{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_15487/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_15487","id":"gutenberg_15487","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15487","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Social ethics","Social sciences","United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918"],"text":"Produced by Alicia Williams, Joel Schlosberg and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and\nSociology\n\nUNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF\n\nRICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D, LL.D.\n\n_Director of the School of Economics and Political Science; Professor of\nPolitical Economy at the University of Wisconsin_\n\n12mo. Half Leather. $1.25, net, each\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n*Monopolies and Trusts*. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D.\n\n\"It is admirable. It is the soundest contribution on the subject that\nhas appeared.\"--Professor JOHN R. COMMONS.\n\n\"By all odds the best written of Professor Ely's work.\"--Professor SIMON\nN. PATTEN, _University of Pennsylvania_.\n\n*Outlines of Economics*. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D., author of\n\"Monopolies and Trusts,\" etc.\n\n*The Economics of Distribution*. By JOHN A. HOBSON, author of \"The\nEvolution of Modern Capitalism,\" etc.\n\n*World Politics*. By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Assistant Professor\nof Political Science, University of Wisconsin.\n\n*Economic Crises*. By EDWARD D. JONES, Ph.D., Instructor in Economics\nand Statistics, University of Wisconsin.\n\n*Government in Switzerland*. By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, Ph.D., Associate\nProfessor of History, Johns Hopkins University.\n\n*Political Parties in the United States, 1846-1861*. By JESSE MACY,\nLL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College.\n\n*Essays on the Monetary History of the United States*. By CHARLES J.\nBULLOCK, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Williams College.\n\n*Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order*. By EDWARD\nALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D.\n\n*Municipal Engineering and Sanitation*. By W.N. BAKER, Ph.B., Associate\nEditor of _Engineering News_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\n66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK\n\n\n\n\n*In Preparation for Early Issue*\n\n*DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS*\n\n    By JANE ADDAMS, Head of \"Hull House,\" Chicago; joint author of\n    \"Philanthropy and Social Progress.\" (_Now ready._)\n\nMiss Addams' Settlement Work is known to all who are interested in\nsocial amelioration and municipal conditions. As the title of her book\nshows, it will be occupied with the reciprocal relations of ethical\nprogress and the growth of democratic thought, sentiment, and\ninstitutions.\n\n*CUSTOM AND COMPETITION*\n\n    By RICHARD T. ELY, LL.D., Professor of Political Economy and\n    Director of the School of Economics and Political Science in the\n    University of Wisconsin; President of the American Economic\n    Association; author of \"Monopolies and Trusts,\" etc.\n\nTopics treated under Custom include the Rent of Land and Custom;\nInterest and Custom; The Remuneration of Personal Services and Custom;\nCustom and Commerce.\n\nCompetition is first discussed with reference to the biological aspects\nof the question, and the significance of subhuman competition is\nconfined and a careful classification of its various kinds is presented.\nOne of the main topics of the book is Competition as a Principle of\nDistribution, and its treatment of the subject of price admirably\nsupplements the theoretical discussion in \"Monopolies and Trusts.\"\n\n*AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS*\n\n    By CHARLES ZUEBLIN, B.D., Associate Professor of Sociology in the\n    University of Chicago.\n\nThis work takes up the problem of the so-called public utilities, public\nschools, libraries, children's playgrounds, public baths, public\ngymnasiums, etc. The discussion is from the standpoint of public welfare\nand is based on repeated personal investigations in leading cities of\nEurope, especially England and the United States.\n\n*COLONIAL GOVERNMENT*\n\n    By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Professor of Political Science in\n    the University of Wisconsin; Author of \"World Politics at the End of\n    the Nineteenth Century as Influenced by the Oriental Situation.\"\n\nBy the author of the \"World Politics,\" which met so cordial a reception\nfrom students of modern political history. The main divisions of the\nbook are: Motives and Methods of Colonization; Forms of Colonial\nGovernment; Relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies;\nInternal Government of the Colonies; The Special Colonial Problems of\nthe United States.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\n66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK\n\n\n\n\nTHE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY\n\nOF\n\nECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND SOCIOLOGY\n\nEDITED BY\n\nRICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.\n\nDIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF\nWISCONSIN\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS\n\n\n\n\n*THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND\nSOCIOLOGY.*\n\n12mo. Half leather. $1.25 _net_ each.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n*MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS.*\nBY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.\n\n*THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION.*\nBY JOHN A. HOBSON.\n\n*WORLD POLITICS.*\nBY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.\n\n*ECONOMIC CRISES.*\nBY EDWARD D. JONES, PH.D.\n\n*OUTLINE OF ECONOMICS.*\nBY RICHARD T. ELY.\n\n*GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND.*\nBY JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, PH.D.\n\n*ESSAYS IN THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.*\nBY CHARLES J. BULLOCK, PH.D.\n\n*SOCIAL CONTROL.*\nBY EDWARD A. ROSS, PH.D.\n\n*HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.*\nBY JESSE MACY, LL.D.\n\n*MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION.*\nBY M.N. BAKER, PH.B.\n\n*DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS.*\nBY JANE ADDAMS.\n\n*COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.*\nBY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_IN PREPARATION._\n\n*CUSTOM AND COMPETITION.*\nBY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.\n\n*MUNICIPAL SOCIOLOGY.*\nBY CHARLES ZUEBLIN.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY,\n66 FIFTH AVENUE.\n\n\n\n\n_THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY_\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS\n\nBY\n\nJANE ADDAMS\nHULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO\n\n_New York_\nTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY\nLONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.\n1902\n\n\n\n\nSet up and electrotyped March, 1902. Reprinted\nJune, September, 1902.\n\nNorwood Press\nJ.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith\nNorwood Mass. U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nTo: M.R.S.\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\n\nThe following pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures\non \"Democracy and Social Ethics\" which have been delivered at various\ncolleges and university extension centres.\n\nIn putting them into the form of a book, no attempt has been made to\nchange the somewhat informal style used in speaking. The \"we\" and \"us\"\nwhich originally referred to the speaker and her audience are merely\nextended to possible readers.\n\nAcknowledgment for permission to reprint is extended to _The Atlantic\nMonthly_, _The International Journal of Ethics_, _The American Journal\nof Sociology_, and to _The Commons_.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER I                                                           PAGE\nINTRODUCTION                                                           1\n\nCHAPTER II\nCHARITABLE EFFORT                                                     13\n\nCHAPTER III\nFILIAL RELATIONS                                                      71\n\nCHAPTER IV\nHOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT                                                 102\n\nCHAPTER V\nINDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION                                              137\n\nCHAPTER VI\nEDUCATIONAL METHODS                                                  178\n\nCHAPTER VII\nPOLITICAL REFORM                                                     221\n\nINDEX                                                                279\n\n\n\n\nDEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nIt is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that \"Ethics\" is but\nanother word for \"righteousness,\" that for which many men and women of\nevery generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life\nbecomes meaningless.\n\nCertain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the\ncommunity almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from\nstealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much\nvoluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal\nwould be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and\nexpectation which makes virtue easy. In the same way we have been\ncarefully reared to a sense of family obligation, to be kindly and\nconsiderate to the members of our own households, and to feel\nresponsible for their well-being. As the rules of conduct have become\nestablished in regard to our self-development and our families, so they\nhave been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of\nthese claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and\nthirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of\nright living would lie easily in their hands.\n\nBut we all know that each generation has its own test, the\ncontemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately\njudge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately\nuse a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed\ninclude that which has already been attained; but if it includes no\nmore, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have\n\"arrived\" when in reality we have not yet started.\n\nTo attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to\npride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands\nsocial adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.\n\nIt is perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us\nthat the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of\nthe Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are\nnot in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the\npoor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry?\n\nAll about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to\ntheir attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round\nof uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite,\nthe declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food\nwhich characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their\nfellow-citizens. These men and women have caught a moral challenge\nraised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered,\nothers who are denied the relief which sturdy action brings are even\nseeking an escape, but all are increasingly anxious concerning their\nactual relations to the basic organization of society.\n\nThe test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They\nfail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal\nobligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand\ninvolving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another\nrequirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of\nsocial ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet\nexpressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a\nmental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between\ntheir consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer\ndefinition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a\npart in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality.\nIn the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is\nbecoming clear: if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a\nsocial morality, it is inevitable that those who desire it must be\nbrought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to\nprocure an adequate social motive.\n\nThese men and women have realized this and have disclosed the fact in\ntheir eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the\nlife about them. They believe that experience gives the easy and\ntrustworthy impulse toward right action in the broad as well as in the\nnarrow relations. We may indeed imagine many of them saying: \"Cast our\nexperiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the\nlarger social aims. We have met the obligations of our family life, not\nbecause we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because\nof a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation\nnaturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare\nourselves for the larger social duties.\" Such a demand is reasonable,\nfor by our daily experience we have discovered that we cannot\nmechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in rare moments\nof exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that even as the\nideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the strength to\nattain it must be secured from interest in life itself. We slowly learn\nthat life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may\ncome quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from\nselfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of\nDemocracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all\nmen, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and\nequality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well\nas a test of faith.\n\nWe are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by\ntravelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common\nroad where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size\nof one another's burdens. To follow the path of social morality results\nperforce in the temper if not the practice of the democratic spirit, for\nit implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy\nwhich are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy.\n\nThere are many indications that this conception of Democracy is growing\namong us. We have come to have an enormous interest in human life as\nsuch, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness. We do not\nbelieve that genuine experience can lead us astray any more than\nscientific data can.\n\nWe realize, too, that social perspective and sanity of judgment come\nonly from contact with social experience; that such contact is the\nsurest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and\nconcerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. Indeed, it is a\nconsciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and\nmore thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that\nnew curiosity regarding human life which has more of a moral basis than\nan intellectual one.\n\nThe newspapers, in a frank reflection of popular demand, exhibit an\nomniverous curiosity equally insistent upon the trivial and the\nimportant. They are perhaps the most obvious manifestations of that\ndesire to know, that \"What is this?\" and \"Why do you do that?\" of the\nchild. The first dawn of the social consciousness takes this form, as\nthe dawning intelligence of the child takes the form of constant\nquestion and insatiate curiosity.\n\nLiterature, too, portrays an equally absorbing though better adjusted\ndesire to know all kinds of life. The popular books are the novels,\ndealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely\nread not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a\nmeasure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all\nsorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social\nadjustment--for the remedying of social ills.\n\nDoubtless one under the conviction of sin in regard to social ills finds\na vague consolation in reading about the lives of the poor, and derives\na sense of complicity in doing good. He likes to feel that he knows\nabout social wrongs even if he does not remedy them, and in a very\ngenuine sense there is a foundation for this belief.\n\nPartly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a\nnew affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world\nbefore. Evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only\nthat man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the criminal.\nWe have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and\nhardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a\nrealization of the experiences of other people. Already there is a\nconviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our\nexperiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately\ndetermine our understanding of life. We know instinctively that if we\ngrow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse\nto certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect,\nwe not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the\nscope of our ethics.\n\nWe can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one\ncommon characteristic,--the conviction that they are different from\nother men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they\nare more sensitive or more refined. Such people \"refuse to be bound by\nany relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration,\nor the identity of political opinion, or religious creed.\" We have\nlearned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the\nwill which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which\ndeliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say\nthat they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on narrow and\nunprogressive issues.\n\nWe know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and\ndemocratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social\nexpression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the\nidentification with the common lot which is the essential idea of\nDemocracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as\nthough we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience,\nbecause we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry\nus to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and\njostle of the crowd.\n\nThe six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who\nare being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance\nof social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct.\nNo attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the\nassumption that the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy,\nbut the quite unlooked-for result of the studies would seem to indicate\nthat while the strain and perplexity of the situation is felt most\nkeenly by the educated and self-conscious members of the community, the\ntentative and actual attempts at adjustment are largely coming through\nthose who are simpler and less analytical.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nCHARITABLE EFFORT\n\n\nAll those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy,\nwhich literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away\nfrom us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to\nact upon them.\n\nOur conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a\ncourse of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct,\nwhich has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing\nmoral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the\nstrain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon\nanother.\n\nProbably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing\nmore rapidly than the charitable relation--that relation which obtains\nbetween benefactor and beneficiary; at the same time there is no point\nof contact in our modern experience which reveals so clearly the lack of\nthat equality which democracy implies. We have reached the moment when\ndemocracy has made such inroads upon this relationship, that the\ncomplacency of the old-fashioned charitable man is gone forever; while,\nat the same time, the very need and existence of charity, denies us the\nconsolation and freedom which democracy will at last give.\n\nIt is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined,\nand we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon\nconvictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of\nenvironment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our\nmethods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was\nbelieved that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that\nthe prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered\nharshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed\nthe individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior\nprosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior morality. We\nhave learned since that time to measure by other standards, and have\nceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive respect; while\nit is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, its possession\nis by no means assumed to imply the possession of the highest moral\nqualities. We have learned to judge men by their social virtues as well\nas by their business capacity, by their devotion to intellectual and\ndisinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we naturally resent\nbeing obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the industrial side.\nOur democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is largely in this\nmodern tendency to judge all men by one democratic standard, while the\nold charitable attitude commonly allowed the use of two standards, that\nmuch of the difficulty adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil\nbecomes wearing and brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable\nif we judge large numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in\nmaintaining it.\n\nThe daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house\nmade untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is\nno longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her\nhostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over\nagainst her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained\nonly through status.\n\nThe only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those\nwho have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through\nsickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable\nreasons; but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing, and\nmust be bolstered and helped into industrial health. The charity\nvisitor, let us assume, is a young college woman, well-bred and\nopen-minded; when she visits the family assigned to her, she is often\nembarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the stress of her\nteaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to treat the\nmembers of the family almost exclusively as factors in the industrial\nsystem. She insists that they must work and be self-supporting, that the\nmost dangerous of all situations is idleness, that seeking one's own\npleasure, while ignoring claims and responsibilities, is the most\nignoble of actions. The members of her assigned family may have other\ncharms and virtues--they may possibly be kind and considerate of each\nother, generous to their friends, but it is her business to stick to the\nindustrial side. As she daily holds up these standards, it often occurs\nto the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made\ntender by much talk of brotherhood and equality, that she has no right\nto say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to\ncope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family.\n\nThe grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial\npreaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and\nhousewifely training. In a generation our experiences have changed, and\nour views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which\ncould be applied when our consciences were in line with them, but which\nare daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work\nwith their hands and those who do not. The charity visitor belonging to\nthe latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the\nsituation forces upon her. Our democracy has taught us to apply our\nmoral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so\nsensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical convictions,\nhe finds it difficult to preach.\n\nAdded to this is a consciousness, in the mind of the visitor, of a\ngenuine misunderstanding of her motives by the recipients of her\ncharity, and by their neighbors. Let us take a neighborhood of poor\npeople, and test their ethical standards by those of the charity\nvisitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to help them out of\ntheir distress. A most striking incongruity, at once apparent, is the\ndifference between the emotional kindness with which relief is given by\none poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the guarded care with\nwhich relief is given by a charity visitor to a charity recipient. The\nneighborhood mind is at once confronted not only by the difference of\nmethod, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical standards.\n\nA very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is\nsufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly\nrelations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything,\nand all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate\nfamily affairs of all the others. The fact that the economic condition\nof all alike is on a most precarious level makes the ready outflow of\nsympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world.\nThere are numberless instances of self-sacrifice quite unknown in the\ncircles where greater economic advantages make that kind of intimate\nknowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish family in which the\nman has lost his place, and the woman is struggling to eke out the\nscanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow and her five\nchildren who have been turned into the street, without a moment's\nreflection upon the physical discomforts involved. The most maligned\nlandlady who lives in the house with her tenants is usually ready to\nlend a scuttle full of coal to one of them who may be out of work, or to\nshare her supper. A woman for whom the writer had long tried in vain to\nfind work failed to appear at the appointed time when employment was\nsecured at last. Upon investigation it transpired that a neighbor\nfurther down the street was taken ill, that the children ran for the\nfamily friend, who went of course, saying simply when reasons for her\nnon-appearance were demanded, \"It broke me heart to leave the place, but\nwhat could I do?\" A woman whose husband was sent up to the city prison\nfor the maximum term, just three months, before the birth of her child\nfound herself penniless at the end of that time, having gradually sold\nher supply of household furniture. She took refuge with a friend whom\nshe supposed to be living in three rooms in another part of town. When\nshe arrived, however, she discovered that her friend's husband had been\nout of work so long that they had been reduced to living in one room.\nThe friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged\nto sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did\nuncomplainingly if not cheerfully. Fortunately it was summer, \"and it\nonly rained one night.\" The writer could not discover from the young\nmother that she had any special claim upon the \"friend\" beyond the fact\nthat they had formerly worked together in the same factory. The husband\nshe had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at once went\nforth in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon his promise\nof future payment.\n\nThe evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid\nhis fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right\nand wrong. There is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many\npeople with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that\ntheir ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged by the\nmethods of these agencies. When they see the delay and caution with\nwhich relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious\nscruple, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. It is\nnot the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors,\nand they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to \"be\ngood to the poor\" should be so severely supervised. They feel,\nremotely, that the charity visitor is moved by motives that are alien\nand unreal. They may be superior motives, but they are different, and\nthey are \"agin nature.