizatioli was built on the teaching of the Child worshiped of old in a manger and the fact that so many children were given only neglect, cruelty, and privation. And so there was no limit to her efforts except that of physical exhaustion. The press associations, the educational associations, the teachers, the judges, the women 's clubs, the labor unions — all were solicited to join in this new effort in behalf of the children. And, then, when the legislative session of 1908 opened, when the laws to whose formulation and urging she had given so lavishly of her time and effort were to be considered, she had again to surrender and go to the Southwest for recuperation! CHAPTER VI THE CrV^IC LEAGUE— THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN SCHOOL .... Build schoolhouses , pay teachers, .... lend them your brains — Edward Deisiison. In 1908 the Board of Education appropriated $10,000 for the erection of a building in the West End. Compared with expenditures for other buildings, it was not a nig gardly grant; but, as has been said, the superintendent had asked for $15,000' and had urged the value of social work in the schools. He said in his report for 191 1, before the Lincoln School was built : Last year the schools of Lexington were used as social centers in a hmited way. None of the buildings, save the High School, is adapted to the purpose either of recreation or entertainment. None save school rooms could be used and these were always crowded with interested parents. In these small rooms were given musicals, lectures, plays, etc. The interest that was mani fested demonstrated that, with proper auditoriums, the great majority of those who reside in the several school communities would gladly take advantage of such opportunities for recreation, amusement and intellectual improvement. I have frequently called the attention of the Board of Education to the necessity of making some provision for these occasions by making the auditoriums of the attics of the buildings. Estimates have shown that these improvements can be made at small cost. Certainly the cost of such improvements would be nothing in com parison to the good that could be accomphshed by the use of these assembly rooms. Not only could they be used with pleasure and ' Annual Report, 1908, p. r4. 91 92 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE profit by the people, but they would serve as assembly rooms for the pupils, something that is greatly needed in each school, and for physical culture drills, etc' The use of the school as a social and civic center, a policy now widely advocated, was being urged in many quarters then. Miss Jane Addams at Hull-House, Miss Mary McDowell at the University of Chicago Settle ment, Miss Lillian Wald at the "House on Henry Street,'^ were all experimenting in interesting and varied ways. Madge had persuaded Miss Cloud, who had gone into the work in the beginning of 1901, to go to Chicago for suggestions; and she was informed as to the various devices used for bringing to children in such neighbor hoods as Irishtown the things they needed — "their freedom and their right" — but her plan was different from other plans. Miss Addams characterizes it as a " daring experiment. " It was the plan of raising from voluntary sources the sum needed to supplement the public grant, giving this sum to the public authority and asking only a share in the control for a period of time during which the undertaking might be considered experimental. She therefore undertook to raise the large sum of $35,000 to add to the $10,000 granted by the School Board to make of the school the enterprise she thought it should be. It was no easy task. She begged of every body on every pretext. There are 760 names on the list of contributors! She hunted out ex-Kentuckians and demanded that they pay some share of the debt they owed for being Kentuckians. Mr. T. Coleman Du Pont, of Wilmington, Delaware; Mrs. Emmons Blaine and 'Annual Report, 1911, pp. 17-18. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 93 Mrs. Ogden Armour, of Chicago; Mr. N. D. Nelson, of New Orleans, whose co-operative experiment at Le Clair, Illinois, is well known; Mr. James R. Keene; ISIr. James B. Haggin, are a few of the names of those who sent her their tribute to her appeal. Mr. Robert Todd Lincoln, while not born in Kentucky, was only one generation away on both sides and had many relatives in Kentucky and made the first thousand-dollar gift. She went to Chicago, where Miss Addams helped her by going with her and speaking for her, and to New York, to beg in person from those who did not respond to the written appeal. She held great meetings in Lexing ton, and then when the total had still not been obtained, she resorted to a "drive." The period set for the drive was a period of nine days from Monday, the fourteenth, to Wednesday, the twenty-third, of November, 1910. It began with a ban quet, and wound up with a meeting in the Auditorium. The ministers preached for it and indorsed it; a member of the Commercial Club, Mr. S. H. Clay, had general charge with an executive committee of men and women. There were 150 solicitors, and each day a special women's committee served for them a luncheon, at which reports of progress were made. Children marched, women urged, pretty girls invited, the sum was raised, and the enterprise was assured. Those who recaU that time of storm and stress will remember how she did it all — it is impossible to give any idea of her charm, her grace, her determination, her refusal to listen to any pleading that it be given up — and it was done. The story may in fact be told largely in her words; for in this. 94 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE as in all her efforts to raise money, she desired not only the gifts but the sympathy and understanding of the donors, and so at one of the great meetings, one for which Miss McDowell, of Chicago, had come to Lexington, she set the whole plan forth with all the reasons for its execution : The Civic League has asked you here tonight to consider with us the plan for a model public school in the city of Lexington and the means by which we are to get it. Perhaps it is necessary for us to realize that we have need of educational improvement. We have been saying to ourselves for some time, in the manner of Kentuckians, that we have one of the best public school systems in the country, and unless some one insists that Kentuckians look the facts in the face they are very apt to believe just what they say of themselves to others. As a State we stand disgracefully low in the tables of illiteracy. To the dismay of our own local community, it has recently been shown that in ten Blue Grass counties, of which Fayette is one, there are but 92 fewer native white illiterates than in the whole State of Massachu setts, a State with almost double the population of Kentucky and a large foreign element. In 1907 the county of Fayette, which was spending over $185,000 of county revenues, devoted but little over $2,000 of this to her public schools. Since that time we have gotten from the Legislature a new county school board law, one of the special objects of which was to bring about local county taxation for the benefit of schools, and this year Fayette county will spend $4,000 for her schools while she spends $65,000 for her roads. Now the roads over which the children go to school are important, but the schools to which they go are likewise important, and the present proportion of expenses simply indicates that our county officials, the men who are deciding the business methods of our county, have not at present a proper appreciation of the importance of our schools. If you should ask — you who are contentedly saying that we have a perfect system of schools in Lexington — those who are inti mately acquainted with the schools about them, they would not THE ABRAH.AM LINCOLiN SCHOOL THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 95 tell you that any single school in Lexington is a model. The super intendent would not; the members of the board would not. And if you should talk for five minutes to a principal or teacher showing any intelhgent interest or knowledge of the subject, he or she would begin to pour out to you a hst of the things needed for the schools. Personally I do not believe that we shall ever have model schools, as good schools even as the money that is spent for them should provide, while we divide our community into two classes, the women who are doing the thinking about educational matters and the men who are doing the voting. Having started out seventy years ago by granting the first school suffrage to women of any Enghsh-speaking people, Kentucky, by a final stroke at her last Legislature, contentedly reduced herself to an oriental position by declaring that men only were fit for school suffrage. It is rather singular that this reactionary attitude on the part of Kentucky men has gone on side by side with the most remarkable and impor tant development of pubhc interest in educational affairs that Ken tucky has seen in the seventy years past. And this movement has been conceived and executed and financed to a large extent by Kentucky women. Of all the ridicu lous pohtical disabilities that men have ever put upon women the most ridiculous is to debar them from a share in the control of the public schools — to say to them on the one hand, "Women, your glorious mission is to bear and to rear children," and on the other hand to say to them, "When those children are six years old — or four years old, now that we have kindergartens — they must go into the pubhc schools, and there you may not go with them. How the pubhc schools are conducted is a matter for men, not for women. Mothers have nothing to do with the education of their children. " As a matter of fact, even debarred as they are from any author ity, the mothers of this community know more and care more about what is going on in the; pubhc schools than do the fathers. A mother came to me the other day, wanting me to look into a matter in the pubhc schools which she thought very wrong and to get it remedied. It was a thing about which I had never thought, but I have thought of it since and I have asked people in this and other 96 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE communities whose experience is much wider than mine, and I am convinced that that mother was right. I told her that I was not on the School Board, that I was as devoid of any power in the matter as was she, and when she left I decided that this hard job was perhaps not my job, and I wrote to her and suggested that she have her husband, the father of the boy, talk with the members of the School Board about it. Now that was a month or so ago and I do not beheve that any thing has been done. I mention it simply to show you that there is a difference in women's standard and men's standard of what the public school should be, and I believe that if we want to bring up our children in the best way we should be getting the judgment and advice of the mother sex instead of ignoring it. We should have women on- our School Boards and women as principals and women as inspectors "nosing" about in our schools and finding out the little apparently insignificant things that are perhaps the things of vital importance that should be changed and bettered. We had an example the other day of the difference in the male and female standard. A stranger came into our midst, a woman, and she went into the cellars and basements of our pubhc schools, and she did not hke them, and a few days later the gentlemen of our School Board went around and looked at them and they said they were all right. Now even male janitors could have made a change in those cellars and basements in the two or three days intervening between visits, but if the men of our School Board had gone with Mrs. Crane I think their views and hers about the conditions of those cellars and basements would have been different. Our men have minds above cellars. It takes a woman who has had herself to see to cleaning and whitewashing to know how a cellar or basement ought to be. If you do not believe it I suggest that some of you women go and look at the cehars of some of the most prominent business houses in our city, even those within the fire hmits and see if you think they are right. We can not expect men who have looked down upon housekeeping for many centuries and considered it a menial task fit only for women to know very much about it. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 97 Now if we are going to have a model school in Lexington what do we mean by it ? In the first place we mean a school in which teachers are chosen for merit and efficiency; a school in which there are provided for our children the very best teachers that can be obtained for the money to be laid out, no matter where we go to get those teachers; a school in which a teacher who is doing her best knows that she will hold her place while she deserves it and does not have the Damocles sword of an annual election, for which all sorts of wire puhing are necessary, hanging over her head; a school in which the curriculum is the result of the careful thought of big minds; in which discipline is gentle but absolutely firm, in which book teaching is of the highest type; and in which that indescribable process of character building is going on constantly from the influence of a high type of men and women in charge of the children. I shall not dwell on these subtler most important elements of the model school. We all have already our ideals of the perfect school of the old-fashioned type; the only difficulty is to live up to them, to attain them. The things that I am going to dwell upon are very tangible, and material, and much easier to obtain. Our model school must have in it thorough equipment for hand training in every grade. It must have in it certain physical equipment and space for neighborhood uses, some time back con sidered out of the province of the public school, and it is these things that I want to talk about. There can be no longer any question about the practical and commercial value of education. In Asia where the mass of people are wholly iUiterate the average daily wage of the workman is 3 cents. In Russia it is 14 cents, in the United States 48 cents, and in Massachusetts 87 cents, and everywhere there is a direct relation between the amount spent for education and the average earning capacity of the people. For every dohar earned per inhabitant in Kentucky, Indiana earns $1.57. When we go further to the apphcation of the latest educational discovery, the discovery that it is wasteful to try to train the- mind alone, but that you must train the hands and body with it, the illustration is even more striking. 98 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE In Russia only 8 per cent of the population have any education. In Germany no child is allowed to escape education, and there is a most complete system for the teaching of agriculture, beginning with the school garden in the elementary school and going through the higher agricultural colleges. In Russia the average yield per acre is just one-third of what it is in Germany. Twenty years ago Denmark was one of the poorest nations in Europe. Now in the per capita wealth of its people it is, with one exception, the richest. In general distribution of wealth it stands first. This is because Denmark inaugurated and carried out a wonderful system of public schools with industrial training. Her rural schools include dairying, poultry-raising, fruit-growing and all forms of agriculture in their curriculum. The peasants of Denmark have taxed themselves rich. Since the landing of the pilgrim fathers Massachusetts has had an idea of public education that has been almost a religion with her, and now she has advanced her conception of what education is. In 1906 she created a Commission on Industrial Training throughout that state similar to the system used in Germany, which when com pleted will be an object lesson to every state in the Union. In spite of her barren soil, rocky New England farms, her bitter climate, her lack of natural, physical resources, the State of Massa chusetts has held her own in all these years and has produced citizens of a higher earning capacity than any other state in the Union, and now she has decided to still further maintain, her trade supremacy in competition with other countries. She has decided that her own home markets shall not be flooded with things "made in Germany." And how is she going to maintain this trade supremacy, this commercial prosperity ? Some time back she was putting $10,000,000 a year into the education of her children. She is going to put more than that. She is going to hold her business by educating her young. I want you to realize a little how other communities have waked up to the commercial and moral value of hand training in the pubhc schools, and want to refer to the way in which most of the great advances in educational matters have come from the initiative and generosity of private individuals. It is impossible to ask that any THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 99 community shall act as a whole through its puMic representatives, until after there have been many individuals who are ready to act privately to attain a desired end. In Boston, Mrs. Quincy Shaw maintained the kindergartens for many years before they were taken over by the public authorities. She maintained the Lloyd Training School until manual training was adopted into the pubhc school system, and in city after city we see this same thing happening. At one of the monthly meetings of the Commercial Club of Chicago in 1882 Mr. Marshall Field arose and said that he would give $20,000 to start a Manual Training School in that city if the other members of the club would bring the fund up to $100,000, and this was promptly done. Within a year the land was bought and the school building begun. That Manual Training School accomplished its mission. Through its influence manual training was introduced into the pub hc school system of Chicago and of several other cities, and finaUy in 1907 the school was made over by the men of the Commercial Club to the University of Chicago. The men of the Commercial Club simply decided that the hand training of the youth of Chicago was at that time the most important business matter before them, and the glorious history of their sustained interest in the movement is related in a single sentence, that in all the years of the existence of this Manual Training School " the Commercial Club constituted an elastic and thoroughly satisfactory endowment fund." Our own community has not as yet contracted the habit of public giving. Sometimes in Louisville when I have looked at the magnfficent Manual Training High School, the gift of one citizen, and at the building in which the charity organization society has its headquarters, the gift of another; and at the beautiful drinking fountains and gateways and bridges on the streets and in the parks, I have wished that that contagion of pubhc spirit might reach this Blue Grass region. At present the attitude of many of us toward the state or the city seems to be to "do" it, to give as little as we can and to get as much. It seems sometimes as if we had forgotten that this government was our own government and that what we gave to the public we were, after all, but giving to ourselves. lOO MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Aside from the material thing to be gained in this model school about which we are talking, would it not be worth while for the citizens of Lexington to give to it simply to get themselves in the habit of helping on our public administration instead of continuaUy abusing it ? I am not saying that we should not hold our pubhc officers to a high standard, to a much higher standard than we have ever held them, but we shall never do it except by feehng ourselves a keen and intense interest in the conduct of public affairs, and when we feel that interest, we shall be ready to sacrffice something ourselves; we shall be ready to give of our thought and our energy — yea, even of the money out of our pockets. The plan which we are proposing to you to attain this model school is on the Carnegie order. It is a poohng of pubhc money and private money for .an institution to be maintained from pubhc funds. The School Board has already voted $10,000 for the school, the limit of what it can possibly vote until there is a new bond issue. The Civic League is asking that $20,000 be added to this $10,000 by private subscription. The appeal has not yet been made except to a few persons in this community, but already some have volun teered — we have one donation in four figures and one in three — outside people who are interested in advancing this newer form of education have made gifts and about one-fifth of the $20,000 is subscribed. And in Virginia lately under the working of a new law that has given a tremendous impetus to school building, and in other parts of the world, they have found that when you add a splendid school building the tax rate does not have to go up to supply the increased maintenance, for the value of property about the school building rises, so that the assessment takes care of the increased maintenance. Another thing that we want our model school to give besides hand training is the opportunity for community use. It is slowly dawning upon us that the public schools belong to the public, and that they have the right to use them both in school hours and out. Of all the wicked extravagance the most wicked, it seems to me, is to tax people — and poor people, for every landlord, no matter how disgraceful the hovel which he rents, makes his tenants pay the taxes in rental which he fixes — to tax poor people for the THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL loi purpose of erecting costly school buildings and then to allow these school buildings to stand idle 165 days out of the year and 19 hours out of every 24 of the days they are in use. While the people have need of them for every sort of use our school buildings are closed and idle for half of the afternoon, for all of the evenings, on Satur days and on Sundays and through three months of the summer while our janitors are taking the rest cure. And there is no place for our people, whose homes are too small for more than domestic use, to meet with their fellowmen as every rightly constructed human being wants to do. The men must go to the saloons for their political meetings. The young people, if they want to dance or to enjoy themselves in other ways, must go to the skating rinks and the cheap dance halls and the five-cent theaters; and they go unchaperoned, and there are often deplorable consequences. Then we go to work and in our juvenile courts and our reform schools we spend the money that we should have spent to keep these young people from going wrong. And the pity of it is that a broken thing mended is never what a whole thing might have been, even if we succeed in mending and not in further scarring and disfiguring the young character which is handled so roughly in police courts and jails and state insti tutions. All over this country cities are gradually waking up to the fact that Jacob Riis stated when he said that the public school should be the social center of the community. When I tried to tell in Chicago what our School Board and our Civic League wanted to do in a public school in Lexington, Miss Jane Addams was willing to give of her precious time to go with me and indorse the project; because, as she said, the social settlement can never do all that should be done of this kind in the cities. They are only the out posts, the experiment stations. One of the things that they must specially point the way to, is the community use of the pubhc school buildings. In New York City twenty years ago a group of young long shoremen who lived near the Brooklyn bridge and were known as "The Buttermilk Club" because they revolted against the vul garity and the coarse temptations of the saloon, their only meeting I02 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE place, apphed through a friend, an influential woman then on the School Board, for the use of a room in one of the public school buildings to hold their meetings. The New York School Board refused. They dared not set such a precedent; it might prove a most expensive thing. And now what is the New York School Board doing? It is spending thousands of dollars a year to provide in its school build ings public lectures free to the people. It is opening its school buildings after school hours winter and summer, night and day, to the use, the uplift, the education and the recreation simply of old and young who dwell about those school buildings. In the summer time it is running vacation schools for children in which never a book is used, where the subjects taught are nature work and draw ing, and clay modeling and basketry, and the wood work, and cook ing, and sewing, and embroidery, and milhnery even, and the only book subject taught is a little history or civics, and this is taught not out of books but orally and by dehghtful picnic excursions to historic points in New York City and in the neighborhood. And it is maintaining play-schools which are only kindergartens enlarged, and playgrounds — over a hundred of them — on mother earth, where the land can be had, and where it can not, in basements and on roofs of school buildings. And on these roof gardens of these school buildings there are sand piles for the little ones to dig in and spades and pails to do the digging with. There are bands of music playing through the long hot summer evenings and the old people are listening there to the national songs of this, their new country and to the old songs which they knew in the old country, and the young people are dancing to that music. And all this, mind you, is being supplied by educational funds. It is coming out of the money that used to be dedicated to blue backed spellers and birch rods, to the misery and unhappiness of childhood. Now we have learned that the happy child can acquire even book learning twice as fast as the unhappy child, and we have learned that the young person who is given a natural and healthful outlet for that universal instinct of youth, the desire for joy and physical activity and for social intercourse with his fellows, is likely to make a good citizen instead of a bad one. We know that all the THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 103 social evils we have to contend with practically are the out growth, not of the hours of work, but of the hours of play; and that it is these hours that we must look to if we want a healthy and a moral and an efficient people. And in other cities than New York, where the school problem is not so big a one, they have gone even further. There are many towns where the vacation schools and the playgrounds, once sup ported by Woman's Clubs or Civic Leagues, or by private indi viduals, are now taken over by School Boards and are a regular part of the school work. Gymnasia, and public baths, and swimming pools, and clubs for young people and old, library stations, and all sorts of classes have gotten lodged in the school buildings never to go out. And the manual training has been developed until there is not only manual training from the kindergarten through the High School maintained by the School Boards, but there are trade schools with the avowed purpose of teaching boys and girls to make an honest living. And strangest of all, in some places, as Miss McDowell has told you, there is actually a social settlement worker — we have to caU her this, for it is the best way to describe her — who has her head quarters in the school building. She is helping the medical inspec tor to weigh and measure children, and to examine suspicious throats and eyes; she is then following up the cases of the sick and defective children into their own homes and becoming a friend of the family and helping to remedy the conditions that have pro duced the illness. She is giving out the little milk bottles of pasteurized milk furnished by the Milk Commission, to take the place of the cheap candies and pickles for which the pennies of the children formerly went at lunch time. She is cheering on the bath matron in her task of washing twenty or thirty baby children a day, or of marshalling the relays of older children who go down for the shower baths every twenty minutes of the school day. She is running clubs and classes and even providing evening entertain ments for the older people. Now the model school we want in Lexington is to be built in the West End simply because that is the next school we are to build. By and by we want such a model school for every school in I04 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Lexington. Surely it will not be many years before our people demand that every school building in Lexington for white or for colored be equipped for manual training work, so that this may be given to all our boys and girls and not just to an occasional few who are picked out and sent from their school to the manual training center. And after we get these schools all up to the standard we are now setting, you may rest assured that somebody wiU come along with a standard of a school building way in advance of any we have now; and then we will begin aiming for that. One's wagon should always be hitched to a star. I believe I can tell you best what we need in all of these model schools we are to have, by telhng you a httle of the history of the school in the West End, and why we want the things in it that we do want. Seven years ago the Woman's Club and the Civic League started a little playground in what is commonly known as Irish- town on a lot loaned to us by Mr. Richard Stoll. The second year his property had been sold and we could not get it for a playground, and so we started a little vacation school with cooking, and sewing and out-door kindergarten in a slip of a yard, and sand piles, and swings, and see-saws, and basket ball, and croquet. Then we went to the School Board and showed them that in a hst of 80 children of kindergarten and primary age but four were even registered up town and they were not attending school. We showed them that there were children of 14 and 15 who could neither read nor write and that the public school system was passing over the heads of these children, who really needed it most. The School Board started a kindergarten with our httle playground instructor, Miss Betsy Cloud, in charge — ^which is about the best thing that has ever happened to that end of town — and to tliat kindergarten the School Board has added one thing after another. There is a school now of 150 pupils and one grade was lost this fall simply because the children could not be accommodated in the funny little school-rooms that have been made out of the two con verted dweUing houses that are the school. And we are not pushing the School Board any longer about this West End School. They are pushing us, and right now they are eager to build and we are begging for time that we may try to raise a little more money. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 1-05 For seven years we have had a beautiful vision of what the new school building in that section was going to be and how it would have in it a kitchen, a carpenter shop and a laundry with stationary wash tubs where the girls might learn the fine art of laundry work and where the mothers might bring their washing out of school hours, as they do to the municipal laundries in the European cities; of how it would have a gymnasium and play-nasium and shower baths for the use of young and old ahke and a swimming pool; per haps a little room that might be used for a library and a clubroom; and either an assembly hall or a kindergarten room so large that by putting funeral chairs into it we could on short notice convert it in time into an assembly hall. And if we can not afford a separate assembly hall we want a stage at the end of the kindergarten room where the piano and the cupboards for the kindergarten work may go, which you see is really an economy of space, and a teacher's room to one side of it where a sick child may be taken or a business matter gone over with the principal in school hours, and which in the evening may be converted into that fascinating place where wigs are put on and eyebrows are blackened and ready-made expressions created by the fine hand of the artist — a green room. For the children who read and learn and play Shakespeare and Schiller in their youth are going to have tastes above Anna Held and " The Merry Widow " and the five-cent theater when they grow up. The Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages knew well the educational value of the stage, and we are beginning to learn it again, largely through the appalling effects of using it as a place to propagate low and sensual tastes rather than noble ideals. We like to claim that the manual training in our public schools grew out of the humble little work started in the West End School; and that the playground and park movement grew out of that. And we believe now that if we can open there a model school which the board will allow the superintendent to use as a sort of experi ment station where the curriculum may be loosened and adapted to the model set by the School of Education in Chicago, the influ ence of the school in the West End will go not only through all the schools of Lexington eventually, but through all the schools of Central Kentucky. And even further, for no Kentucky movement io6 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE has ever yet hid its light under a bushel; and we will see that there is plenty of free space in the newspapers to proclaim our shining example throughout the length and breadth of the, state. In the seven years that we have been in the West End we have seen boys go to the penitentiary and girls go wrong in one way or another for the lack, we believe, of being taught in the school to use their hands to make an honest living, and of being given some outlet for social intercourse under proper conditions. And the things we have seen there, you could have seen in many other parts of town if you had only watched for them closely. The school we are planning to build will be fed from the section known as Irishtown and from Davis Bottom and the territory extending over to the tobacco factories and the Southern depot and from the Spiegel Heights and from the new and growing section beyond the Cincinnati Southern tracks that cross the Versailles road. The lot picked out is in the very center of this district. The building must be so constructed that it may be added on to from year to year. Sometimes we have gotten discouraged with our work in the West End. It seemed as if there were but httle results. But when we remember that for seven years through the school and the playground, winter and summer, there have been with these children every day women of refinement and high character who are teaching them not only what is in the books but all the little unconscious things that go to make up a good man or a good woman we must know that the work has not been in vain. And, however hard it is, however exacting, we know too that those children are worthy of it. I have seen them sitting with their bare little feet under the kindergarten tables and their heads bowed over them, saying the grace that the teachers have taught them: "Father, we thank thee for the night. And for the blessed morning hght; For rest and food and loving care; And all that makes the world so fair. " And I have said to myself, " those children have a right, just as your children or my children have, just as every child in the world THE OUT-IlOOR CL.