\" They cannot comprehend why a person whose\nintellectual perceptions are stronger than his natural impulses, should\ngo into charity work at all. The only man they are accustomed to see\nwhose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his tenderness of\nheart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is frankly \"on the make.\"\nIf the charity visitor is such a person, why does she pretend to like\nthe poor? Why does she not go into business at once?\n\nWe may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus\nconfuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite\nhonestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity\nfrom time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to\nsay: \"What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to give us, why not\nlet us alone and stop your questionings and investigations?\" \"They\ninvestigated me for three weeks, and in the end gave me nothing but a\nblack character,\" a little woman has been heard to assert. This\nindignation, which is for the most part taciturn, and a certain kindly\ncontempt for her abilities, often puzzles the charity visitor. The\nlatter may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the\nvisited families hold. Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of\nthe poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the\nopposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness,\nwho accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of\nirritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still\nadmiration, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured\nlandlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is\nseldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned\nfor a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to\naccumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a\npoor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one\nsense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person\nwho concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this\ngood-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little\ngenuine respect. The poor are accustomed to help each other and to\nrespond according to their kindliness; but when it comes to worldly\njudgment, they use industrial success as the sole standard. In the case\nof the charity visitor who has neither natural kindness nor dazzling\nriches, they are deprived of both standards, and they find it of course\nutterly impossible to judge of the motive of organized charity.\n\nEven those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in\naltruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something\ndistasteful in the juxtaposition of the words \"organized\" and \"charity.\"\nWe say in defence that we are striving to turn this emotion into a\nmotive, that pity is capricious, and not to be depended on; that we mean\nto give it the dignity of conscious duty. But at bottom we distrust a\nlittle a scheme which substitutes a theory of social conduct for the\nnatural promptings of the heart, even although we appreciate the\ncomplexity of the situation. The poor man who has fallen into distress,\nwhen he first asks aid, instinctively expects tenderness, consideration,\nand forgiveness. If it is the first time, it has taken him long to make\nup his mind to take the step. He comes somewhat bruised and battered,\nand instead of being met with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at\nonce chilled by an investigation and an intimation that he ought to\nwork. He does not recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation.\n\nThe only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by\nvirtue of their professional training render services which may easily\nbe interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to\nobvious needs which do not require investigation.\n\nThe state of mind which an investigation arouses on both sides is most\nunfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of different standards,\nwith the consequent misunderstandings, are not so bad as the moral\ndeterioration which is almost sure to follow.\n\nWhen the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that\nunder certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed\nfrom some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn\nwhat the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a\nglass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any\nself-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is\nan expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize\nthat saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by\nat a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite\nelusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor\nthey gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious\nobservance. The deception in the first instances arises from a wondering\ninability to understand the ethical ideals which can require such\nimpossible virtues, and from an innocent desire to please. It is easy to\ntrace the development of the mental suggestions thus received. When A\ndiscovers that B, who is very little worse off than he, receives good\nthings from an inexhaustible supply intended for the poor at large, he\nfeels that he too has a claim for his share, and step by step there is\ndeveloped the competitive spirit which so horrifies charity visitors\nwhen it shows itself in a tendency to \"work\" the relief-giving agencies.\n\nThe most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the\ncharitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love\nand sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The\nspontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child\nis turned into righteous indignation against the district nurse,\nbecause she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. Or the\nkindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed\nmedicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary,\nbecause it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and \"who can get well on a\npiece of paper?\"\n\nIf a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is\nquite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to\nmass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty\nwardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in,\nall the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They\nknow she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she\nhas a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They\nimagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous\ngift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought\nto get new shoes for the family all round, \"she sees well enough that\nthey need them.\" It is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has\npractically done, when she lent her own shoes. The charity visitor has\nbroken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive\nsociety, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources\nof the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is\njudged by the ethics of that primitive society.\n\nThe neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their\nown part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other\nthings. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are\nlike the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady\nvisitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as\nthough she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not\nintend to give them things which are so plainly needed?\n\nThe visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to\na standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living\nwhich they formerly possessed; that saving, which seems quite\ncommendable in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a\npoorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the\nchildren of the family do not.\n\nShe feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the\nindustrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago\nhonestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in\ncomfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had\npractised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained\nwhatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for\nindulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly\nuntouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity\nvisitor. She says sometimes, \"Why must I talk always of getting work and\nsaving money, the things I know nothing about? If it were anything else\nI had to urge, I could do it; anything like Latin prose, which I had\nworried through myself, it would not be so hard.\" But she finds it\ndifficult to connect the experiences of her youth with the experiences\nof the visited family.\n\nBecause of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually\nsurprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. She\nrefers quite naturally to the \"horrors of the saloon,\" and discovers\nthat the head of her visited family does not connect them with \"horrors\"\nat all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free\nlunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not\nable to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity\nvisitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. He may\nlisten politely to her reference to \"horrors,\" but considers it only\n\"temperance talk.\"\n\nThe charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward\ntheir children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that\nthe standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children\nso much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the\npunctilious wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child. The\nstandard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself,\nassisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, \"That\nthey do better when you are not too hard on them\"; but the wearing of\nmourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of\nevery woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a\ncertain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement.\nIt is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we\nlive, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more\ndifficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened\nsupply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining\nchildren in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she\ndoesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her\nfirst month of experience with the family since bereaved.\n\nThe subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the\nresult of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The\ngirl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable\nschool or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by\nall her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even\nshabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose\nfamily lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to\nanother, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,\nknows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her\nposition. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to\nthe amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social\nadvancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is\njudged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful\nlittle decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the\npeople whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her\nbackground, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact\nthat girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where\n\"working girls\" and \"young ladies\" meet upon an equal footing, and where\nthe clothes superficially look very much alike. Bright and ambitious\ngirls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon,\nto study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might\nhesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own\nneighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits\nand the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by\nother surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same\nreason, girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little\ntowns and villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the\nfront parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the\nhouse. These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment;\nthey impede the democratic relationship and add to the\nself-consciousness of all concerned. Every one who has had to do with\ndown-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of\nsome bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps\nwretched, and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her,\nalthough the working girl may not have been at home when the call was\nmade, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy\nthroughout. In some very successful down-town clubs the home address is\nnot given at all, and only the \"business address\" is required. Have we\nworked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than anything\nelse?\n\nThe charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to\nspend much money upon clothes, to care so much for \"appearances.\" She\nrealizes dimly that the care for personal decoration over that for one's\nhome or habitat is in some way primitive and undeveloped; but she is\nsilenced by its obvious need. She also catches a glimpse of the fact\nthat the disproportionate expenditure of the poor in the matter of\nclothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of the rich who hide from\nthem the interior of their houses, and their more subtle pleasures,\nwhile of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and their street\nmanners. Every one who goes shopping at the same time may see the\nclothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to her\nreceptions see the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her library.\nThe poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing the\nstreet clothes which they have seen. They are striving to conform to a\ncommon standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to\nall of us. The charity visitor may regret that the Italian peasant\nwoman has laid aside her picturesque kerchief and substituted a cheap\nstreet hat. But it is easy to recognize the first attempt toward\ndemocratic expression.\n\nThe charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to\nconsider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor; for\nshe cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according\nto the conventions which have regulated her own life. She finds both of\nthese fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her\nsympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight.\nShe discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been, and it\ntakes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist\nso strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit\nthe bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The\ncharity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early\nmarriages, quite naturally because she comes from a family and circle\nof professional and business people. A professional man is scarcely\nequipped and started in his profession before he is thirty. A business\nman, if he is on the road to success, is much nearer prosperity at\nthirty-five than twenty-five, and it is therefore wise for these men not\nto marry in the twenties; but this does not apply to the workingman. In\nmany trades he is laid upon the shelf at thirty-five, and in nearly all\ntrades he receives the largest wages in his life between twenty and\nthirty. If the young workingman has all his wages to himself, he will\nprobably establish habits of personal comfort, which he cannot keep up\nwhen he has to divide with a family--habits which he can, perhaps, never\novercome.\n\nThe sense of prudence, the necessity for saving, can never come to a\nprimitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the\nnecessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He\nnaturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to\ncare for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very\nearly. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County\npoorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his\nlittle boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared\nthis sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to well\nsupport a family when he was twenty than when he was thirty-five, for\nhis wages had steadily grown less as the years went on. Another tailor\nwhom I know, who is also a Socialist, always speaks of saving as a\nbourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to the genuine workingman. He\nsupports a family consisting of himself, a wife and three children, and\nhis two parents on eight dollars a week. He insists it would be criminal\nnot to expend every penny of this amount upon food and shelter, and he\nexpects his children later to care for him.\n\nThis economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to\nwork overyoung and thus cripple their chances for individual\ndevelopment and usefulness, and with the avaricious parent also leads to\nexploitation. \"I have fed her for fourteen years, now she can help me\npay my mortgage\" is not an unusual reply when a hardworking father is\nexpostulated with because he would take his bright daughter out of\nschool and put her into a factory.\n\nIt has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly\nurging her \"family\" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least\nconnive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not\nthe excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been\ntaking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and\nmore social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his\nparents, who are receiving charitable aid. She does not realize what a\ncruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives\nadvice.\n\nThe manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children\nwas able to show during a child-labor investigation, that the only\nchildren under fourteen years of age in his employ were proteges who had\nbeen urged upon him by philanthropic ladies, not only acquaintances of\nhis, but valued patrons of the establishment. It is not that the charity\nvisitor is less wise than other people, but she has fixed her mind so\nlong upon the industrial lameness of her family that she is eager to\nseize any crutch, however weak, which may enable them to get on.\n\nShe has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely support\nhis widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate member to the\ncommunity, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. As she\nhas failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of\nmarriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she\nfails to understand that the present conditions of employment\nsurrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained\nduring the energetic youth of her father.\n\nThe child who is prematurely put to work is constantly oppressed by this\nnever ending question of the means of subsistence, and even little\nchildren are sometimes almost crushed with the cares of life through\ntheir affectionate sympathy. The writer knows a little Italian lad of\nsix to whom the problems of food, clothing, and shelter have become so\nimmediate and pressing that, although an imaginative child, he is unable\nto see life from any other standpoint. The goblin or bugaboo, feared by\nthe more fortunate child, in his mind, has come to be the need of coal\nwhich caused his father hysterical and demonstrative grief when it\ncarried off his mother's inherited linen, the mosaic of St. Joseph, and,\nworst of all, his own rubber boots. He once came to a party at\nHull-House, and was interested in nothing save a gas stove which he saw\nin the kitchen. He became excited over the discovery that fire could be\nproduced without fuel. \"I will tell my father of this stove. You buy no\ncoal, you need only a match. Anybody will give you a match.\" He was\ntaken to visit at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was\npaid for it. On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no\nrent for that house, he came back quite wild with interest that the\nproblem was solved. \"Me and my father will go to the country. You get a\nbig house, all warm, without rent.\" Nothing else in the country\ninterested him but the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an\nexclusiveness worthy of a single taxer.\n\nThe struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near\nthe edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the\ncharity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents\nwho work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn,\ntake care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with\nthem from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the\nimmature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing\nhabits of obedience, so that the nerves and will may not depart from\nthis control when the child is older. The charity visitor, whose family\nrelation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand\nthe industrial foundation for this family tyranny.\n\nThe head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of\nworking women, and spoke of the despotism which is often established\nover little children. She said that the so-called determination to break\na child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged\nthe ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. But many of the\nwomen were puzzled. One of them remarked to the writer as she came out\nof the club room, \"If you did not keep control over them from the time\nthey were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown\nup.\" Another one said, \"Ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't\nhave to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with\nthem, because even if they don't give money to her, she can get along\nwithout it.\"\n\nThere are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and\nconstantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes\nreceiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as\noften nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who\nfor six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling\nwages which she earns in a large factory. Is it habit or virtue which\nholds her steady in this course? If love and tenderness had been\nsubstituted for parental despotism, would the mother have had enough\naffection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of\nmoney obligation through all these years? This girl who spends her\npaltry two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her\nmother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on\nthose clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some\npowerful force.\n\nThe charity visitor finds these subtle and elusive problems most\nharrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is a man who has become\nblack-listed in a strike. He is not a very good workman, and this, added\nto his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. The\nfatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less\neager for it, and gets a \"job\" less and less frequently. In order to\nkeep up his self-respect, and still more to keep his wife's respect for\nhim, he yields to the little self-deception that this prolonged idleness\nfollows because he was once blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a\nmartyr. Deep down in his heart perhaps--but who knows what may be deep\ndown in his heart? Whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for\nan instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her\nearn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family.\nThe charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the\nother men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further\nknows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not skilful.\nShe cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce\nhim as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain\nintellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees other\nworkmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many\nmore hours in the public library reading good books than the average\nworkman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has yielded only\nto those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which come to the\nintellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would induce his\nunion to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a constant\nspeaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral attitude on the\nquestions discussed there. He contributes a certain intellectuality to\nhis friends, and he has undoubted social value. The neighboring women\nconfide to the charity visitor their sympathy with his wife, because\nshe has to work so hard, and because her husband does not \"provide.\"\nTheir remarks are sharpened by a certain resentment toward the\nsuperiority of the husband's education and gentle manners. The charity\nvisitor is ashamed to take this point of view, for she knows that it is\nnot altogether fair. She is reminded of a college friend of hers, who\ntold her that she was not going to allow her literary husband to write\nunworthy potboilers for the sake of earning a living. \"I insist that we\nshall live within my own income; that he shall not publish until he is\nready, and can give his genuine message.\" The charity visitor recalls\nwhat she has heard of another acquaintance, who urged her husband to\ndecline a lucrative position as a railroad attorney, because she wished\nhim to be free to take municipal positions, and handle public questions\nwithout the inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in\na corrupt city to a corporation attorney. The action of these two women\nseemed noble to her, but in their cases they merely lived on a lesser\nincome. In the case of the workingman's wife, she faced living on no\nincome at all, or on the precarious one which she might be able to get\ntogether.\n\nShe sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she\nis utterly unwilling to condemn her while praising the friends of her\nown social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is\nchanged by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other\ntwo do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight\nwas only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The\ncharity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the\nfinest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from\nthe thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she\nsuspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into\ncomplaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family\naltogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the\ncrippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects\nthat she will never know many finer women than the mother. She is\nunwilling, therefore, to give up the friendship, and goes on bearing her\nperplexities as best she may.\n\nThe first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with\nher shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their\nchildren out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which\nreceives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the\ninstalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of\njuvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving\nno legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we\nremember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house\nor regular meals.\n\nThere are certain boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves\ninto little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid than the\nrest. Their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house,\nto knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the\nnearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they buy beer and\ndrink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley. From\nbeginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that they may be\nseen and caught by the \"coppers,\" and are at times quite breathless with\nsuspense. It is not the least unlike, in motive and execution, the\npractice of country boys who go forth in squads to set traps for rabbits\nor to round up a coon.\n\nIt is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious\ntraining really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy\nundertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very\nbeginning the most enticing and exciting experiences which they have\nseen have been connected with crime. The policeman embodies all the\nmajesty of successful law and established government in his brass\nbuttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon.\n\nThe boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale\nto tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. The\nearliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the\nrattling fire engines, \"the time there was a fire in the next block,\"\nand all the tense interest of the patrol wagon \"the time the drunkest\nlady in our street was arrested.\"\n\nIn the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took\nfifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their\napathetic interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an\nomnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find\nthem galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled by.\nTheir eager little heads popped out of the windows full of questioning:\n\"Was it a man or a woman?\" \"How many policemen inside?\" and eager little\ntongues began to tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes had\nwitnessed.\n\nThe excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a\nfight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who\nreceives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is\nwilling to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest\nthings possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation\nschools than the conscientious charity visitor.\n\nThis very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of\ntheir own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often\nleads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten\nwere once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of\npilfering and destroying property. They had dug a cave under a railroad\nviaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer\nvacation. They had \"swiped\" potatoes and other vegetables from\nhucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand\nfashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen\njunk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations.\nThe father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five\nmiles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did not\nwant an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor\npaid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman living near the\nviaduct. She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and supper, and left\nsomething in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to\nwork in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge\nhis statement that he \"would rather sleep outdoors in the summer,\" or to\ninvestigate what he did during the day. In the meantime the three boys\nlived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous\nstories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more\nas the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic\npassing over the street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous\nexertions on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform\nSchool, comforting himself with the conclusive remark, \"Well, we had fun\nanyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in\nthe country, where we can't hurt anything.\"\n\nIn addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the\nscenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of\nthe young people. \"Going to the theatre\" is indeed the most common and\nsatisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all\ntheir wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay\nfor a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday afternoon. It is their\none satisfactory glimpse of life--the moment when they \"issue forth from\nthemselves\" and are stirred and thoroughly interested. They quite simply\nadopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see\nthere. In moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the\ngestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry\nexpression often conflicts hideously with the fine and genuine emotion\nof which it is the inadequate and vulgar vehicle.\n\nAs in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of\nexpressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they\nknow.\n\nIf we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the\nspectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the\npopular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function\nof art for the multitude of working people than all the \"free galleries\"\nand picture exhibits combined.\n\nThe greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come\nsharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding\nand explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's own ethical\nstandpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had bought and sold\nschool books stolen from the school fund,--books which are all plainly\nmarked with a red stamp,--came to Hull House one morning in great\ndistress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident \"to speak\nto the judge.\" She gave as a reason the fact that the House had known\nher for six years, and had once been very good to her when her little\ngirl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her visitor knew\nthe school books were stolen when buying them, and any attempt to talk\nupon that subject was evidently considered very rude. The visitor wished\nto get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason why the House\nshould not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she could not go\nto him. After a long conversation the visitor entirely failed to get\nanother point of view and went away grieved and disappointed at a\nrefusal, thinking the resident simply disobliging; wondering, no doubt,\nwhy such a mean woman had once been good to her; leaving the resident,\non the other hand, utterly baffled and in the state of mind she would\nhave been in, had she brutally insisted that a little child should lift\nweights too heavy for its undeveloped muscles.\n\nSuch a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher\nethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but\nit is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in\nwhich the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient\nis broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:--\n\nA certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and\npathos of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the well-being of\nperhaps a dozen old women to whom she sustains a sincerely affectionate\nand almost filial relation. Some of them learn to take her benefactions\nquite as if they came from their own relatives, grumbling at all she\ndoes, and scolding her with a family freedom. One of these poor old\nwomen was injured in a fire years ago. She has but the fragment of a\nhand left, and is grievously crippled in her feet. Through years of pain\nshe had become addicted to opium, and when she first came under the\nvisitor's care, was only held from the poorhouse by the awful thought\nthat she would there perish without her drug. Five years of tender care\nhave done wonders for her. She lives in two neat little rooms, where\nwith her thumb and two fingers she makes innumerable quilts, which she\nsells and gives away with the greatest delight. Her opium is regulated\nto a set amount taken each day, and she has been drawn away from much\ndrinking. She is a voracious reader, and has her head full of strange\ntales made up from books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed\nimpossible to do anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two\nyears in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and\nwhere she was nursed through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives\na better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old\nwoman. The neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is\nsupported and comforted by a \"charity lady,\" while at the same time she\noccasionally \"rushes the growler,\" scolding at the boys lest they jar\nher in her tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that\nsecond standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the\nstandard of charitable societies, that only the \"worthy poor\" are to be\nhelped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the\nplums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this\ncriticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't\nin the least deserve what she gets. In order to disarm them, and at the\nsame time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so\ncolossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn in\nthe suburb she discovered an awful family secret,--a horrible scandal\nconnected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order\nto prevent the divulgence of this that she constantly receives her\nministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation\nas simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem. Doubtless many\nof them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and\npatience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. But the\nstandard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems\nunfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people\nwho \"rush the growler\" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a\ncertain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. It is certainly\ndangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.\n\nJust when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy\namong the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is\ncertainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a\ncomment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be\nwilling to make.\n\nOf what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any\nvalue? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity\nvisitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do.\nIt drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they\nclaim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of\na sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods\ndo, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so\nthat she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and\nthus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment.\n\nBoth the tenement-house resident and the sister assume to have put\nthemselves upon the industrial level of their neighbors, although they\nhave left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent fear\nof starvation and a neglected old age.\n\nThe young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most\nprecarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the\ncity, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which\nour growing democracy forces upon her.\n\nWe sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would\ndoubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not\nscientific enough. We dislike the entire arrangement of cards\nalphabetically classified according to streets and names of families,\nwith the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. Our feeling\nof revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted the students of\nbotany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were\ntabulated in alphabetical order, when geology was taught by colored\ncharts and thin books. No doubt the students, wearied to death, many\ntimes said that it was all too scientific, and were much perplexed and\nworried when they found traces of structure and physiology which their\nso-called scientific principles were totally unable to account for. But\nall this happened before science had become evolutionary and scientific\nat all, before it had a principle of life from within. The very\nindications and discoveries which formerly perplexed, later illumined\nand made the study absorbing and vital.\n\nWe are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human\naffairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education\nof children. We are at last learning to follow the development of the\nchild; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt\nmethods and matter to his growing mind. No \"advanced educator\" can allow\nhimself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child ought to be\nas to exclude the discovery of what he is. But in our charitable efforts\nwe think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of\nwhat he may become; and we ruthlessly force our conventions and\nstandards upon him, with a sternness which we would consider stupid\nindeed did an educator use it in forcing his mature intellectual\nconvictions upon an undeveloped mind.\n\nLet us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to\nbed because he is afraid of the dark. The \"soft-hearted\" parent stays\nwith him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him.\nThe scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes\nthat the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has\nthe best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a\nbelief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after\nall act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific\nparent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. He\ntalks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves\nhim to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and\ndevelopment which the child does not possess. There is no doubt that our\ndevelopment of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and\nstilted stage. We have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated\nkind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere repression much as the\nstern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the\nchild, who is hysterically crying upstairs and laying the foundation for\nfuture nervous disorders. The pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the\nundeveloped stage of our philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed\nin our tendency to lay constant stress on negative action. \"Don't give;\"\n\"don't break down self-respect,\" we are constantly told. We distrust the\nhuman impulse as well as the teachings of our own experience, and in\ntheir stead substitute dogmatic rules for conduct. We forget that the\naccumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally\nresult in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to\nlife itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull upon the\nsympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the\nvisitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an\nultimate intellectual comprehension. Indeed, part of the perplexity in\nthe administration of charity comes from the fact that the type of\nperson drawn to it is the one who insists that her convictions shall not\nbe unrelated to action. Her moral concepts constantly tend to float away\nfrom her, unless they have a basis in the concrete relation of life. She\nis confronted with the task of reducing her scruples to action, and of\nconverging many wills, so as to unite the strength of all of them into\none accomplishment, the value of which no one can foresee.\n\nOn the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her\nsocial compunction through charitable effort finds that the wider\nsocial activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only\nincreases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts\nher social ideals. She is chagrined to discover that in the actual task\nof reducing her social scruples to action, her humble beneficiaries are\nfar in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in\nself-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue of humility by\na social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits by the side of\nthe road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a contrite sinner,\nbut she gets the dust upon her head because she has stumbled and fallen\nin the road through her efforts to push forward the mass, to march with\nher fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only through a social\naim but by a social process.\n\nThe Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the\ngreat forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. \"To love mercy\" and at\nthe same time \"to do justly\" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first\nrequirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving\nwith all its disastrous results; to fulfil the second solely is to\nobtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary\nlack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is\nimpossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be\nattained save as we fulfil still the third requirement--\"to walk humbly\nwith God,\" which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the\nlowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the\ncompany of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with\nthe pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected\nwhenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nFILIAL RELATIONS\n\n\nThere are many people in every community who have not felt the \"social\ncompunction,\" who do not share the effort toward a higher social\nmorality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it. Some of\nthese have been shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which\nthe trial of new powers involve, because they are content to attain\nstandards of virtue demanded by an easy public opinion, and others of\nthem have exhausted their moral energy in attaining to the current\nstandard of individual and family righteousness.\n\nSuch people, who form the bulk of contented society, demand that the\nradical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his\npersonal and family relations, and judge most harshly any deviation\nfrom the established standards. There is a certain justice in this: it\nexpresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of men, that none of the\nestablished virtues which have been so slowly and hardly acquired shall\nbe sacrificed for the sake of making problematic advance; that the\nindividual, in his attempt to develop and use the new and exalted\nvirtue, shall not fall into the easy temptation of letting the ordinary\nones slip through his fingers.\n\nThis instinct to conserve the old standards, combined with a distrust of\nthe new standard, is a constant difficulty in the way of those\nexperiments and advances depending upon the initiative of women, both\nbecause women are the more sensitive to the individual and family\nclaims, and because their training has tended to make them content with\nthe response to these claims alone.\n\nThere is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral energy\nnecessary to work out a more satisfactory social relation, the\nindividual often sacrifices the energy which should legitimately go\ninto the fulfilment of personal and family claims, to what he considers\nthe higher claim.\n\nIn considering the changes which our increasing democracy is constantly\nmaking upon various relationships, it is impossible to ignore the filial\nrelation. This chapter deals with the relation between parents and their\ngrown-up daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the\nperplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the various attempts of\nyoung women to secure a more active share in the community life. We\nconstantly see parents very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to\ntheir daughters when these daughters undertake work lying quite outside\nof traditional and family interests. These parents insist that the girl\nis carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, that she is in search of a\ncareer, that she is restless and does not know what she wants. They will\ngive any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine and\ndignified claim. Possibly all this is due to the fact that for so many\nhundreds of years women have had no larger interests, no participation\nin the affairs lying quite outside personal and family claims. Any\nattempt that the individual woman formerly made to subordinate or\nrenounce the family claim was inevitably construed to mean that she was\nsetting up her own will against that of her family's for selfish ends.\nIt was concluded that she could have no motive larger than a desire to\nserve her family, and her attempt to break away must therefore be wilful\nand self-indulgent.\n\nThe family logically consented to give her up at her marriage, when she\nwas enlarging the family tie by founding another family. It was easy to\nunderstand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college,\ntravelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because\nthese merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own\nmembers. When, however, she responded to her impulse to fulfil the\nsocial or democratic claim, she violated every tradition.\n\nThe mind of each one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we\nemerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family\nobligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet\nmost of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to\ndisregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. We have\nyielded at times to the temptation of ignoring them for selfish aims, of\nconsidering the individual and not the family convenience, and we\nremember with shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. But just as\nwe have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an\norderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps\nwe are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family\nand the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled.\n\nThe attempt to bring about a healing compromise in which the two shall\nbe adjusted in proper relation is not an easy one. It is difficult to\ndistinguish between the outward act of him who in following one\nlegitimate claim has been led into the temporary violation of another,\nand the outward act of him who deliberately renounces a just claim and\nthrows aside all obligation for the sake of his own selfish and\nindividual development. The man, for instance, who deserts his family\nthat he may cultivate an artistic sensibility, or acquire what he\nconsiders more fulness of life for himself, must always arouse our\ncontempt. Breaking the marriage tie as Ibsen's \"Nora\" did, to obtain a\nlarger self-development, or holding to it as George Eliot's \"Romola\"\ndid, because of the larger claim of the state and society, must always\nremain two distinct paths. The collision of interests, each of which has\na real moral basis and a right to its own place in life, is bound to be\nmore or less tragic. It is the struggle between two claims, the\ndestruction of either of which would bring ruin to the ethical life.\nCuriously enough, it is almost exactly this contradiction which is the\ntragedy set forth by the Greek dramatist, who asserted that the gods who\nwatch over the sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher\nclaims of the gods of the state. The failure to recognize the social\nclaim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains\nthat woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not\ndirected to the general good. This suspicion will never be dissipated\nuntil parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and\nrecognize the social claim.\n\nOur democracy is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human\ninstitutions, and a claim is being advanced which in a certain sense is\nlarger than the family claim. The claim of the state in time of war has\nlong been recognized, so that in its name the family has given up sons\nand husbands and even the fathers of little children. If we can once see\nthe claims of society in any such light, if its misery and need can be\nmade clear and urged as an explicit claim, as the state urges its claims\nin the time of danger, then for the first time the daughter who desires\nto minister to that need will be recognized as acting conscientiously.\nThis recognition may easily come first through the emotions, and may be\nadmitted as a response to pity and mercy long before it is formulated\nand perceived by the intellect.\n\nThe family as well as the state we are all called upon to maintain as\nthe highest institutions which the race has evolved for its safeguard\nand protection. But merely to preserve these institutions is not enough.\nThere come periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid upon\na passing generation, to enlarge the function and carry forward the\nideal of a long-established institution. There is no doubt that many\nwomen, consciously and unconsciously, are struggling with this task. The\nfamily, like every other element of human life, is susceptible of\nprogress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspirations are\nenlarged, although its duties can never be abrogated and its obligations\ncan never be cancelled. It is impossible to bring about the higher\ndevelopment by any self-assertion or breaking away of the individual\nwill. The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at\nthe same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type\nof progress. The family in its entirety must be carried out into the\nlarger life. Its various members together must recognize and acknowledge\nthe validity of the social obligation. When this does not occur we have\na most flagrant example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an\nethical code is applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to\nconditions which are no longer the same as when the code was instituted,\nand for which it was never designed. We have all seen parental control\nand the family claim assert their authority in fields of effort which\nbelong to the adult judgment of the child and pertain to activity quite\noutside the family life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy of\nwhich we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this\nauthority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and\nmisunderstanding. We see parents and children acting from conscientious\nmotives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery\nwhich can scarcely be hidden.\n\nSuch glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in Assisi,\nwhen the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet,\ndramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting\nthe narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. All the\nconflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father\nrecognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and\nadjust his own claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful\nand hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have been the most tender\nand loving of men, responsive to all possible ties, even to those of\ninanimate nature. We know that by his affections he freed the frozen\nlife of his time. The elements of tragedy lay in the narrowness of the\nfather's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his lack of sympathy\nwith the power which was moving his son, and which was but part of the\nreligious revival which swept Europe from end to end in the early part\nof the thirteenth century; the same power which built the cathedrals of\nthe North, and produced the saints and sages of the South. But the\nfather's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart sore and\nangry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. He could not, indeed,\nhave felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of the same\nrevival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of himself\nand his narrower claim. It is another proof that the notion of a larger\nobligation can only come through the response to an enlarged interest\nin life and in the social movements around us.\n\nThe grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen with well-defined\nduties and a need of \"making his way in the world,\" that the family\nclaim is urged much less strenuously in his case, and as a matter of\nauthority, it ceases gradually to be made at all. In the case of the\ngrown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity of earning a\nliving, and who has no strong artistic bent, taking her to Paris to\nstudy painting or to Germany to study music, the years immediately\nfollowing her graduation from college are too often filled with a\nrestlessness and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear\nthinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family ethics to modern\nconditions.\n\nIt is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise\nthan as a family possession. From her babyhood she has been the charm\nand grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her as an\nintegral part of the social order, hard to believe that she has duties\noutside of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense.\nThis assumption that the daughter is solely an inspiration and\nrefinement to the family itself and its own immediate circle, that her\ndelicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her father's protection\nand prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most part so long as her\neducation was in line with it. When there was absolutely no recognition\nof the entity of woman's life beyond the family, when the outside claims\nupon her were still wholly unrecognized, the situation was simple, and\nthe finishing school harmoniously and elegantly answered all\nrequirements. She was fitted to grace the fireside and to add lustre to\nthat social circle which her parents selected for her. But this family\nassumption has been notably broken into, and educational ideas no longer\nfit it. Modern education recognizes woman quite apart from family or\nsociety claims, and gives her the training which for many years has\nbeen deemed successful for highly developing a man's individuality and\nfreeing his powers for independent action. Perplexities often occur when\nthe daughter returns from college and finds that this recognition has\nbeen but partially accomplished. When she attempts to act upon the\nassumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring upon ideals\nwhich are so entwined with filial piety, so rooted in the tenderest\naffections of which the human heart is capable, that both daughter and\nparents are shocked and startled when they discover what is happening,\nand they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. The ideal for the\neducation of woman has changed under the pressure of a new claim. The\nfamily has responded to the extent of granting the education, but they\nare jealous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over against\nit.\n\nThe modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a stress of social\nobligation which her family did not in the least anticipate when they\nsent her to college. She finds herself, in addition, under an impulse to\nact her part as a citizen of the world. She accepts her family\ninheritance with loyalty and affection, but she has entered into a wider\ninheritance as well, which, for lack of a better phrase, we call the\nsocial claim. This claim has been recognized for four years in her\ntraining, but after her return from college the family claim is again\nexclusively and strenuously asserted. The situation has all the\ndiscomfort of transition and compromise. The daughter finds a constant\nand totally unnecessary conflict between the social and the family\nclaims. In most cases the former is repressed and gives way to the\nfamily claim, because the latter is concrete and definitely asserted,\nwhile the social demand is vague and unformulated. In such instances the\ngirl quietly submits, but she feels wronged whenever she allows her mind\nto dwell upon the situation. She either hides her hurt, and splendid\nreserves of enthusiasm and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and\nemotions are turned inward, and the result is an unhappy woman, whose\nheart is consumed by vain regrets and desires.\n\nIf the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even\nreproached for her discontent. She is told to be devoted to her family,\ninspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of\nher time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do\nthis, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even\nheroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of which she has\ndreamed so long? That life which surrounds and completes the individual\nand family life? She has been taught that it is her duty to share this\nlife, and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence between\nher self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly\nmore apparent. But the situation is not even so simple as a conflict\nbetween her affections and her intellectual convictions, although even\nthat is tumultuous enough, also the emotional nature is divided against\nitself. The social claim is a demand upon the emotions as well as upon\nthe intellect, and in ignoring it she represses not only her convictions\nbut lowers her springs of vitality. Her life is full of contradictions.\nShe looks out into the world, longing that some demand be made upon her\npowers, for they are too untrained to furnish an initiative. When her\nhealth gives way under this strain, as it often does, her physician\ninvariably advises a rest. But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not\nwhat she requires. What she needs is simple, health-giving activity,\nwhich, involving the use of all her faculties, shall be a response to\nall the claims which she so keenly feels.\n\nIt is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be\npart of a life quite outside their own, because the college woman\nfrequently makes these first attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have\nnot been trained in the line of action. She lacks the ability to apply\nher knowledge and theories to life itself and to its complicated\nsituations. This is largely the fault of her training and of the\none-sidedness of educational methods. The colleges have long been full\nof the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must\nultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only\nsecure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. But while\nthe teaching has included an ever-broadening range of obligation and has\ninsisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the\ntraining has been singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions\nfor personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost\nexclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless,\nwoman's education is at fault, in that it has failed to recognize\ncertain needs, and has failed to cultivate and guide the larger desires\nof which all generous young hearts are full.\n\nDuring the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no\ncontact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or\nthe needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only\nwith each other and with mature men and women who are there for the\npurpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden\nto bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet\nwere provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not\ndiffer widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional\nor business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly\nbrought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently\nevery obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to\nbegin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been\npreparing. But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have\nbeen trained solely for accumulation, and she has learned to utterly\ndistrust the finer impulses of her nature, which would naturally have\nconnected her with human interests outside of her family and her own\nimmediate social circle. All through school and college the young soul\ndreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the helpless and of tenderness\nto the unfortunate. We persistently distrust these desires, and, unless\nthey follow well-defined lines, we repress them with every device of\nconvention and caution.\n\nOne summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in East London,\nwhere she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds\nencountered there, directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes\nof travel filled with young English men and women who could walk many\nmiles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats\nreceived honorable mention in Alpine journals,--a result which filled\ntheir families with joy and pride. These young people knew to a nicety\nthe proper diet and clothing which would best contribute toward\nendurance. Everything was very fine about them save their motive power.\nThe writer does not refer to the hard-worked men and women who were\ntaking a vacation, but to the leisured young people, to whom this period\nwas the most serious of the year, and filled with the most strenuous\nexertion. They did not, of course, thoroughly enjoy it, for we are too\ncomplicated to be content with mere exercise. Civilization has bound us\ntoo closely with our brethren for any one of us to be long happy in the\ncultivation of mere individual force or in the accumulation of mere\nmuscular energy.\n\nWith Whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult not to advise\nthese young people to use some of this muscular energy of which they\nwere so proud, in cleaning neglected alleys and paving soggy streets.\nTheir stores of enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and\nwomen of East London and utilize latent social forces. The exercise\nwould be quite as good, the need of endurance as great, the care for\nproper dress and food as important; but the motives for action would be\nturned from selfish ones into social ones. Such an appeal would\ndoubtless be met with a certain response from the young people, but\nwould never be countenanced by their families for an instant.\n\nFortunately a beginning has been made in another direction, and a few\nparents have already begun to consider even their little children in\nrelation to society as well as to the family. The young mothers who\nattend \"Child Study\" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and\nexpect given characteristics from their children, at certain ages and\nunder certain conditions. They quite calmly watch the various attempts\nof a child to assert his individuality, which so often takes the form of\nopposition to the wishes of the family and to the rule of the household.\nThey recognize as acting under the same law of development the little\nchild of three who persistently runs away and pretends not to hear his\nmother's voice, the boy of ten who violently, although temporarily,\nresents control of any sort, and the grown-up son who, by an\nindividualized and trained personality, is drawn into pursuits and\ninterests quite alien to those of his family.\n\nThis attempt to take the parental relation somewhat away from mere\npersonal experience, as well as the increasing tendency of parents to\nshare their children's pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally\nresult in a better understanding of the social obligation. The\nunderstanding, which results from identity of interests, would seem to\nconfirm the conviction that in the complicated life of to-day there is\nno education so admirable as that education which comes from\nparticipation in the constant trend of events. There is no doubt that\nmost of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence,\nbecause our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend\neach other. The old difficulties incident to the clash of two codes of\nmorals must drop away, as the experiences of various members of the\nfamily become larger and more identical.\n\nAt the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist\nand may be seen all about us. In order to illustrate the situation\nbaldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to\ntake an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. The\ntragedy of King Lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed\nso long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his\ntwo older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we\nhave not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood,\nrevealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and\nunhappy a relation to all of his children. In our pity for Lear, we fail\nto analyze his character. The King on his throne exhibits utter lack of\nself-control. The King in the storm gives way to the same emotion, in\nrepining over the wickedness of his children, which he formerly\nexhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.\n\nIt might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his\nold age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously\nurged the family claim with his whole conscience. At the opening of the\ndrama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent\nparent expects when he has given gifts to his children. From the two\nelder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and\nfitting, but he longed to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best\nbeloved child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but instead\nof delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. Cordelia\nmade the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and\nscrupulously to express her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and\ndistressed by this attempt at self-expression. It was new to him that\nhis daughter should be moved by a principle obtained outside himself,\nwhich even his imagination could not follow; that she had caught the\nnotion of an existence in which her relation as a daughter played but a\npart. She was transformed by a dignity which recast her speech and made\nit self-contained. She found herself in the sweep of a feeling so large\nthat the immediate loss of a kingdom seemed of little consequence to\nher. Even an act which might be construed as disrespect to her father\nwas justified in her eyes, because she was vainly striving to fill out\nthis larger conception of duty. The test which comes sooner or later to\nmany parents had come to Lear, to maintain the tenderness of the\nrelation between father and child, after that relation had become one\nbetween adults, to be content with the responses made by the adult child\nto the family claim, while at the same time she responded to the claims\nof the rest of life. The mind of Lear was not big enough for this test;\nhe failed to see anything but the personal slight involved, and the\ningratitude alone reached him. It was impossible for him to calmly watch\nhis child developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy.\n\nThat a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to\napprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his\nanger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him\nthan his sense of paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the\ncommon ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal\ninheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of himself so long as a noble\nand indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might\nperceive himself in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he\ndeclared himself more sinned against than sinning. He could believe any\namount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no\nfidelity on the part of Cordelia unless she gave him the sign he\ndemanded.\n\nAt length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and\nbroken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first\ntime his experience was identical with the experience of the men around\nhim, and he came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in the\nplace of \"the poor naked wretches,\" and unexpectedly found healing and\ncomfort. He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human\ncontact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which\nhe suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his\nthrone, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.\n\nIn reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of\nour censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of\ntenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and\nbe unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved? We see in the old\nking \"the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet\ncharacteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone.\"\nHis eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are\nimpatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this,\neven in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense\nof a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow conception that would break\nthus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part\nin the new life. We want to remind her \"that pity, memory, and\nfaithfulness are natural ties,\" and surely as much to be prized as is\nthe development of her own soul. We do not admire the Cordelia who\nthrough her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later admire the\nsame woman who comes back from France that she may include her father in\nher happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly taken her\nsalvation for herself alone, and it was not until her conscience had\ndeveloped in her new life that she was driven back to her father, where\nshe perished, drawn into the cruelty and wrath which had now become\nobjective and tragic.\n\nHistorically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was\narchaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life\nsince developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and\nindulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without\nany anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that\nthey could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary\nconception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that\nwe have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate\nthat by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like\nmisery.\n\nWounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a\nmodicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual\nto the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a\ncode of ethics dealing with these larger relationships, instead of a\ncode designed to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only\nbetween individuals.\n\nDoubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those\nwhich occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and\nbelieved in, are brought sharply together. The awkwardness and\nconstraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners\nclash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nHOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT\n\n\nIf we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive,\nlife would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the\ncontention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as\nimportant as its aims. We can all recall acquaintances of whose\nintegrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion\nas they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are\noften insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of\nother people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.\n\nThis tendency to be so sure of integrity of purpose as to be\nunsympathetic and hardened to the means by which it is accomplished, is\nperhaps nowhere so obvious as in the household itself. It nowhere\noperates as so constant a force as in the minds of the women who in all\nthe perplexity of industrial transition are striving to administer\ndomestic affairs. The ethics held by them are for the most part the\nindividual and family codes, untouched by the larger social conceptions.\n\nThese women, rightly confident of their household and family integrity\nand holding to their own code of morals, fail to see the household in\nits social aspect. Possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to\nthe social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the\nhousehold employer and the household employee, or, as it is still\nsometimes called, that between mistress and servant.\n\nThis persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may\nbe partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense,\ncivilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one\nplace, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number\nof persons. From the familiar proposition that the home began because\nthe mother was obliged to stay in one spot in order to cherish the\nchild, we can see a foundation for the belief that if women are much\naway from home, the home itself will be destroyed and all ethical\nprogress endangered.\n\nWe have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings\nwere most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore,\nthe good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually\nthe two--the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her\nvirtue--became synonymous. A code of ethics was thus developed in regard\nto woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited\nto her own family circle. When it became impossible to adequately\nminister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who\ndid not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the\nhousehold, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs.\nWhen women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, dyers, spinners,\nand weavers, the soap and candle makers, they administered large\nindustries, but solely from the family point of view. Only a few hundred\nyears ago, woman had complete control of the manufacturing of many\ncommodities which now figure so largely in commerce, and it is evident\nthat she let the manufacturing of these commodities go into the hands of\nmen, as soon as organization and a larger conception of their production\nwere required. She felt no responsibility for their management when they\nwere taken from the home to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to\nmanufacture food and clothing for her family was her instinct to stay\nwith them, and by isolation and care to guard them from evil.\n\nShe had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own\nfamily, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. The British\nmatron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own\nroof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals and\nhealth of young girls were endangered in the overcrowded and insanitary\nfactories. The code of family ethics was established in her mind so\nfirmly that it excluded any notion of social effort.\n\nIt is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals,\nand to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of\nall that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting\nthat the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of\nthe structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to\none household shall minister to that exclusively. But to make this\ndistinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of\nobligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of\ndomestic management. The moral issue involved in one has become\ninextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the\nother, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers,\nthrough the confusion of the two problems, take a difficult and\nuntenable position.\n\nThere are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a\nsimpler code. The wife of a workingman still has a distinct economic\nvalue to her husband. She cooks, cleans, washes, and mends--services for\nwhich, before his marriage, he paid ready money. The wife of the\nsuccessful business or professional man does not do this. He continues\nto pay for his cooking, house service, and washing. The mending,\nhowever, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings\nare pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated\nimportance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings\nwere the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they\nwere formerly mistresses. But one industry, the cooking and serving of\nfoods to her own family, woman has never relinquished. It has,\ntherefore, never been organized, either by men or women, and is in an\nundeveloped state. Each employer of household labor views it solely\nfrom the family standpoint. The ethics prevailing in regard to it are\ndistinctly personal and unsocial, and result in the unique isolation of\nthe household employee.\n\nAs industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified,\nfrom the mediaeval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who\nspun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and\nlive together in ties of affection and consanguinity. Were this process\ncomplete, we should have no problem of household employment. But, even\nin households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is\nneither loved nor loving.\n\nThe modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who\nspun its clothes, and, to a large extent, the woman who washes them, but\nit stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food and ministers\ndirectly to its individual comfort; it strangely insists that to do\nthat would be to destroy the family life itself. The cook is\nuncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable; but it will not drop her as\nall her fellow-workers have been dropped, although the cook herself\ninsists upon it. So far has this insistence gone that every possible\nconcession is made to retain her. The writer knows an employer in one of\nthe suburbs who built a bay at the back of her house so that her cook\nmight have a pleasant room in which to sleep, and another in which to\nreceive her friends. This employer naturally felt aggrieved when the\ncook refused to stay in her bay. Viewed in an historic light, this\nemployer might quite as well have added a bay to her house for her\nshoemaker, and then deemed him ungrateful because he declined to live in\nit.\n\nA listener, attentive to a conversation between two employers of\nhousehold labor,--and we certainly all have opportunity to hear such\nconversations,--would often discover a tone implying that the employer\nwas abused and put upon; that she was struggling with the problem\nsolely because she was thus serving her family and performing her social\nduties; that otherwise it would be a great relief to her to abandon the\nentire situation, and \"never have a servant in her house again.\" Did she\nfollow this impulse, she would simply yield to the trend of her times\nand accept the present system of production. She would be in line with\nthe industrial organization of her age. Were she in line ethically, she\nwould have to believe that the sacredness and beauty of family life do\nnot consist in the processes of the separate preparation of food, but in\nsharing the corporate life of the community, and in making the family\nthe unit of that life.\n\nThe selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics,\ninsists that those who minister to the comforts of her family shall\nminister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be\ncut off, more or less, from their natural social ties, excludes the best\nworking-people from her service.\n\nA man of dignity and ability is quite willing to come into a house to\ntune a piano. Another man of mechanical skill will come to put up window\nshades. Another of less skill, but of perfect independence, will come to\nclean and relay a carpet. These men would all resent the situation and\nconsider it quite impossible if it implied the giving up of their family\nand social ties, and living under the roof of the household requiring\ntheir services.\n\nThe isolation of the household employee is perhaps inevitable so long as\nthe employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even\nmore difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this\nindustry. In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently\ndisplaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions.\nThe workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with their\ntime, quickly reorganize.\n\nThe general statement may be made that the enterprising girls of the\ncommunity go into factories, and the less enterprising go into\nhouseholds, although there are many exceptions. It is not a question of\nskill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will make a girl rise\nindustrially while she is in the household; she is not in the rising\nmovement. She is belated in a class composed of the unprogressive\nelements of the community, which is recruited constantly by those from\nthe ranks of the incompetent, by girls who are learning the language,\ngirls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life solely from the\nsavings-bank point of view. The distracted housekeeper struggles with\nthese unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the well-defined and\nindependent relation of employer and employed, but the hazy and\nconstantly changing one of mistress to servant.\n\nThe latter relation is changing under pressure from various directions.\nIn our increasing democracy the notion of personal service is constantly\nbecoming more distasteful, conflicting, as it does, with the more\nmodern notion of personal dignity. Personal ministration to the needs\nof childhood, illness, and old age seem to us reasonable, and the\ndemocratic adjustment in regard to them is being made. The first two are\nconstantly raised nearer to the level of a profession, and there is\nlittle doubt that the third will soon follow. But personal ministrations\nto a normal, healthy adult, consuming the time and energy of another\nadult, we find more difficult to reconcile to our theories of democracy.\n\nA factory employer parts with his men at the factory gates at the end of\na day's work; they go to their homes as he goes to his, in the\nassumption that they both do what they want and spend their money as\nthey please; but this solace of equality outside of working hours is\ndenied the bewildered employer of household labor.\n\nShe is obliged to live constantly in the same house with her employee,\nand because of certain equalities in food and shelter she is brought\nmore sharply face to face with the mental and social inequalities.