\>S THE GYMNASIUM The Gymnasium classes are held in the Assembly Room named by the Board ot Education for Major McDowell. She called the room the "pulsini; heart of the neighborhood." THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 107 has, to rest and food and loving care and all that makes the world so fair. " And I have said to myself : "When we make our school building here we must build one thing in this section that is fair, that is dignified and noble, and that shall serve its ends not only for usefulness but for an inspiration of neatness, order and beauty to the whole community. " Isn't it a vision worth waiting for and working for, and giving to and even worth begging for ? Will you help us to get it ?' When the money had been raised, it was given to the school authorities and accepted by them under an arrange ment that it would be administered by a joint committee of the League and of the Board and that the League would for ten years direct the out-of-school activities. After that there were the plans to decide upon, the contracts to be let, and the building operations to be supervised. Work was begun in September, 191 1, and the cornerstone was laid on December 7, 191 1. She described the exercises as "Sunshine in December." We looked across the heights of High street or the VersaiUes road, .... across to the huddled roofs of the one-story cottages that are Irishtown And there were the children winding their way through Willard street, an almost impassable lane in winter, across the hollow and up to the site of the great new building As we looked we felt that the picture of the little strugghng, chmbing procession was a good omen for the new school. The half -finished pile seemed a goal of inspiration and happy effort, beginning to hft its head in the sunshine of that bright December afternoon.^ The building was dedicated on November 30, 1912, and the open-air school, to which anemic children came from two other schools, was opened on St. Patrick's Day, 1 9 13. When the question of a name arose, the » Lexington Leader, May 30, 1909. ' Lexington Herald, December 10, 191 1. io8 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Board proposed her name; but she rejected the suggestion and asked that the school she had builded be given the name of one whom she thought the greatest Kentuckian. Her father's name was by later action of the Board perpetuated in the great assembly hall "in which the children play." In 1914 she was asked to describe the work of the school at the National Conference of Social Work meet ing in Memphis. The account of the work as it had then developed can again be given in her words: In the heart of the Blue Grass, in a poor section of the city of Lexington, a little over twelve years ago a playground was opened by the Civic League and the Woman's Club, Lexington organizations. Playgrounds had been started then in only two other southern cities, Louisville and New Orleans. The Lexington playground abounded in local color and it was unique; it was started in the shadow of a distillery, and out of it has grown, as education always should grow from play, a "model school" as it is still affectionately known by those who worked to bring it about. After the second summer of the playground which had devel oped into a vacation school with cooking classes, with out-of-door sewing classes and kindergarten; the Civic League went to the School Board, showed them that the pubhc school system was pass ing over the heads of the children of this neighborhood who needed it most, and induced them to start a public kindergarten in Irish- town. To this kindergarten one grade was added after another. The Civic League kept the playground going in the summer, a little manual training and evening recreation in winter, and always the men and women of the Civic League kept working for the "model school" which had then shaped itself in their brains as the kind of pubhc school that Irishtown and Davis Bottom and Spiegel Heights and all that contiguous section needed. And now there stands in the place of the one-room kindergarten the Abraham Lincoln School, that is both a public school and a social settlement, of THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 109 which Dr. Earl Barnes of Philadelphia had written: "I have never seen a piece of social work where the combination of personal and public support, together with the general aim and purpose, appealed to me so powerfully as in your school. " The School Board, urged by the Civic League, set aside ten thousand dollars for a school in the "West End," all that could be spared from a bond issue that had to build other schools for white and colored children. The Civic League set out to raise the rest, and has now turned over to the School Board a plant that has cost over forty-five thousand dollars. The League is still at work, for the grounds are yet to be graded and surfaced and planted, the playground laid out, a retaining wall built and other details com pleted. The money was raised by private subscriptions at home and abroad — the first one coming from Mr. Robert Lincoln, the son of President Lincoln — by an appeal to ex-Kentuckians, and finally by a whirlwind campaign such as the Y.M.C.A. people use. It was not an easy job, for it was hard for the community to see that the West End needed such a school as the Civic League planned. But the money was finaUy raised, and the school built and named for Abraham Lincoln, Kentucky's greatest son, and it has become, as the Civic League said it would, a model not only for Lexington but for Kentucky, which is having a distinct effect on the public school standard of the state. And sometimes visitors come from much farther away than Kentucky. Dr. Charles Fordyce, Dean of Edu cation of the University of Nebraska, who visited Lincoln School recently, said he considered it the finest example he had ever seen of the perfect blending and working together of the public school and the social settlement priaciple. The Civic League, when most of the money was raised, entered into a contract with the School Board. The site was selected and the architect and the plans chosen, and the school built by a joint committee of School Board, and Civic League; and it was stipu lated that for ten years after, the Civic League should control the use of the school building for all recreational and educational pur poses outside the regular school uses. Ten years, it was believed, would fix the experiment so that the School Board would no longer need the Civic League. After a year and a hah it is no longer an no MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE experiment; it seems already impossible that anything so beautiful could perish off the earth ! The school has a carpenter shop, a kitchen and sewing room, a laundry, shower baths and a swimming pool, a roof garden with an outdoor school — the latest project — and a room 75X40 feet and a story and a half high, which is a kindergarten in the morning, a gymnasium in the afternoon, an auditorium and a theater at night, and the pulsing heart of the school and the community life morning, noon and night of every day. Here the Blue Birds and the Camp Fire Girls meet, the Athletic Club, the Dramatic Club, the Choral Club; here in the evening sixty-five girls from the four laundries, the Ten Cent Store, the bottling houses of the two distilleries of the neighborhood and from the tobacco factories, come for gymnastics and a swimming lesson afterwards. Here forty mothers of the Mother's Club meet once a month for health lectures and for a social hour. Here finally once a month about 200 young men and girls of the various clubs and classes, with the parents for chap- erones, and such children of school age as can shp in, gather for the monthly dance that is the social event of the neighborhood. There isn't any turkey trotting, for the edict has gone forth that this "ain't no country club," but there is more of real happiness than was found in the many saloons that furnished the only pubhc meeting places before the school was built. Only once did the auditorium lose its attraction for a httle while — during the very hot season of last July and August, when the swimming pool was just opened, when nobody wanted to do anything but to take shower baths and to swim. Nearly a thou sand showers were paid for in those months, with numberless baths to school children for which no charge was made. There are no other public baths, no other public swimming pools in Lexington. Railroad men who came into Lexington from a two days' run, and many other adults not directly connected with the school, were glad to pay for the privilege of a bath and a swim. As for the children, when the swimming pool was first opened the widows had to be nailed up to keep them out, until proper regulations could be established for ages and sexes and the emptying and refilling of the pool. Late in the season even the swimming teacher had to THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL in dogmatically limit the number of baths in a day. And this in a neighborhood where cleanhness had been rarer and more difficult to attain than godhness ! Not only is the laundry used as part of the school equipment, but out of school hours, the mothers of the neighborhood may bring their washing to it, and for the payment of ten cents may have the use of stationary tubs, with running water, ironing boards, with gas heaters for the irons and a steam drier. The insufficiency of the water supply is the crying need of the neighborhood, and the laundry is seldom out of use, a mother sometimes coming even at night to finish her ironing, or put her washing to soak, while her children are having a good time upstairs. There is a circulating hbrary in the school which supphes the reading for the neighborhood — a neighborhood that did little read ing before the coining of the playground and the kindergarten. Self-government prevails throughout the school, from the floor committee of young men who manage the dances, to the house committees of very small boys and girls who in each grade care for the school room and maintain order for the teacher. About the last thing to be added is the Outdoor School. On St. Patrick's Day last, when crocuses and daffodils came out, thirty httle children, carefuUy chosen from three schools, came out on the roof garden to do their studying and their playing, and their sleeping. The School Board had bought desks and paid the teacher's salary. When the Civic League and the Tuberculosis Society counted up on that 17th of March what there was in the treasury when cots and Esquimo suits and blankets and all equip ment were paid for, it found there was $4.50 in the treasury to feed those children on till the 4th of July, when the school was to close. But the ravens provided, and they have been fed every day of the school term since, and temperatures and pulses have gone down, and weights have gone up, and rosy cheeks have taken the place of pale ones. This was the third open-air school ever started in a Southern City. The Civic League employs a medical helper, who has charge of the outdoor children, foUows the work of the medical inspector with the other children, goes into the houses of the neighborhood, 112 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE and keeps a social history card for every pupil. It shows scholar ship, health, home conditions and sanitation, and, with a view to proving eventually that these children stay in school longer and are fitted to earn better wages when they come out than did their older brothers and sisters, it shows the ages at which these brothers and sisters went to work, the wages they first earned, and the wages they are earning today. Now there is a secret to every formula, and the Lincoln School does its best to give away its formula to every visitor who comes; but there is one thing, the real secret of its success, that it can't give away — the genius of the little kindergartner who supervised the first playground, who is now the principal of the " model " school and the head of the social work; whom every man, woman and child in the neighborhood adores; about whom the school and the school idea has so slowly and so lovingly grown that they are entwined in the very life of the neighborhood forever !' Additions are of course frequently made to the equip ment of the school. Among the gifts or purchases re cently acquired might be mentioned an Edison machine; a moving-picture machine, to which reference has been made; a Spaulding playground apparatus; an archery outfit; pool and billiard tables, put in for the entertain ment of soldiers at Camp Stanley; an electric hair-dryer, bought as part of the "personal equipment." She told in the Memphis address one secret of the growth of the Lincoln School. The work of Miss Cloud there should have an enduring place in the record of Lexington's and of Kentucky's educational work, as well as in the story of Kentucky's social work. She had dis covered Miss Cloud back in 1901, doing playground work to the delight of children from well-to-do families ' Forty-first Annual Proceedings oj the National Conjerence oj Charities and Corrections, pp. 397 ff. THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 113 out East Main Way, and had brought her to Irishtown in the beginning. She could not always keep her, for there were other groups who had discovered Miss Cloud too. But for several years, Miss Cloud has known no divided affection and has been always a part of the life of Irishtown. In 1908, Miss Cloud went for inspiration and suggestion to Chicago, and Madge wrote Miss Addams about her: My dear Miss Addams : This is Miss Cloud of whom I wrote you. She is head Kinder gartner and Principal of our Irishtown school, and is the person to whom we owe the success of our playground movement. She is in Chicago learning — in three months, like our sewing machine agent who took six weeks off to master the law, — how to run our Irish- town school, if ever we get the kind we want — the way the School of Education is run. I want her also to learn at Hull House and at Mary McDowell's Settlement how to run a settlement, for I hope some day to have a httle settlement house beside our large school house in Irishtown for her to live in. The school will still be a part of the Pubhc School System, but better than any of the others and different. I think sometimes when I remember what we owe Miss Cloud, that Jacob Riis's definition of Roosevelt fits her — " the most valu able citizen of Lexington. " It isn't saying quite as much as if you said New York, but it is all we can say. Don't forget you are coming to see me in September. Very truly yours, M. McD. B. But the other source of the school's success is, of course, the volume of work, devotion, and inteUigence she continued to expend on the problems of the neighbor hood, for the extra services, the out-of-school activities, 114 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE had to be paid for from Civic League money; and she longed to make the play-space about the school a model playground as the school had served as a demonstration school. In 191 5-16 she was again begging money for the playground, for the support of the out-of-door school, for the feeding of the anemic children. A letter written August 20, 1915, in the attempt to secure the playground is given here. The playground is not yet the model, for the city has not yet built the retaining wall and done its other tasks; but the plans for the playground are drawn, awaiting only the further action of the city. August 20, 19x5 My dear Mr. — : Now and then I have mailed you httle newspaper chppings hoping to give you some idea of the wonderful use that has been made of the swimming pool and shower baths at Lincoln School. These, you know, we owe very largely to your generosity, since you gave $500 of the extra thousand it took to insure them. The school has been an unparalleled success in every respect. If you will, I want you to read the enclosed newspaper article to see what some educational authorities from a distance who have visited the school have said of it. Please return this article to me, as this is my last copy. It is hard sometimes to tell for which feature to be the most grateful: the swimming pool and showers, the laundry, which the mothers use as much as the children, the auditorium, which is the social center for the whole community, the outdoor school on the roof garden, or just the school itself, which is giving the children of that community a preparation for life that no children growing up there ever had before. But there is one feature that we have wanted from the begin ning that we have never been able to add, a model play-ground about the school. Since we began teaching in the school the social and medical work in connection with it have made such demands on our interest and the money we could raise, that we simply have THE GIRLS OF IRISHTOWN Learning laundry work in the Lincoln School THL B0\'^ OF IRISHIU^W In the carpenter shop at Lincoln School THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 115 not been able to do the play-ground part. We have made a rough guess that it will take at least a thousand dollars to put side-walks and gutters-, to fence, grade, surface and equip the original lot. After we had finaUy scraped up that much, we concluded last sum mer that the wisest thing we could do with the money was to buy the 100 feet on High Street adjoining our school lot. On 30 feet of this the httle house, which you see in the enclosed picture, stands, the other 60 feet is vacant and we got it at a very low price. We own the Valley Ave. frontage back of the 30 foot lot. If we could secure the Valley Ave. frontage of the other we should have not only a good play-ground and room for a base-ball diamond as well, but reaUy a httle park. As the school building is now the only social and physical outlet for the people in that community under decent conditions, so this Httle park or play-ground would furnish the only place in that whole section for out-door exercise and recreation. We want it very much, as we wanted the school, to set a stand ard for the other school yards in Lexington. The standard of the school, by the way, has worked beautifully, even the new colored school the Board is now building is to have equipment for manual training and domestic science, provisions for an open-air school room and an auditorium for adult and recreational use. And I beheve it wiU do more good morally among the colored people than several additional churches. There isn't a single school in Lexing ton for white or colored children with a proper play-ground or properly equipped. There is only one in fact of them all that even has the necessary space for such a play-ground. The School Board, which has been scrimped to death merely to meet the increased school population with the usual facihties, will try again for a bond issue this faU. If we could get a model school yard in connection with Lincohi School it would practically insure that the new schools add not only such features as Lincoln School has now made sine qua non for a school building, but that a proper- sized and equipped play-ground would also become a sine qua non for a school building. We can get some money from the School Board this faU for the Lmcohi School, but we are particularly anxious to have this apphed ii6 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE to putting side-walks on two sides of the school, to guttering, and to drainage. All of that is a job and an expensive one in itself, and streets and side-walks and drainage there will be almost as valu able to the people living in that neighborhood, all of whom use our school building steadily, as is the school itself. It seems to me we can hardly ask the children and their elders to tramp through the mud another winter or our janitors to try to keep the school building clean. I think it will take at least a thou sand dollars to make the present lot into a properly drained, graded, surfaced, equipped play-ground with the necessary fencing, etc. It is on this job that I am hoping that you will feel inclined to help us, as you did about getting the swimming pool. A play-ground and athletic field in Irishtown is something that it is as hard for the average Lexingtonian to see the need of as it was to make them see the need of such a school building with swimming pool, etc. Now we have it, nobody can ever enter it and doubt again. It wiU be the same thing when we offer a little park as counter attraction to the six saloons in that neighborhood, but somehow I can't get Lex ington people to see it beforehand. (We are working to try to get rid of the six saloons, but that is a still longer fight in this commu nity and I am convinced that the constructive work like opening other places for recreational purposes besides the saloons has to go along with it.) I hope this long letter has not worn you out and that you may feel inclined to help us do a further really big and valuable thing in connection with Lincoln School. Hoping to hear from you, I am Cordially yours, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge She described in her various letters the development of the social uses of the building and its equipment. In the summer of 191 7 the usual activities were enlarged to meet the recreational needs of the soldiers at Camp Stanley, located on the Versailles road, which is an extension of the street on which the school faces. Dances THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 117 and social entertainments of various kinds were so planned as to give the soldiers amusement, catching them before they got farther into town and fell into the hands of those awaiting them for their undoing. The most distinguished and careful chaperonage was provided so that every girl might feel perfectly safe when present at these parties. In the following winter, when bitter cold prevailed, while .coal was scarce and prices were high and families suffered, the doors of the school would not be closed for days at a time. The domestic- science group served hot soup and coffee; the laundry was made fullest use of with its facilities for heating water and for rapid drying; sports were carried on by the social workers in the afternoon and evening. There were basket- and volley-ball games of young people, knitting groups of grandmothers, reading circles in the library. The place was alive with neighbors, warm and friendly and comfortable. The children helped in carrying buckets of soup and coffee to shut-in neighbors; and, though not a class exercise was lost, a period of what would have been great suffering was not only safely passed, but was turned into an experience of neighborly service of the richest kind. But the normal contacts are by way of good times. There are the evening parties; the afternoon club meet ings of older and of younger women, of girls gone out into wage-earning, and of boys who are now at work; the contests with groups from other schools; with groups from other playgrounds; and the Lincoln School contest ants often win the prizes for svdmming feats. Sometimes there is a patron's day, vdth a program like the follow ing, lasting all day. ii8 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE PROGRAM AT LINCOLN SCHOOL Patron's Day will be uniquely celebrated at Lincoln School this morning at lo : 30 o'clock. The pubhc is invited. The program follows: Bugle Call — S. C. Ballard, Second Regiment Salute the Flag Retrospect of American History, by occupants of Ship of State Song — Who Wouldn't Be a Soldier ? Indian War Dance Star-spangled Banner Belgian Rose, song and waltz in front of Antwerp Cathedral Holland Song — Wooden Shoes and Windmill Dance in village street Pohsh National Hymn Robin Hood and His Merry Men — contest in archery Maypole Dance Song — Rule Britannia French Minuet Dance Eiffel Tower — Marseillaise Native French Song Flower Girls Japanese Dance Song — Saruka (Cherry Blossoms) Solo by Girl in Jinrikisha Highland Fling Song — Bluebells of Scotland Spanish Song Irish Lilt Song — Wearin' of the Green — from Blarney Castle Italian National Song Dance — Tarantella Santa Lucia Song by all nations — Sail On, O Ship of State The day's festivities will end with a social gathering and dance in the evening. ORDIoRIXt; FROM THK GROCER One way of learning arithmetic and domestic economy. The teacher is the beloved "Miss Betsy" Cloud ' THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 119 A "rummage sale" is the culmination of a long series of co-operative activities. Many articles are given through the school, but nothing dilapidated or soiled or unsuited to the uses of an individual is passed on. Articles that can be repaired are cleaned and repaired and altered, all the processes being used as a basis for instruc tion. Sometimes the final products are placed on sale. A further word vdll be said about the social work of the school in the following chapter; for while on the whole the activities are of an educational and recreational character, there arises the necessity, as in the winter of 191 7-18 referred to and in the activities of the outdoor school, of rendering aid not unlike the giving of material rehef. This involves the apphcation of the case method of work, and the history card is the basis for sound treatment in this as well as in the medical supervision and care. The beautiful occasions that mark the life of the children at Lincoln School can be somewhat illustrated by the pictures; the kind of knowledge possessed by the members of the staff is indicated by the "social history" card. Perhaps the most convincing evidence of the true success of the school, however, is the condition in which the children whose mothers were among the pupils of those earher days come to school, the way in which those moth ers understand and use the school, and the way in which in their homes the floors are clean and there are white sash curtains at windows that go up and down and there are well-kept httle grassplots on which children can play. The children from these homes are gladly brought or come voluntarily to the weekly chnic, and the members of the staff are certain that they find less sickness and I20 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE greater opportunity for effective treatment in these "second generation" homes. The account of the school would be incomplete, however, were no mention made of the place it has had as a demonstration. Whether it is well to caU an enter prise in which one is interested a "model" may be questioned. There are some in every community who do not wish to "follow" anything and who must be enabled to appear to have discovered for themselves. Moreover, many public-spirited persons prefer to go over the experimental stage for themselves. Like Thomas of old, they find it difficult to be convinced by other than their sense of touch. But, however the views on that subject may differ, the demonstration character of the work had several elements of value. In the first place, the school served to show to the community what the conditions really were. It is a new understanding that comes when one assumes a special responsibility for a situation. For example, in March, 1914, the city authorities granted a new license for a coffee-house at one address on Manchester Street and the transfer to another address of a license which had been enjoyed at another location and revoked because of violations of the law there. The granting and transferring of licenses for coffee houses in the old days were not uncommon acts, and Manchester Street was in those days a street where law- breaking was a common phenomenon. But by 1914 several things had happened. The more ambitious and decent families had become vocal and had somewhere to go for help. They therefore — ninety-four of them, "residents and property-owners living in Irishtown" — THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 121 drew up and signed a protest.' The persons closely con nected with the school reported to others what it meant, and the result was that the commissioners reconsidered, the two applicants explained that they never had wanted the licenses anyhow, and the neighborhood was spared. Another value such a demonstration possesses lies in the opportunity to learn through association with pubhc officials what are the real impediments in the way of a general appreciation of the particular problems. It cannot be expected that the public officials, selected as they are, will realize the economy in swiftly wiping out such evils as iUiteracy and demoralized home conditions, but how to bring home the lesson most swiftly is more easily learned when the members of the group who see the way ahead are in frequent and natural intercourse with the public ofi&cials in the performance of common tasks. She felt the importance of this common under taking and urged it whenever the opportunity arose. It is true that Madge's name is not in any carven stone, but her face is there. For when she chose another name for the school, the school refused to remain without evidence that the children and teachers knew to whose work their presence there was due. From contributions of the children a fund was raised for the painting of a portrait, for which she sat in the winter of 1920; and from the walls of the auditorium, which bears her beloved father's name, her eyes look down on all their gay activi ties — on the "beating of the pulse of the neighborhood," as she described the room. Although I have tried to put together the important items in the development of the work in "Irishtown," ' Lexington Herald, March 5, 1914. 