\n\nThe difficulty becomes more apparent as the character of the work\nperformed by the so-called servant is less absolutely useful and may be\nmerely time consuming. A kind-hearted woman who will complacently take\nan afternoon drive, leaving her cook to prepare the five courses of a\n\"little dinner for only ten guests,\" will not be nearly so comfortable\nthe next evening when she speeds her daughter to a dance, conscious that\nher waitress must spend the evening in dull solitude on the chance that\na caller or two may ring the door-bell.\n\nA conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: \"In England it\nmust be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your\ndaughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same\nthings. But really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my\ndaughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when Mary goes off to a\nfrolic quite breaks my heart.\"\n\nToo many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from\nmanual labor, and therefore constantly impose exacting duties upon\nemployees, the nature of which they do not understand by experience;\nthere is thus no curb of rationality imposed upon the employer's\nrequirements and demands. She is totally unlike the foreman in a shop,\nwho has only risen to his position by way of having actually performed\nwith his own hands all the work of the men he directs. There is also\nanother class of employers of domestic labor, who grow capricious and\nover-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests to occupy their\nminds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that the duties of\nthe latter are not clearly defined. Tolstoy contends that an exaggerated\nnotion of cleanliness has developed among such employers, which could\nnever have been evolved among usefully employed people. He points to the\nfact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be immaculately\nclean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the household, and\nthen is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card, in order that\neven his clean hands may not touch it; later, even his clean hands are\ncovered with a pair of clean white gloves, which hold the tray upon\nwhich the card is placed.\n\nIf it were not for the undemocratic ethics used by the employers of\ndomestics, much work now performed in the household would be done\noutside, as is true of many products formerly manufactured in the feudal\nhousehold. The worker in all other trades has complete control of his\nown time after the performance of definitely limited services, his wages\nare paid altogether in money which he may spend in the maintenance of a\nseparate home life, and he has full opportunity to organize with the\nother workers in his trade.\n\nThe domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her\n\"mistress\" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity\nof family life.\n\nThe household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other\nworkers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a\ncorporate body. The industrial isolation of the household employee\nresults, as isolation in a trade must always result, in a lack of\nprogress in the methods and products of that trade, and a lack of\naspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize this\nisolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that\nhousehold labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements\nthere have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. It is\nsaid that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought\nabout by Count Rumford, who died a hundred years ago. This is largely\ndue to the lack of _esprit de corps_ among the employees, which keeps\nthem collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education\nin the individual keeps her from improving her implements.\n\nUnder this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers\npurposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower\nquality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made to\nperform the fullest work, there is an amount of capital invested\ndisproportionate to the product when measured by the achievement in\nother branches of industry. More important than this is the result of\nthe isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing more devastating\nto the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind and spirit, than\nthe constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of that fellowship\nwhich makes our public opinion. If an angry foreman reprimands a girl\nfor breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, and the culprit\nknows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or injustice of her\nsituation. In either case she bears it better for knowing that, and not\nthinking it over in solitude. If a household employee breaks a utensil\nor a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by her employer, too often\nthe invisible jury is the family of the latter, who naturally uphold her\ncensorious position and intensify the feeling of loneliness in the\nemployee.\n\nThe household employee, in addition to her industrial isolation, is also\nisolated socially. It is well to remember that the household employees\nfor the better quarters of the city and suburbs are largely drawn from\nthe poorer quarters, which are nothing if not gregarious. The girl is\nborn and reared in a tenement house full of children. She goes to school\nwith them, and there she learns to march, to read, and write in\ncompanionship with forty others. When she is old enough to go to\nparties, those she attends are usually held in a public hall and are\ncrowded with dancers. If she works in a factory, she walks home with\nmany other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly walked to\nschool with them. She mingles with the young men she knows, in frank,\neconomic, and social equality. Until she marries she remains at home\nwith no special break or change in her family and social life. If she is\nemployed in a household, this is not true. Suddenly all the conditions\nof her life are altered. This change may be wholesome for her, but it\nis not easy, and thought of the savings-bank does not cheer one much,\nwhen one is twenty. She is isolated from the people with whom she has\nbeen reared, with whom she has gone to school, and among whom she\nexpects to live when she marries. She is naturally lonely and\nconstrained away from them, and the \"new maid\" often seems \"queer\" to\nher employer's family. She does not care to mingle socially with the\npeople in whose house she is employed, as the girl from the country\noften does, but she surfers horribly from loneliness.\n\nThis wholesome, instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that,\nas every city intelligence-office can testify, the filling of situations\nis easier, or more difficult, in proportion as the place offers more or\nless companionship. Thus, the easy situation to fill is always the city\nhouse, with five or six employees, shading off into the more difficult\nsuburban home, with two, and the utterly impossible lonely country\nhouse.\n\nThere are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts\nto supply domestic and social life to their employees; who take the\ndomestic employee to drive, arrange to have her invited out\noccasionally; who supply her with books and papers and companionship.\nNothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom\nsuccessful in actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of\ncompanionship. The employee may have a genuine friendship for her\nemployer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and\nthe unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she\nhas, merely because of the propinquity.\n\nThe unnaturalness of the situation is intensified by the fact that the\nemployee is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from\nher natural associates, and that her employer sympathetically insists\nupon filling the vacancy in interests and affections by her own tastes\nand friendship. She may or may not succeed, but the employee should not\nbe thus dependent upon the good will of her employer. That in itself is\nundemocratic.\n\nThe difficulty is increasing by a sense of social discrimination which\nthe household employee keenly feels is against her and in favor of the\nfactory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. Women\nseeking employment, understand perfectly well this feeling among\nmechanics, doubtless quite unjustifiable, but it acts as a strong\ninducement toward factory labor. The writer has long ceased to apologize\nfor the views and opinions of working people, being quite sure that on\nthe whole they are quite as wise and quite as foolish as the views and\nopinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of\nyoung mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily\ndemonstrated. The contrast is further accentuated by the better social\nposition of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for her in\nthe way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and vacation homes, from which\ngirls performing household labor are practically excluded by their hours\nof work, their geographical situation, and a curious feeling that they\nare not as interesting as factory girls.\n\nThis separation from her natural social ties affects, of course, her\nopportunity for family life. It is well to remember that women, as a\nrule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their\nparents, their brothers and sisters, and kinsfolk, and will sacrifice\nmuch to accomplish this. This devotion is so universal that it is\nimpossible to ignore it when we consider women as employees. Young\nunmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirements as\nyoung men are, and are more ready and steady in their response to the\nneeds of aged parents and the helpless members of the family. But women\nperforming labor in households have peculiar difficulties in responding\nto their family claims, and are practically dependent upon their\nemployers for opportunities of even seeing their relatives and friends.\n\nCuriously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to\nits claims, on the part of the employer, operates against the girl\nemployed in household labor, and still further contributes to her\nisolation.\n\nThe employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her own family\nlife intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to\nher cook, for instance, but once or twice a week, such opportunity for\nuntrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family\nclaims constantly. This in itself is undemocratic, in that it makes a\ndistinction between the value of family life for one set of people as\nover against another; or, rather, claims that one set of people are of\nso much less importance than another, that a valuable side of life\npertaining to them should be sacrificed for the other.\n\nThis cannot be defended theoretically, and no doubt much of the talk\namong the employers of household labor, that their employees are\ncarefully shielded and cared for, and that it is so much better for a\ngirl's health and morals to work in a household than to work in a\nfactory, comes from a certain uneasiness of conscience, and from a\ndesire to make up by individual scruple what would be done much more\nfreely and naturally by public opinion if it had an untrammelled chance\nto assert itself. One person, or a number of isolated persons, however\nconscientious, cannot perform this office of public opinion. Certain\nhospitals in London have contributed statistics showing that\nseventy-eight per cent of illegitimate children born there are the\nchildren of girls working in households. These girls are certainly not\nless virtuous than factory girls, for they come from the same families\nand have had the same training, but the girls who remain at home and\nwork in factories meet their lovers naturally and easily, their fathers\nand brothers know the men, and unconsciously exercise a certain\nsupervision and a certain direction in their choice of companionship.\nThe household employees living in another part of the city, away from\ntheir natural family and social ties, depend upon chance for the lovers\nwhom they meet. The lover may be the young man who delivers for the\nbutcher or grocer, or the solitary friend, who follows the girl from her\nown part of town and pursues unfairly the advantage which her social\nloneliness and isolation afford him. There is no available public\nopinion nor any standard of convention which the girl can apply to her\nown situation.\n\nIt would be easy to point out many inconveniences arising from the fact\nthat the old economic forms are retained when moral conditions which\nbefitted them have entirely disappeared, but until employers of domestic\nlabor become conscious of their narrow code of ethics, and make a\ndistinct effort to break through the status of mistress and servant,\nbecause it shocks their moral sense, there is no chance of even\nbeginning a reform.\n\nA fuller social and domestic life among household employees would be\nsteps toward securing their entrance into the larger industrial\norganizations by which the needs of a community are most successfully\nadministered. Many a girl who complains of loneliness, and who\nrelinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly tries to\nformulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. She\nsometimes says that she \"feels so unnatural all the time.\" The writer\nhas known the voice of a girl to change so much during three weeks of\n\"service\" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her\nhome. It alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child\n\"speaks a piece\" and the husky gulp with which the _globus hystericus_\nis swallowed. The alertness and _bonhomie_ of the voice of the\ntenement-house child had totally disappeared. When such a girl leaves\nher employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally\nincomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally concludes that she\nwishes to get away from the work and back to her dances and giddy life,\ncontent, if she has these, to stand many hours in an insanitary factory.\nThe charge of the employer is only half a truth. These dances may be the\nonly organized form of social life which the disheartened employee is\nable to mention, but the girl herself, in her discontent and her moving\nfrom place to place, is blindly striving to respond to a larger social\nlife. Her employer thinks that she should be able to consider only the\ninterests and conveniences of her employer's family, because the\nemployer herself is holding to a family outlook, and refuses to allow\nher mind to take in the larger aspects of the situation.\n\nAlthough this household industry survives in the midst of the factory\nsystem, it must, of course, constantly compete with it. Women with\nlittle children, or those with invalids depending upon them, cannot\nenter either occupation, and they are practically confined to the sewing\ntrades; but to all other untrained women seeking employment a choice is\nopen between these two forms of labor.\n\nThere are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or\ndo some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed\nhousekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her\nhousehold. Household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and\nwomen seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two\nforms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment,\nin point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family\nand social life. Three points are easily disposed of. First, in regard\nto hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The\naverage factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the\nevening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. This\nleaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours\nof household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night,\nwith little difference in seasons. There is one afternoon a week, with\nan occasional evening, but Sunday is seldom wholly free. Even these\nevenings and afternoons take the form of a concession from the employer.\nThey are called \"evenings out,\" as if the time really belonged to her,\nbut that she was graciously permitting her employee to use it. This\nattitude, of course, is in marked contrast to that maintained by the\nfactory operative, who, when she works evenings is paid for \"over-time.\"\n\nSecond, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found\nclearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any\nmeasure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less\ncompetition.\n\nThird, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we\nconsider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving\nmoney. This is greater among household employees, because they do not\npay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend\nmoney in recreation is less frequent. The minimum wages paid an adult\nin household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week;\nthe maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare\nopportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the\nhousekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.\n\nThe factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be\nsmaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the\nminds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers\nfor increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for\nless than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last\nbeing a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five\ndollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance\nof earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it\neasier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board,\nin a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be content with\nfour dollars a week and pay no board, in a scale of wages rising toward\nsix dollars; and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen\nat sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar\nhousekeeper. In many cases this position is well taken economically,\nfor, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employees\nin the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she\nworks in a factory and lives with them. The rent is no more when she is\nat home. The two dollars and a half a week which she pays into the\nfamily fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night\nshe can often contribute toward the family labor by helping her mother\nwash and sew.\n\nThe fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in\nregard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if\nthe position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining\nfactor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to\nremedy this, at least in its domestic and social aspects. To allow\nhousehold employees to live with their own families and among their own\nfriends, as factory employees now do, would be to relegate more\nproduction to industrial centres administered on the factory system, and\nto secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the\nhousehold.\n\nIn those cases in which the household employees have no family ties,\ndoubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of\nresidence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most\nkeenly felt. Indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in\nthe servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs,\nthe household employee could have the independent life which only one's\nown abiding place can afford. This, of course, presupposes a higher\ngrade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the\nother hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher\ngrades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. As the\nplan of separate clubs for household employees will probably come first\nin the suburbs, where the difficulty of securing and holding \"servants\"\nunder the present system is most keenly felt, so the plan of buying\ncooked food from an outside kitchen, and of having more and more of the\nhousehold product relegated to the factory, will probably come from the\ncomparatively poor people in the city, who feel most keenly the pressure\nof the present system. They already consume a much larger proportion of\ncanned goods and bakers' wares and \"prepared meats\" than the more\nprosperous people do, because they cannot command the skill nor the time\nfor the more tedious preparation of the raw material. The writer has\nseen a tenement-house mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door\nof a local grocery store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they\ncould be easily prepared for supper and \"the children liked the tinny\ntaste.\"\n\nIt is comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household\nindustry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. The difficulties really\nbegin when the family income is so small that but one person can be\nemployed in the household for all these varied functions, and the\ndifficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall\naltogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in a flat, or,\nworse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one set of\nutensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making the\nliving room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly\ninsupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. Such a woman, rather than\nthe prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high\nstandard of quality is established.\n\nThe problem of domestic service, which has long been discussed in the\nUnited States and England, is now coming to prominence in France. As a\nwell-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in\nthe ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an\n\"unconscious slavery,\" while English and American writers appeal to the\nstatistics which point to the absorption of an enormous number of the\nclass from which servants were formerly recruited into factory\nemployments, and urge, as the natural solution, that more of the\nproducts used in households be manufactured in factories, and that\npersonal service, at least for healthy adults, be eliminated altogether.\nBoth of these lines of discussion certainly indicate that domestic\nservice is yielding to the influence of a democratic movement, and is\nemerging from the narrower code of family ethics into the larger code\ngoverning social relations. It still remains to express the ethical\nadvance through changed economic conditions by which the actual needs of\nthe family may be supplied not only more effectively but more in line\nwith associated effort. To fail to apprehend the tendency of one's age,\nand to fail to adapt the conditions of an industry to it, is to leave\nthat industry ill-adjusted and belated on the economic side, and out of\nline ethically.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nINDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION\n\n\nThere is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to\naction our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we\nhave not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to\nfuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all\nbeen at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly\nindividualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless\nattempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering\nmotion of a baby's arm before he has learned to cooerdinate his muscles.\n\nIf, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism\nto one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive and\neffective action the individual still has the best of it. He will secure\nefficient results while committees are still deliberating upon the best\nmethod of making a beginning. And yet, if the need of the times demand\nassociated effort, it may easily be true that the action which appears\nineffective, and yet is carried out upon the more highly developed line\nof associated effort, may represent a finer social quality and have a\ngreater social value than the more effective individual action. It is\npossible that an individual may be successful, largely because he\nconserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any\nof his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act\nwith others. The individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his\nsuccess while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code.\nNowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial relations,\nas existing between the owner of a large factory and his employees.\n\nA growing conflict may be detected between the democratic ideal, which\nurges the workmen to demand representation in the administration of\nindustry, and the accepted position, that the man who owns the capital\nand takes the risks has the exclusive right of management. It is in\nreality a clash between individual or aristocratic management, and\ncorporate or democratic management. A large and highly developed factory\npresents a sharp contrast between its socialized form and\nindividualistic ends.\n\nIt is possible to illustrate this difference by a series of events which\noccurred in Chicago during the summer of 1894. These events epitomized\nand exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics\nwhich regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that\nso-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an\nindividual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual\nethics.\n\nAs this situation illustrates a point of great difficulty to which we\nhave arrived in our development of social ethics, it may be justifiable\nto discuss it at some length. Let us recall the facts, not as they have\nbeen investigated and printed, but as they remain in our memories.\n\nA large manufacturing company had provided commodious workshops, and, at\nthe instigation of its president, had built a model town for the use of\nits employees. After a series of years it was deemed necessary, during a\nfinancial depression, to reduce the wages of these employees by giving\neach workman less than full-time work \"in order to keep the shops open.\"\nThis reduction was not accepted by the men, who had become discontented\nwith the factory management and the town regulations, and a strike\nensued, followed by a complete shut-down of the works. Although these\nshops were non-union shops, the strikers were hastily organized and\nappealed for help to the American Railway Union, which at that moment\nwas holding its biennial meeting in Chicago. After some days' discussion\nand some futile attempts at arbitration, a sympathetic strike was\ndeclared, which gradually involved railway men in all parts of the\ncountry, and orderly transportation was brought to a complete\nstandstill. In the excitement which followed, cars were burned and\ntracks torn up. The police of Chicago did not cope with the disorder,\nand the railway companies, apparently distrusting the Governor of the\nState, and in order to protect the United States mails, called upon the\nPresident of the United States for the federal troops, the federal\ncourts further enjoined all persons against any form of interference\nwith the property or operation of the railroads, and the situation\ngradually assumed the proportions of internecine warfare. During all of\nthese events the president of the manufacturing company first involved,\nsteadfastly refused to have the situation submitted to arbitration, and\nthis attitude naturally provoked much discussion. The discussion was\nbroadly divided between those who held that the long kindness of the\npresident of the company had been most ungratefully received, and those\nwho maintained that the situation was the inevitable outcome of the\nsocial consciousness developing among working people. The first defended\nthe president of the company in his persistent refusal to arbitrate,\nmaintaining that arbitration was impossible after the matter had been\ntaken up by other than his own employees, and they declared that a man\nmust be allowed to run his own business. They considered the firm stand\nof the president a service to the manufacturing interests of the entire\ncountry. The others claimed that a large manufacturing concern has\nceased to be a private matter; that not only a number of workmen and\nstockholders are concerned in its management, but that the interests of\nthe public are so involved that the officers of the company are in a\nreal sense administering a public trust.\n\nThis prolonged strike clearly puts in a concrete form the ethics of an\nindividual, in this case a benevolent employer, and the ethics of a mass\nof men, his employees, claiming what they believed to be their moral\nrights.