122 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE I have, I know, failed to portray the imminence, the constancy, the illumination of her devotion to the school. I desire therefore to close the chapter vnth the state ment of Miss Cloud, who has been able to speak in terms both of truth and of beauty. Behind the institution bearing the name of Abraham Lincoln stands the great heart of Mrs. Breckinridge. I am often reminded of what Prof. Anna Bowen said of Mrs. Breckinridge after a visit to the little school on Manchester Street: "As I left the little school and came toward West Main Street I lifted my eyes and saw standing on his tall shaft just in front of me the form of Kentucky's most honored son, apparently watching down the httle street where the children came to play. Could the old statesman come back and walk for a day among those who are proud to trace their lineage to him, I doubt not he would acknowl edge that his mantle of true statesmanship — the unselfish giving of oneself to build up the state — had fallen now upon the woman who is today so unselfishly giving her best thought and effort to uplift her fellows — the little people of Irishtown. " I am asking you to come with me to these early days when the West End playground was started in the distillery lot on Man chester Street. Many of the early workers have gone into larger fields and some into the Great Beyond. A concentrated service of twenty years cannot be gone over in five minutes and so I can touch only a few of our most treasured experiences and point to the sharp turns in the road jvhich have demonstrated to Lexington that Lincoln School is worth whil?. It is generally understood that no effort to better the lot of the poor amounts to much unless in some way it takes the form of edu cation. And it was the form of education which would inspire and encourage those less fortunate which became the grave concern of Mrs. Breckinridge. It was her abiding faith in her feUow- creature as well as the sure conviction of her ingenious and scintil lating mind that the time was ripe for a new form of education. The moment this thought came to her she embraced it as the opportunity to express her inmost self. She marshaled her forces and stepped in'o her role as leader and grappled with opposing THE CIVIC LEAGUE— LINCOLN SCHOOL 123 conditions, readjusting and creating until the scheme seemed per fect. She began at once on city officials enforcing and creating laws by which the West End of the city might be lighted and cleaned up. She changed the sewage plan and laid water pipes along the main streets and secured concrete waUss and graded streets. She, also, planted shade trees along the sidewalks. She encouraged the Sun day closing law in this end of town by inaugurating the band concert. Beautiful excursions were given to the mothers who willingly became patrons of the school. Mothers' clubs were conducted at the school where carpet rags were sewed and civic questions were expounded. The manual training school in the yard was the nucleus out of which grew the manual training system for the public schools. Now that the new school was started workers seemed to come from every side and in order to perfect the work she sent chosen ones to various schools for observation. In a letter to Jane Addams in Chicago, she said, " Please be good to the bearer of this letter, show her your settlement and teach her how to run one. I hope to come to Chicago in the fall and raise enough money to put with what I have gotten from the school board and build the Model School for the poor part of our city. " This is one of thousands of letters sent out asking for suggestions as to operation and help. Lecturers came by the score to educate the public and prepare them for the wider use of the model school plant — the school laun dry, the swimming pool, the community kitchen, evening recrea tion and organized teamwork in play. The school library was started for Mrs. Breckinridge by the Chi Omega girls of Lexington in 191 2. They conducted book showers and dramatic clubs for older girls and took charge of the Christmas festivities for several years, giving freely of their money and time. In April, 1912, the Open Air Department was added to the school. In an article written by Mrs. Breckinridge at its installa tion she quoted from Robert Louis Stevenson these lines, "The children sing in far Japan, The children sing in Spain, The organ and the organ man. Are singing in the rain. " 124 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Then why should we not provide for the happiness of our under nourished children and make the swimming and showers, lunch periods and the rest times bright spots in the lives of the children ? From time to time Lincoln School has added to its activities those things which have become essential in the scheme of the wider use of the school plant. The moving picture machine is its last acquisition. The following poem was sent to me by Mrs. Breckinridge in September of last year, and it so thoroughly expresses her constant thought that I would like to quote it: " We send them -off to school again today. This cool September morning. All the street Is musical with patter of small feet. And little, shining faces all the way Seem wayside posies for our smiles to greet. " I wonder if they ever guess or know With what strange tenderness we watch them go ? Just children on their way to school again ? Nay, it is ours to watch a greater thing — These are the World's Rebuilders, these must bring Order to chaos, comforting to pain, And light in blasted fields, new fires of Spring. " Dear Lord, Thy childish hands were weak and small. Yet had they power to clasp the world withal. Grant these. Thy little kindred, strength as true — They have so much to learn, so much to do. " In that she was wise we sought her counsel. In that she was brave, dauntless, and fearless, we admired her. In that she was ex quisite and delicate we hoped not to offend her. In that she was at all times our loving friend we loved her. CHAPTER VII THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life. . , , It is not easy to write of Madge's warfare against tuberculosis. In the first place, she was herself a victim of the disease; and for a quarter of a century she lived a life that, while full of satisfaction, joy, ardent and eager happiness, and valiant effort, was never free from con sciousness of the disease. She did not complain. The distinguished physician in New York, who cared for her in the early nineties, wrote, after her death: "I have always been proud of her career, and I have never for gotten her calm resignation as a patient when under my care in this city many years ago." While she often subjected herself to strains both physical and nervous that for more vigorous persons would have been thought unendurable, she lived within certain limitations imposed by her malady. She was always prepared for the bell to sound and for plans to be suddenly disarranged. In 1903-4 she was in a sanatorium in Denver, in 1908 in Arizona and California, in the winters of 1916 and 191 7 she was in Asheville, North Carolina, in the summer of 1916, 1917, 1918 at Saranac, New York. Then emotionally she was interested in the subject of the treatment and curabihty of the disease. Her grandfather. Dr. William Adair McDowell, had suffered persecution for his convictions on that subject, and she felt near to him as she felt near to anyone who endured I2S 126 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE martyrdom for his convictions; and his sufferings were fresh to the memory of "Aunt Mag." As she worked over the problem in her own case, too, she realized more clearly the extent of the needless loss and waste of life in Kentucky. After her return in 1904 from Colorado, where she and her mother had been undergoing treat ment, she brought the subject before the Civic League, as has been pointed out. But when a course of lectures had been given and the true nature of the task reahzed it became clear that such an undertaking as developing an antituberculosis movement should be the work of a separate organization, drawing in other influences and attacking the problem from another angle than that from which the League approached its tasks. At a meeting of the Civic League held November 20, 1905, the problem was set forth and the campaign was, as it were, launched. The facts with reference to the disease in Kentucky were reviewed, the experience of Louisville's effort in the same movement related, plans for a meeting of organization were laid, and the work, including the emplo)TTient of a visiting nurse, the initiation of an educational campaign, the drafting of legislation was outlined. A subsequent meeting for organization was accordingly held on December 17, addressed by Dr. S. A. Knopf, of New York, a constitution was adopted, officers were elected, and the new society was vigorously launched.' At this meeting for organization, steps were taken looking toward the development of an educational cam- " The officers elected then were Dr. George P. Sprague, president; Thomas A. Combs and Dr. J. A. Stucky, vice-presidents; Airs. Warner Kinkead, secretary; and Mr. Thomas Johnson, treasurer. She was one of four members of the Executive Committee with Colonel John R. Allen, Ralph S. Goldensen, and Dr. D. L. Smith. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 127 paign in co-operation with the local health authorities, toward co-operation with the Associated Charities in the support of a visiting nurse and in the maintenance of a tuberculosis dispensary and clinic, and toward the pushing of the legislative program . With amazing prompt ness a biU providing for the estabhshment and main tenance of a state sanatorium for the care and treatment of patients suffering from tuberculosis was introduced on the sixteenth of the following month.' This measure was a carefully elaborated scheme carrying an appropriation of $50,000 for the purchase of a site and for the construction of a building and of $20,000 annuaUy for the maintenance of the institution, and creating an unpaid bipartisan board of six trustees, for which women were to be eligible, two of whom were to be physicians, to be appointed by the governor and Senate. Its introduction did not, however, mean hasty prepa ration. It had been under consideration by those who were planning the separate organization. It embodied the best thought of the Lexington group after conference with experts from New York and Chicago, and after careful study of bills presented in other states and com pilations of reports from existing sanatoria. The appro priations, while not as great as would be needed, were as great as the Committee thought the legislature prepared to grant. The bill approved itself to the legislature, too, and failed of passage only because, after it had passed the Senate, Governor Beckham interferred to prevent its passage by the lower house. It was reintroduced in 1908 with an increased appropriation of $75,000 for ' See Lexington Herald, January 1 7, 1906, for the draft of this act. 128 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE purchase and construction and $30,000 for maintenance and was passed by the legislature. This time, however, it was vetoed by Governor Willson on the ground that it was an ill-considered measure. He wrote to the president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs that the bill provided for "no plan, no location," that "it is a most hopelessly thoughtless and ill-considered suggestion which no friend to such a movement as I would support." He wrote to Mrs. Breckinridge: Dear Mrs. Breckinridge: I do hope that you are well, and I do wish to send you word of cheer. Child Labor, Juvenile Court bihs approved. Have not reached School Bill. You will soon get message on Tuberculosis Bill. I shall help that cause — -dear to me. My father and brother Forsythe Willson were its victims. But investigation, system, ample information and providing the money must come first. I think this appropriation would be mere waste. It will take $500,000, and annual $100,000, and we can not start this half-thought-out way on an empty treasury, $800,000 deficit. Hoping you are quite well or gaining in good cheer, I am, Yours with sincere respect for your noble and dauntless spirit, Augustus E. Willson This attack upon her work and this charge of lack of preparation evoked one of the most incisive, masterly, and comprehensive documents she had ever occasion to prepare. In her report to the State Federation of Women's Clubs she makes answer to the objections of Governor Willson in a review of the entire procedure of preparing a measure for the consideration of a legislative body such that its careful study would repay any student THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 129 of social legislation.' Her final explanation of the governor's objection is that perhaps he thought that the drafters of the measure thought that he would select the six trustees from the Institute for the Feeble-Minded ! But she was not to be discouraged. In September, 1909, the Kentucky Association for the Prevention and Relief of Tuberculosis was organized at a meeting held in Louisville — organized for the purpose of doing educational work in the field, encouraging the organization of local associations, promoting the establishment of dispensaries for the treatment and care of needy persons, encouraging the establishment of local sanatoria, co-operating vnth public ofi&cials in preventive work, and securing appro priate legislation. She spoke at that meeting, describing the situation in Lexington and urging the importance of pubhc (state) sanatoria. In closing her address, she said: We look forward to the time when Lexington shaU have its local hospital and the Blue Grass counties shaU have combined their resources in a farm sanatorium where their own patients may be cured in their home altitude and climate. But we feel very strongly that the first measure of rehef to which we should aU bend our energies is to procure a state institution or institutions. Not only would this offer some measure of rehef to all parts of the state, but the institutions would serve an educational purpose as well.^ She was elected first vice-president of the new organiza tion and remained an officer of that organization until her death. From this time (1909) her work in this field of tuber culosis took on two aspects, the local and the state activi ties, and the thread of the two may be briefly traced. ' Yearbook of the Kentucky Federation oj Women's Clubs, 1908-g, p. 76. ' Lexington Leader, September 30, 1909. 130 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE In the local field there were three hnes of effort.' The first was that directed toward the maintenance of the nursing service with its attendant problems of relief. She was familiar with the general problem of the care of the sick poor in their homes, for the Associated Chari ties had since the winter of 1906-7 attempted to main tain a visiting-nurse service. On August I, 1 9 10, the earlier society, organized in December, 1905, was expanded into the Fayette Tuber culosis Association, which entered upon a vigorous cam paign of education and service. The society employed a supervising nurse, who had had training in a similar organization in Chicago. During its first six months of effort 107 patients received care. On February 10, 191 1, a dispensary was opened in the same building with the Associated Charities, several physicians gave their services, and the patients became dispensary cases. On May 11, 191 1, the Association took on the functions of a visiting-nurse organization. The Association began vigorous educational work. Before the close of the period by the first report, January i, 1913, 45,612 pieces of literature had been distributed, prizes for compositions on the subject had been offered in the elementary and high schools, and over three thousand compositions had been read, school instruction had been inaugurated in both city and county, Tuber culosis Sunday had been established. In the beginning the Association had given rehef in the form of rent and food when the breadwinner of a family was tuberculous. After May, 191 1, however, the burden of general rehef was laid upon the Associated Charities, while the organi- ^ Lexington Herald, March 31, 191 1. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 131 zation supphed the special food and clothing called for by the treatment. Madge was second vice-president of the organization during the first year and member of the Executive Committee during all the other years. In the autumn of 191 1 the Board of Education estabhshed medical inspection in the schools, the Associ ation nurses doing much of the "follow-up" work that should be provided for by the establishment of a school nursing service. From the beginning the organization was specially concerned for the care of children who were anemic, in need of surgical treatment of ears and eyes, nose and throat, or pretubercular. In the first report published by the Association on January i, 191 3, the Association urged (i) the establishment of an open-air school, (2) the creation of Fayette County as a tuberculosis district under a law passed in 191 2, (3) a movement toward housing reform, and (4) an expansion of its educational and nursing service. A second definite development, then, was that recom mended in this report and fulfilled when on St. Patrick's Day of 19 13 the open-air school was inaugurated at Lincoln School under the joint auspices of the Civic League, the Association, and the Board of Education. As has been said, at first the anemic children came from other schools as well as from the Lincoln School group on recommendation of the nurses, by permit from the Board. The income from the Anthony Dye Fund, amounting to about $500 or $550 a year, was used to pay the salary of a social worker who acted as medical assistant. The fund also furnished the milk necessary 132 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE for the children's special diet. The Tuberculosis Associ ation furnished the equipment for the school and other food besides milk. The Board of Education furnished the teacher, who gave instruction in the grade subjects, and the assistance of a domestic-science teacher was given for making out the special dietaries of the chil dren. When in any case the disease became positive the child was taken from the school and to the extent possible given home conditions favorable to his re covery. Through this division of the work, the closest co-operation has been maintained among the various organizations and the effectiveness of the work has been greatly increased since the opening of the Sanatorium in 1917. The third line of local effort was that directed toward the establishment of a local sanatorium. In 1 91 2, a tuberculosis biU was finally passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. It did not provide for a state sanatorium, as she had so hoped to have an act provide, but created a commission, to which reference will be made below, and also provided for the creation of tuberculosis districts' with power to erect and maintain sanatoria. These districts could consist of a single county or of several contiguous counties. The district -could be created by resolution of the fiscal court or in default of the court's action by an election held in accordance with certain requirements laid down in the statute. The governing body of a district once created was to be an unpaid revolving board of seven persons designated by the county judge from nominations made by the state commission. ¦ Acts 0} igi2, chap. iii,p. 358, sec. 6. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 133 To that board were given by the statute the powers of a body corporate and the authority to construct, maintain, and conduct a sanatorium for the care and treatment of tuberculosis patients — ^first, such as were indigent residents of the district, and then,- if there were sufi&cient accommodations, those from other districts. The law went into effect July i, 191 2, but no action looking toward the creation of a tuberculosis district was taken by the Fayette Fiscal Court, though twice solicited to take such action;' and in the autumn of 1913 an election was held in which the creation of such a district was a leading issue. Again, therefore, there was necessity for a campaign. That it was a vigorous cam paign is shown by the following comment from the current press : Those in favor of other movements for the good of the com munity might well take heed of the work done and the methods pursued to arouse interest and to educate the people upon the need for a tuberculosis sanatorium ; public meetings were held at which the present conditions were revealed both by word and by picture, and the need for a vigorous campaign against the White Plague pointed out; a committee was appointed, of which Mr. Fred Lazarus was chairman, to organize a force to be at the polls on election day; and at every voting booth there was one — a man, or a woman, or a boy, with cards to give to every voter to remind him to vote on this proposition. As a result of the pre-election cam paign and the work done on election day, by a majority of over twenty-eight hundred the people of Fayette County declared them selves in favor of taking steps necessary to stamp out this scourge.^ And the state commission wrote later of the same campaign: More anti-tuberculosis work has been done in Fayette County than anywhere else in the State outside of Louisville. Conditions ' Lexington Herald, February 24, 1913. 'Ibid., November ir, 1913. 134 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE here were particularly advantageous. A petition for the election was duly signed by residents of the county and filed, and the Com mission began work in September. Its moving picture exhibit covered the outskirts of the county. Later, the car exhibit reached Lexington, and one or two other points. During the two weeks' sojourn in Lexington lectures were delivered evenings at points in and near the city. Miss Chloe Jackson, who had organized and conducted the work of the visiting nurses for three years, had been hired by the Commission, and was retained in Fayette County for September and the first half of October by an agreement with the Fayette County Tuberculosis Association whereby her salary was divided between the two bodies. During this period she trained a new nurse for the place and supervised the Commission's cam paign. About 8,000 people were reached by her lectures. In addition, a mass meeting was held in Lexington at which the chief speakers were Dr. J. A. Stucky, of Lexington; Professor Severance Burrage, of Indianapolis; Miss Chloe Jackson and Mrs. Desha Breckinridge. The newspapers gave us an enthusiastic support. A special writer W9,s retained by the Commission for a week's work in preparing daily stories for the papers. Very httle opposition appeared against the measure. Indeed, it is possible that a favor able vote might have been obtained without the strenuous efforts of the campaign; but the campaign served the purpose of bringing out a much larger vote than would otherwise have been possible, and it gave definite expression to the desire of the people of the county for the building of an adequate hospital. After so strong a vote, there can be no excuse for indifference in future years on the part of the fiscal authorities of the county. The vote carried in this county by about four and one-hah to one.' And again: In Fayette County, the voluntary Association has been at work since 1905. The free dispensary for the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis has been maintained by them during most of the subsequent period, at 618 West Main Street, Lexington. From one to four visiting nurses have been maintained by them in active ' First Biennial Report oj the Kentucky Tuberculosis Commission, p. 41. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 135 service. Hundreds of cases of the disease have been diagnosed and treated. The work has been conducted with admirable efficiency, but the nurses knew that all their efforts went for naught, when their patients had no place near home where they could be received and properly cared for. This message they had sent broadcast through the county and the idea of the county hospital, although the Fiscal Court had twice refused to take the necessary action to build one, was familiar to the people of the county and was gener ally recognized as a necessity. The educational campaign of the Commission, with its car and moving picture exhibit, and its defi nite presentation of the matter in hand, together with a mass meet ing in the city of Lexington, and general support of the newspapers of the city, served to focus pubhc attention, and a favorable vote was naturaUy the result. The heavy majority indicates very clearly the value of prolonged effort.' That was November, 19 13. The Board of Trustees for the district was duly constituted^ March 24, 1914, but time slipped by. In 191 5 the court appropriated $2,536.35 out of its general funds for a first payment on a tract of land suited to the purposes of the institution and conveniently located with reference to the city that had been selected as a site for the proposed institution. And finally, on January 7, 1916, after receiving a masterly protest^ from the Trustees, asking a levy of five cents from which $2 1 ,000 would be derived, a levy of three cents on the hundred dollars of taxable property was authorized that brought in $17,450. It was already clear that to carry out any effective plan the public grant would have to be supplemented from private sources, and again there ' Ibid., p. 44. ' It was composed of Mr. Thomas A. Combs, chairman, Mr. T. J. Tunis, Mr. E. R. Bradley, Mr. WiUiam Worthington, Dr. Josephine D. Hunt, Mrs. Wilbur R. Smith, and Madeline McD. Breckinridge. 3 See Lexington Herald, January 5, 1916. 136 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE was the question of the size of the task to be performed, the proportion of the cost to be borne by private and from public funds, the determination as to the plans, and the raising of the money that should come from private benevolence. PLAN OF THE BLUE GRASS SANATORIUM A — Administration Building B — Children's Building C — Service Building D — Pavilions for adult patients The cost for construction according to the plans finally decided on was estimated at $6i,ooo." These plans provided for the care of fifty-six patients. There was to be an administrative building for ofi&cers with living quarters for the superintendent and staff; a chil dren's building, for which Aunt Mag gave $10,000 in memory of her father, to accommodate twenty-four chil dren; and a service building with provision for thirty- THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 137 two patients. After the grant from the county, building operations were begun. The cornerstones of two buildings, the children's building and the service building, were laid with gay celebrations November 15, 1916. At this celebration there was a special tribute to Dr. William Adair McDowell in whose memory the gift of $10,000 had been given by his daughter; and the children from the schools of Lexing ton planted trees given by generous persons who had been interested in the tree-planting from the beginning of the Civic League's Arbor Day programs, and again the general interest of the community was focused on the undertaking. It was estimated, as has been said, that the con struction of the sanatorium would cost $61,000; and when the Fiscal Court's attitude in spite of the over- whelrriing majority in the election of 1913 and of the fact that the Democratic party had in 1916 included this development as one to be favored should they win the election — when that attitude became clear, Madge decided again, as in the case of Lincoln School, that private funds must supplement the public appropriation, and again she undertook to raise the needed amount.. There were questions raised. Why private funds? The question might rather be like that question put by another great champion of the rights of childhood to members of Congress who were indifferent to proposals for saving the lives of mothers and babies: "Why do members of Congress want mothers and babies to die needlessly?" Why do governors and fiscal courts want so many citizens of Kentucky, of Fayette County, to die needlessly ? Perhaps she could never have answered 138 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE that. But she could and did answer, "Why Private Funds?" she said: I have been asked, "Why Private Funds?" — to answer the question being put to our Tuberculosis workers why private funds should be contributed for a sanatorium for Fayette County ? The best answer I can make is this : The Sanatorium Board has now waited nearly four years since the people of Fayette County voted three to one for the Tuber culosis Sanatorium to be established. In these four years the County has contributed an average of less than $10,000 a year, and one citizen of Fayette County — who, by the way, is deprived of any say-so as to how the taxes of Fayette County shall be spent or who shall spend them — ^has given $10,000. We have come to the con clusion that the policy of "watchful waiting" wiU never get a sana torium out of Fayette County. We beheve that the way to resume specie payments is to resume, and that the way to start a Sana torium in Fayette County is to start it. If $55,000 is raised this week the Sanatorium will be opened within two weeks and will run, with a capacity of 50 patients, until next January. The central buildings, administration and service, are good for 200 patients, and the capacity of the institution can be increased merely by the addition of pavUions, which are the cheap est form of structure used. The plant once built, the County must maiatain it. We beheve it is worth $55,000 to the citizens of Fayette County to get it started. We have been told by Judge Bullock that the County has given in these last four years all that it was able to give for this purpose. He says with the county tax hmited by the constitution to 50 cents on the $100 of taxable property, and the free roads to maintain, Fayette County has done all she can for the indigent who are dying in their homes of tuberculosis and for the indigent who have the disease and may be cured. The County for a number of years has given $2,500 annuaUy to the Pubhc Health Nursing Association (formerly the Anti- Tuberculosis Society). Last year this was cut down to $1,750, five hundred of which was put into a machine that more county patients THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 139 could be reached. This year, in view of its appropriation to the Sanatorium, the County has cut off the Public Health Nursing Association entirely and is giving -nothing to it. The nurses of the Association, however, have made from June ist to July ist of this year, 406 visits to county patients outside the city hmits, most of these patients being sufferers from tuberculosis. We may not all agree with Judge Bullock that the proper division of coilnty funds has been made; but whether or not we agree with him, the fact remains that there is no hope of any more money from the County for the Sanatorium until next year. Undoubtedly the County had before it a big business problem, with what were toll roads formerly, made free roads and the auto mobile invented to wear them out rapidly. If Judge Bullock is right, if Fayette County cannot maintain roads for those who ride in automobiles and provide, as the law says she must, for her sick and indigent, then, as I see it, it is up to those who ride in auto mobiles to put in a little to care for the poor and sick of the county. Fifty-five thousand dollars is not a large sum for the citizens of a county so rich as this. To give it is a good business invest ment, if thereby they insure the maintenance of such an institution for the future. And that is exactly what the persons do who con tribute to this $55,000.' She demanded of the rich from their surplus, of the poor as an insurance : Every inteUigent working man knows the value of health insurance. In many of the European countries, notably in Ger many the efficient, before the war, a system was in vogue which said to the working man, " In the days of sunshine when you are getting regular wages for your work, put a little of your wages in an insur ance fund and your employer will put in a little more and the state will add a little more to that, and when the rainy day comes when you can not work, there will be something to take care of you. " This is practically the system which the present campaign for providing contributions to a tuberculosis sanatorium exemplifies. If every working man in Lexington will give a little part of his ' Lexington Herald, July i, 191 7. I40 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE present wages to make up $55,000, he can know that his employer is also giving a larger sum, though perhaps a smaller proportion of his income, and he can know that he is insuring an institution here after to be maintained absolutely from public funds, to which if his health breaks down he may go to be cured. For the working people of this community to contribute to the present fund is a first class investment. The present law concerning county sanatoria for tuberculosis was drawn with the full knowledge that it would be difficult for any county to provide the proper plant out of one year's levy. The law was therefore more flexible as to the time in which the plant would be provided, though the intention was very clear that at least a small workable plant should be provided in not less than two levies. The counties such as Fayette where a vote of the people has already been taken calling for the erection and maintenance of a county sanatorium, have taken advantage of this looseness in the law. Fayette County in four years has failed to provide a sufficient plant to take care of her tuberculosis problem. But the present law is explicit that the plant once started, the county must maintain it. If by an addition of even a considerable portion of his means a working man can this week insure that Fayette County shall never again be in the disgraceful situation she is now in, with not a bed for a patient with a disease from which there were one hundred and forty-two deaths in Fayette County last year he will undoubtedly make a good investment.' And again she passed the goal she set herself to gain. It was by raising the very considerable sum of $55,000, with the world at war, that she asked the community to celebrate the nation's holiday in 191 7. It was to be a two weeks' campaign, and at the end almost $57,000 was pledged.^ How was it done? There were all the incidents that had been found successful in any "drive." She was a genius at publicity and organization, "yet asking naught for herself." There were the Fourth of 'Lexington Herald, July t2, 191 7. '$56,780. TWCJ OF THE PAMLIONS AT THE BLUE GRASS SANATORIl^M THE CHILDREN'S BUILDING .VF THE BLUE GRASS SANATORIUM This building was erected by "Aunt Mag" in memory of ber father, Dr. William Adair McIloHX-ll. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 141 July orations on the new revolution against the tyrant who was taking tolls in lives, not stamps, there were women's committees and men's committees and county committees, luncheons, dinners, and teas — every challenge, every competition, every appeal — and all for the com munity's chance to save its own lives. So there the broad acres stretch out, the buildings stand, patients are cared for, and her work goes on. Then, there was the state work. The tragedy of the earher biUs has been related. But there could be no permanent defeat for her while she was alive. The act of 191 2 that both went through the legislature and was signed by the governor (Governor McCreary) provided, as has been said, for the creation of a continuous, unpaid commission of seven men and women, of whom two should be physicians, appointed by the governor.' The field of work designated by the statute covered, in brief, investigation with reference to the disease in all its effects on community life, popular education concerning it, and the encouragement of provision in the way of sana toria, chnics, dispensaries, and for the care, treatment and cure of its victims. It did not, as the earlier acts had done, provide for the establishment of a state sanatorium. She was appointed on that Commission as the vice- president, the governor being president, and served on it as long as she felt that her membership on the board^ " Acts oj Kentucky, 1912, chap. iii. ' The other members of the first board were Miss Tevis Camden, of Wood ford County; Dr. W. V. Williams, of Frankfort; Dr. H. S. Keller, of Frank fort; Dr. Everett Morris, of Sulphur; Dr. R. T. Yoe, of Louisville; and Mr. Bernard Flexner who had labored with her through all these efforts. He, however, was unable to accept the appointment, and Mr. C. L. Adler, of Louis ville, was appointed in his place. See First Biennial Report oj the Kentucky Tuberculosis Commission. 142 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE served the cause for which she had so long labored. She resigned from the board on August 21, 1916. It is hardly possible to review the work of the board during her presence on it. The resources of the State Board of Health had been increased; there had been created a bureau of vital statistics that could do the required investigational work. The Tuberculosis Com mission was therefore able to devote its efforts to publicity and educational work and to stimulating the creation of local districts and the formation of local associations. This it did. But months had passed before the appropria tion of $15,000 carried by the act became available.' When money was at last available, the most recent devices in educational work of this character were made use of — the exhibit car, the moving picture, the lecture at teachers' institutes, the special campaign in counties that were ripe for it, and the organization of a nursing staff, co-operation with such other agencies as the State Board of Health and the Red Cross in its Christmas stamp sale. The problems are the old problems — the excessive death-rate among the colored population, the special work with the children — ^problems that were in the minds of those hopeful persons who organized in Lexington in December of 1905. The Commission was attacked by the state inspector for spending a large sum of money in a short time, but the defense was not difficult to frame. The Commission would have felt guilty had they failed to use, in the war in which they were engaged, all the resources at their command. ' This was due to some controversy as to its validity which was involved in a case already before the courts. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 143 Her contribution to the work of the Commission was like the contribution she made to every group with which she served, knowing what was going on everywhere in the tuberculosis world, hunting possible candidates for the positions to be filled, negotiating for the service what would be largest for the state. Perhaps a few of her letters vdU sufficiently illustrate her relation to the work through the Commission. It is not possible to review in detail the questions that arose. Four letters wiU be quoted, three showing her relation to other mem bers of the commission, and one, her letter of resignation in August, 1916. For in that month, after Governor Stanley had taken office, when the terms of certain members of the board had expired, there arose the question of the appointment of new members and of the selection of employees, and it became clear that Governor Stanley intended to control the board and that service on the board would therefore be too costly for the results to be gained from it. She and, with one exception, aU members of the earlier board resigned and left him free.' The first letter is to her cousin, Tevis Camden, younger than she and not strong, but with few distracting interests to divert her from such public service as she should find interesting and profitable. The subject was the selection of an executive secretary to be made at an approaching meeting of the Commission. The selection of the agents, visitors, and employees of any organization of which she was a member was always a subject to which she devoted much thought, time, and effort; for she always knew what the duties were, what the standards of 'In 1918, the board was merged with the Health Department as the Bureau of Tuberculosis. See Acts oj igiS, chap. 65, sees, i a and 4, p. 290. 144 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE efficiency were, where good people were to be found if there were any especially qualified in the particular field under consideration. She also knew what salaries were paid in other communities and what levels of training and ability could be expected for the salary level pre vailing in Kentucky. In the case of the Tuberculosis Commission the subject was especially puzzling because the best training and skill obtainable were possessed by a woman, a highly trained, graduate registered nurse with rare organizing and publicity ability. Perhaps if Madge had not been so conspicuously identified with the suffrage cause she would have felt freer to support the woman who was the better candidate. But she was keen to safe guard her service on the Commission from any appearance of being used for any other motive, however legitimate in itself, than promoting the contest with the white plague. She, therefore, as appears from this first letter yielded at first on the subject to the political arguments of her associates on the Commission. She regretted this, how ever, and determined not to yield again and is trjong to persuade her young cousin to stand with her in the effort to secure the selection of the better candidate. On June 15, 1916, before going to Saranac for the summer, Madge wrote: My dear Tevis: I go to Louisville tomorrow to talk with Mr. Adler and Dr. Yoe and to get what further facts I may concerning Dr. X., possibly to talk to him also. I have already talked with several persons in Lexington who have some acquaintance with Dr. X., and I have to admit that I am further confirmed in my prejudice against him, though I haven't gotten yet a great deal of first-hand information. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 145 It would, however, seem to me hunting trouble when I know how exceUent a person Miss Y. is to deUberately get some one of whom there is a great deal of doubt to say the least. I wUl write you again after my visit to Louisville, but in the meantime I am so strongly impressed with the fact that I should make a more earnest plea to you than I did the other day to stand with us in the support of Miss Y., and certainly not to pledge yourself to the Governor. He wiU, I imagine, return to Kentucky by Sunday and you may see him immediately. I wish you would talk with your mother and get her judgment as to your pledging yourself to me or to Mis s Y. as you choose to put it before seeing the Governor. He is a pretty smart man and a pretty powerful man and there would undoubt edly be a considerable protection in telhng him that your judgment is so strongly for Miss Y., due to what you had heard of her last year, that you sent your proxy to vote for her, that you have had no reason to change your mind, but that the additional facts coming in to us about her and the experience of the Board last year with a man who had not done just this work before had further con firmed you into beUeving that she is the desirable candidate. The difference of $1500, at least in the salaries asked by Dr. X. and Miss Y., other things being equal, I think ought to determine us in Miss Y.'s favor. For the great need is to get more visiting nurses in more counties in Kentucky. It is on the success of that and the wide-spread success of it alone, I believe, that we can hope both for the continuance of the Commission appropriation by the coming Legislature, and to that end I feel we should not waste $1,500 another year. Of course I feel that other things are not in the least equal, that the lower priced candidate is the one candidate of whom we can feel quite certain, and that the high priced candidate we have every reason to feel very uncertain about, even if the infor mation we hear about him is not sufficient to make us certain the wrong way. I appreciate why you do not want to trouble your father about the thing, but if your mother is better now than she was when I was down there, I feel sure she would want to advise with you. I am planning to see the Governor myself before the meeting, and I admit 146 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE that I am pretty scared to do it, because I realize so well how much smarter he is than I am. I am going to brace myself up with promises to myself to vote for Miss Y. and all kinds of reinforce ments before I go. I am not very much moved by the idea that it is necessary to select a man whom the Governor chooses. We found it wasn't during the last administration and I stiU think that we were exactly right about it and that it would have been suicidal to our decision to have employed Dr. A. B. in the beginning rather than French, who did a great deal for us which we could not have done for ourselves. The Governor never does take as much interest in the work or really exert as much influence as those members of the Commission who are earnestly concerned for the advancement of the Tuberculosis work. I do not believe Governor Stanley would interfere with us if we had once elected our candidate; in fact, I believe Miss Y. would win him over and I think she would make good his protestations that he is earnestly interested in Tuber culosis work and that this is his one and only motive. On the other hand, if we should give in and get Dr. X. — and as you know there is a doubt as to whether Governor Stanley reaUy wants Dr. X. or is only pledged to him for political reasons — I am pretty sure Dr. Keller's summing up is correct, that all the old employees would be turned off and others engaged for political reasons. This is the situation that seems to me quite intolerable, that we have avoided by the most strenuous exertion during aU the years of the Com mission's life, which certainly have been years of struggle and that I think as long as we are on the Commission we should struggle to StiU further prevent. Cordially yours, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge In the second letter she is appeahng to a feUow- member of the Commission responsible for the selection of the person best qualified for work to be done. On June 20, 1916, she writes to Dr. Dunning Wilson, of Louisville, Kentucky: THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 147 My dear Dr. Wilson: .... I hear of a candidate whom I think I could under no cirjcumstances be willing to support, judging from the news I have gotten concerning him. It is about this I desired to speak to you and also about another applicant — a woman — for the position, of whom I am greatly in favor. I last year yielded my preference for her really because of Dr. KeUer's desire that we should have a man, because I felt that Dr. Keller was having the whole bag to hold and though I believed that she was the safest and best candidate we had, and we could have gotten her at a very much lower salary than the salary desired by any of the men candidates, I yielded^the point. I am sure I made a mistake and I think Dr. Keller will now agree also that I did. This year I believe I owe it to the Commission as well as myself to act on my own best judgment, and of course I should like to be able to talk the thing over with the other members of the Commission and give them the reasons that actuate me. I do not know whether your vote is pledged or whether your mind is made up on the situation of the Secretary, but I should like to have you consider her as a possibiUty. I am enclosing you some letters of recommendation of her that I got last year and I have also suggested that she put in a formal apphcation, sending further letters that would give in detail something of the remarkable health work that I think she has done. She spoke at the teachers' institutes last summer and was so satisfactory that without ques tion the Commission agreed to take her at an advanced salary for this summer. She succeeded in getting one of the first, I believe the first, con- soUdated school under our County School Board Law. She trans- * ported pupils under construction of that law and later got a piece of legislation setting aside any doubt on the subject of using the school fund for that purpose. They now have a number of con- soUdated schools, six I believe. She has recently gotten medical inspection in aU the rural schools of the county, which does not exist, I understand, in any other county in the state. She has gotten a visiting nurse not only for Maysville but for the county, a free clinic there, and has helped to create, and has largely created. 148 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE I think, an enthusiasm for the health work there that is an inspira tion and has even been a model to us in this work for the whole state and in one particular, for instance, has been a model to us in Lexington. In the course of her school work she has dealt with exactly the kind of hard headed Kentuckians that we are going to have to deal with continually — the county school boards and circuit courts. She has been able to bring a rural community in Kentucky to a very advanced project in educational and health Unes. She has done considerable legislative work and has, I, think, a pecuUar tact and ability for accomplishing things through people, not only legislation but Fiscal Court appropriations. She has, of course, every advantage in reaching the school children and the teachers, not only through her long connection with school work, but because of the high esteem in which all the school people hold her. I believe the very large part of our work must always be done through the school children and the teacher. She is wiUing to serve the first year for a salary of $2,000. The difference in the amount of the salary we are now paying wUl enable us to start considerably more visiting nurse work in the state. I think the health nurses whom we have started in Kentucky coun ties are our best testimonial and that if we could come to another Legislature with a great many more of these jewels in our crown and with the local sentiment for us, that is inspired by successful local work, our Commission would be in no danger; otherwise I believe it will be in considerable danger. She is expert in newspaper publicity work and she is an excellent administrator. In short, I believe her to be superior to any man whom we have • employed either since we have been a State Commission or pre viously as a State Association, for just the work that has to be done in Kentucky. And personally I am coming to the conclusion that aU the Lord gives you to go by is your own reason and best judgment, and when you yield these to somebody else's prejudices that you deserve what you get. I have certainly gotten it in the neck and next time I am going to try to vote as conscientiously as possible myself, without regard to somebody else's prejudices. I fear a few of them will exist. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 149 I was very sorry that it was obligatory for me to be away from home the last meeting of the Commission, but there seemed no way to avoid it and I felt pretty sure that the situation would develop that did develop, namely that there were not votes enough to elect any one candidate and that really there was some gain in having the issue come up and then having a time for our Commissioners to confer together about the situation, and this I have been anxious to do, not only with the old, but with the new Commis sioners. It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to welcome you to the Board. It is a comforting thing that the new appointments have been of people whose interests in public health work cannot be questioned, whose motives cannot be questioned, and certainly in your case, whose ability in the matter has been fully proven. Hoping to have a talk with you, I am CordiaUy yours, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge Similarly, on July 12, 1916, she 'writes to Dr. U. V. Williams, of Frankfort, Kentucky: Lexington, Ky. July 12, 1916 My dear Dr. Williams : I want to repeat in black and white, so that I may be sure you understand, the answer to your questions of the other day. You wanted to know why I sent my proxy to Mr. Adler instead of to you. In the first place I was not wiUing to send my proxy to vote for any candidate, which was what you asked, nor could I have asked Miss Camden's nor could I have gotten it, to vote for any candidate at that meeting. The only proxy I sent was a vote to postpone election tiU the caUed meeting. This I had sent to Mr. Adler, though it seems not in correct form, in answer to a letter he had written which had reached me in New York a week or more before I reached Chicago, or heard anything from you.. He wrote asking if it wouldn't be best to ask that the June meeting be postponed. I wrote him that 150 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE I did not think it ought to be postponed because of the accounts, that I would be glad to send my proxy to vote to postpone the election to the called meeting, but not to vote for any candidate. That was merely in the body of a letter, so I sent that same proxy again from Chicago by telegraph and naturally sent it to him, since I had already told him that I would like him to cast my proxy to postpone the election. I had had no opportunity to confer with any of you about the election before I left home. I was not willing to vote for Mr. Z.'s re-election, for whatever his qualities, I distinctly did not and do not think he has been a success in our work or that we are justified in paying the salary necessary to get him. I was not willing to vote for Dr. X. with the information I had about him and it seemed to me the only thing I could do was to vote to postpone until we had had d chance to confer. I telegraphed you from Chicago to this effect: that I was not willing to send proxy for any candidate and had already sent proxy to Mr. Adler to vote for postponement of election. I paid for the telegram myself and there is no reason why it should not have reached you. I had previously telegraphed you for certain information, for I was anxious to see whether there was any chance of an election at that meeting. I did not believe there was. For I did not think of your going into an agreement to elect the Governor's candidate in order to get a month or two more for Mr. Z. As you know, I voted for Mr. Z. as your candidate last summer, giving up my own candidate, who I felt was competent and could be had at a much lower salary, and yielded the matter absolutely to you and Dr. Keller. As you know, as soon as I got home I came to see you and said at once, as I had said to Mrs. Z. in Chicago, that I would be glad to vote to continue Mr. Z. to the end of his year, which was as I gathered from her all that he desired. She said he did not wish to be put out summarily, but wanted a chance to resign. I did not try to drive a bargain, but told you what I was willing to do in jus tice to what I could conscientiously. I cannot see now but that Mr. Z. simply wants to hold on whether it is the will of the THE CA.MPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 151 Commission or not and does not care whether he ruins the work of the Commission for the future or not. You said to me just as freely that you could vote for Miss Y. on the second ballot, and Dr. Yoe, Miss Camden, Mr. Adler and I are still absolutely unable to explain your present attitude. Apparently my being willing to yield to your wishes and preference a year ago and again being wiUing to yield to yours and Mr. Z.'s desire that he should hold on to the end of his year only makes you feel that having driven me that far you can drive me a httle further. Now I do not believe this is your natural instinct or the way you usually play. I would like you to think it over and see if you think it is a fair way of dealing with a person who has played fair with you for a number of years. As to the matter of asking that Dr. Yoe and Mr. Adler be made a Committee on our Tuberculosis plans, my only idea was to pick two persons in one town and I had supposed that they should be members of the Commission. I was glad to add Mr. Z. when Dr. Dixon suggested it, but it didn't occur to me first to make him and you a committee any more than it occurred to me to make French a member of the Committee to approve the site. You and Dr. KeUer were in the same town then, it was convenient for you to come, and this time as that time I felt that any two members of the old Commission would give a fair and liberal judgment in the matter. It didn't occur to me there was any honor in the thing, merely that I was asking work of two members of the Committee and I chose two members living in one town in order to avoid delay. I have been working very hard to get these plans to the contractors and am sta3dng here against the doctor's plain orders and my own knowledge as to the good of my health in hopes of getting in the bids that the work may not be delayed durjng my absence. I cer tainly did not mean to slight or offend you in any way in this matter and should have been delighted to have you on the Committee to inspect plans. I am glad to make this explanation, for I have always been friendly to you since we have worked together as members of the Commission and though you may not any longer be friendly to me I desire you to know that my action toward you has always been guided by friendliness. 152 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE I have put the work and the weKare of the Commission above the interests of any particular candidate, and I have to continue to do that; if the result of the present situation is as it probably wiU be, that the Governor elects his candidate and that should be a per son for whom some of us old members are not wilhng to assume responsibihty, we can of course resign from the Commission and leave the Governor and those who are satisfied to run the thing to suit themselves. I believe that we old members of the Commission should get ready and answer the report of the inspector, showing its absurdities and clearing our record. This we can put into the hands of each of the Commission members at the next meeting; it wiU also be ready for publication in case the Governor should have the inspec tor's report published. I am not willing personally to go out of the state, perhaps for an indefinite period, without leaving the answer to this ready. I propose to go down to Frankfort next Saturday, though I can ill spare the time, and take on the extra work, to work over the books and try to get up an answer. I have talked over the telephone with Mr. Adler, who I presumed would be the hardest one to get; he says he can go up Saturday. He will communicate with Dr. Yoe and I told him that I would write you and Miss Camden at once. If all old members of the Commission cannot take part in writing the reply, those who cannot could make the others a com mittee to do it and if satisfactory to aU, we could aU sign it. Dr. KeUer is wiUing to help do the work and perhaps would desire also to sign the report. I am presuming that you wiU feel as we do about the necessity of defending our record. I will go down to Frankfort Saturday on the C. & O. probably, in order to get as long a day as possible. I will stop by your office and learn your desires in this matter and if you wish to have any conver sation with me about the other matter we can then have it. Very truly yours, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge And then five weeks later from Saranac Lake she sent in her resignation. The political aims of the Governor THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 153 are inconsistent with the public service which it is her sole aim to render. She writes to Governor Stanley: Saranac Lake, N.Y. Governor A . O. Stanley ° ' ^ Frankfort, Kentucky My dear Governor Stanley: I desire to tender my resignation as a member of the Kentucky Tuberculosis Commission. For a number of years I have done what I could to aid in the fight against tuberculosis in Kentucky. As a member of the State Tuberculosis Association, as a member of the committee that drew and worked for the passage of the law creating a State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis, finally passed in 1910 and vetoed by Governor WiUson, as a member of the committee that drew and worked for the passage of the law creating the pres ent State Commission and providing the legal machinery for the estabhshment of county sanatoria, I have rendered the service I could. When the present law went into effect a little over four years ago I welcomed the opportunity offered me to serve on the State Commission and to work, however stumbUngly, for a pubUc education and sentiment that wiU finaUy eradicate tuberculosis from Kentucky. I again felt honored in accepting reappointment on the Commission for a four-year term. I have, however, since the beginning of the year been reluctantly forced to the conclusion that as a member of the Commission I can not under existing circumstances render any service for the tuber culosis cause commensurate with the effort entailed. My con ception of carrying out the purposes of the law, is, I beUeve, very divergent from yours. As through your power of appointment you may soon have an entirely harmonious Commission, it seems wiser for me to tender my resignation, leaving a place on the Commission for some one who feels a stronger call to that service, and myself devote instead the same amount of time and energy to working through other channels for the eradication of tuberculosis in Ken- Very respectfuUy yours, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge 154 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Between August, 1916, and Thanksgiving, 1920, she was not inactive in relation to tuberculosis, but her work so far as the state was concerned was without official title. As has been seen, the local work was absorbing, she was ill much of the time, both her mother and her aunt Mag died; but her interest never flagged. Her last appeal perhaps was to Governor Morrow for support of the new plan that had been substituted for that of establishing state sanatoria, namely, state aid to the district sanatoria. Such a measure was passed in 1920.' The principle had been embodied in a provision in the act of 1918 for state aid to counties or districts establishing local health bodies, including special aid for visiting-nurse work. However, in 1920, too, a sana torium in Louisville, the Hazlewood Sanatorium — whose interests seemed to her sometimes urged to the detriment of other portions of the state — was declared a state sana torium, its indebtedness was paid, and funds were appro priated for its maintenance.^ The principle for which she had so struggled was recognized, and provision of the kind she had urged was initiated. For other por tions of the state, however, she was more hopeful of the other measure and was looking to the development of this new field of co-operative effort, and she wrote a number of editorials urging this measure with others.^ In a letter to Governor Morrow, urging his support of the measure which he finally allowed to become a law without his signature, is given utterance to one of the few moods of discouragement she ever admitted: "The •¦Acts oj ig20, chap. 154, p. 663. This act was allowed by the governor to become a law without his signature. ' Ibid. 5 See, for example, the Lexington Herald, January 31, 1920. THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS 155 tuberculosis fight in Kentucky, " she wrote, " from the start to finish has been work, persuade, fight, until when you get anything you are so weary you can hardly rejoice in it."- And in a personal interview in which she pleaded for his support, when he urged the necessity of public economy and begged her to be patient, she reminded him of the fifteen years of public agitation and of the possibility of those who labored so not living to v^dtness the fruits of their labors. She was too gentle to repeat Mrs. Kelley's indictment: "Why do governors want people needlessly to die of tuberculosis?" But no answer has yet been found to that inquiry. In her work for tuberculosis prevention especially is borne in on the observer the conviction that under our present method of selecting our officials, such lovers of their kind as she are fearfuhy wasted. How governors one after another wasted her! How our chosen repre sentatives, governors, fiscal courts, what not, wasted her! To put our minds to the problem of a new state in which by some device we may be led by those who go ahead instead of by those who hold us back, is surely one task for any who, reading the record of her work, would apply the lesson. CHAPTER VIII THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES The nobler a soul is, the more objects of compassion it hath. — Bacon. The Board of Directors of the Associated Charities in their resolutions at the time of her death called her the ."founder of the Society." They say: Mrs. Madeline McDowell Breckinridge was the founder of the Associated Charities work as it is now conducted. In 1901 she organized the institution existing at that time and introduced into Lexington the modern idea of relief and social-welfare work. Her interest in the organization has been unfailing from its beginning, on its present basis. She has served continuously on the Board of Directors and, in 1916, in recognition of her services, she was elected a life member. She would, however, probably disclaim any such title ; for while she was interested in the association from the beginning there were others likewise who were devoted co-workers from the time in 1900 when the organization grew out of an acute local need. The incidents connected with the founding of the society are very interesting, especially in view of some of the ater controversies into which she felt compelled to enter. The Lexington Associated Charities is unlike many societies that go by that or a similar name, for the Lexington society owes its organization directly to the solicitation of the city officials. It is no mere private vol untary group dictating how things shall be done. It came into being as a response by generous individuals to an 156 THE ASSOCLA.TED CHARITIES 157 appeal — a cry of despair — uttered by the mayor in dis tress. The sequence of events in that early period is as follows. In those olden times, before 1899-1900, the City Council and the County Board were in the habit of appro priating special charity funds — even perhaps as today — ex cept that there was no organized agency for the dis tribution of those funds. Mayor Duncan took ofi&ce January i, 1900. By the third of the month he was flying the flag of distress. The applicants for public charity were swarming. He could not investigate. The truly needy would not apply under the conditions prevailing. The vociferous received what they did not need. He called for help on the "charitable ladies." They had helped out the administration in times of distress before; they would, he knew, come again to the public's aid.' At first there was no organization ready to take the matter in charge and to investigate the cases before help was given.^ But why not organize a new committee or society? Mr. Elijah Allen, then a member of the Board of Alder men, greatly urged a new organization, but the mayor was not particular whether the agency be old or new, so relief be given him. There could hardly be. found a prettier iUustration of all the incidents attendant upon indis criminate giving. A temporary plan was formed of referring aU the colored applicants to Professor Russell, a leading colored educator, and of requiring the white applicants to bring recommendations from well-known citizens.^ This relieved the ofi&ce, but the mayor knew that even so the needy were not cared for; and finally, after several meetings, an organization of ladies was ¦ See the Lexington Herald, January 3, 1900. = Ibid., January 7, rgoo. ^ md., January ir, 1900. 158 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE effected February 14, 1900. Two days before, at a meet ing at which the mayor had said that if a plan would be worked out for the city, he thought the county would come into the scheme, a committee had been appointed to draw up a plan for the organization.' On that com mittee were members of the older group of women interested in the humane and charitable efforts of the city. Some of them were well informed with reference to modern charitable methods. One of them, Mrs. Charles, for example, wrote to the papers of January 15 an admirably clear and full account of undertakings else where. She pointed out the need for adopttag better relief methods and of accompanying them vdth construc tive attacks on the sources of poverty and urged the intro duction of domestic science and manual training into the public schools. It was altogether a comprehensive statement — and, indeed, one may infer that the desire of the pubUc offi cials was, with the help of the charitable ladies whose aid was asked, to abandon forever, so far as the city was con cerned, the ancient practices common in connection with pubhc outdoor relief. The group who undertook the work for the mayor^ decided to open a down-town headquarters, to employ a full-time executive, and to appoint in each precinct a com mittee of two ladies to investigate the applications for aid. ¦ The members of the committee were Miss Rosa Johnson, Mrs. Avery Winston, and Mrs. John Skain. The names of those listed as attending these meetings include Mrs. T. H. Clay, Mrs. C. H. Brent, Mrs. C. H. Voorhies, Mrs. Charles Kemp, Mrs. F. E. Beauchamp, Mrs. S. B. Cronley, Mrs. S. A. Charles, Mrs. Edmund Bacon, and Mrs. Henry B. Kinkead, as well as those appointed on the committee. ' Mrs. Winston, Mrs. Skain, Miss Rosa Johnson, Mrs. Clay, Health Officer Malcomb Brown, and Dean John M. Lewis. THE ASSOCLA.TED CHARITIES 159 Madge's name is not given on the list of committees in this organization, but she was present at the meetings and soon found her opportunities for service; for she was familiar with the principles of sound case work and had a real devotion to the democratic aspects of what was knovra as the"charity organization" movement, which she believed was grounded in respect for the poor. The prin ciples on which that movement was based included knowl edge of the nature of the need, application of resources to the special need, adequate care and relief, co-operation with other agencies interested, soliciting support so as to establish right relations between donor and recipi ent, careful recording so that the work on individual problems could be continuous, consistent, and construc tive, and so that the community could benefit from the experience of individuals in the discovery of its plague spots. It is a doctrine that is indeed fundamentally demo cratic and respectful to the needy. A person in distress is regarded as of sufficient importance to justify learning the true nature of his malady and applying the appropriate remedy. No two cases of distress are just alike, and no wholesale remedy wUl suffice. When a situation has become such as to affect many alike, it should be dealt with by a law, removing as far as possible the cause of distress. On these points she was clear; and to the removal of certain sources of misery, poverty, and demor- ahzation — illiteracy, child labor, mistreatment of children, tuberculosis — she devoted the passionate efforts that have been described. To the problems of individual need she gave the same devoted service, and as she would effect no compromise with agencies or influences striking down i6o MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE the body or the mind, so she would yield truce to no organi zation, however persuasive its general approach might be, if its work was really based upon a scorn and disrespect for the poor, such as would result in the use of wholesale methods or in the insidious drugging of the community into belief that serving a family in need is a shght and generalized problem. Such an organization as pulled down the respect of a poor person who though poor — perhaps because he was poor — was worthy of gentlest handling and most careful treatment, such an organization could not be allowed to remain in the community if she could prevent it. Souphouses, bread lines. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for necessitous persons, were obnoxious to her, and on this ground. The new organization, in spite of the support given by the city and county, for the county "came in, " had many difficulties. Some of those whose aid was necessary were themselves not converted or took insufficient time to think the problem through. It was very satisfying, the "kind lady's handout " on which the tramp learned to rely, the "small-change" charity that left more than a small coin's worth of glow! There are beggars plying their trade on the streets of Lexington today, twenty-one years after the organization was effected. They show clearly to aU the world that, in spite of aU, Lexington has not yet "seen through" the problem. Madge was eager to go ahead with the work as rapidly as was possible. After aU these years, Mrs. Charles writes : I had the privilege of being associated in the work of the Associated Charities with Mrs. Breckinridge in Lexington, and I so well remember meeting her in the street at the time when a THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES i6i few of us were trying so hard to establish an organization for the betterment of the poor of the city, and of teUing her what we were trying to do. Her sympathy and interest were immediately aroused, and she at once entered into the work with the enthusi asm characteristic of everything she did. The success of the work was largely due to her efforts and since I have left Lexington I have heard the organization has become a great power for the good in the community. In spite of the difficulties of the early years, by 1907 the society was in a position where incorporation seemed advisable and where the publication of an annual report was justified.' The purposes of the newly incorporated society were stated to be : To encourage thrift, self-dependence and industry through friendly intercourse, advice and sympathy, and to aid the poor to help themselves rather than to aid them by ahns. To secure the concurrent and harmonious action of the different charitable organizations of Lexington, Kentucky, in order to raise the needy above the need of relief, prevent begging and imposition, and diminish pauperism. To arouse interest in social problems and put within the reach of the public the results of careful investigation. To cause a thorough investigation of the case of every applicant for rehef and to place the results of such investigations at the disposal of charitable societies and agencies, and private persons of benevolence. To obtain employment for suitable assistance for every deserv ing applicant from public authorities, charitable agencies or benevo lent individuals, and to make aU relief either of alms or charitable work conditional upon good conduct and progress. ' The "Articles of Incorporation" can be found in the Lexington Herald for February i r, 1907. The others named were G. V. Morris, Thomas Johnson, Arma Gratz Clay, and C. H. H. Branch. Her name appears as a member of the board from that time on. i62 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE In every department of its work this corporation shaU be com pletely severed from all questions of religious belief, politics and nationality.' The mayor, the judge of the City and Police Court, the chief of police, the members of the City Council and of the Board of Aldermen, the city physician, the health ofi&cer, the superintendent of schools, the county judge, the chief presiding officer of every charitable association, and the pastors of all churches of the city were ex officio members of the organization. The first published Report (1906-7) showed a number of interesting developments. The society had already established a visiting-nursing service, on a small scale — they had been able to afford only two months of this service, but it was a beginning — they had attacked through the wood yard the problem of the transient, they had established a penny savings fund, and they had developed sound case work, including friendly visiting. It wfll be recalled that a juvenile court law had been enacted in 1906, and the secretary of the society was likewise proba tion ofl&cer under that law. Of the income — $2,383.50^ for the six months reported on — the city had given $1,000 and the county $500. The society was indeed an arm of the public service. In the eighth Report, the first published report covering a fuU year, the city is shown to have contributed $2,049.99, the county $1,100 for relief and $338.48 for juvenile court work, out of a total income of $3,945.30, leaving less than ' "Articles of Incorporation,'' sec. iii. ' In this calculation a balance of $415.59 on hand at the beginning of the year is admitted. THE ASSOCLATED CHARITIES 163 $500 obtained from gifts. The ofi&ce of the society had been combined with a wayfarers' rest, and transient persons in need were fed and lodged and cared for as best it could be done. The co-operation with the Juvenile Court continued, and the executives of the society re mained the officers of the probation staff. During the year 1907-8 the society took up the sources of the various forms of distress represented by the applicants for help. Tuberculosis, housing, child labor, and the chattel-loan agencies were among the subjects studied. A correspondence into which she entered with the proprietor of a chattel-mortgage com pany illustrates a special type of service she was con stantly rendering to the society in making clear to the community how its principles worked out. She knew the tasks by which the society was specially strained and the dffficulties it, at the moment, must encounter. Her swift attack was like that of the ancient hght-armored troop we read of in our early school days. Her quiver was always full; her aim was sure. The heart of the insincere pretense was struck. The chattel loan, for example, has always been a prob lem to the charitable organization. Until there is provi sion for meeting the need experienced from time to time by the most careful and thrifty members of the low-income groups for obtaining credit in emergency, the loan shark win persist. So every society must in its time point out the lack and suggest a remedy. In 1909 the Lexington Associated Charities, spurred by a particularly distressing case that came to the knowledge of the society, published the facts in several of their cases. The attack by the 164 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Charities was met by a response on the part of the proprietor of a chattel-mortgage company, who described the methods of his firm and said among other things, " We claim to be benefactors to poor people. " There was the element of truth in the statement that the poor needed devices for credit that were not avail able. But as he furnished credit, so he took usury, and sad indeed was the fate of his claim. The whole communication is reproduced, for while the claim to grati tude of the usurer could not be allowed, the fundamental evil is pointed out, namely, that the appropriate credit institutions have not been developed. The proprietor of the chattel-loan firm says : We have been in business in Lexington nine years now. We have always paid our license promptly amounting to $250, City, County and State license, and if we did not do a legitimate business we do not think we would be allowed a license. There is no branch estabhshment doing business under our name, or in any way con nected with our firm. While we chattel loan people have been referred to as "loan sharks," we are not the "sharks" that we have been painted by the newspapers. There are two sides to the ques tion relative.to the conduct of the chattel loan business. We claim to be benefactors to poor people. Banks loan money and so do we, but our loans are made to the poor, who are unable to secure loans from the banks. Their loans are secured while we take risks on practically every dollar we loan. How many of the people who come to us for small loans, do you think, would be able to borrow money from the banks ? Not one in a hundred. Compared with the amounts loaned and the risks taken, the chattel loan people are as helpful in a business way as the banks, yet we are condemned and denominated "loan sharks. " We believe we are entitled to a hearing and when our methods are investigated it will be found that our business is not only legitimate, but helpful to those needing our service.' ' See the Leader, Sunday, January 24, 1909. THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 165 And she replies: In The Leader of Sunday appeared an article under the heading "Chattel Loan Firms," in which Mr. , of The Lexington Chattel Loan Company, undertakes to correct the erroneous impression concerning the chattel loan business in which he is engaged, and against which a crusade has been started by the Associated Charities. "We claim," says Mr. — , "to be benefactors to the poor people." As it happens, I do not have to go far from home for a proof of the benefactions of Mr. • — — ¦ — 's firm. The sister of my cook no later than December borrowed from his firm, according to her statement, the sum of $8.00, for which she is to pay back a dollar each week until she has paid twelve; in other words, for the benefaction she is p&ying for the loan of $8.00 for an average time of one month the modest rate of 600 per cent a year. A little more than a year ago I settled — through a lawyer — with this same firm, The Lexington Chattel Loan Company, of which Mr. S — — — was at that time the head, for a similar loan made to my cook some time before my acquaintance with her began. She had gotten eight dollars, and was to pay back twelve. She had succeeded in paying back five in weekly installments. Being unable to pay more the matter was brought up in the Court of one of our justices and the resulting bUl was for $1.60 for Justice's cost and 50 cents for constable's cost. The court costs of $2 . 10 were paid and $3 . 00 was tendered The Chattel Loan Company by her lawyer. The Chattel Loan Company, for some reason better known to them selves than to us, accepted the $3.00 and gave a receipt in full for her debt. That is with the aid of a lawyer — ^who gave his services, but has not yet pubUshed himself as a philanthropist — this woman obtained a loan of $8.00 for a few months for $10.10. Without this lawyer's aid she would have had to pay $14.10 for the $8.00 — unless there had been other court processes, each with their attendant costs, which there probably would have been as the woman had by- that time become absolutely unable to pay. This was the case of a woman who had been obliged to leave her husband because he drank and gambled away her wages as weli as i66 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE his. She was and is trying to support herself and three little children and, with the aid of the sister, who negotiated the latest loan from The Lexington Chattel Loan Company, to support an aged father. The sister also had a child to support without the aid of the child's father. I questioned my cook as to how, knowing the price she was paying for the money, she could have wanted these loans. In times of crisis, it seems, at the birth of the youngest baby, an attack of pneumonia of the second child, etc., she had resorted to the aid of the "philanthropists " of which Mr. ¦ is the type. By the conditions which she accepted because it was the only means which she knew to get the money which she had to have short of stealing, she was to pay back between April first and July seventh, $12.00, for a loan of $8.00. Mr. is right. He is operating under a state, city and county license. There are no laws in Kentucky at present to reach him and his fellow philanthropists — except the law of usury. For the violation of this law, I understand, he can not be prosecuted. The only remedy lies with the people who are too helpless and ignorant to use it. If every borrower from the firm was wise and cunning enough to tender The Lexington Chattel Loan Company the principal borrowed, plus the highest legal rate of interest, and could not be intimidated by the firm and court processes to recede from that position, I believe that Mr. et al., would very quickly decide to try some other form of philanthropy. But, of course, this is not to be hoped for. Until another remedy is found these philanthropists will continue to do business, and the penalties exacted from the honest and timid borrowers will more than make up for the losses from others, making the balance on the right side of the bookS' — which, of course, is the important thing in such philanthropic schemes.' The subject of burials and their cost was another of the problems in which she was greatly interested. She re spected the longing experienced by every grieving heart to pay to the body of the dead the last and utmost respect. ' Lexington Herald, January 27, 1909. THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 167 She knew that the poor and well-to-do were alike in that ultimate desire, and she regretted the example of display set by the well-to-do and resented the advantage taken of the poor by the unscrupulous undertaker; and so she calculated and estimated and tried to plan a way by which the loving instincts might be gratified without such dis astrous effects in the fanuly resources. The question of sound and thorough records is brought up ; and, although she is out of the city and deeply engaged in effort along other hnes, she writes back at once a mas terly statement covering the subject, and showing that whether the society spends private, or much more clearly if it spends public, funds, the results of constructive work and of effective use of experience can be gained only through the keeping of records and the careful scrutiny of recorded work. She writes from Charleston, South Carolina, on March 22, 191 5: Though I am a little late in the day making connection with Dr. J. W. Porter's article of March 16 on the question of charity and rehef work, I believe I rather owe it to my side of the discussion to add a few more "opinions" on the subject. Dr. Porter says: "Concerning the claim that 'continuous records shall be kept of those applying for rehef,' the writer and your correspondent are the poles apart. In many cases such a record should be kept, while in others help should be promptly given and as promptly forgotten. The writer has personal knowledge of several instances in our city where parties have been helped who would be deeply humihated to know that their names would appear on a charity roll. In not a few instances help has been given to those who have never applied to any charity organization." I fuUy agree with Dr. Porter that there are many times when the right hand should not know what the left hand doeth. AU persons with any spark of human brotherhood do charity of this kind; not only the rich and the well-to-do, but the poor, even the i68 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE very poor, who are closer to the needs of their brothers, do it con tinually. It is done between members of the same family, of the same church congregation, of the same fraternal order, and happUy, because of bonds of many kinds between human beings, within many other groups of people. A central relief agency through which public funds are dis pensed can never, fortunately, do away with such expressions of kind-heartedness and feUow feeling. But I can not be too emphatic in maintaining, and I believe I am right, that an agency dispensing outdoor relief and maintained wholly or in part from public funds, should for many reasons, some of them quite obvious, keep exact records of the persons asking aid, the reasons found on investigation why help should be given or withheld, and the amount of aid given in each case. The financial records of such a society should be open at any time to the inspection of the authorities and to repu table tax-paying citizens. There is practically no danger of any use of this investigating privUege from any wrong motive. It is largely because the City Missionary Society believes that its own activities should be private, though in order to act intelli gently it must often know what the Associated Charities has done or is going to do in a given case, that proper co-operation between the two has often proven impossible. Dr. Porter states that none of the city appropriation goes to the salary of any one connected with the organization, but aU directly to charity. SimUarly, the Associated Charities might maintain that none of the public money received by it from city and coimty goes into salaries or other service, suice more than the total amount of administrative expense is raised from private subscriptions. But, after all, that is a quibble; it is a matter of individual "opinion" and construction whether one necessary part of the work is paid for from one consignment of money put into a common treasury or from another. I believe that the City Missionary Society has, as has any individual church society, the right to keep its relief work quite private and unrevealed, even to deny itself and other social workers the advantages of a " confidential exchange. " But I do not believe that a society maintained on those principles, and which, as its THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 169 name indicates, desires to combine with its relief work a certain amount of religious teaching representing the views of the groups of persons from different Protestant churches composing it, should ask or receive tax money. Tax money comes not only from Protestants but from Jews and Catholics and agnostics. The principle of separation of church and state is fairly weU accepted in this country. And taxpayers of all views have a right to know how their money is being spent, whether for streets or for parks or for charity. This is said without animus — though that wUl prob ably be doubted. I believe that any church or group of churches or of individuals has an inahenable right to maintain a relief society combining religious work with relief and keeping its records private, but I do not think it is particularly self-respecting in such a society to ask contributions from public funds At one time each member of the fiscal court and the County Judge did relief work. A considerable amount of relief work is, I believe, still done by the county authorities. I do not think this is best, any more than I think it is best for each city commis sioner also to do separate charity work. And I do not think this view would be inconsistent with the highest respect for every individual composing the city commission and fiscal court, any more than it would be inconsistent with the highest respect for private charitable societies to say that I think there should not be two nor three nor half a dozen societies dispensing outdoor rehef from pubUc funds, but only one such agency. Or even that I think it would be infinitely better for the poor if there could be one central agency through which, or in close and frank co-operation with which, aU other relief societies worked. Nor is it inconsistent with the highest respect for public officials and private societies to say that I beheve every taxpayer has the same right to demand to know exactly how tax money is spent in relief work, whether by city or county authorities or by societies handling such funds, that he has to know how money is spent on the parks or on the streets, or the city haU or the county roads.' To what might be called the standard problems of the society — the transient, the intermittent husband, the ' Lexington Herald, March 25, 1915. 170 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE widow with several children — further reference need not be made. If there was opportunity for setting forth the fundamental interest, of increasing the inteUigence of the community, of expressing the joy of really setting right one family situation, she leaped to do it. But the hst is as long as the hst of the difficulties of the society and as the list of confusions on the part of those who have not yet tried to render the only service Edward Denison said half a century ago could be rendered for the poor, namely, "lend your brains." "No one may dehver his brother, he can but throw him a plank." She handed out one plank after another on which the poor might pass over the distress, in which the well-to-do might embody his ultimate good wfll. During the year 1909-10 the tuberculosis society established ofi&ces in the building with the Charities; later the city physician joined the group; a distinguished specialist in the nose, throat, ear, and eye established a chnic in the bmlding ; and so the co-operative relationships were multiplied. The problem of the transient and of the beggar were always heavy on the minds and hearts of the society, but the work went on. It did not go on easily, however. Each year the appropriations had to be obtained. The city and county ofi&cials do not remain the same, the private funds must be soHcited, the lessons of 1900 may be and are forgotten and must be learned all over again. Then, too, there is the recurring problem of indiscriminate almsgiving. In 1909, for example, the Salvation Army came in vsdth its proffer of a souphouse — a method rejected before 1900. She wrote swiftly and immediately, "Why, because a person is poor, must he be made a spectacle of?" THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 171 I have noticed that the Salvation Army proposes to open a free soup kitchen in Lexington, and I must register a protest. Lexington has passed through the free soup kitchen era, and has gotten to a wiser sort of charity. Many of the local charitable persons, who in former days helped to run the occasional free soup kitchen, wUl, I know, be glad to second this motion. WhUe I have heard Captain Ennis spoken of in the highest terms for his sympathy with the poor and his earnestness, I am obliged to object to this method of relief, which unfortunately, to my mind, is aU too common in Salvation Army circles. There is no reason why, because a person is poor, he should be made a spectacle of. If a worthy family is in need of food, it should be sent to the house; the famUy should not be subjected to display ing their poverty in pubUc. Nor does one bowl of hot soup, or one meal, do much to help a famUy that is without food or groceries or work in a cold speU like the present one. One hot meal does the giver more good as a rule than it does the recipient; he has a glow of satisfaction at his own generosity that lasts for days, sometimes for weeks or months; but the hungry man or woman is apt to be hungry again inside of twenty-four hours. The free soup kitchen relieves distress in so temporary a way that it really should not be classed as relief, but the effect of de stroying self-respect in the applicant, who thus makes a public avowal of pauperism, is lasting. Moreover, the free soup kitchen, the public dispensary of hot food is a soft snap for the impostor and for the fraud, and the no-accounts who find pauperism easier and pleasanter than working will come in like flies to the honey pot. Wind of it will soon get around. The hobo is not an igno ramus; he reads the newspapers. Two men who lodged at the Associated Charities Friday night were quick to notice the item in Saturday morning's paper about the proposed free soup kitchen. The great advantage in the free soup kitchen, as in the public Christmas dinners, and other spectacular relief measures adopted by the Salvation Army in the cities, is that it appeals to the emo tions of the comfortable rich and loosens the purse strings. To the poor, in my opinion, it has only dis?idvantages. There are 172 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE emergencies in which the public doling out of hot food is excusable and sometimes necessary. After some great public calamity — • earthquake, flood, or fire, for instance. But Lexington is not facing such a situation at present. The Associated Charities is able to deal with the situation, and will be, even if the thermometer stays in the zero neighborhood for some days, provided the community is willing to pay the bUls for coal and groceries, and judging from yesterday's donations it is wiUing. About 75 persons were taken care of at the office yester day, by the office force, with some assistance from members of the Board. Nearly all of the persons applying for assistance or for whom application was made were well known to the agents, and a very small amount of investigation was necessary, as compared to what had to be done five or six years back, when the office was first opened. If the community will continue to support the Associated Charities, it may feel confident that year by year it grows better fitted to cope with the local situation, and that there is, therefore, less need of violent and spectacular measures.' Again, early in 1914, the demorahzing effect of the indiscriminate rehef-giving of the Army, both in giving to those whose need is different in character and in diverting from those whose need might not be met because it is not made known, was pointed out in another vigorous protest : An item appeared in Wednesday evening's Leader, brought to the paper, it was stated, by Adjutant Harris, of the Salvation Army. The item told of two little children who had come to the Salvation Army headquarters in a distressing condition, applying for assist ance. It gave the father's name and his address, stated that there were seven children in the family, "six under twelve, five of whom are trying to attend Lincoln School, but who are greatly handicapped for want of clothing and shoes." 'Lexington Herald, January 31, 1909. THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 173 Does the public of Lexington approve that method of soliciting aid? If the family is a worthy one, should it be humiliated by publishing the name, address and the circumstances of poverty in detail ? Does the contribution of a little temporary help compen sate to that family for the loss of self-respect and the consignment to the ranks of pauperism and possibly of professional mendicancy that the publication leads up to ? The method of the Salvation Army is undoubtedly an excellent one for raising money. It is, the writer thinks, a vicious one when it comes to the effect on the persons for whom help is sohcited. But as it happens the facts in the present case illustrate more than one of the faults of an organization that depends for existence on appeals to the sentimentality of the community. The two children represented not one family, but two, the mother of one httle girl, "the little Martha" of the story, having heard, as she puts it, "that they were givin' out things up at the Salvation Army," proposed that these two children "go up and get what they could." Naturally they did not wear their best clothes. The other chUd, whose father's name the newspaper article almost gave — there was the mistake of a letter, fortunately — ¦ comes of a famUy that needs slight assistance from time to time only, most of the members of which are self-respecting. The boys have sometimes needed admonition from the Juvenile Court and truant officer. In this family there are two grown sons and an able-bodied father, two daughters old enough to work and at pres ent at work in the tobacco factory, two small children, a girl about 8 years old and a boy about 12, who do go to Lincoln School. The other family, the mother of which had the brilliant and very natural idea of availing herself of the overflowing charity of the Salvation Army, has a long and interesting history, which may be found in the records of the Juvenile Court. The father and mother are able-bodied. There is a son 17 years old who works in the tobacco factory. There are six younger chUdren, three of school age, one of kindergarten age and a baby. At one time the family was broken up by the Juvenile Court and the children placed temporarUy in the Children's Home, because of the dirt, neglect, and drunkenness of the parents. The father 174 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE has more than once been put in jail ; about a year ago the Juvenile Court exercised its moral suasion to make him marry the mother; an attempt was made to rehabilitate the family and the father was compelled to move into a more decent house. For three or four years it has taken constant surveUlance to prevent the children from begging on the streets and from door to door. The truant officer states that for three or four weeks before Christmas it took as much effort to keep the three children of school age in school as a half dozen families of children should require, as the mother had then decided to send the children out soliciting Christmas dinner, Christmas presents, etc., whUe the heart of the householder was soft. If the community desires to make profes sional paupers of these five children whom it wiU have to support through the rest of their natural lives, it can do it by adopting Salvation Army methods of relief. There is much real poverty in this community, there is much real sickness and sorrow and distress. It is too bad to have the charity of the community frittered away in a few tin horns, a few Christmas packages, a little spasmodic giving that is valuable chiefly for the satisfaction the giver obtains. We have established the incorporated agencies of relief in this city. Their Board of Directors are made up of local people weU known to the cominunity and responsible to it. Their books are open to the public, their financial management may at any time be investigated, the records of their work may be examined by any citizen who desires to do so. And yet these agencies are poorly supported by the pubhc. The Associated Charities has for a month or two advertised the fact that it needed money to furnish shoes for chUdren, and yet it has had to run into debt to furnish them in a portion of the most insistent cases. It was somewhat heartbreaking to read not only of the Christ mas dinners to thousands of "poor" in New York City, but of the many things done for the "poor" in Lexington at Christmas. Not that the well-springs of human kindness should close at Christmas, but that they should flow regularly, consistently, thoughtfully aU the year through agencies that wUl use them to the best advantages. THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 175 And furthermore that it is a confession of failure that there should be so many "poor" in Lexington, so many "mean streets," so many unsanitary dweUing houses, so many sick of preventable diseases. Our duty is not fulfilled by giving a tin horn, or a Christmas dinner; our task is to abolish poverty. It is being done in newer and more civilized countries. Right here in Lexington we know many of the next steps if only we would take them. The public has a general notion that organized charity means large money for salaries and administration and little money for the poor. And that in the case of the Salvation Army it all goes to the poor. Organized charity does try to pay a living wage to those who give their whole time to its service. And the pubUc should remember that also the "army" of the Salvation Army must be supported before any of the dimes given up by the comfortable citizen imder the hypnotism of the tambourine find their way to "the poor." The pubhc never sees the books of the Salvation Army; there is no accoimting to those who give. Also it sends constantly new sets of "officers" into each community, who proceed to raise money to give dinners or baskets to 500 "poor, " or 5,000 "poor, " or whatever number is decided on as appropriate, without seeking to gain information of those who have long studied the situation, and who stay by it year by year. Whatever may be its accomplishment in "saving souls," of which an accurate accounting is difficult, as a rehef agency it is disorganizing and ineffective. This is the testimony from careful investigators in many communities.' The public ofi&cials that took the trouble or had the occasion reaUy to learn the doctrine did not forget. When I was City Clerk, I, too, felt that if the city gave money to the Salvation Army that is given to the Associated Charities, the charity work would be taken care of — ^but after giving the matter careful study and consideration, I have become convinced that the Associated Charities is working on the right lines. I have had even preachers teU me that the Associated Charities is coldblooded, but 'Lexington Herald, January i, 1914. 