\n\nThese events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has\nbecome organized into a vast social operation, not with the cooeperation\nof the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the\nindividual owning the capital. There is a sharp divergence between the\nsocial form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the\nemployees are more highly socialized and dependent. The president of the\ncompany under discussion went further than the usual employer does. He\nsocialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were\nliving. He built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town,\nwithout calling upon the workmen either for self-expression or\nself-government. He honestly believed that he knew better than they what\nwas for their good, as he certainly knew better than they how to conduct\nhis business. As his factory developed and increased, making money each\nyear under his direction, he naturally expected the town to prosper in\nthe same way.\n\nHe did not realize that the men submitted to the undemocratic conditions\nof the factory organization because the economic pressure in our\nindustrial affairs is so great that they could not do otherwise. Under\nthis pressure they could be successfully discouraged from organization,\nand systematically treated on the individual basis.\n\nSocial life, however, in spite of class distinctions, is much freer than\nindustrial life, and the men resented the extension of industrial\ncontrol to domestic and social arrangements. They felt the lack of\ndemocracy in the assumption that they should be taken care of in these\nmatters, in which even the humblest workman has won his independence.\nThe basic difficulty lay in the fact that an individual was directing\nthe social affairs of many men without any consistent effort to find out\ntheir desires, and without any organization through which to give them\nsocial expression. The president of the company was, moreover, so\nconfident of the righteousness of his aim that he had come to test the\nrighteousness of the process by his own feelings and not by those of the\nmen. He doubtless built the town from a sincere desire to give his\nemployees the best surroundings. As it developed, he gradually took\ntoward it the artist attitude toward his own creation, which has no\nthought for the creation itself but is absorbed in the idea it stands\nfor, and he ceased to measure the usefulness of the town by the standard\nof the men's needs. This process slowly darkened his glints of memory,\nwhich might have connected his experience with that of his men. It is\npossible to cultivate the impulses of the benefactor until the power of\nattaining a simple human relationship with the beneficiaries, that of\nfrank equality with them, is gone, and there is left no mutual interest\nin a common cause. To perform too many good deeds may be to lose the\npower of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out\na personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral\nlesson which our times offer.\n\nThe president of this company fostered his employees for many years; he\ngave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks; but in their extreme\nneed, when they were struggling with the most difficult situation which\nthe times could present to them, he lost his touch and had nothing\nwherewith to help them. The employer's conception of goodness for his\nmen had been cleanliness, decency of living, and, above all, thrift and\ntemperance. Means had been provided for all this, and opportunities had\nalso been given for recreation and improvement. But this employer\nsuddenly found his town in the sweep of a world-wide moral impulse. A\nmovement had been going on about him and among his working men, of which\nhe had been unconscious, or concerning which he had heard only by rumor.\n\nOutside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in\nmany languages, that \"the injury of one is the concern of all.\" Their\nwatchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual\nand trade interests, to the good of the working classes, and they were\nmoved by a determination to free that class from the untoward conditions\nunder which they were laboring.\n\nCompared to these watchwords, the old ones which this philanthropic\nemployer had given his town were negative and inadequate. He had\nbelieved strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual effort, but\nhad failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined abstinence and\nconcerted action. With all his fostering, the president had not attained\nto a conception of social morality for his men and had imagined that\nvirtue for them largely meant absence of vice.\n\nWhen the labor movement finally stirred his town, or, to speak more\nfairly, when, in their distress and perplexity, his own employees\nappealed to an organized manifestation of this movement, they were quite\nsure that simply because they were workmen in distress they would not be\ndeserted by it. This loyalty on the part of a widely ramified and\nwell-organized union toward the workmen in a \"non-union shop,\" who had\ncontributed nothing to its cause, was certainly a manifestation of moral\npower.\n\nIn none of his utterances or correspondence did the president for an\ninstant recognize this touch of nobility, although one would imagine\nthat he would gladly point out this bit of virtue, in what he must have\nconsidered the moral ruin about him. He stood throughout for the\nindividual virtues, those which had distinguished the model workmen of\nhis youth; those which had enabled him and so many of his\ncontemporaries to rise in life, when \"rising in life\" was urged upon\nevery promising boy as the goal of his efforts.\n\nOf the code of social ethics he had caught absolutely nothing. The\nmorals he had advocated in selecting and training his men did not fail\nthem in the hour of confusion. They were self-controlled, and they\nthemselves destroyed no property. They were sober and exhibited no\ndrunkenness, even although obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon\nhall of a neighboring town. They repaid their employer in kind, but he\nhad given them no rule for the life of association into which they were\nplunged.\n\nThe president of the company desired that his employees should possess\nthe individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them\nthe social virtues which express themselves in associated effort.\n\nDay after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires\nconstantly reported the same message, \"the President of the Company\nholds that there is nothing to arbitrate,\" one was forced to feel that\nthe ideal of one-man rule was being sustained in its baldest form. A\ndemand from many parts of the country and from many people was being\nmade for social adjustment, against which the commercial training and\nthe individualistic point of view held its own successfully.\n\nThe majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of\nsimilar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same\ncommercial experience, shared and sustained this position. It was quite\nimpossible for them to catch the other point of view. They not only felt\nthemselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually\naccustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they\nhad come to consider their motives beyond reproach. Habit held them\npersistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions.\n\nA wise man has said that \"the consent of men and your own conscience\nare two wings given you whereby you may rise to God.\" It is so easy for\nthe good and powerful to think that they can rise by following the\ndictates of conscience, by pursuing their own ideals, that they are\nprone to leave those ideals unconnected with the consent of their\nfellow-men. The president of the company thought out within his own mind\na beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did\nnot appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it.\nThe most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent,\nmakes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious\nof social plans and experiments, ignoring this, is prone to failure.\n\nThe man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to\nconsult the \"feasible right\" as well as the absolute right. He is often\nobliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's \"best possible,\" and then has the\nsickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move\nalong with those whom he leads toward a goal that neither he nor they\nsee very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people\nreally want, and then \"provide the channels in which the growing moral\nforce of their lives shall flow.\" What he does attain, however, is not\nthe result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-climber\nbeyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by\nthe sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower\nperpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not\ntaught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the\nvillagers to move up a few feet higher; added to this, he has made\nsecure his progress. A few months after the death of the promoter of\nthis model town, a court decision made it obligatory upon the company to\ndivest itself of the management of the town as involving a function\nbeyond its corporate powers. The parks, flowers, and fountains of this\nfar-famed industrial centre were dismantled, with scarcely a protest\nfrom the inhabitants themselves.\n\nThe man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the\ncooeperation of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure.\nHe does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his\nown permanent success which associated efforts afford. Genuine\nexperiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic\nfaith and practice than those which underlie private venture. Public\nparks and improvements, intended for the common use, are after all only\nsafe in the hands of the public itself; and associated effort toward\nsocial progress, although much more awkward and stumbling than that same\neffort managed by a capable individual, does yet enlist deeper forces\nand evoke higher social capacities.\n\nThe successful business man who is also the philanthropist is in more\nthan the usual danger of getting widely separated from his employees.\nThe men already have the American veneration for wealth and successful\nbusiness capacity, and, added to this, they are dazzled by his good\nworks. The workmen have the same kindly impulses as he, but while they\norganize their charity into mutual benefit associations and distribute\ntheir money in small amounts in relief for the widows and insurance for\nthe injured, the employer may build model towns, erect college\nbuildings, which are tangible and enduring, and thereby display his\ngoodness in concentrated form.\n\nBy the very exigencies of business demands, the employer is too often\ncut off from the social ethics developing in regard to our larger social\nrelationships, and from the great moral life springing from our common\nexperiences. This is sure to happen when he is good \"to\" people rather\nthan \"with\" them, when he allows himself to decide what is best for them\ninstead of consulting them. He thus misses the rectifying influence of\nthat fellowship which is so big that it leaves no room for\nsensitiveness or gratitude. Without this fellowship we may never know\nhow great the divergence between ourselves and others may become, nor\nhow cruel the misunderstandings.\n\nDuring a recent strike of the employees of a large factory in Ohio, the\npresident of the company expressed himself as bitterly disappointed by\nthe results of his many kindnesses, and evidently considered the\nemployees utterly unappreciative. His state of mind was the result of\nthe fallacy of ministering to social needs from an individual impulse\nand expecting a socialized return of gratitude and loyalty. If the\nlunch-room was necessary, it was a necessity in order that the employees\nmight have better food, and, when they had received the better food, the\nlegitimate aim of the lunch-room was met. If baths were desirable, and\nthe fifteen minutes of calisthenic exercise given the women in the\nmiddle of each half day brought a needed rest and change to their\nmuscles, then the increased cleanliness and the increased bodily\ncomfort of so many people should of themselves have justified the\nexperiment.\n\nTo demand, as a further result, that there should be no strikes in the\nfactory, no revolt against the will of the employer because the\nemployees were filled with loyalty as the result of the kindness, was of\ncourse to take the experiment from an individual basis to a social one.\n\nLarge mining companies and manufacturing concerns are constantly\nappealing to their stockholders for funds, or for permission to take a\npercentage of the profits, in order that the money may be used for\neducational and social schemes designed for the benefit of the\nemployees. The promoters of these schemes use as an argument and as an\nappeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes\nwill be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the\nstockholders will be increased. However praiseworthy this appeal may be\nin motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory\ndeserves the failure it so often meets with in practice. In the clash\nwhich follows a strike, the employees are accused of an ingratitude,\nwhen there was no legitimate reason to expect gratitude; and useless\nbitterness, which has really a factitious basis, may be developed on\nboth sides.\n\nIndeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of\nmisunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and\nemployees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so\nfar as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual\ncode of ethics.\n\nThere is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from\nthe standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked\nindustrial significance. Failing, as they do, however, to touch the\nquestion of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of\ntrades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when\nthey urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation\nexisting between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance\nof strikes and other trades-union tactics. The men have individually\naccepted the kindness of the employers as it was individually offered,\nbut quite as the latter urges his inability to increase wages unless he\nhas the cooeperation of his competitors, so the men state that they are\nbound to the trades-union struggle for an increase in wages because it\ncan only be undertaken by combinations of labor.\n\nEven the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the\nprofits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of\ntheir wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact\nthat the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit\nshall accrue.\n\nBoth individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and\nindividual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most\nuseful as they establish standards to which the average worker and\nemployer may in time be legally compelled to conform. Progress must\nalways come through the individual who varies from the type and has\nsufficient energy to express this variation. He first holds a higher\nconception than that held by the mass of his fellows of what is\nrighteous under given conditions, and expresses this conviction in\nconduct, in many instances formulating a certain scruple which the\nothers share, but have not yet defined even to themselves. Progress,\nhowever, is not secure until the mass has conformed to this new\nrighteousness. This is equally true in regard to any advance made in the\nstandard of living on the part of the trades-unionists or in the\nimproved conditions of industry on the part of reforming employers. The\nmistake lies, not in overpraising the advance thus inaugurated by\nindividual initiative, but in regarding the achievement as complete in a\nsocial sense when it is still in the realm of individual action. No sane\nmanufacturer regards his factory as the centre of the industrial system.\nHe knows very well that the cost of material, wages, and selling prices\nare determined by industrial conditions completely beyond his control.\nYet the same man may quite calmly regard himself and his own private\nprinciples as merely self-regarding, and expect results from casual\nphilanthropy which can only be accomplished through those common rules\nof life and labor established by the community for the common good.\n\nOutside of and surrounding these smaller and most significant efforts\nare the larger and irresistible movements operating toward combination.\nThis movement must tend to decide upon social matters from the social\nstandpoint. Until then it is difficult to keep our minds free from a\nconfusion of issues. Such a confusion occurs when the gift of a large\nsum to the community for a public and philanthropic purpose, throws a\ncertain glamour over all the earlier acts of a man, and makes it\ndifficult for the community to see possible wrongs committed against it,\nin the accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. It is possible also\nthat the resolve to be thus generous unconsciously influences the man\nhimself in his methods of accumulation. He keeps to a certain individual\nrectitude, meaning to make an individual restitution by the old paths of\ngenerosity and kindness, whereas if he had in view social restitution on\nthe newer lines of justice and opportunity, he would throughout his\ncourse doubtless be watchful of his industrial relationships and his\nsocial virtues.\n\nThe danger of professionally attaining to the power of the righteous\nman, of yielding to the ambition \"for doing good\" on a large scale,\ncompared to which the ambition for politics, learning, or wealth, are\nvulgar and commonplace, ramifies through our modern life; and those most\neasily beset by this temptation are precisely the men best situated to\nexperiment on the larger social lines, because they so easily dramatize\ntheir acts and lead public opinion. Very often, too, they have in their\nhands the preservation and advancement of large vested interests, and\noften see clearly and truly that they are better able to administer the\naffairs of the community than the community itself: sometimes they see\nthat if they do not administer them sharply and quickly, as only an\nindividual can, certain interests of theirs dependent upon the community\nwill go to ruin.\n\nThe model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will\nwith which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless\nbe of great public value. This again shows the advantage of individual\nmanagement, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth,\nbut this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites\nthe ambition to provide other schools from public funds. The town of\nZurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the\nvote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. Every man who\nvoted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits,\nand, of course, the voluntary attendance must be larger than in a\nschool accepted as a gift to the community.\n\nIn the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts\ntoward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is\ntrying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to\ndo for themselves. The result of his efforts will only attain its\nhighest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by\nthe community as well as for the community.\n\nThere are doubtless many things which the public would never demand\nunless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because\nthe public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating\ntheir wants. Thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until\nthey become so established in the popular affections that they are\nincorporated in the public school system. Churches and missions\nestablish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots\nthe city with branch reading rooms and libraries. For this willingness\nto take risks for the sake of an ideal, for those experiments which must\nbe undertaken with vigor and boldness in order to secure didactic value\nin failure as well as in success, society must depend upon the\nindividual possessed with money, and also distinguished by earnest and\nunselfish purpose. Such experiments enable the nation to use the\nReferendum method in its public affairs. Each social experiment is thus\ntested by a few people, given wide publicity, that it may be observed\nand discussed by the bulk of the citizens before the public prudently\nmakes up its mind whether or not it is wise to incorporate it into the\nfunctions of government. If the decision is in its favor and it is so\nincorporated, it can then be carried on with confidence and enthusiasm.\n\nBut experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for\na certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and\nsocial advancement. The list of those who found churches, educational\ninstitutions, libraries, and art galleries, is very long, as is again\nthe list of those contributing to model dwellings, recreation halls, and\nathletic fields. At the present moment factory employers are doing much\nto promote \"industrial betterment\" in the way of sanitary surroundings,\nopportunities for bathing, lunch rooms provided with cheap and wholesome\nfood, club rooms, and guild halls. But there is a line of social\nexperiment involving social righteousness in its most advanced form, in\nwhich the number of employers and the \"favored class\" are so few that it\nis plain society cannot count upon them for continuous and valuable\nhelp. This lack is in the line of factory legislation and that sort of\nsocial advance implied in shorter hours and the regulation of wages; in\nshort, all that organization and activity that is involved in such a\nmaintenance and increase of wages as would prevent the lowering of the\nstandard of life.\n\nA large body of people feel keenly that the present industrial system\nis in a state of profound disorder, and that there is no guarantee that\nthe pursuit of individual ethics will ever right it. They claim that\nrelief can only come through deliberate corporate effort inspired by\nsocial ideas and guided by the study of economic laws, and that the\npresent industrial system thwarts our ethical demands, not only for\nsocial righteousness but for social order. Because they believe that\neach advance in ethics must be made fast by a corresponding advance in\npolitics and legal enactment, they insist upon the right of state\nregulation and control. While many people representing all classes in a\ncommunity would assent to this as to a general proposition, and would\neven admit it as a certain moral obligation, legislative enactments\ndesigned to control industrial conditions have largely been secured\nthrough the efforts of a few citizens, mostly those who constantly see\nthe harsh conditions of labor and who are incited to activity by their\nsympathies as well as their convictions.\n\nThis may be illustrated by the series of legal enactments regulating the\noccupations in which children may be allowed to work, also the laws in\nregard to the hours of labor permitted in those occupations, and the\nminimum age below which children may not be employed. The first child\nlabor laws were enacted in England through the efforts of those members\nof parliament whose hearts were wrung by the condition of the little\nparish apprentices bound out to the early textile manufacturers of the\nnorth; and through the long years required to build up the code of child\nlabor legislation which England now possesses, knowledge of the\nconditions has always preceded effective legislation. The efforts of\nthat small number in every community who believe in legislative control\nhave always been reenforced by the efforts of trades-unionists rather\nthan by the efforts of employers. Partly because the employment of\nworkingmen in the factories brings them in contact with the children who\ntend to lower wages and demoralize their trades, and partly because\nworkingmen have no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy,\nand must perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only\nchannel of redress which is open to them.\n\nWe may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving\nstreet-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of\nthe last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper. A\ncomfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral\nshock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the\nlittle fellow, who is making his way in the world. The philanthropic\nlady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such\na bright boy is not in school. She may make up her mind in a moment of\ncompunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys' schools and\nhomes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a\nchance at manual training. She probably is convinced that he alone, by\nhis unaided efforts, is supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is\nmoved to do all she can for him. Next to her sits a workingman trained\nin trades-union methods. He knows that the boy's natural development is\narrested, and that the abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up\nthe force which should go into growth; moreover, that this premature use\nof his powers has but a momentary and specious value. He is forced to\nthese conclusions because he has seen many a man, entering the factory\nat eighteen and twenty, so worn out by premature work that he was \"laid\non the shelf\" within ten or fifteen years. He knows very well that he\ncan do nothing in the way of ameliorating the lot of this particular\nboy; that his only possible chance is to agitate for proper child-labor\nlaws; to regulate, and if possible prohibit, street-vending by children,\nin order that the child of the poorest may have his school time secured\nto him, and may have at least his short chance for growth.\n\nThese three people, sitting in the street car, are all honest and\nupright, and recognize a certain duty toward the forlorn children of the\ncommunity. The self-made man is encouraging one boy's own efforts; the\nphilanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the workingman alone is\nobliged to include all the boys of his class. Workingmen, because of\ntheir feebleness in all but numbers, have been forced to appeal to the\nstate, in order to secure protection for themselves and for their\nchildren. They cannot all rise out of their class, as the occasionally\nsuccessful man has done; some of them must be left to do the work in the\nfactories and mines, and they have no money to spend in philanthropy.\n\nBoth public agitation and a social appeal to the conscience of the\ncommunity is necessary in order to secure help from the state, and,\ncuriously enough, child-labor laws once enacted and enforced are a\nmatter of great pride, and even come to be regarded as a register of the\ncommunity's humanity and enlightenment. If the method of public\nagitation could find quiet and orderly expression in legislative\nenactment, and if labor measures could be submitted to the examination\nand judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of warfare, we\nshould have the ideal development of the democratic state.\n\nBut we judge labor organizations as we do other living institutions, not\nby their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their\nblundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and\nby the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual\nfinds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action.\n\nThe very blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a\nunion, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often\nconfuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust\nuncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. The situation is\nmade even more complicated by the fact that those who are formulating a\ncode of associated action so often break through the established code of\nlaw and order. As society has a right to demand of the reforming\nindividual that he be sternly held to his personal and domestic claims,\nso it has a right to insist that labor organizations shall keep to the\nhardly won standards of public law and order; and the community performs\nbut its plain duty when it registers its protest every time law and\norder are subverted, even in the interest of the so-called social\neffort. Yet in moments of industrial stress and strain the community is\nconfronted by a moral perplexity which may arise from the mere fact that\nthe good of yesterday is opposed to the good of today, and that which\nmay appear as a choice between virtue and vice is really but a choice\nbetween virtue and virtue. In the disorder and confusion sometimes\nincident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see\nanything but the unlovely struggle itself.\n\nThe writer recalls a conversation between two workingmen who were\nleaving a lecture on \"Organic Evolution.\" The first was much puzzled,\nand anxiously inquired of the second \"if evolution could mean that one\nanimal turned into another.