176 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE I am sure that the person making this statement had not put him self thoroughly in touch with the work and spoke without a full knowledge of scientific charity. These are the words of a mayor who had been a city clerk writing to a gentleman, a member of the Commercial Club, who, later, in 1914, urges the claim of the Salvation Army on the city administration. The mayor replies direct to thewriter but sends her the original recommenda tion as weU, because he knows "that the Association is a child of your creation. " She replies so convincingly that the Commercial Club gentleman hastens to assure her, "I am not now and never have been in sympathy with the Salvation Army — and whUe, of course, they may reach a soul now and then, I am of the opinion that the per capita cost is too high " So she fought the battles as new enemies or old enemies in some new guise presented themselves. It was ever the respect she had for the poor. And in 191 7 the great encounter came! It was one of the most heroic encounters ever engaged in. One knows not where to turn for analogy unless it be to the driving of the money-changers from the Temple. Almost alone and in a fight few thought worth making, not because the issues were not of sufficient importance, but because the fruits of victory would be so elusive and difficult to share. If the encounter could only be set forth in worthy fashion! And she did not want to have to make the fight. "Never," she cried on January 29, 191 7, "did I feel less like going into a controversy with the Army." Her mother, it wfll be recaUed, was fatally fll and died four days later. Moreover, the winter 1916-17 was one of the THE ASSOCL\TED CHARITIES 177 winters when the hand of the disease was on her. There were weeks in Ashevflle, and when she was aUowed to return the doctors were trying to control her daily tasks. On January 30, 19 17, the city officials included the Salvation Army among those organizations to whom grants of pubhc money were made for the relief of distress and the service of the poor. The organizations listed were the Associated Charities, $2,500; the Chfldren's Home, $2,400; the City Missionary Society, $500; the Colored Orphans' Home, $1,500; the House of Mercy, $750; the Humane Society, $600; the Industrial School, $600; the Old Ladies' Home, $600; the Orphan Asylum, $600; the Baby Milk Supply, $1,200; the Salvation Army, $720; the Pubhc Health Nursing Association Emergency Work, $2,500; the Good Samaritan Hospital, $7,200; St. Joseph's Hospital, $7,200: a total of $31,340. The plea for the Salvation Army was for the price of rent for a building once used by the Associated Charities, in which would be housed and fed especially the transient applicant. She presented in advance the arguments against the grant. First, it was not necessary, there were the organizations already at hand to do the work. Second the presence of the Army -with its indiscriminate giving and general solicitation demoralized both the poor and the giving pubhc. Third, it was not legal; the Army was a religious and not a social organization. Fourth, the Army was an alien organization with orders from its head quarters — outside the state — ^located first at Nashvflle then at Cincinnati. Fifth, the officers were not under the control of the local agencies. Sixth, they kept inadequate records and so could not report, if they would, as to their work. Seventh, the methods of solicitation were not 178 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE actuaUy legal; their women went into saloons to beg. Eighth, the Army was an incorporated body chartered under the laws of New York having real property worth more than seven millions, personal property of nearly two millions — carrying on enterprises for a profit and actuaUy often exploiting its ovm officials in the compulsory use of the uniform whose supply the Army monopolized. She set it all out and gave aU the world to understand that the thing should not happen if she could prevent its happening. But the grant was made. Why it was made we need not try to say — for the city officials were put into a most humiliating position in their attempt to defend their action. They were shovra to be ignorant as to what was to be done with the money or by whom it was to be handled.' For she sought an injunction against its payment. It is a strange and touching incident. Per sonally she had nothing to gain. So few cared and fewer understood. As though trying to render her cause unpopular, the officials resorted to the device of holding up the grants made to aU other organizations. Their conduct is impossible to explain and the account of it difficult to believe. She won the action in the court — the original grant was held invalid; but the lower court pointed out a way of making such a grant valid. But when the authorities foUowed the suggestion of the court, she sought another injunction, and this was fought neither by the Army nor by the city.^ Did it pay ? The very next winter the same struggle against indiscriminate relief had to be ' See daily papers of Lexington beginning January 10, 1917. ' See daily papers of Lexington beginning June 5 and July 25, 1917. THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 179 fought over again vdth an emergency relief committee.' She could, however, never ask, "WUl it pay?" Others she might save, herself she could not save, when truth and respect for the poor were issues in the problem. This is perhaps the place in which reference may be made to her methods of raising money. Her two great drives — one for Lincoln School in 1910, and one for the Blue Grass Sanatorium in 1917 — ^have been referred to. She herself preferred simple giving. She had to share in order to enjoy. She worked out ways and schemes by which what she gave could be increased in effectiveness. She could not alone give enough, and often what she could give was of slight use unless increased by the gifts of others. So she would give a stated amount, equal to the generally expected contribution, and then offer a larger sum provided a given number of others would contribute simUar amounts; ten doUars straight, but twenty-five doUars with five others of like amount, or fifty dollars with ten simUar gifts, etc. It is not an uncommon method; it is often a very good device to protect one's self from being finaUy caUed on to give it aU. The extraordinary thing about her was that after making the offer she went out and found the other nine! The possibility or impossi- bihty of finding them was in a way a test to her of whether that object was the one to which contributions should at the time be made. There is a very interesting letter on the general subject that may be quoted: I don't at aU agree with you that my proposition to give $100 if nine other persons did the same is unreasonable. In fact, I think it not only reasonable, but the best way for raising the most money. ' See the papers, January 16-30, 1918. i8o MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE The Associated Charities has been raising money in the last week in Lexington with several such conditional offers. The President said he would give $ioo if so many others did. That proposition has been taken up. I have had a standing offer for a number of years to be one of ten to give $25 or $50. The $25 has always been taken up, though I and others have had to work pretty hard sometimes to get the other nine. They tell me this year that they expect to take me up on the ten fifties, as I hope they wUl. Otherwise Desha and I will each go in with the $25 group, aud he will also go in with that one if I go in with the $50 group. I adopted that plan with the Associated Charities in order to help get the money needed after finding for some years how httle good the go-in-alone plan did the society. You wfll remember that when I put in the $100 sUently toward the secretary's salary it didn't bring any others. I haven't been giving it conditionally to advertise myseff, but because I believe it's the way to get the other nine hundred, and that one hundred alone does little good. As the interest increases I think the con ditions can profitably be stiffened. If we go into campaign this year I think we can certainly get ten hundred-dollar donors. Of course the "luck" comes only after you have immolated yourself to do the asking — and also very often after that it doesn't come! I dread asking people for money as much as any one else can, and in one way it is harder for me because I have to " beg " for so many different things. But, as I have said, if the Board, or whoever forms the Finance Committee, wants me to go in on it, I wfll. But, of course, giving and asking did not exhaust the efforts. Yet how she asked! Personal appeals based on every possible claim; underneath the fair exterior of her begging there was some impatience with those who could be expected to contribute only when the weather was very cold, the misery very obvious, but every kind of claim was put forth and everywhere. There was no escaping her! And yet it was never misleading — her begging was never that — and it was always as educational and as artistic as THE ASSOCLATED CHARITIES i8i it could be in the nature of things. When Woodland Park was to be equipped, it was a gay green tag — a car nation colored — that was offered for sale. When a pool was made possible, the dedication was so charming that anyone who could would be tempted to give another if only to enjoy so beautiful a distinction. But funda mentally she wanted everyone to understand and to care. She had a respect for the contributor, too ; and she there fore took infinite pains to inform and to convince, rather than to cajole. She looked for a fair day when the devices she used might be no longer necessary, and she helped in every movement leading toward a fairer chance. And the result was the simple reality and immediateness of aU her work. She thought in terms of the actual cost to the chfldren she loved, the women for whom she had abounding sympathy, the men whose co-operation in buflding a better community she craved. In the field of social case work, too, she had national recognition. She was an officer of the National Con ference of Social Work as well as of the National Child Labor Committee. The extraordinary quality of her service as a volunteer — an unpaid worker whose professional methods would stand any technical test, a member of boards who knew as weU as any executive how the thing should be done — was recognized. She gave substance to the old claim of the charity organization movement that of the honorary worker might be expected the highest quality of service, since the standards were not those of the wage bargain but of the ideal itself, and the limit to the day's work was set by no contract, by no pattern of output, but by the demands of the task only. Thus was it vdth her! CHAPTER IX EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN It viiU not be possible nor is it necessary to trace in detail the steps by which her interest in votes for women was aroused. It viiU be remembered that before her mar riage she had enjoyed the associations viith the members of the Fortnightly, and she and Mrs. Harrison had had gay times with histories and encyclopedias and great tomes on literature, philosophy, and science. After the Fort nightly was merged with the other clubs to form the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky, she was for a time less interested; and for a number of years it might be said that her activities relating to the status of women con sisted in co-operating vnth special efforts in which joint committees were formed among various clubs to accom plish a special object and then disbanded. It was from such a joint effort that the McNamara meeting had grown, and the emergency meeting from which the Civic League finally resulted. Such an effort was developed in the early weeks of 1902 in connection with the status of women at the University of Kentucky, then called the Kentucky State College. Women students had been admitted to the college in 1880 shortly after the creation of a department of education; EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 183 in 1900 an appropriation of $60,000 had been aUowed by the legislature for a women's dormitory; and in 1901 provision was made for the salary of a woman director of physical education. In the appropriation act, provision was made for a supervisory committee of three discreet, prudent, and inteUigent women to be appointed by the governor for a term of years; the first committee being women named in the act. She was one of the three named.' But no steps had been taken toward the construction of the dormitory; there was no dean of women nor any department of domestic science or household manage ment. The women students were receiving neither the domestic and social supervision nor the academic and professional training already provided by many of the coeducational institutions of the Middle West. A com mittee of women, then, in 1902, not all from Lexington, made a study of the care given women students in other institutions and obtained a mass of interesting information much of which was pubUshed in the daily papers. Two communications were eventuaUy addressed to the mem bers of the University Board of Trustees urging the appointment of a dean of women and the establishment of a department of domestic science. Her chief service in connection with these efforts was in preparing state ments for the Herald, which gave aid and comfort by editorial comment and support. At this time a stupid course was being foUowed by certain representatives of the Democratic party in the legis lature with reference to the right enjoyed by women in " Lexington Herald, January ir, r9oo. Mrs. Elizabeth Scott and Mrs. Ida Harrison were the other two. i84 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE cities of the second class to vote on school matters. The history of the right of Kentucky women to vote in school elections was an ancient though a restricted right. In 1838, ten years before the Seneca Falls Convention, widows with chfldren of school age were given the right to vote in elec tions of trustees of district schools. By the constitution of 1850, women were rendered eligible to the office of county superintendent of schools, and in 1901, twenty women in Kentucky were holding that office in various parts of the state. In 1888, widows with chfldren of school age, or tax-paying widows and tax-paying spinsters, were given the right to vote on questions of school taxation; and in 1894, women in cities of the second class were granted in the charters enacted during the session of that year school suffrage. Under this grant of power, women had voted in school matters, had been elected to boards of education, and their activities seemed to threaten the grip of the pohticians on the perquisites of the school system. It was therefore pro posed to repeal the clause granting the suffrage to women in these cities. The charge made by those proposing the measure was that the ignorant and degraded and especiaUy the negro women voted in such large numbers as to outweigh the influence of the educated and public- spirited and that the educated women did not desire nor exercise the right they had been granted. The charge was shovsm to be vnthout foundation, so far as white and colored voters were concerned, by citing the relative numbers of these two groups voting in Lexington and Covington. Moreover, aggressive committees were organ ized to go to Frankfort and to appear before the legislative committees that were pretending to consider the matter. EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 185 Vigorous statements were sent by the women of Lexington to the legislature on February 6, 1902; and women's delegations sought hearings and, vdth the co-operation of leading men of the community, presented their case in arguments that were unanswerable, except by the votes of a majority whose reply was substantially, "Why argue ? We have the votes. " The provision in the charter was in fact repealed by a strict party vote, one Democrat opposing and one Repub- Ucan supporting the measure. Not untfl 19 12 did women again obtain the power to vote on school matters. The right then obtained was, however, bestowed on aU the women of the state "possessing the legal quahfications required of male voters .... and who in addition are able to read and write."' In this early skirmish the Herald rendered to the women vahant service, and Madge was becoming both admirably informed regarding the questions at issue and thoroughly grounded in the logic on which the women's claims were based. In the winter of 1903-4, as has been said, she was com- peUed by her ovsm health and that of her mother to spend a considerable period in a sanatorium in Colorado and whfle there became stfll more familiar with the general suffrage movement. Eastern periodicals delighted to publish attacks on the women voters of Colorado. Special correspondents and investigators went out to report. Cer tain charges made by Colorado officials led to Senator Shaf roth's entering the arena in behalf of the women voters of that state. She was greatly interested and tried to send back dispassionate statements for those in Lexington who ' Acts oj igi2, chap. 47, p. 193. 1 86 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE were interested in the movement. It may perhaps be said that she came back from Colorado a convinced advocate of the women's claims to substitute direct political power for the indirect influence on which they were supposed to rely in Kentucky. It has been seen that she came back likewise determined to attack with organ ized effort the dread malady of which she herself had been already a victim, and public-health problems require per sistent, incisive, and direct action. In 1905 she tried the experiment of taking charge of a weekly page in the Herald — the Sunday edition — and directing its use to the end of enlightening any women who would read on all the questions of chfld care and woman's advancement, and other problems in which she was interested. The emblem at the head of the page was at first an arc of a circle vsdth the words " Woman's Sphere" on the arc, and underneath the quotation from Dr. Heber Newton: "Whatever Woman can do that, by divine ordination, she ought to do, by human aUowance she should be privfleged to do, by force of destiny in the long run she vdU do. " But on Easter Sunday of 1906, a new design of the sphere was adopted. It was put on as a new "Easter bonnet," she said. Only a person famfliar with the technique of newspaper make-up can realize the labor and skiU that went into that page. Fortunately, we have her own. account of this under taking, for the page gained a national reputation; and Mr. Paul Kellogg, editor of Charities and the Commons^ wrote to her saying: We have watched with considerable interest the uses to which you have put the Woman's Page of the Lexington Herald. It is ' Now the Survex. EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 187 such a rehef in contrast to the things which go into the pages for women on most papers, and I am wondering if you would not be disposed at your convenience to write a short article for Charities and the Commons on what can be done with a woman's page in a newspaper in a town the size of Lexington. We go to a lot of editors and club women throughout the country and those inter ested in phflanthropy, and some of them might take the hint — especiaUy if the article was concrete and told specifically the different things you have undertaken on the page and carried through (or faUed to carry through); the attitude of other local papers toward it, etc. She wrote in reply: A Woman's Page appearing as a Sunday supplement feature of a daily paper of a southern town demonstrates the reason for what the Rev. Anna Shaw designates the "wailing cry of a recent critic, that we have fallen upon a time when doctrines are taught to women by women." This page was undertaken some six months ago with a distinct idea that it was to be different from the ordinary Woman's Page of the Sunday supplement; that it was not to be given up wholly to discussions of fashion and to ways of making Christmas presents out of old duck skirts — to "squaw talk" in short. The editor believed that it would be as unjust to consider such matters the sole interest of the average woman as to believe that the page containing news of the prize ring and the race track bounded the interests of the average man. Shirtwaists and Christmas presents undoubtedly have their place in the thoughts of most women, but they do not entirely absorb them. The present page was planned to handle club interests, educa tional interests, industrial, hterary, artistic, religious, civic, what ever came within the scope of the intelligent woman's interest and seemed at the time most pertinent. The page has been headed recently with a caption ' ' Woman's Sphere ' ' followed by a quotation from the Rev. Heber Newton, " Whatever Woman can do that, by divine ordination, she ought to do, by human allowance she should be privfleged to do, by force of destiny in the long run she will do. " Under this definition of Woman's Sphere it will be seen that any thing from cabbages to politics can be appropriately treated. 1 88 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE It is one of the purposes of the page to bring about a public realization of the fact that women are thinking seriously and to some purpose on a number of subjects not usually considered feminine. It desires to furnish news and comment on these subjects for the women who are already interested and to interest other women in them. The editor believes that the average woman needs some stimulus to broader interests than she now has. Much of the philanthropy and the rational reform of the pres ent day depend largely upon the support of women. While noting progress in these lines, suggestions and experiments per taining to them, it is believed that the page wfll not only interest and encourage those women already given to such lines of thought, but that it may entice other women into an interest which they do not now feel. The page has been made to some extent the organ of the Women's Clubs. It has given a, large portion of its space to educational matters, commenting editorially on local conditions in the City of Lexington and in the State of Kentucky. In the last two months, since the Legislature of Kentucky has been in session, there has been continued comment on educational measures before that body; on laws affecting women and chfldren, such as the wife desertion bill, the bill providing equal guardianship of father and mother, the bill raising the age of protection for girls, the child labor bill and the juvenfle court bill. A good deal of space has been devoted also to the bfll providing for a State Sanatorium for tuberculous patients. This bill had its origin in an organization for the prevention of tuberculosis formed in Lexington, which includes a large number of women in its membership and the officers of which are men and women. At this time she began again to work more actively viith the woman's club movement. Reference has been made to her relationship to that movement. She had not been greatly interested since the old Fortnightly days, but about this time the State Federation was taking an active part in movements for school injprovement and EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOAIEN 189 chfld welfare. In 1906-7, after the enactment of the first chfld labor law, she became a member of the in dustry and chfld labor division of the State Federation. The foUowing year and each year untfl 1913-14 her name appears in yearbooks of the Federation as likewise a mem ber of the education division. Among those whose names appeared from the first on the records of the Civic League was that of Professor R. N. Roark, of the State CoUege department of education. Professor Roark supported aU forward-looking public measures, and Mrs. Roark, herself a university woman of abflity and charm, became in 1907-8 chairman of the edu cation department of the State Federation of Women's Clubs. That organization was at this time greatly exer cised over the figures with reference to Kentucky's status in the matter of iUiteracy that had been made known through the pubhcations of the United States Census. It had appeared that in the list of fifty states and territories arranged in order of Uteracy Kentucky had below it only Louisiana, with her overwhelming negro population. North Carohna, with her onus both of negroes and moun tain whites, and New Mexico with her hybrid Spanish and Indian population. Not only were the figures shockingly humfliating to the state as a whole, but an analysis showed the Blue Grass region to have greatly neglected the edu cation of its own young. The Federation had undertaken to reveal these facts and to inaugurate a veritable crusade in behalf of popular education, and Madge went into that effort vsdth aU her power. The program of the Federation included the provision of educational facflities for afl portions of the state, the estabhshment of a rural demonstration school, like the I90 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE Irishtovm demonstration for the city, the awakening of interest ever3rwhere in school improvement. As a part of that campaign she took in 1908-9 the chairmanship of the legislative division of the Federa tion, and for the next four years was at the head of that division. In one non-legislative year, 1909-10, it was aUowed to lapse, but the next, 1910-11, it was kept very much alive and very active. The legislative program of 1908 included twelve measures, of which only those of concern to the main inter est of her life wiU be noted here. The school suffrage measure, which was intended to undo the deed of 1902 and to obtain school suffrage for aU women ppssessing the required educational quahfications — for the women agreed to accept the requirements of read ing and writing — was introduced both as an item in a county school board bfll that the Federation was pushing and as a separate measure. The provision was early stricken from the county bfll, which passed with the women left oiit. That measure, though "a defective law," she said, still established a principle of county taxation, and county orgianization, that the Federation thought very irhportant. But the school suffrage measure failed in spite of the fact that it had been drafted by the best legal talent, was introduced under favorable con ditions as an educational measure, and much educational work had been done throughout the state in its behalf.' She reported to the Federation that letters were sent out to the club presidents of the State, asking that a special work be done to create sentiment in favor of the bill; that ' Yearbook oj the Kentucky Federation oj Women's Clubs, 1908-9, p. 76. EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 191 mass meetings of women be held, that club meetings be devoted to its discussion, that the local newspapers be used and that the Representatives be seen. A further letter was sent enclosing a pamphlet describing the effects of school suffrage in twenty-nine other states of the Union. The same pamphlet was sent also with a personal letter to prominent women in towns not represented in the Federation, asking that they agitate the subject among women of their section. It was sent to every member of the Legislature. It was sent to the presidents of the forty County School Improvement Leagues in the State, asking that they bring it to the consideration of their members .... A copy was likewise sent to the editors of over two hundred newspapers in the State of Kentucky, with the request that they print it and make editorial comment thereon. Some thirty-odd of the most prominent men in the State of Kentucky were asked to write their opinions of the measure and its possible effects and these opinions, published in pamphlet form and sent out to the members of the Legislature and to others, you have possibly seen. In reply to the letters to newspaper editors, a num ber of marked copies containing the bill and containing editorial reference to it were sent me, and some of the letters were so warmly enthusiastic they were funny. So also were most of the letters from the thirty men chosen There were, in all, five hearings before Legislative committees on the measure. In these hearings a dozen or two clubwomen from seven or eight cities participated. As a rule, the hearing was announced at a late date and only those women could be gotten who lived nearby. The chairman of the Education committee, who, in the absence of the chairman of the Legislative committee during the latter part of the session, did a large portion of the legislative work, says with confidence that if the measure had ever come to a vote it would have been passed by both houses. The manner of the kiUing of the bfll was artistic. It was taken out of the hands of the Legislative committee to which it had been referred and put into the hands of the committee on suffrage and elections — from which it never emerged ' ' Ibid., pp. 75-77- 192 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE At the same session of the legislature an amended chfld labor law, an amended juvenile court law, an amended Compulsory School Law, and a law creating an Educational Commission' were aU passed. This last act provided for representation of the State Federation on the Commission and Madge was elected as that representative. The work she did on that Commission she described in the f oflowing report to the Federation : Appointed on the Educational Commission in the fall of 1909 as the Federation representative, in place of Dr. Spencer, I attended all of the somewhat arduous meetings of the commission in which the work of the past eighteen months was reviewed and put in final shape and a number of new measures dealt with. Mrs. Roark was then a member of the Commission as Acting President of the East ern Normal School, and together we tried to represent the interests of women as weU as to render whatever service we could on aU the measures under discussion. An effort made by Dr. Spencer and by Mrs. Roark to make a woman member of the State Board of Education mandatory did not succeed. It had, however, the value that such agitations always have of causing prominent educators to reflect on the value of a woman in that position. As the law was drawn women are eligible. On our motion the Commission endrsoed the bfll for school suffrage for women, suggesting some changes in the bfll presented at the last session, and referring it to a sub-committee composed of Mrs. Breckinridge and Dr. Ramsey. To the same committee was also referred the compulsory school law for cities, and the com pulsory law for rural districts and the school law for cities of the second class. The compulsory school law for cities was passed by the Legis lature as presented. Neither the rural compulsory law nor the school law for cities of the second class was presented. The law ' Acts oj igo8, chap. 56, p. r33; chap. 65, p. r7o; Acts oj igi2, chap. 67, p. 181. EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 193 for first class cities, however, similar in most essentials to the laws drawn for cities of the other class, passed the Legislature. Under the second class city bill drawn, women were made eligible not only to the school board but as electors. It is probable that this bill wiU be passed at the next session. In the bill for the government of first class cities, women were made eligible to the School Board. The body of laws drawn by the Educational Commission, of which a synopsis of the principal ones was published in a prelimi nary report of the Commission, is undoubtedly a valuable contribu tion to our educational advance. In addition to the two mentioned, the first class city bill and the city compulsory school law, but one other bill drawn was passed, — the text book bill referring the choice of text books to a County Commission. The main strength of the Commission was put to saving what had already been won at a past session, particularly the County School Board Bill. Three other bflls were presented to compel this, and numerous dangerous amendments had to be killed. Though constructive work accomplished at this session by the Commission was shght, there is really no doubt that its service was valuable. The Superintendent of Schools, in a letter to the writer, just after the adjournment of the Legislature, sums it up thus: " ReaUy we are in good shape, no damage, a fine system and another chance We have met the enemy and they have taken no scalps." Another member of the Commission, Superintendent L. N. Taylor, in a letter to the writer says: "Our report has been re jected and our work discredited, but I feel abundant assurance that the main and best feature of our work will yet find expression in our statutes. The movement has been retarded but it has not been defeated. With delay it will gather strength Right is too persistent a force to be finally defeated. The school suffrage measure that failed in 1908 was reintroduced in 19 10, but again failed: Our School Suffrage bill was endorsed by the Kentucky Educa tional Commission. It was presented in the Senate by Mr. Claude Thomas, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for his sincere and 194 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE earnest support. A favorable report followed a hearing before the Elections Committee. At this hearing, the speakers were from Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort and Bowling Green, and were both men and women, as in subsequent hearings before the House Com mittee. The Senate passed the biU 17 to 12, but too late for it to go from Senate to House, as the House Rules Committee, on which our friends the enemy were in control, then had charge of affairs. It was presented in the House by Mr. Eugene Graves, of Paducah. The bill was referred to a distiactly hostfle committee. Efforts to get it to another committee failed. We did our utmost by hearings before the committee, through the newspapers, and before the House. The committee was controlled by the chairman, Mr. Harry G. Meyers, of Covington; it brought in an adverse report. Our one fighting friend on the committee, Mr. DiUard Hunter, of Winchester, brought in a minority report; a motion to substitute this was lost. A change of the vote of five of those voting against the measure would have carried it. These votes might have been supplied by Louisvflle, or by Covington, or Newport. The measure was not rejected by the State; it was de feated by cities of the first and second class, for seffish reasons. The leaders of the liquor interests were the leaders of the opposition. With human intelligence, it can be won at another session, if the women of the Federation will, in the meantime, do their duty in the matter of forming public sentiment and getting and spreading information as to school conditions.' In 1912 its passage was finally secured, but not with out continued effort: "Our School Suffrage measure, although it was embodied in the Democratic platform, was not passed without a struggle. It was freely predicted a few days before the Legislature adjourned, that having passed the House it would never pass the Senate, and even some of our friends advised us to let it die without an open strug gle. We rejected this advice, however, and the bill is now a law. During the Federation year we did not remit our effort to advance popular interest in the measure, both among women and ' Yearbook oj the Kentucky Federation oj Women's Clubs, 1910-ir, p. 32. EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 195 among men. Circular letters and literature were sent out to all candidates for the Legislature, and another set of letters and litera ture later, to those elected to the Legislature. The aid of the county superintendent was also thus solicited. Much work was done this year by individual members of the clubs in personally distributing literature. I calculate that in the course of the several years' work for the School Suffrage bfll not less than 100,000 pieces of literature have been distributed. This aUows for a margin of about s,ooo which may stiU be reposing in the closets and attics of clubs and club members.' The labor, as she describes it, involved in this work cannot be measured or estimated. It meant poring over reports concerning the work done in all kinds of com munities from which help for the varied sections of Kentucky might be dravsTi, speaking before every kind of group, the press, the farmers and the farmers' wives, women's clubs; it meant drafting legislation and urging it on the legislative committees. In the passage quoted, she refers to the great task of awakening and arousing the women. This meant both speaking to groups of women and the preparation of state ments of facts and presentation of argument that could be understood by the simplest reader. It caUed for that fine art in writing that is grounded in knowledge of the subject, in respect for the prospective reader, and in a passionate desire to secure a foUowing. In these early campaigns she went aU over Kentucky, she spoke to such a variety of groups of voters in such a variety of locahties that from that time there was no place in which she was not at home. At the risk of repeating and of possible prosiness, it may be pointed out that the warfare she waged under aU the varying conditions was 'Ibid., I9i2-r3, p. no. 196 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE ever against the same kind of enemy, the smaU politician, the selfish interest, whiskey, vice, and greed. But she knew that the great citadel to be overcome was indifference and ignorance. And the passion of her love for children, the dehght of her own heart in beauty, the consciousness that her own dehght could never be untarnished until afl eyes capable of seeing had at least the chance to look, these sustained and indeed compelled her to an activity of which the records seem incredible. In Aprfl, 191 1, she described the whole effort in a speech during the Four teenth Conference for Education in the South,' of which Mr. Oswald G. ViUard, then editor of the New York Eve ning Post, wrote: There were a number of brilliant representatives of the women of the South present, among them Mrs. Beverly B. Munford of Virginia, and Mrs. Desha Breckinridge of Kentucky. The latter's touching speech on " Public Schools and Southern Development" on Thursday afternoon in the Centennial Club auditorium was indubitably the most brilliant utterance of the entire convention. At one time she fairly brought tears to the eyes of her auditors, and her plea for the ballot for women, that the mother might follow her children into the schools and into other communal institutions, is said to have shaken the faith even of an anti-suffrage editor of the Outlook who was in attendance. Certainly this granddaughter of Henry Clay made an impression upon her auditors that will not readily be forgotten. She and her fellow-workers from the South who were present might fairly be said to be actuated by a thor oughly militant spirit, had that term not been associated with window-breaking and other forms of lawlessness. Had it been a political gathering they would have been classified as advanced insurgents, because of their interest in social reforms and uplifting movements of every kind. Moreover, some of them were dissatis fied with their treatment by the Conference, as were the negroes 'She spoke at length again the following year before the Fifteenth Con ference. See Proceedings, p. 222. EARLY EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMEN 197 of Nashville, who were plainly told in advance of the gathering that their presence at the hearings were not wanted. The two white women who appeared on the main programme were there to relate experiences, not to advance theories or put forth opinions. Thus Mrs. Cora Wflson Stewart told a touching story of the "Moonlight Schools of Rowan County, Kentucky," and Miss Susie V. Powell of Mississippi on Friday related the story of the work for school improvement in her state. But this did not satisfy all the women workers in the cause, who are beginning to comment on the fact that there is not a single woman on the Southern Educational or General Educational Boards. It was pointed out by them that these organizations, admirably officered and manned as they are, and having the Rockefeller gifts behind them, are confronting a danger which is not negligible by reason of the celebrity and abflity, and often farsighted vision with which they dispatch their work.' But the brflliant work she had done in the State Federa tion had been knovwi beyond the boundaries of the state. It was recognized that she was prepared for a larger field and could take her part on a larger stage. She was one of the most distinguished of the speakers at the meeting of the General Federation of Women's Clubs in Boston in June, 1908, where she reported on the Kentucky work,^ and in the autumn of 19 10 she was elected to the Executive Board of that organization and served on the council committee and as board member of its education department. She did not, however, stand for re-election at the end of her first term. She attended the meeting in 191 2 at San Francisco, where she presented a brief report from the councfl^ of which she had been a member, and Mrs. Philip N. Moore, who had been since 1908 president of the Federation, v^Tites of her service in the following words: Mrs. Desha Breckinridge was an earnest member of the General Federation Board from 1910 to 1912. She represented not only 'New York Evening Post, April 7, 1911. ' See her report to the Ninth Biennial Convention. 3 Official Proceedings, General Federation oj Women's Clubs, p. 40. 198 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE the charming courtesy of the South, but the helpful strength of the Northern Climes. Such combination is rare, and every member of the Board appreciated her presence. We realize what a loss has come not alone to her state, of which she was so proud, but to the entire country, to which she gave such loyal devotion. But her mind was turning more and more to the necessity of acquiring the instrument for direct influence upon pub lic affairs, and, from 191 2 on, while she spoke before many groups, she was impatient for the opportunity to work directly, and perhaps chiefly, for the vote as an instrument in the accomplishment of the social ends that were ever before her eyes. Her activities in the Civic League, the Charities, the tuberculosis and Federation work had not exhausted her efforts. She had for several years identified herself vdth the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. She had pushed the measures with which that Association was speciaUy identified — ^non-support and abandonment, coguardian- ship, the membership of women on boards of management of correctional and educational institutions, etc. In 1911 she was an honored speaker before the National American Woman's Rights Association at its LouisviUe meeting on "The Prospect for Woman's Suffrage in the South," and in the autumn of 191 2 she accepted for the term of three years the presidency of the state association. To the years of work that lay between her election in 191 2 and the briUi ant and unique completion of that work in securing the ratification of the federal amendment by the Kentucky legislature on the first day of the session of 1920, as no ratification has ever been secured before, and in the casting of her vote in the autumn of 1920, the next chapter will be devoted. CHAPTER X VOTES FOR WOMEN True to a Vision— steadfast to a Dream. ^Stephen Phillips. The Kentucky Equal Rights Association had been organized in November, 1888. At that time the status of women in Kentucky under the common law had not been altered. For the married woman the law of cover ture stiU prevafled. She could make no wil\, enter into no contract, own no personal property. If she worked for wages, they belonged to her husband, who had also the right to manage such real property as she might own. The father was sole guardian of the children; the mother, as Blackstone remarked, being "entitled to reverence and respect." For women outside marriage, the "age of consent" was twelve, which was also the age of lawful marriage for girls. The microscopic right to school suf frage granted in 1838 to vsidows with chfldren of school age has already been referred to. Otherwise in the field of pohtics they enjoyed only the right to petition. By 191 2 that situation had been greatly altered, and much legis lation had been obtained. A married woman had been given the right to make a vdU (1894) ; a property rights law had been passed (1894) ; the wife's claim to her own earnings had been recognized (1900) ; the presence of women on the Board of Directors of the Houses of Reform for Juvenile Offenders (1896) and the appointment of women physicians for women's wards in the hospitals for the insane (1898), had been made mandatory; the age of consent had been raised from 199 200 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE twelve to sixteen years ; the coguardianship law, recogniz ing the mother's claim to her child, had been passed (1910) ; and an act limiting the work of women in industry to ten hours a day or sixty hours a week became law in 1912. The struggle for school suffrage has been reviewed. During the years from 1902 on, the effort to secure the presidential suffrage had met with no encouragement, though bifls were introduced at various sessions of the legislature as part of an educational program. Madge had been a member of the organization for many years and had addressed the annual meeting in 191 1, teUing of the Federation work and of the plans for the coming legis lative session.' Prior to the meeting in 1912, the Associa tion had had but one president. Miss Laura Clay, who vdth her sister, Mrs. Mary Clay Bennett, had been largely instrumental in organizing the Association, had given generously to its support, and identified her life vdth the cause. The term of office during the earlier history of the society had been a two-year term, and Miss Clay had been constantly re-elected. In 1910, however, the constitution had been amended, making the term a three-year term and rendering the person holding office ineligible for the succeeding term. Madge was elected, then, in 191 2, and served untfl the end of 191 5, when Mrs. T. Jefferson Smith, a niece of Miss Clay and daughter of Mrs. Bennett, was elected. She served for one year only, however, when she resigned to take office on the board of the national associa tion, and Mrs. John G. South^ served until the annual • Minutes, Twenty-secorid A nnual Convention, Kentucky Equal Rights Association. ' The daughter of Hon. W. O. Bradley, for many years United States Senator from Kentucky and governor from 1896 to rgoo — the first governor to appoint women on state boards. M.VDCE [X l')1,? .vr .\SHI,.\X1), I>1..\XX1X(; SrfFR.\C,K WORK VOTES FOR WOMEN 201 meeting of 191 8, which was not held untfl the spring of 1919. At that meeting Madge was elected for another term, covering the years 1919, 1920, and 1921.' At the convention of 191 5, when her first term as presi dent had expired and when it had been determined to push at the 1916 legislature the effort to secure the submission of an amendment to the constitution of Kentucky, a new office, that of campaign chairman, was created; and she was elected to that office, which she held until the autumn of 1916, when she was compeUed by fll health to resign. In December, 1913, at the annual convention of the National American Suffrage Association held at Washing ton, she was elected second vice-president of that organi zation and again elected at the Nashvifle convention in 1914. Early in 1915, however, she resigned from this board. There are eight years then to be accounted for. Of these, during five — 1913, 1914, 1915, 1919, 1920 — she was the official head of the Kentucky association. During one, 1916, she was campaign chairman. During one and part of another, 1914-15, she was both head of the Ken tucky association and second vice-president of the national association. The review of these years should cover her work in organizing the state and pushing the amendment to the state constitution, her contribution to similar work in other states, her advocacy of the federal amendment, and the culmination of the two in the ratification of the federal amendment by the Kentucky legislature on the opening day of its session in 1920. ' At the thirtieth annual meeting, held in Januar}', 1920, on the days just before and after the ratification of the federal amendment by the Kentucky legislature, it was voted that as soon as the ratification of the federal amend ment was complete or presidential suffrage passed, the Kentucky Equal Rights Association should transmute itself into a Kentucky League of Women Voters, and this organization was completed in December, r92o. 202 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE The first two years, 1913 and 1914, were devoted largely to extending the organization throughout the state, to attempting to reach all possible groups through which interest might be spread and to forming county leagues. By the end of 1913 the number of members had increased from 1,779 to 4,500; and where there had been 11 county leagues, there were organizations in 20 counties and the beginnings of organization, either mem bers or a chairman, in 45 other counties. During 19 14 these numbers increased from 4,500 to 10,500 individual members and to 64 county leagues fuUy pledged to the cause, and some interest aroused in 119 out of the 120 Kentucky counties. This represented an enormous volume of organization work. In 1913, for instance, suffrage material was furnished by a plate page on suffrage to one hundred papers in the state; a parade was had in Louis ville at the time of the Perry centennial celebration ; tents were opened at the fairs in LouisviUe, in Lexington, in • Mason County, and in McCracken County; ten-dollar prizes were offered for essays by high-school students; addresses were made before any audiences that would listen, such as the teachers, the state press associations, state farmers' institutes, the women's clubs. The school suffrage law, passed in 19 12, gave a basis for a new kind of appeal for women to use such power as they had obtained. In these appeals the limitations of that power were pointed out and further effort to secure larger power was urged. Madge said that the Association was at that time in the "pink tea" stage of organization. It had passed the old cruel stage of bitter protest, ridicule, ostracism, and niartyrdom, and it was now possible to bring it on to the VOTES FOR WOMEN 203 platform of \'igorous campaigning. It was also possible to make use of certain other liberal agencies. In 19 13 the People's Forum, a men's organization in Louisville for cultural purposes, included Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in its list of lecturers, and the suffrage association now took its place with groups offering the most briUiant and popular speakers. The beautiful and charming Ethel Snowden, from England, and the brilliant young Max Eastman, poet and radical, were imported. Charlotte Perkins Oilman, in whose poems about children Madge dehghted, was among the lecturers also brought to Louisville and Lexington. The volume of work was very great and the quality very rare. Madge became, immediately after her election, the official representative, the attorney, as it were, for the "party defendant," leaping swiftly to meet the attacks of- pretended argument or of ridicule that were already becoming somewhat out of date and yet survived in the columns of those newspapers representing the ancien regime. She beUeved in aggressive warfare. She was, however, always an honorable combatant. Some journals were, of course, beyond argument or reason. The history of the suffrage movement, like the history of every move ment on the part of an unfree group to obtain their free dom, is fuU of fllustrations of the fact that combatants who are brave and honorable according to the code of their group often abandon the principles of courage and of honor when dealing with persons who are in their estimation of an inferior status. Encounters with such journals were impossible for one to whom fair play was essential. The Louisville Evening Post seemed, however, in a way, worth struggling with. On January 21,1913, the Evening Post devoted considerable space to an argument 204 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE attempting to refute the claims of the women that exclu sion from political power was a factor in the difference notoriously characteristic of women's wages as compared with men's wages. On the twenty-seventh the Post pub lished a lengthy communication from her with its own reply. And then an enemy appeared within her own house hold! One of the features of the Herald is a column of "Paragraphs" — ^humorous and serious comments on the issues of the day from the pen of Mr. Enoch Grehan, pro fessor of journahsm at the University of Kentucky. He, too, from time to time took his fling at the women's de mands. She made him the occasion for an elaborate set ting forth of the issue as it then stood, with the English movement in the throes of the suffragette disorders and the American groups gradually consolidating their organi zation on a truly nation-wide scope. The visit of Mrs. Snowden to LouisviUe and Lexing ton — she spoke in Lexington April 29, 1913 — was made an occasion at which the men of liberal views and pro fessional prestige were given the opportunity of declaring their sympathy vdth a cause which was not only a just cause but becoming highly respectable and not too unfash ionable. Hon. John R. Allen, one of the two or three most distinguished members of the Lexington bar, in introducing Mrs. Snowden, related the women's struggle to the American Revolution and gave to the leaders of the group almost the dignity of the Daughters of the Revolu tion. In early May Madge made a tour of several Virginia cities, speaking in Richmond, Staunton, and L}'nchburg, dealing especially with the need in southern states of a revi sion of the laws out of which grows the so-called" unwritten HENRY CLAY, ,\GED 43 Portrait by Matthew Harris Jouett VOTES FOR WOMEN 205 law." Like many women of the South, she resented the archaic attitude toward the position of women in the family group underlying the whole idea of the "unwritten law." The violation of a husband's claim to exclusive control and enjoyment of his wife's person led to a right on the part of the husband to avenge the wrong. The right was described in terms of protection and affection and chivalric intent that concealed the real relation of the woman to the situation. It was a complicated problem difficult to set forth and one she desired to bring home to the men and women of the South. It was in connection vnth this problem particularly that she developed a very incisive though not repelling sarcasm. The newspaper comments on her appearance in various southern com munities dwell perhaps especially on this feature of her presentation. Her voice, clear, penetrating, but appeal ing, her relation to Henry Clay, her simple and dignified bearing, her slender person, these always strike the hearer — and then her sarcasm. "A good-natured sarcasm and a clever satire," comments the Richmond Virginian on May 4, after an address in the John Marshall High School of that city; " she knows what she is talking about, " said the Staunton News of May 11; "she has the rarest sense of humor," comments the Lynchburg Daily Advance of May 14. It is an interesting incident of this Virginia trip that her brother, Judge Henry C. McDowell, of the Fed eral Circuit Bench, living in Lynchburg, could not be per suaded to introduce her at the Lynchburg meeting. She took great dehght in revealing the fact in her opening remarks. At the December, 1913, meeting of the national associa tion she became second vice-president, and the beginning 2o6 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE of the year 1914 saw the legislative campaign on for the submission of an amendment to the Kentucky constitu tion. She described the effort in her annual report as f oUows : A bill drawn by Mr. R. A. McDowell, of Louisville, was presented in the last Legislature, introduced in the Senate by the Honorable J. H. Durham, of Franklin, and in the House by Honorable J. G. Miller, of Paducah. Two amendments to the State Constitution previously voted by the people and not properly advertised by the Secretary of State were repassed and only two can be passed by any one Legislature. But the gains were made: A special committee on woman suffrage was appointed in the House (a thing worked for but not yet obtained in the Lower House of Congress) to which the bill was referred. Both this com mittee and the Senate committee reported the bill out and reported it favorably — a thing that has never happened before in Kentucky. Of the thirteen members of these two committees, but two members voted against a favorable report and one voted to report only without favorable expression. Hearings on suffrage were granted by the House of one and one-half hours; by the Senate of one hour. The members of both Houses were invited to attend each of these hearings and most of them did attend. Headquarters were main tained at the Capitol Hotel throughout the legislative session, with one or more of our workers always in attendance.' On January 14, 1914, she and Miss Clay were given the opportunity of addressing the entire legislature in joint session. The privilege had never before been ex tended to women in Kentucky, and the occasion was a brifliant social occasion as well as a political innovation. The socially eligible came from many parts of the state, and the resulting publicity for the cause throughout the state was very great, for the happenings at the capital are of course reported to the local papers everywhere. 'Report oj the Twenty-fijth Annual Convention (1914), p. n. VOTES FOR WOMEN 207 By the end of 191 4 the organization had been spread over the state. She was now an officer of the national association, and from the Congressional Committee of the national organization, of which Mrs. Medill McCormick was at the time chairman, she obtained the assistance of an organizer for a part of a year. The state association's treasury paid five other organizers who were out for much shorter periods. It proved possible to present the cause at teachers' institutes in ninety-four counties and at fifty citizens' meetings. A great quantity of literature was distributed : over ten thousand leaflets in connection with school-suffrage agitation were sent out; four-month sub scriptions to the Women's Journal were supplied to all mem bers of the legislature, as well as to forty-three newspaper editors who promised to clip and to publish, and to fifty- seven chairmen of local leagues; sample literature was presented to every local league. The Chautauqua was brought into service. Madge made fourteen suffrage addresses in the state besides making thirty-two outside the state. The end of March brought a meeting of the national board in New York. May brought the trip to Memphis for the National Conference of Social Work, at which the addresses on the work of Lincoln School and on the social hygiene problem already quoted were delivered. Early June meant a "whirlwind campaign" of a week or more in southwestern Kentucky. On the sixth of June, Cincinnati; on the seventh, LouisviUe; the eighth, Owensboro; the ninth, Henderson; then Hopkinsville. EUiston, Glasgow, and Bowling Green; back to Lexington for an address; then to Chicago for the national board on the twelfth and an address at the banquet held at that time. Saturday, June 27, she was one of the national 2o8 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE officers to present a petition to Congress. On August 25, two addresses at Columbus, Ohio, as Ohio was a "cam paign state," September 5-13, a week in Missouri — St. Louis, Joplin and Carthage, Cape Girardeau, West Plains — and a week in Nebraska, since Missouri and Nebraska were also "campaign states" that year. On this trip she spoke frequently in the open air at street meetings and to circus crowds. On October 2 2 in the afternoon she debated vnth Miss Price, the anti-suffrage representative, before the Jewish Council of Women in Cincinnati, and in the evening spoke at a suffrage meeting. The annual meeting of the state association on November 5-7 wound up a year that would have seemed a strenuous year had suffrage been her only interest. To realize what effort was put forth, one may recall that she was at this time serving on the State Tuber culosis Commission, trying to get a Blue Grass sana torium, and developing the work of Lincoln School. During these two years, 1913 and 1914, an extensive organization had been developed. Suffrage was thor oughly respectable and on the whole not unfashionable. In 191 5, however, it was realized that the organization was neither very thorough nor very radical, and the necessity of deepening and strengthening the work was clearly recognized. But the world-war was on; and, while the United States did not go in for two years more, it was more difficult than before to get money and to arouse interest in the cause. During this year, however, all the old channels of publicity were still utilized, and new ones were sought. The teachers' institutes, the editors of the state, and the women's clubs were still stimulated. Every minister in the state, "Roman CathoUc, Jewish, VOTES FOR WOMEN 209 LTnitarian, and every one representing any Protestant denomination," received a letter asking that he use his moral influence and preach at least one sermon for the cause. The plea was based on the possible effect of the woman's vote on law enforcement and on moral standards in public life. The year 1 914-15 witnessed too the same great volume of traveling and speaking as the preceding years. December saw her starting on a tour of Texas — Houston, Galveston, Austin, Dallas — after an address on the way, December 2, in New Orleans; then crossing back by way of Tuscaloosa, Florida, to Alabama — Montgomery, Birm ingham — and into Georgia — Savannah and Augusta — -and back for Christmas at home, for "even a suffragist may be at home sometimes," she wrote. She greatly longed to further the cause in the South, and after a winter in which there were two trips to New York and a three weeks' vacation with her husband in Bermuda, she was again for two weeks at the problem of the southern community, in South Carolina and then in North Carolina. The following extract from a letter written afterward, April 12, 191 5, to Miss Frost, of Charleston, wiU give some idea of the character of these journeys on which she went so fre quently, so gaily, and with such devotion : There wasn't much rest for the wicked either on the South Caro hna or my North Carolina tour. I decided to put in the Friday and Saturday nights after aU, but though Mrs. Lynch told me definitely on Tuesday I was to go to Spartansburg Saturday, it turned out that my first date was Monday, being 10 : 30, when I spoke to the girls at Coker CoUege. I took a train, however, that afternoon for Char lotte, N.C., that the station man told me got in at 11:00, but I found when I got on the train was not due till 12:10 and which actually arrived at 1:00. I got in a good rest Sunday morning 2IO MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE however, before I got in touch with Federation and Lexington friends who kept me busy thereafter. I left Charlotte at six o'clock Tuesday, but due to a wreck ahead that we had to wait on and walk around, I missed my connection for the next one night stand and didn't get there until 9 : 30 at night. When I telephoned them, however, that I couldn't get there, they asked me to speak when I did arrive and I said I would if there was any audience, and we actually began the meeting at a quarter of ten. Mrs. Henderson was with me for the last two or three days, which made it very nice, though six o'clock trains were rather hard on her. We were scheduled for a mid-day meeting at Raleigh^ that was good Friday, and I was to speak that night at Chapel Hill. The Raleigh newspaper came out with an article announcing that they would meet me at the train with a brass band and parade through the streets. It was an April Fool joke, but it made the suffragists tear their hair. They are trying to get suffrage there in the most lady-hke manner, without having anybody find out they want it. They just had me in the middle of the day like a Lenten Service. As I spoke under the portrait of my great-grandfather, and as he had dedicated the capitol in the forties, that lent a little respectability to me and suffrage. I think it also comforted them when the Bishop of North Caro lina called, because he is one of my mother's Hart relatives — I found them all through that part of North CaroUna. I took pains to tell him that the Bishop of South CaroUna and his wife had both come to the meeting and that they were both suffragists. The first week in June found her in Arkansas, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first she was in West Virginia, and then the summer's efforts again at Chautauquas and teachers' institutes. The State Republican Convention was held in July in Lexington, and suffrage planks had to be sought and work developed toward the legislative campaign of the coming winter. She was not always patient. Sometimes she was tempted to express exasperation. An incidental corre- VOTES FOR WOMEN 211 spondence with the governor — Governor McCreary — shows a note of such exasperation as well as it illustrates the swiftness with which she takes advantage of every opening to advance or to urge her cause : The morning paper states that you have appointed a com mittee to interest the women of this State in the program of "Pre paredness" outUned by President Wilson. The committee named consists of some eighty-five Kentucky women. Does it strike you as consistent that you should expect the women of Kentucky to have any interest in or any concern for the preparedness of their country, while you deny them a voice in its government ? If there are any functions of government that are purely mascuhne they must surely be those of offense and defense. The most ancient and honorable argument of the antis is that women can not fight and therefore should not vote. And surely no man who feels that women should have no voice in deciding whether war is to be made or not, can feel that any part of the burden of war or the preparedness therefor should be thrown upon women — not even the burden of forming public opinion to that end. What have women to do with public opinion anyhow ? We suffragists of course know that it is impossible for men, however much they would, to prevent the burden of war from faUing upon women, or the burden of preparedness from falling on the whole people in taxation, women as well as men. We know that every State and every country in time of war as in time of peace must and should have the help of its women. But for men who deny women the vote, even to take one eye out of the sand on this question is dangerous. Do you remember that the last Legislature, a Democratic Legislature, defeated the bill for. submission of woman suffrage to the voters ? And that the same Legislature failed to appropriate for a Kentucky building at the Panama Exposition ? Thereafter you appointed a commission to try to raise the funds for such a building by private subscription, and this commission made a special and wide-spread appeal to the women of the State to come to the rescue and see that the dignity of Kentucky was upheld. 