\" The challenged workman stopped in the rear\nof the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and expounded what he thought\nevolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the conversation can be\nrecalled, is what he said: \"You see a lot of fishes are living in a\nstream, which overflows in the spring and strands some of them upon the\nbank. The weak ones die up there, but others make a big effort to get\nback into the water. They dig their fins into the sand, breathe as much\nair as they can with their gills, and have a terrible time. But after a\nwhile their fins turn into legs and their gills into lungs, and they\nhave become frogs. Of course they are further along than the sleek,\ncomfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving their tails\nand despising the poor damaged things thrashing around on the bank.\nHe--the lecturer--did not say anything about men, but it is easy enough\nto think of us poor devils on the dry bank, struggling without enough to\nlive on, while the comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all\nthey want and despise us because we thrash about.\" His listener did not\nreply, and was evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the\napplication. Doubtless the illustration was bungling in more than its\nsetting forth, but the story is suggestive.\n\nAt times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so\nanxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably\non the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for\nhim to see the situation fairly. He becomes insensible to the unselfish\nimpulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers\nin a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on\nthe disorder which has become associated with the strike. He is\ncompletely side-tracked by the ugly phases of a great moral movement. It\nis always a temptation to assume that the side which has respectability,\nauthority, and superior intelligence, has therefore righteousness as\nwell, especially when the same side presents concrete results of\nindividual effort as over against the less tangible results of\nassociated effort.\n\nIt is as yet most difficult for us to free ourselves from the\nindividualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their\nsocial relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to\nproduce a social result through all the difficulties of associated\naction. The philanthropist still finds his path much easier than do\nthose who are attempting a social morality. In the first place, the\npublic, anxious to praise what it recognizes as an undoubted moral\neffort often attended with real personal sacrifice, joyfully seizes upon\nthis manifestation and overpraises it, recognizing the philanthropist\nas an old friend in the paths of righteousness, whereas the others are\nstrangers and possibly to be distrusted as aliens. It is easy to confuse\nthe response to an abnormal number of individual claims with the\nresponse to the social claim. An exaggerated personal morality is often\nmistaken for a social morality, and until it attempts to minister to a\nsocial situation its total inadequacy is not discovered. To attempt to\nattain a social morality without a basis of democratic experience\nresults in the loss of the only possible corrective and guide, and ends\nin an exaggerated individual morality but not in social morality at all.\nWe see this from time to time in the care-worn and overworked\nphilanthropist, who has taxed his individual will beyond the normal\nlimits and has lost his clew to the situation among a bewildering number\nof cases. A man who takes the betterment of humanity for his aim and end\nmust also take the daily experiences of humanity for the constant\ncorrection of his process. He must not only test and guide his\nachievement by human experience, but he must succeed or fail in\nproportion as he has incorporated that experience with his own.\nOtherwise his own achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes\nto believe in his own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes\nan exception of himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank\nand file of his fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to know of the\nlives of our contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their\nintegrity, which is after all but the first beginnings of social\nmorality, but in order to attain to any mental or moral integrity for\nourselves or any such hope for society.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nEDUCATIONAL METHODS\n\n\nAs democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the\nvalue and function of each member of the community, however humble he\nmay be. We have come to believe that the most \"brutish man\" has a value\nin our common life, a function to perform which can be fulfilled by no\none else. We are gradually requiring of the educator that he shall free\nthe powers of each man and connect him with the rest of life. We ask\nthis not merely because it is the man's right to be thus connected, but\nbecause we have become convinced that the social order cannot afford to\nget along without his special contribution. Just as we have come to\nresent all hindrances which keep us from untrammelled comradeship with\nour fellows, and as we throw down unnatural divisions, not in the\nspirit of the eighteenth-century reformers, but in the spirit of those\nto whom social equality has become a necessity for further social\ndevelopment, so we are impatient to use the dynamic power residing in\nthe mass of men, and demand that the educator free that power. We\nbelieve that man's moral idealism is the constructive force of progress,\nas it has always been; but because every human being is a creative agent\nand a possible generator of fine enthusiasm, we are sceptical of the\nmoral idealism of the few and demand the education of the many, that\nthere may be greater freedom, strength, and subtilty of intercourse and\nhence an increase of dynamic power. We are not content to include all\nmen in our hopes, but have become conscious that all men are hoping and\nare part of the same movement of which we are a part.\n\nMany people impelled by these ideas have become impatient with the slow\nrecognition on the part of the educators of their manifest obligation\nto prepare and nourish the child and the citizen for social relations.\nThe educators should certainly conserve the learning and training\nnecessary for the successful individual and family life, but should add\nto that a preparation for the enlarged social efforts which our\nincreasing democracy requires. The democratic ideal demands of the\nschool that it shall give the child's own experience a social value;\nthat it shall teach him to direct his own activities and adjust them to\nthose of other people. We are not willing that thousands of industrial\nworkers shall put all of their activity and toil into services from\nwhich the community as a whole reaps the benefit, while their mental\nconceptions and code of morals are narrow and untouched by any uplift\nwhich the consciousness of social value might give them.\n\nWe are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and\nwriting, suspecting them to rest upon the assumption that the ordinary\nexperience of life is worth little, and that all knowledge and interest\nmust be brought to the children through the medium of books. Such an\nassumption fails to give the child any clew to the life about him, or\nany power to usefully or intelligently connect himself with it. This may\nbe illustrated by observations made in a large Italian colony situated\nin Chicago, the children from which are, for the most part, sent to the\npublic schools.\n\nThe members of the Italian colony are largely from South\nItaly,--Calabrian and Sicilian peasants, or Neapolitans from the\nworkingmen's quarters of that city. They have come to America with the\ndistinct aim of earning money, and finding more room for the energies of\nthemselves and their children. In almost all cases they mean to go back\nagain, simply because their imaginations cannot picture a continuous\nlife away from the old surroundings. Their experiences in Italy have\nbeen those of simple outdoor activity, and their ideas have come\ndirectly to them from their struggle with Nature,--such a hand-to-hand\nstruggle as takes place when each man gets his living largely through\nhis own cultivation of the soil, or with tools simply fashioned by his\nown hands. The women, as in all primitive life, have had more\ndiversified activities than the men. They have cooked, spun, and\nknitted, in addition to their almost equal work in the fields. Very few\nof the peasant men or women can either read or write. They are devoted\nto their children, strong in their family feeling, even to remote\nrelationships, and clannish in their community life.\n\nThe entire family has been upheaved, and is striving to adjust itself to\nits new surroundings. The men, for the most part, work on railroad\nextensions through the summer, under the direction of a _padrone_, who\nfinds the work for them, regulates the amount of their wages, and\nsupplies them with food. The first effect of immigration upon the women\nis that of idleness. They no longer work in the fields, nor milk the\ngoats, nor pick up faggots. The mother of the family buys all the\nclothing, not only already spun and woven but made up into garments, of\na cut and fashion beyond her powers. It is, indeed, the most economical\nthing for her to do. Her house-cleaning and cooking are of the simplest;\nthe bread is usually baked outside of the house, and the macaroni bought\nprepared for boiling. All of those outdoor and domestic activities,\nwhich she would naturally have handed on to her daughters, have slipped\naway from her. The domestic arts are gone, with their absorbing\ninterests for the children, their educational value, and incentive to\nactivity. A household in a tenement receives almost no raw material. For\nthe hundreds of children who have never seen wheat grow, there are\ndozens who have never seen bread baked. The occasional washings and\nscrubbings are associated only with discomfort. The child of such a\nfamily receives constant stimulus of most exciting sort from his city\nstreet life, but he has little or no opportunity to use his energies in\ndomestic manufacture, or, indeed, constructively in any direction. No\nactivity is supplied to take the place of that which, in Italy, he would\nnaturally have found in his own surroundings, and no new union with\nwholesome life is made for him.\n\nItalian parents count upon the fact that their children learn the\nEnglish language and American customs before they do themselves, and the\nchildren act not only as interpreters of the language, but as buffers\nbetween them and Chicago, resulting in a certain almost pathetic\ndependence of the family upon the child. When a child of the family,\ntherefore, first goes to school, the event is fraught with much\nsignificance to all the others. The family has no social life in any\nstructural form and can supply none to the child. He ought to get it in\nthe school and give it to his family, the school thus becoming the\nconnector with the organized society about them. It is the children\naged six, eight, and ten, who go to school, entering, of course, the\nprimary grades. If a boy is twelve or thirteen on his arrival in\nAmerica, his parents see in him a wage-earning factor, and the girl of\nthe same age is already looking toward her marriage.\n\nLet us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years\nto speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified\nwith the fortunes of his family. Whatever interest has come to the minds\nof his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open\nair; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable\naccompaniments of all their experiences. Yet the first thing that the\nboy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the\ntime, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the\nperplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. He does not find this very\nstimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the\nschoolroom. The peasant child is perfectly indifferent to showing off\nand making a good recitation. He leaves all that to his schoolfellows,\nwho are more sophisticated and equipped with better English. His parents\nare not deeply interested in keeping him in school, and will not hold\nhim there against his inclination. Their experience does not point to\nthe good American tradition that it is the educated man who finally\nsucceeds. The richest man in the Italian colony can neither read nor\nwrite--even Italian. His cunning and acquisitiveness, combined with the\ncredulity and ignorance of his countrymen, have slowly brought about his\nlarge fortune. The child himself may feel the stirring of a vague\nambition to go on until he is as the other children are; but he is not\npopular with his schoolfellows, and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic\ninterest. Even the pictures and objects presented to him, as well as the\nlanguage, are strange.\n\nIf we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the\nexperiences which the child already has and to use his spontaneous and\nsocial activity, then the city streets begin this education for him in a\nmore natural way than does the school. The South Italian peasant comes\nfrom a life of picking olives and oranges, and he easily sends his\nchildren out to pick up coal from railroad tracks, or wood from\nbuildings which have been burned down. Unfortunately, this process leads\nby easy transition to petty thieving. It is easy to go from the coal on\nthe railroad track to the coal and wood which stand before a dealer's\nshop; from the potatoes which have rolled from a rumbling wagon to the\nvegetables displayed by the grocer. This is apt to be the record of the\nboy who responds constantly to the stimulus and temptations of the\nstreet, although in the beginning his search for bits of food and fuel\nwas prompted by the best of motives.\n\nThe school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition\nto the distractions of the neighborhood. Nothing is more fascinating\nthan that mysterious \"down town,\" whither the boy longs to go to sell\npapers and black boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay\nall night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great\ndailies. If a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements,\nnothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and\nworthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and\nwith a distaste for its dulness.\n\nOn the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities\nwho conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of\nthe early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories,\npainstakingly performing their work year after year. These later are the\nmen who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood\nof every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year\nafter year without in the least knowing what it is all about. The one\nfixed habit which the boy carries away with him from the school to the\nfactory is the feeling that his work is merely provisional. In school\nthe next grade was continually held before him as an object of\nattainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole object of\npresent effort is to get ready for something else. This tentative\nattitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his factory work;\nhe pursues it merely as a necessity, and his very mental attitude\ndestroys his chance for a realization of its social value. As the boy in\nschool contracted the habit of doing his work in certain hours and\ntaking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory he earns\nhis money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of\nlurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the school and\nin the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and monotonous, his\nrecreation must become more exciting and stimulating. The hopelessness\nof adding evening classes and social entertainments as a mere frill to a\nday filled with monotonous and deadening drudgery constantly becomes\nmore apparent to those who are endeavoring to bring a fuller life to the\nindustrial members of the community, and who are looking forward to a\ntime when work shall cease to be senseless drudgery with no\nself-expression on the part of the worker. It sometimes seems that the\npublic schools should contribute much more than they do to the\nconsummation of this time. If the army of school children who enter the\nfactories every year possessed thoroughly vitalized faculties, they\nmight do much to lighten this incubus of dull factory work which presses\nso heavily upon so large a number of our fellow-citizens. Has our\ncommercialism been so strong that our schools have become insensibly\ncommercialized, whereas we supposed that our industrial life was\nreceiving the broadening and illuminating effects of the schools? The\ntraining of these children, so far as it has been vocational at all, has\nbeen in the direction of clerical work. It is possible that the\nbusiness men, whom we in America so tremendously admire, have really\nbeen dictating the curriculum of our public schools, in spite of the\nconventions of educators and the suggestions of university professors.\nThe business man, of course, has not said, \"I will have the public\nschools train office boys and clerks so that I may have them easily and\ncheaply,\" but he has sometimes said, \"Teach the children to write\nlegibly and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of\npunctuality and order; to be prompt to obey; and you will fit them to\nmake their way in the world as I have made mine.\" Has the workingman\nbeen silent as to what he desires for his children, and allowed the\nbusiness man to decide for him there, as he has allowed the politician\nto manage his municipal affairs, or has the workingman so far shared our\nuniversal optimism that he has really believed that his children would\nnever need to go into industrial life at all, but that all of his sons\nwould become bankers and merchants?\n\nCertain it is that no sufficient study has been made of the child who\nenters into industrial life early and stays there permanently, to give\nhim some offset to its monotony and dulness, some historic significance\nof the part he is taking in the life of the community.\n\nIt is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing\ndemocracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. As the\npolitical expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the\nfree right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting\nthat he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of\nhis social and industrial value.\n\nThe early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to\nexchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently\nstill survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools.\nWe have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres\nof production and manufacture in which a huge population is engaged, or\nwe have lacked sufficient presence of mind to adjust ourselves to the\nchange. We admire much more the men who accumulate riches, and who\ngather to themselves the results of industry, than the men who actually\ncarry forward industrial processes; and, as has been pointed out, our\nschools still prepare children almost exclusively for commercial and\nprofessional life.\n\nQuite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and\nbegins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so\nthe school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a\nclerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation\nof ignorant and unsuccessful men. The schools do so little really to\ninterest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition\nin the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost\nfrom the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work\nand a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for\nmoney with which unmeaning purchases may be made and an unmeaning\nsocial standing obtained.\n\nThe son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses\nhis family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he\ncomes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people\nlearn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial\narithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption\nthat a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,--that every\npromising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined\nfor factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under\nother conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a\nfolding-bed for her huge four-cornered \"spare room,\" because her sister,\nwho has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the\ncramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him\neducationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress\nmeanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and\nmonotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his\ninterest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom,\nwho performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is\nnecessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to our\ntheories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is\ncovered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or\ntrouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious\neffort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial\nlife with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration\nregarding it.\n\nApparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust\nwhich centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To\nget away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is\nstill the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line.\nA workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the\nbrightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal\nschool, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general\nsocial standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are\nsuperior to factory or even office work. \"Teacher\" in the vocabulary of\nmany children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is\nindiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner. The same\ndesire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano,\nor the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. The\novercrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much\nthe same source, and from the conviction that \"an education\" is wasted\nif a boy goes into a factory or shop.\n\nA Chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended\nand meant to give a start in life. He sent them both to the Athenaeum for\nseveral winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them\ninto his office, where they speedily became known as the bright one and\nthe stupid one. The stupid one was finally dismissed after repeated\ntrials, when to the surprise of the entire establishment, he quickly\nbetook himself into the shops, where he became a wide-awake and valuable\nworkman. His chagrined benefactor, in telling the story, admits that he\nhimself had fallen a victim to his own business training and his early\nnotion of rising in life. In reality he had merely followed the lead of\nmost benevolent people who help poor boys. They test the success of\ntheir efforts by the number whom they have taken out of factory work\ninto some other and \"higher occupation.\"\n\nQuite in line with this commercial ideal are the night schools and\ninstitutions of learning most accessible to working people. First among\nthem is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of\ntype-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and\nmethods of distribution. Commodities are treated as exports and\nimports, or solely in regard to their commercial value, and not, of\ncourse, in relation to their historic development or the manufacturing\nprocesses to which they have been subjected. These schools do not in the\nleast minister to the needs of the actual factory employee, who is in\nthe shop and not in the office. We assume that all men are searching for\n\"puddings and power,\" to use Carlyle's phrase, and furnish only the\nschools which help them to those ends.\n\nThe business college man, or even the man who goes through an academic\ncourse in order to prepare for a profession, comes to look on learning\ntoo much as an investment from which he will later reap the benefits in\nearning money. He does not connect learning with industrial pursuits,\nnor does he in the least lighten or illuminate those pursuits for those\nof his friends who have not risen in life. \"It is as though nets were\nlaid at the entrance to education, in which those who by some means or\nother escape from the masses bowed down by labor, are inevitably caught\nand held from substantial service to their fellows.\" The academic\nteaching which is accessible to workingmen through University Extension\nlectures and classes at settlements, is usually bookish and remote, and\nconcerning subjects completely divorced from their actual experiences.\nThe men come to think of learning as something to be added to the end of\na hard day's work, and to be gained at the cost of toilsome mental\nexertion. There are, of course, exceptions, but many men who persist in\nattending classes and lectures year after year find themselves possessed\nof a mass of inert knowledge which nothing in their experience fuses\ninto availability or realization.\n\nAmong the many disappointments which the settlement experiment has\nbrought to its promoters, perhaps none is keener than the fact that they\nhave as yet failed to work out methods of education, specialized and\nadapted to the needs of adult working people in contra-distinction to\nthose employed in schools and colleges, or those used in teaching\nchildren. There are many excellent reasons and explanations for this\nfailure. In the first place, the residents themselves are for the most\npart imbued with academic methods and ideals, which it is most difficult\nto modify. To quote from a late settlement report, \"The most vaunted\neducational work in settlements amounts often to the stimulation\nmentally of a select few who are, in a sense, of the academic type of\nmind, and who easily and quickly respond to the academic methods\nemployed.\" These classes may be valuable, but they leave quite untouched\nthe great mass of the factory population, the ordinary workingman of the\nordinary workingman's street, whose attitude is best described as that\nof \"acquiescence,\" who lives through the aimless passage of the years\nwithout incentive \"to imagine, to design, or to aspire.\" These men are\ntotally untouched by all the educational and philanthropic machinery\nwhich is designed for the young and the helpless who live on the same\nstreets with them. They do not often drink to excess, they regularly\ngive all their wages to their wives, they have a vague pride in their\nsuperior children; but they grow prematurely old and stiff in all their\nmuscles, and become more and more taciturn, their entire energies\nconsumed in \"holding a job.\"\n\nVarious attempts have been made to break through the inadequate\neducational facilities supplied by commercialism and scholarship, both\nof which have followed their own ideals and have failed to look at the\nsituation as it actually presents itself. The most noteworthy attempt\nhas been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for\nwhich has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who\nhave from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed\nfor workingmen's sons. The early schools of this type inevitably\nreflected the ideal of the self-made man. They succeeded in transferring\na few skilled workers into the upper class of trained engineers, and a\nfew less skilled workers into the class of trained mechanics, but did\nnot aim to educate the many who are doomed to the unskilled work which\nthe permanent specialization of the division of labor demands.\n\nThe Peter Coopers and other good men honestly believed that if\nintelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully\nattended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in\ntime even become an employer himself. Such schools are useful beyond\ndoubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure\nsatisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question.\n\nAlmost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions\nfounded by rich men, anxious to help \"poor boys.\" These have been\ncaptured by conventional educators for the purpose of fitting young men\nfor the colleges and universities. They have compromised by merely\nadding to the usual academic course manual work, applied mathematics,\nmechanical drawing and engineering. Two schools in Chicago, plainly\nfounded for the sons of workingmen, afford an illustration of this\ntendency and result. On the other hand, so far as schools of this type\nhave been captured by commercialism, they turn out trained engineers,\nprofessional chemists, and electricians. They are polytechnics of a high\norder, but do not even pretend to admit the workingman with his meagre\nintellectual equipment. They graduate machine builders, but not educated\nmachine tenders. Even the textile schools are largely seized by young\nmen who expect to be superintendents of factories, designers, or\nmanufacturers themselves, and the textile worker who actually \"holds the\nthread\" is seldom seen in them; indeed, in one of the largest schools\nwomen are not allowed, in spite of the fact that spinning and weaving\nhave traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are\nat present employed in the textile mills.