212 ¦ MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE You appointed on the commission men who had opposed the woman suffrage bill in the Legislature, and one man, in particular, whom the women all remembered not only for the fact that he had opposed full suffrage when offered and school suffrage for women through three previous sessions, but especially for the inexcusable manner in which he had opposed these measures. The women did not respond to the appeal for funds. Kentucky went without a building at the Exposition. She was one of a few States unrepresented and unadvertised, as I have heard Kentucky visitors relate with mortification. Kentucky women are not 'idiots — even though they are closely related to Kentucky men. You can't ignore them and treat them as if they were kindergarten children, and when work is needed expect them to do a man's share — or a woman's, as you please to state it; it has amounted to about the same thing since the world began, only sometimes the woman's share has been and still is the heavier. Wouldn't it be better for the Democrats of Kentucky to wake up to the fact that women are one-half the people of Kentucky, that neither Kentucky nor the Nation can get along without our help, and hereafter to ask it on a self-respecting basis? To take the position of the anti-suffragist that women do not need to protect themselves because men perfectly protect them, and then at the first rumor of war to call on them to do their part in the plans for defense, is not really self-respecting. Can't you assure me that you and the Democrats whom you represent will give proof at the next Legislature that you are no longer in so inconsistent a position ? '¦ In 1915, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were "campaign states," that is, were sub mitting the question to the voters of the state, and the Kentucky association voted to contribute $150 to the work in those states. She had spoken in eight Kentucky towns, had given a week each to Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and had planned to devote a considerable period to the campaigns especially in Massachusetts and New 'Louisville Herald, November 14, 1915. M.VDGE, IX CHICAGO, JUXE, 1914 VOTES FOR WOMEN 213 Jersey. In September, however, illness again fell upon her, and she had to change her plans and send substitutes into those states. The annual meeting of 191 5 was a brilliant meeting. Mme Schwimmer came again — it was before the Ford Peace Ship — and Mrs. Snowden, too. The mayor, J. E. Cassidy, welcomed the gathering. Sessions were held in the "Opera House" and in the "Bafl Room" of the Phoenix Hotel, and plans were laid for the legislative campaign that was later undertaken. But she was not present. Having made the plans, she had to remain away in the search for renewed strength. It will be recaUed that in her annual report in 1914 she pleaded guilty to a divided interest, in that the national organization, the board meetings, and speeches outside the state had taken time that otherwise might have gone into state work. That national relationship had, of course, meant not only attending meetings but also taking a position with reference to various issues. In the work of the national association circumstances had developed leading to the withdrawal of an aggressively mihtant group led by Miss Alice Paul, who thought it well to transfer to the United States campaign the militant methods pursued in England by Mrs. Pankhurst and her followers. Madge had always been a warm admirer of Mrs. Pankhurst, who had spoken in Kentucky on her invitation, but had always taken the position that the conduct of the men of the United States had not been such as to render necessary a resort to the methods of the English militants. She hoped never to have to resort to those methods. There is, however, no reason to think that she would not have done so had she thought the 214 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE denial of the women's claim sufficiently persistent and aggravated to leave to the women no other means of a sufficiently hopeful character. Moreover, she cared a great deal for having groups free to try each its own method ; she could not bear a house divided against itself, and so, while on the board, she did all in her power to prevent the break between the two groups. There were other questions of policy that divided the two groups besides the question of so-called "mili tant tactics." The "National" beheved in the federal amendment, but believed in pushing the work both in Washington for the federal amendment and in the states for amendments to the various state constitutions. There were, later, unexpected divisions in the National as to whether any other than the States' Rights method could be used, and there were many grades of opinion as to the relative importance of work at Washington and in the states. The "Union," organized by Miss Paul, devoted itself at first pretty exclusively to the work in Washington and would ask only for the so-called Anthony amendment. To Madge, the relation of work in the states to work at the national Capitol was a question of ways and means. She never forgot that both congressmen and legislators had constituents and that federal amendments became effective only after ratification by the requisite number of legislatures. She was not sure that only through the federal amendment would all the women of the United States become politically free, but she was perfectly willing to obtain the vote by that method — to appear before con gressional committees as she appeared, for example, on December 3, 1913, before the House of Representatives VOTES FOR WOMEN 215 Committee on Rules' asking that a special committee be created on woman's suffrage, or to go with delegations to plead vnth President Wflson in the days before he saw the light. On Aprfl 29, 1914, for example, she wrote to Miss Kate Gordon, of New Orleans, that she could not become a mem ber of any group seeking suffrage "only by the States' Rights method." "I believe firmly," she wrote, "in pressing Southern Democrats both at home and at Wash ington. I stfll consider that the Washington end is more for purposes of agitation than with the hope of results; but I beheve that if some of us press hard enough at Washington, there is much more hope of results at home. " In 191 9, when the federal amendment had finally been passed and the issue had been raised again by Miss Clay's vnthdrawing from the Fayette Equal Rights Asso ciation because that organization indorsed the effort for ratification, she held a public debate with Miss Clay, and later, in preparation for the ratification, wrote : Speedy ratification of the Federal amendment for Woman Suffrage by the Kentucky Legislature is imminent. The States' Rights question has been raised in Kentucky. A very little reflec tion wiU show that- the amendment of the Federal Constitution by three-fourths of the states violates no right of any state. In fact, the method of amendment is a distinct acknowledgment of the principle of States' Rights, since the amendment is referred for ratification to the representatives of the states, the legis latures. Senator Pollock of South Carolina, speaking in the Senate on the suffrage ratification resolution, quoted Senator John C. Cal houn of South Carohna, possibly the greatest exponent of the doctrine of States' Rights in America, to the effect that the method ' .Si.Yty-third Congress, Second Session, H. R. Doc. 754, p. r9. 2i6 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE prescribed for amending the Federal Constitution by ratifications of three-fourths of the states was absolutely consistent with the sovereignty of the states. John Madison, who framed the article on amendment of the Constitution, said that "such coalition of three-fourths of the states would be impossible to take place on any measure that was not for the general good. " The framers of our Constitution had lived through a most difficult period under the Articles of Confederation, when unanimous consent of the thirteen colonies was necessary even to validate tax measures of the general government. Out of their bitter experience they concluded that the Constitution itseU should become effective when accepted by nine of the thirteen colonies — less than three- fourths. Their great concern was to get something practicable and workable, and this is shown in the article on amendment. As Senator Pollock of South Carolina also pointed out in the United States Senate, with so considerable a body of persons desir ing this Federal amendment, it would have been a violation of the States Rights principle not to allow the states to pass upon it. The so-called "crime of the Fourteenth Amendment" con sisted in forcing ratification by blood and iron through the carpet bag legislatures of unwilling southern states. The states are not only wilhngly but gladly ratifying the present amendment. Since it passed the United States Senate in June, already twenty-two states have ratified it, fourteen of them at sessions of their legisla tures called for the purpose. Kentucky men have had 127 years in which to grant suffrage by the States' Rights method. The man who at the present moment talks of deferring suffrage till it may be given by the States' Rights route will usually be found to be an anti-suffragist at heart, who instinctively catches at any straw that promises further delay of the inevitable. It is contended that a state that votes against ratification of the Federal amendment has its right as a state violated if the amend ment is ratified in spite of its vote. Its right as a state is no more violated than is that of an individual who votes for a Republican president when the result of the election shows a Democratic president elected. When an amendment to the Constitution is DESIIA BRECKLXRIDGE, 1920 VOTES FOR WOMEN 217 legally ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, that amendment becomes, as much as any original section of the Constitution, the "supreme law of the land." The enforcing clause to which objection has been made of the Nineteenth Amendment is not only not dangerous, it is entirely innocuous and really superfluous, since the second article of the Constitution itself confers upon the Congress all the powers which this clause can confer. At present it is impossible for a state desiring to do so to fully protect its women in their right of citizenship. A woman from the State of Montana, for instance, albeit she had sat as a repre sentative in the Congress of the United States, if today she should remove her residence to the State of Kentucky, would lose her voting rights. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment a citizen of the United States may not on account of sex be deprived of her citizenship even by the most backward state of the Union.' The question of "states' rights" in the decade 1910-20, as in 1 86 1, was reaUy a question of the negro, and on this subject she was clear", in relation to the baUot, as she had been in the matter of school opportunities in Irishtown. She wrote^ in reply to an inquiry as to how the negro women had used their school suffrage : I think it is true that politics have effectually been taken out of our colored schools. Yes, it is true that we work with the colored women Many of the colored women are very much interested in the welfare of the public schools and are quite eager to use their privilege. I have foUowed this pohcy with regard to them. I didn't call on them for help and made no effort to bring them in while we were fighting for school suffrage, in fact I discouraged such efforts, because I believed one war was enough at a time. I knew ' Lexington Herald, January 4, r92o. ' To Mrs. John D. Hammond, of Augusta, Georgia, May 28, 1915. 2i8 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE the colored people would complicate things and also if we got the ballot we would get it for them as well as for ourselves. As soon as we had gotten it in any one town, we at once took them in on the game and are attempting to work with them and- to lead them wisely as far as we are able. My idea is to pursue the same policy with regard to the fuU suffrage. Personally, I have respect for colored women and beUeve that they can be made excellent citizens. We probably shall not put an educational qualification in our bill asking the full suffrage. I believe that the best way to get the educational qualification is by securing in all elections a ballot without party emblem, so that the voter must be able to read and write in order to stamp opposite the name of the candidate he wishes to vote for. When you put in people able to read and write it is apt to furnish a tool which a dishonest election officer may use corruptly. A second question of policy dividing the Union from the National, was the subject of adopting not only Mrs. Pankhurst's militant tactics in the form of pickets, going to jafl, etc., but likevnse, Mrs. Pankhurst's practice of holding the party responsible for the vote of the individ ual member of Congress. On this she was questioned by her friend, an old-time supporter of the cause of suffrage, Hon. Jouett Shouse, later assistant secretary of the treasury, then in the Kansas Senate. The foUowing cor respondence shows her complete agreement vnth the national association on this issue. He vnote to her Sep tember 20, 1914: A few days ago a dispatch appeared in the Kansas City papers stating that a committee representing the National Equal Suffrage Association would come to Kansas immediately and open head quarters at Topeka, and the object of the coming of this com mittee, as outlined by the newspapers, was to oppose the election of Democrats in Kansas to Congress on account of the attitude VOTES FOR WQMEN 219 of certain members of the Democratic party in opposing the proposed National Suffrage Amendment. When I saw this in the papers I felt sure that there was some mistake. I do not question the right of this committee to oppose the election of any candidate for Congress who will not pledge himself to support the National Suffrage Amendment: I do question the right and propriety of the committee to oppose all Democrats who may be candidates regardless of their position on the suffrage question merely because some Democrats in Congress are fighting the measure pending there. I want the facts and I shaU be glad if you would investigate and would let me know what the real object of the committee is. Those who have at heart the welfare and advancement of the cause of equal suffrage should not overlook the fact that the Suffrage Amendment was adopted in Kansas in an overwhelming Democratic year, the first year that a Democratic majority was ever elected in both branches of the Kansas legislature; nor should it be forgotten that certain men, now candidates, helped pubhcly to make the fight for suffrage at that time. Of course I realize that you know my position on the question. You know I spoke for suffrage two years ago when it was not nearly so popular as it is now. I do not fear for myself with reference to the coming of this committee with its purported object, as set forth by the newspapers; I do fear for the cause of suffrage if any general boycott is attempted against a party, many of whose members have been and are active supporters of the suffrage cause. In the hope that through you I may learn the truth of this matter She wrote in reply : In reply to your letter of September 20th, asking information as to a dispatch in the Kansas City papers stating that a committee of the National Equal Suffrage Association would open head quarters at Topeka and oppose the election of Democrats in Kansas to Congress, the dispatch is undoubtedly wrong as to its being a committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association to which most of us suffragists belong. The policy of the N.W.S.A. 2 20 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE is, as it always has been, non-partisan. On the other hand, the pohcy of the Congressional Union, headed by Miss Alice Paul, is to hold the party in power responsible for the failure to pass suffrage legislation and to attack the representatives of that party in the equal suffrage states. I presume, therefore, that if such a committee is being sent to Topeka it is undoubtedly sent by the Congressional Union. It is certainly not sent by our Con gressional Committee of the N.W.S.A. Miss Paul was at one time chairman of the Congressional Committee of the N.W.S.A., but the Board, of which I becaihe a member last December, felt it very necessary very soon after to sever the connection. We were very sorry for a split in the ranks and did everything we could to bring Miss Paul and her followers to a realization of the fact that the National Board could not assume responsibility for the things which it did not approve and that if she expected to be a committee of the N.W.S.A. she must submit policies to our supervision. The upshot of the whole thing was that Miss Paul, who is an insurgent of the mihtant type, split off from the national organization and now heads another society called the Congressional Union, with headquarters at Washington. We have a Congressional Committee of which Mrs. Medill McCormick is chairman and of which I am one of the members. It distinctly does not believe in the policy of defeating Democrats, regardless of suffrage proclivities or other qualities, believes that in fact to be a bad mistake. The diffi culty in the situation is that it is practically impossible for the public to become aware of the facts of the split and the difference in the policy of the two organizations. We have even refused to take the Congressional Union into the National Woman Suffrage Association or Federation of Suffrage Clubs, because we consider its policy antagonistic to that of the N.W.S.A. ¦ A third issue was with reference to a device suggested by Mrs. Medill McCormick and adopted by the National with reference to proposing another amendment as a sub stitute for the Anthony amendment when the record of VOTES FOR WOMEN 221 the members of Congress showed that, for the time, urging the Anthony amendment was a futile waste of strength for other than propaganda purposes. It is not possible, yet, and will not be possible until at a later date the records of the various organizations and the correspondence incident to these decisions are made pubhc, to give a complete account of these years of struggle. Such a statement of facts as is set forth here is recognized as a partial statement; but so far as it is possible, the statement represents her attempt at dis passionate and honest effort so to campaign for suffrage as both to forward the cause politicaUy and to secure the largest amount of political and civic education. The amendment proposed by the Congressional Committee drafted by Senator Shafroth, or, at least introduced by him, proposed that the states be compeUed to submit to the voters the question of the enfranchisement of women on petition of 5 per cent of its voters. It was probably never thought of as other than a device for fiUing in the gap from the point of view of congres sional activity until the effect of the various state cam paigns could make itself felt on the views of Congress. She was therefore inclined to go vnth Mrs. McCormick's Congressional Committee in its work for the Shafroth amendment — though she was never convinced either of its intrinsic value nor of the wisdom of appearing to lobby actively for the content of the amendment. But the situation was simplified for her at the annual meeting of the national association which occurred at Nashvflle just after the state annual meeting in 1914, because she came at this time to the conclusion that she could not continue to serve on the board of the national 22 2 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE association. She was re-elected at that meeting, and her resignation from the board was made public only the following May and then from the national headquarters and in such a manner as to cause the organization no embarrassment, and for the future she did her work as from the state organization. Her relation to the State Federation of Women's Clubs remained meanwhfle very close. A part of the work in 191 5 was devoted to obtaining recognition in the plat forms of the various parties, and this task was undei;- taken chiefly by the Federation, the Kentucky Equal Rights Association assisting. The state Democratic Con vention refused to indorse, but the Repubhcan and the minor parties, the Progressive, Prohibition, and Socialists, all indorsed. This meant the Republican support in the 1 916 legislature. It will be remembered that while she could not be re-elected president of the Kentucky association, she was elected to the newly created office of campaign chairman in view of a prospective legislative effort. That effort to secure the legislative action necessary for the submission of an amendment to a vote of the people was not successful. She gives a full account of the struggle in her next report to the state association, which will be quoted below. But some material supplementary to her report must be given here, for it was a very brilliant effort, defeated only by the resort on the part of the state administration to most unworthy methods of combat. . After a favorable vote on the women's bill had been obtained in the Senate, the governor, fearing favorable action in the House, appealed for help to the Kentucky delegation in Washington, and that delega- VOTES FOR WOMEN 223 tion responded in a prompt and effective manner. On March 11, there appeared in the Louisville papers the following item: Frankfort, Ky., March 11, 1916 To the Louisville Times (Special) : Governor Stanley received the foUowing telegram this morning signed by Senator James and Congressman Can trill saying: "At a meeting in Senator James' office this afternoon, at which aU of the Kentucky Democratic members of the House but one were present, the opinion was expressed that it was not within the province of the members of Congress to offer advice to the Legislature, but each man present expressed himself as strongly opposed to the woman suffrage amendment and hoped that it would be defeated, in accordance with the action of the last Democratic State Convention. The one absent member of the House delegation could not be located in time for the conference." This statement by a senator and a member of the lower house of Congress was shown afterward to be false in several points. In the first place, not all the Democratic members in the Kentucky delegation were present at the meeting referred to, as those favoring the women's measure were not notified of it; in the second place, there had been no action by the Democratic State Convention on the sub ject. The sending of the telegram was the merest political trick, but it accomplished the purpose of the senders. This was brought out by correspondence between Madge and the members of the Kentucky delegation in which the editor of the Lexington Herald took an incisive part. Two of her letters will be quoted illustrating the tone of that correspondence.' ' See Report oj' tke Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting oj the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. 2 24 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE On March 12, she addressed the following letter to each of the members of the Kentucky Congressional Dele gation : My dear Sir: The Louisville Times of March nth contained the following item sent by its Frankfort correspondent: "Governor Stanley received the following telegram this morning signed by Senator James and Congressman Cantrill saying: 'At a meeting in Senator James' office this afternoon, at which all of the Kentucky Democratic members of the House but one were present, the opinion was expressed that it was not within the province of the members of Congress to offer advice to the Legislature, but each man present expressed himself as strongly opposed to the woman suffrage amendment and hoped that it would be defeated, in accordance with the action of the last Democratic State Convention. The one absent member of the House delegation could not be located in time for the conference.'" If the Democratic members of Congress from Kentucky felt it "not within their province" to offer advice to the Legislature of Kentucky on the woman suffrage amendment, may I inquire what the purpose was of the telegram to Governor Stanley, published presumably at his desire? Its purpose could hardly have been simply to give moral support to Governor Stanley, since he seems firm enough in his convictions on the subject not to need support. It was hardly intended to be a private telegram or the Governor would not have given it out for publication. The telegram states that the senders "hoped that the woman suffrage amendment would be defeated in accordance with the action of the last Democratic State Convention." As Senator James and Congressman Cantrill well know, no action whatever was taken by the last Democratic State Convention on the question of woman suffrage. The women of Kentucky agree with the gentlemen present in Senator James' office that it is not within their province to offer advice to the Legislature; they, therefore, resent the sending of this telegram to Frankfort just after the VOTES FOR WOMEN 225 woman suffrage amendment had passed the Senate by a vote of 26. to 8, and when it was about to be voted upon by the House. They further resent that the telegram so obviously meant for the consumption of the Democratic members of the House at Frank fort should be intentionally misleading as to the position on this subject of the last State Democratic Convention. It is the impression of the women of Kentucky that Senator James and Congressman CantriU were elected to represent their constituents at Washington, not to represent the liquor interests, as opposed to the women of Kentucky, at Frankfort. The Uquor interests have themselves during the present administration carried the war into Africa and the women of Kentucky are glad for the future that these interests will have to wage it in the open and not secretly and under cover. The women are pleased to meet them on the ground they have chosen. It is quite impossible for any reasonable person to suppose that the animus of this telegram was simply conviction against the mere submission of woman suffrage to the voters of Kentucky, a most honored and ancient Democratic method of setthng ques tions of pubhc importance. The leaders of the Democratic party from President Wilson and the four members of his cabinet, who last November voted for woman suffrage when it was sub mitted to the voters in their respective states, on down to the lesser lights, have publicly declared their profound conviction that the question of woman suffrage should be settled by the states in exactly the method asked for by the women of Kentucky and just refused by Democratic members of the Kentucky House who had previously voted to let the suffrage amendment bill come up, on Friday, voted to smother it according to the orders of Gov ernor Stanley and on the advice of Senator James and .Congress man CantriU, which it was not "within their province" to give. May I inquire. Sir, on behalf of the woman suffragists of Kentucky, and of the members of the Legislature who resent the advice which it was not within your province to give, if you were present at the meeting at Senator James' office, and, if the tele gram as sent represented your wishes and was sent with your full knowledge and desire ? The senders state that one member of 226 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE the Kentucky House delegation was not present at the meeting. It is fair to give each member the benefit of the doubt until .all members have been given an opportunity to make pubhc their position in the matter. I, therefore, respectfully request that you answer my inquiry as to whether you were present at that meeting and subscribed to the telegram sent. I shall be glad to give as great pubhcity as possible to your answer, which in view of the publicity given the telegram by Governor Stanley is undoubt edly due you, that the women of Kentucky whom I repre sent may hold you responsible only for that which you desire to sponsor. After a correspondence in which two things were made clear: first, the falsity of the original message, and, second, the inaccuracy and inadequacy with which other members of the delegation opposed to the measure thought of the problem and discussed it — for example, one objected to submitting the measure at the time of a presidential election (1916), when he should have known that the date of submission was the foUowing year (191 7), one thought the question should be decided by the votes of women, knowing, of course, that there was no constitutional way of securing such a vote — ^she addressed to each member of the delegation the foUowing letter: April 7, 1916 Dear Sir: In the telegram sent by Senator James and Congressman Cantrill to Governor Stanley after the Kentucky Senate had passed the bill to submit the question of woman suffrage to the voters of Kentucky by a vote of 26 to 8, and just before the vote was taken on this measure in the Lower House, it is stated that at a meeting in Senator James' office "at which all of the Kentucky Democratic members of the House but one were present" "each man present expressed himseU as strongly opposed to the woman suffrage amendment. " VOTES FOR WOMEN 227 In justice to the Kentucky Democratic members of the House at Washington, I addressed a letter to each one asking if he was present at the meeting and if he authorized the telegram to Gover nor Stanley. From the five repUes so far received it developed that the telegram was not correct in stating that "all of the Kentucky Democratic members of the House but one were present" at the meeting in Senator James' office, and four of those replying specificaUy state that they did not authorize the telegram, the fifth leaving that question unanswered. Since Congressmen Kincheloe, Rouse and Johnson have not yet replied to the questions put to them as to whether they were present and had authorized the telegram sent by Senator James and Congressman Cantrill, there is yet no evidence that any one of the nine Kentucky Demo cratic members of the House authorized the telegram or even knew that it was to be sent, except Congressman Cantrill, who joined with Senator James in sending it. The interference of Democratic Congressmen when the women of Kentucky were merely trying to ascertain the will of the men voters of Kentucky on the question of woman suffrage in the strictest states' rights method, a method advocated by President Wilson, the four members of his cabinet who voted for woman suffrage in their respective states last fall, and by every prominent member of the Democratic party who has spoken on the subject, was so astounding to the women of Kentucky that they properly withheld ' judgment until each Congressman had been given an opportunity to speak for himself as to his responsibility for the telegram. The failure of the Kentucky House, under the urging of Senator James, Congressman Cantrill and Governor Stanley, to allow the submission bill to be voted on at the last session of the Legislature does not, of course, settle the question. Such a bill wiU be again submitted at the next session and at every session until the question is allowed to go to the voters, or until a Federal amendment granting woman suffrage is before that Legislature for ratification. Kentucky women much prefer to get suffrage by the states' rights route — for the credit of Kentucky men, apart from all 228 MADELINE McDOWELL BRECKINRIDGE other considerations. It had not occurred to them that even those Kentucky Democratic representatives in Congress who were "constitutionally" opposed to woman suffrage by Federal amend ment, also desired to block the settlement of the question by the states' rights route, advocated by the leaders of the Democratic party, until the publication of the telegram to Governor Stanley. Though this telegram was not authorized by the Kentucky Democratic members of the House except Congressman CantriU, the failure on the part of some of those members to repudiate it makes doubtful their attitude as to the states' rights solution of the question. On behalf of the members of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, whom I represent, I desire, therefore, to give to these Kentucky Democratic members the opportunity to pubUcly declare themselves on a question which they themselves have raised. Will you kindly state whether or not you are in principle opposed to the settlement of the woman suffrage question by the states' rights method? WiU you kindly state further whether you will oppose or will advocate the bill presented at this session of the Legislature submitting the question to the voters of Ken tucky when it is again presented by the Kentucky Equal Rights Association at the next session? Though we fully agree that it was not within your province to advise the Legislature, we admit the claim made in defense by one of your members that as Kentuckians you have a right to speak to citizens of Kentucky on questions affecting your state. This question vitally affects 50 per cent of the adult citizens of Kentucky and we desire to offer you the fullest possible publicity for any statement of your views which you care to make. Very triily yours, M. McD. Breckinridge (Mrs. Desha Breckinridge) Campaign Chairman After the legislative campaign she took part in a con gressional conference held by Mrs. Catt in Louisville, VOTES FOR WOMEN 229 March 27-28, 1916. She delighted in Mrs. Catt's effec tiveness. "Mrs. Catt is splendid," she wrote of that conference, " I wish that we could have her for National President always." This was one of a series of con ferences held by Mrs. Catt with the officials of local associa tions with reference to the relation between the work in the states to secure amendments to state constitutions and the work at Washington. Madge presided at some of the sessions and spoke on the importance of state work as an incident in congressional success. She gave two lectures at the University of Indiana (June 26 and 27) and then went for three months to Sara-* nac. It is from Saranac she wrote resigning from the State Tuberculosis Commission, and many other letters went out from there, but the autumn work was devoted chiefly perhaps to the plans for the sanatorium, of which the cornerstone was laid November 9. She was too ill to be present at the annual meeting -of the state associa tion, and the winter was passed chiefly at Asheville in search of yet another recovery of health. CHAPTER XI THE END OF THE STRUGGLE And who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this? — Esther 4: 14 The years 191 7 and 1918 were chiefly devoted to local problems and to questions of a private nature. Her beloved mother died early in the year of 191 7, there was the Salvation Army fight in the courts, and the "drive" for the Tuberculosis sanatorium. She wanted that insti tution well started while her "Aunt Mag" was stiU alive. She spoke for the Liberty Loans and was greatly interested in the efforts at Lincoln School to meet certain recreational needs of the soldiers at Camp Stanley. There was no legislative campaign in 1918 as the national board asked the state association to refrain from a campaign that all efforts might be concentrated on a few states and on Washington. She spent much of the winter months dur ing both years at Asheville and during the summer she was at Saranac. She was discharged by the physician as again cured in September, 1918. During her absence at this time a very genuine trib ute was paid h'er by the Kentucky association.' That organization asked from the farmers of the Blue Grass the gift of one cup of wheat from every bushel sold. The proceeds went to several war funds, and with part of the money received a nurse known as the "Madeline McDowell ¦ President's report at the Twenty-ninth Annual Convention, Kentucky Equal Rights Association. 230 F.V,Mn,\' I'ARTY .\,SSI;MBLF1) .M.V^¦ I'l, 1''17, I.\ HONOR OF .VrXI" ,M,\(,'S UlRPllDAV, ?>[.VY 18, ,VNI) OF .M.MIOF'S lURrilll.W, M.W 20 Those present rcailiim from left t'l ri^'lil ;iri:; Back Row, l(7«7r— Thomas ( . .McHoucll, llr W S. Slinky, Mrs I"hom:is C. |M,:I loudh Mrs. William ,\ .McDoivcll, W . .\ .Mcllowcll, Miss Fannie B. Crittenden. Dr T. S. Bullock, De-ha Hre; kinrid^'e Cn/Drfrf— Thomas llummons, James Simm^, Rolicrt Holloii ("Holi," for manv vears Maior ilcDowell'- coaelimanl, Scott Richanlson, StroND Ro«, H7j/7c— Mrs. .\nnc (lav McHowcll Stmk\-, William .Mclloweil Stuckv (l.aliy), Mi^s Patty liurnley, ".Viint Mas," Madge, Mrs. Mary Ballard Davidson, .Mi^^ Fannie BallanI ColoriJ—Aune^ Holton (".\L'fie, ' lonj; lime cook for the family). Third Row IF*//.— .Mr, William li. lirock, .Mr,, W iniain Fl ( lulia .McDowell) lln.ck, William B, Brock, Ir , llenrv Clay McDowell Brock, ;Uice Dudley McDowell, William (', .McDowell, Mrs W, C. iSIcDowell, llcnr.\ Mi Doivell Bullock, Mrs, T, S (Nannctte .McDowell) Bullock, CMnred — Marie Kniiiht, Myrtle llummons (a graduate ot W ilhcrf