\n\nIt is much easier to go over the old paths of education with \"manual\ntraining\" thrown in, as it were; it is much simpler to appeal to the old\nambitions of \"getting on in life,\" or of \"preparing for a profession,\"\nor \"for a commercial career,\" than to work out new methods on democratic\nlines. These schools gradually drop back into the conventional courses,\nmodified in some slight degree, while the adaptation to workingmen's\nneeds is never made, nor, indeed, vigorously attempted. In the meantime,\nthe manufacturers continually protest that engineers, especially trained\nfor devising machines, are not satisfactory. Three generations of\nworkers have invented, but we are told that invention no longer goes on\nin the workshop, even when it is artificially stimulated by the offer of\nprizes, and that the inventions of the last quarter of the nineteenth\ncentury have by no means fulfilled the promise of the earlier\nthree-quarters.\n\nEvery foreman in a large factory has had experience with two classes of\nmen: first with those who become rigid and tolerate no change in their\nwork, partly because they make more money \"working by the piece,\" when\nthey stick to that work which they have learned to do rapidly, and\npartly because the entire muscular and nervous system has become by\ndaily use adapted to particular motions and resents change. Secondly,\nthere are the men who float in and out of the factory, in a constantly\nchanging stream. They \"quit work\" for the slightest reason or none at\nall, and never become skilled at anything. Some of them are men of low\nintelligence, but many of them are merely too nervous and restless, too\nimpatient, too easily \"driven to drink,\" to be of any use in a modern\nfactory. They are the men for whom the demanded adaptation is\nimpossible.\n\nThe individual from whom the industrial order demands ever larger\ndrafts of time and energy, should be nourished and enriched from social\nsources, in proportion as he is drained. He, more than other men, needs\nthe conception of historic continuity in order to reveal to him the\npurpose and utility of his work, and he can only be stimulated and\ndignified as he obtains a conception of his proper relation to society.\nScholarship is evidently unable to do this for him; for, unfortunately,\nthe same tendency to division of labor has also produced\nover-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that when the\nscholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the result of\nmore specialization rather than an offset from it. He cannot bring\nhealing and solace because he himself is suffering from the same\ndisease. There is indeed a deplorable lack of perception and adaptation\non the part of educators all along the line.\n\nIt will certainly be embarrassing to have our age written down\ntriumphant in the matter of inventions, in that our factories were\nfilled with intricate machines, the result of advancing mathematical and\nmechanical knowledge in relation to manufacturing processes, but\ndefeated in that it lost its head over the achievement and forgot the\nmen. The accusation would stand, that the age failed to perform a like\nservice in the extension of history and art to the factory employees who\nran the machines; that the machine tenders, heavy and almost dehumanized\nby monotonous toil, walked about in the same streets with us, and sat in\nthe same cars; but that we were absolutely indifferent and made no\ngenuine effort to supply to them the artist's perception or student's\ninsight, which alone could fuse them into social consciousness. It would\nfurther stand that the scholars among us continued with yet more\nresearch, that the educators were concerned only with the young and the\npromising, and the philanthropists with the criminals and helpless.\n\nThere is a pitiful failure to recognize the situation in which the\nmajority of working people are placed, a tendency to ignore their real\nexperiences and needs, and, most stupid of all, we leave quite untouched\naffections and memories which would afford a tremendous dynamic if they\nwere utilized.\n\nWe constantly hear it said in educational circles, that a child learns\nonly by \"doing,\" and that education must proceed \"through the eyes and\nhands to the brain\"; and yet for the vast number of people all around us\nwho do not need to have activities artificially provided, and who use\ntheir hands and eyes all the time, we do not seem able to reverse the\nprocess. We quote the dictum, \"What is learned in the schoolroom must be\napplied in the workshop,\" and yet the skill and handicraft constantly\nused in the workshop have no relevance or meaning given to them by the\nschool; and when we do try to help the workingman in an educational way,\nwe completely ignore his everyday occupation. Yet the task is merely one\nof adaptation. It is to take actual conditions and to make them the\nbasis for a large and generous method of education, to perform a\ndifficult idealization doubtless, but not an impossible one.\n\nWe apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life\nthrough his vocation. We easily recognize the historic association in\nregard to ancient buildings. We say that \"generation after generation\nhave stamped their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them,\nuntil they have become the property of all.\" And yet this is even more\ntrue of the instruments of labor, which have constantly been held in\nhuman hands. A machine really represents the \"seasoned life of man\"\npreserved and treasured up within itself, quite as much as an ancient\nbuilding does. At present, workmen are brought in contact with the\nmachinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present set of\nindustrial implements had been newly created. They handle the machinery\nday by day, without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. Few\nof the men who perform the mechanical work in the great factories have\nany comprehension of the fact that the inventions upon which the factory\ndepends, the instruments which they use, have been slowly worked out,\neach generation using the gifts of the last and transmitting the\ninheritance until it has become a social possession. This can only be\nunderstood by a man who has obtained some idea of social progress. We\nare still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of\nlabor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby,\nand we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product\nlong enough to really focus it upon the producer. Theoretically, \"the\ndivision of labor\" makes men more interdependent and human by drawing\nthem together into a unity of purpose. \"If a number of people decide to\nbuild a road, and one digs, and one brings stones, and another breaks\nthem, they are quite inevitably united by their interest in the road.\nBut this naturally presupposes that they know where the road is going\nto, that they have some curiosity and interest about it, and perhaps a\nchance to travel upon it.\" If the division of labor robs them of\ninterest in any part of it, the mere mechanical fact of interdependence\namounts to nothing.\n\nThe man in the factory, as well as the man with the hoe, has a grievance\nbeyond being overworked and disinherited, in that he does not know what\nit is all about. We may well regret the passing of the time when the\nvariety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally\nstimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into\ncontact both with the raw material and the finished product. But the\nproblem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to\nsupply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were. If the\nshop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem\nof the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what\nmay be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to\nsupply him with general information and to insist that he shall be a\ncultivated member of society with a consciousness of his industrial and\nsocial value.\n\nAs sad a sight as an old hand-loom worker in a factory attempting to\nmake his clumsy machine compete with the flying shuttles about him, is a\nworkingman equipped with knowledge so meagre that he can get no meaning\ninto his life nor sequence between his acts and the far-off results.\n\nManufacturers, as a whole, however, when they attempt educational\ninstitutions in connection with their factories, are prone to follow\nconventional lines, and to exhibit the weakness of imitation. We find,\nindeed, that the middle-class educator constantly makes the mistakes of\nthe middle-class moralist when he attempts to aid working people. The\nlatter has constantly and traditionally urged upon the workingman the\nspecialized virtues of thrift, industry, and sobriety--all virtues\npertaining to the individual. When each man had his own shop, it was\nperhaps wise to lay almost exclusive stress upon the industrial virtues\nof diligence and thrift; but as industry has become more highly\norganized, life becomes incredibly complex and interdependent. If a\nworkingman is to have a conception of his value at all, he must see\nindustry in its unity and entirety; he must have a conception that will\ninclude not only himself and his immediate family and community, but the\nindustrial organization as a whole. It is doubtless true that dexterity\nof hand becomes less and less imperative as the invention of machinery\nand subdivision of labor proceeds; but it becomes all the more\nnecessary, if the workman is to save his life at all, that he should get\na sense of his individual relation to the system. Feeding a machine with\na material of which he has no knowledge, producing a product, totally\nunrelated to the rest of his life, without in the least knowing what\nbecomes of it, or its connection with the community, is, of course,\nunquestionably deadening to his intellectual and moral life. To make\nthe moral connection it would be necessary to give him a social\nconsciousness of the value of his work, and at least a sense of\nparticipation and a certain joy in its ultimate use; to make the\nintellectual connection it would be essential to create in him some\nhistoric conception of the development of industry and the relation of\nhis individual work to it.\n\nWorkingmen themselves have made attempts in both directions, which it\nwould be well for moralists and educators to study. It is a striking\nfact that when workingmen formulate their own moral code, and try to\ninspire and encourage each other, it is always a large and general\ndoctrine which they preach. They were the first class of men to organize\nan international association, and the constant talk at a modern labor\nmeeting is of solidarity and of the identity of the interests of\nworkingmen the world over. It is difficult to secure a successful\norganization of men into the simplest trades organization without an\nappeal to the most abstract principles of justice and brotherhood. As\nthey have formulated their own morals by laying the greatest stress upon\nthe largest morality, so if they could found their own schools, it is\ndoubtful whether they would be of the mechanic institute type. Courses\nof study arranged by a group of workingmen are most naive in their\nbreadth and generality. They will select the history of the world in\npreference to that of any period or nation. The \"wonders of science\" or\n\"the story of evolution\" will attract workingmen to a lecture when\nzooelogy or chemistry will drive them away. The \"outlines of literature\"\nor \"the best in literature\" will draw an audience when a lecturer in\nEnglish poetry will be solitary. This results partly from a wholesome\ndesire to have general knowledge before special knowledge, and is partly\na rebound from the specialization of labor to which the workingman is\nsubjected. When he is free from work and can direct his own mind, he\ntends to roam, to dwell upon large themes. Much the same tendency is\nfound in programmes of study arranged by Woman's Clubs in country\nplaces. The untrained mind, wearied with meaningless detail, when it\ngets an opportunity to make its demand heard, asks for general\nphilosophy and background.\n\nIn a certain sense commercialism itself, at least in its larger aspect,\ntends to educate the workingman better than organized education does.\nIts interests are certainly world-wide and democratic, while it is\nabsolutely undiscriminating as to country and creed, coming into contact\nwith all climes and races. If this aspect of commercialism were\nutilized, it would in a measure counterbalance the tendency which\nresults from the subdivision of labor.\n\nThe most noteworthy attempt to utilize this democracy of commerce in\nrelation to manufacturing is found at Dayton, Ohio, in the yearly\ngatherings held in a large factory there. Once a year the entire force\nis gathered together to hear the returns of the business, not so much\nin respect to the profits, as in regard to its extension. At these\nmeetings, the travelling salesmen from various parts of the world--from\nConstantinople, from Berlin, from Rome, from Hong Kong--report upon the\nsales they have made, and the methods of advertisement and promotion\nadapted to the various countries.\n\nStereopticon lectures are given upon each new country as soon as it has\nbeen successfully invaded by the product of the factory. The foremen in\nthe various departments of the factory give accounts of the increased\nefficiency and the larger output over former years. Any man who has made\nan invention in connection with the machinery of the factory, at this\ntime publicly receives a prize, and suggestions are approved that tend\nto increase the comfort and social facilities of the employees. At least\nfor the moment there is a complete esprit de corps, and the youngest and\nleast skilled employee sees himself in connection with the interests of\nthe firm, and the spread of an invention. It is a crude example of what\nmight be done in the way of giving a large framework of meaning to\nfactory labor, and of putting it into a sentient background, at least on\nthe commercial side.\n\nIt is easy to indict the educator, to say that he has gotten entangled\nin his own material, and has fallen a victim to his own methods; but\ngranting this, what has the artist done about it--he who is supposed to\nhave a more intimate insight into the needs of his contemporaries, and\nto minister to them as none other can?\n\nIt is quite true that a few writers are insisting that the growing\ndesire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its\ncounterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part\nof many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of\nconscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual\nbecause his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult\nto bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we\nhave the separation of the people who think from those who work. And\nyet, since Ruskin ceased, no one has really formulated this in a\nconvincing form. And even Ruskin's famous dictum, that labor without art\nbrutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art could only be a sense\nof beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a sense of companionship\nwith all other workers. The situation demands the consciousness of\nparticipation and well-being which comes to the individual when he is\nable to see himself \"in connection and cooperation with the whole\"; it\nneeds the solace of collective art inherent in collective labor.\n\nAs the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling,\nso the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human\nsignificance--some one who shall teach him to find that which will give\na potency to his life. His education, however simple, should tend to\nmake him widely at home in the world, and to give him a sense of\nsimplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality and noise to which\nhe is constantly subjected. He, like other men, can learn to be content\nto see but a part, although it must be a part of something.\n\nIt is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate\nhim in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which\nis his by simple right. We have learned to say that the good must be\nextended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one\nperson or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that\nstatement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we\ncannot even be sure that it is worth having. In spite of many attempts\nwe do not really act upon either statement.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nPOLITICAL REFORM\n\n\nThroughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical\nmaladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting\nupon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to\nthe larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In\naddition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is\noften an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.\n\nNowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests\nitself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to\nhold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social\nexpression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains\nto keep on common ground in our human experiences. Otherwise there is\nin various parts of the community an inevitable difference of ethical\nstandards which becomes responsible for much misunderstanding.\n\nIt is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals\nof those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely\ndifferent from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the\ngains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so\npainfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. This wide\ndifference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes\ntoward politics. The well-to-do men of the community think of politics\nas something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political\nduty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the\nexpression of their moral or social life. As a result of this\ndetachment, \"reform movements,\" started by business men and the better\nelement, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political\nmachinery and with a concern for the better method of administration,\nrather than with the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the\npeople. They fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they\nfail to consider the final aims of city government. This accounts for\nthe growing tendency to put more and more responsibility upon executive\nofficers and appointed commissions at the expense of curtailing the\npower of the direct representatives of the voters. Reform movements tend\nto become negative and to lose their educational value for the mass of\nthe people. The reformers take the role of the opposition. They give\nthemselves largely to criticisms of the present state of affairs, to\nwriting and talking of what the future must be and of certain results\nwhich should be obtained. In trying to better matters, however, they\nhave in mind only political achievements which they detach in a curious\nway from the rest of life, and they speak and write of the purification\nof politics as of a thing set apart from daily life.\n\nOn the other hand, the real leaders of the people are part of the entire\nlife of the community which they control, and so far as they are\nrepresentative at all, are giving a social expression to democracy. They\nare often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they are proceeding\nupon a sounder theory. Although they would be totally unable to give it\nabstract expression, they are really acting upon a formulation made by a\nshrewd English observer; namely, that, \"after the enfranchisement of the\nmasses, social ideals enter into political programmes, and they enter\nnot as something which at best can be indirectly promoted by government,\nbut as something which it is the chief business of government to advance\ndirectly.\"\n\nMen living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately,\nrecognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to\nsocial needs. They realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for\nsocial results, and they hold their power because they respond to that\ndemand. They are corrupt and often do their work badly; but they at\nleast avoid the mistake of a certain type of business men who are\nfrightened by democracy, and have lost their faith in the people. The\ntwo standards are similar to those seen at a popular exhibition of\npictures where the cultivated people care most for the technique of a\ngiven painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall be domestic and\nhuman.\n\nThis difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a\ncertain ward of Chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made\nto dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. In\nthis ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people,\nrepresenting a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated Latin,\nTeuton, Celt, Greek, and Slav who live there have little in common save\nthe basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all\nconditions. In order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in\nnationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any demand, it must be\nfounded upon universal experiences which are perforce individual and not\nsocial.\n\nAn instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it\npossible to understand the individualistic basis of his political\nsuccess, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for\nthe extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of\nwhich he is constantly guilty.\n\nThis leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his\nconstituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the\nsame time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be\ncommitting. They thus free the alderman from blame because his\ncorruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and\nhero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.\n\nIn certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action\nunless the results will benefit himself or some one of his\nacquaintances, and it is a long step in moral progress to set the good\nof the many before the interest of the few, and to be concerned for the\nwelfare of a community without hope of an individual return. How far the\nselfish politician befools his constituents into believing that their\ninterests are identical with his own; how far he presumes upon their\ninability to distinguish between the individual and social virtues, an\ninability which he himself shares with them; and how far he dazzles them\nby the sense of his greatness, and a conviction that they participate\ntherein, it is difficult to determine.\n\nMorality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than\nin the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate\nupon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized\nbefore they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints\nhave been after all \"the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands\nof Christians to whom the Credo has been but mysterious words.\"\n\nEthics as well as political opinions may be discussed and disseminated\namong the sophisticated by lectures and printed pages, but to the common\npeople they can only come through example--through a personality which\nseizes the popular imagination. The advantage of an unsophisticated\nneighborhood is, that the inhabitants do not keep their ideas as\ntreasures--they are untouched by the notion of accumulating them, as\nthey might knowledge or money, and they frankly act upon those they\nhave. The personal example promptly rouses to emulation. In a\nneighborhood where political standards are plastic and undeveloped, and\nwhere there has been little previous experience in self-government, the\noffice-holder himself sets the standard, and the ideas that cluster\naround him exercise a specific and permanent influence upon the\npolitical morality of his constituents.\n\nNothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous\npopulation, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, most admires\nis the quality of simple goodness; that the man who attracts them is the\none whom they believe to be a good man. We all know that children long\n\"to be good\" with an intensity which they give to no other ambition. We\ncan all remember that the earliest strivings of our childhood were in\nthis direction, and that we venerated grown people because they had\nattained perfection.\n\nPrimitive people, such as the South Italian peasants, are still in this\nstage. They want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire\nnothing so much as the good man. Abstract virtues are too difficult for\ntheir untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple\nenough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people.\n\nThe successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the\nmorality of his constituents. He must not attempt to hold up too high a\nstandard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. His\nsafety lies in doing on a large scale the good deeds which his\nconstituents are able to do only on a small scale. If he believes what\nthey believe and does what they are all cherishing a secret ambition to\ndo, he will dazzle them by his success and win their confidence. There\nis a certain wisdom in this course. There is a common sense in the mass\nof men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just as there is sure to\nbe an eccentricity in the differing and reforming individual which it is\nperhaps well to challenge.\n\nThe constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a\nprevious chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and\ndistresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy\nthemselves. The kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor\nis doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in\ndistress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too\ndrunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or child, when he\nis evicted for non-payment of rent, when he is arrested for a petty\ncrime. It seems to such a man entirely fitting that his alderman should\ndo the same thing on a larger scale--that he should help a constituent\nout of trouble, merely because he is in trouble, irrespective of the\njustice involved.\n\nThe alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are\narrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear\nbefore him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are\nlikely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to\n\"fix up matters\" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a\nserious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised\nby his constituents. All this conveys the impression to the\nsimple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a\npowerful friend. One may instance the alderman's action in standing by\nan Italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the\ncivil service regulations. The commissioners had sent out notices to\ncertain Italian day-laborers who were upon the eligible list that they\nwere to report for work at a given day and hour. One of the padrones\nintercepted these notifications and sold them to the men for five\ndollars apiece, making also the usual bargain for a share of their\nwages. The padrone's entire arrangement followed the custom which had\nprevailed for years before the establishment of civil service laws. Ten\nof the laborers swore out warrants against the padrone, who was\nconvicted and fined seventy-five dollars. This sum was promptly paid by\nthe alderman, and the padrone, assured that he would be protected from\nany further trouble, returned uninjured to the colony. The simple\nItalians were much bewildered by this show of a power stronger than that\nof the civil service, which they had trusted as they did the one in\nItaly. The first violation of its authority was made, and various\nsinister acts have followed, until no Italian who is digging a sewer or\nsweeping a street for the city feels quite secure in holding his job\nunless he is backed by the friendship of the alderman. According to the\ncivil service law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are\ndischarged by the foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only\nupon the aldermanic recommendation. He thus practically holds his old\npower over the laborers working for the city. The popular mind is\nconvinced that an honest administration of civil service is impossible,\nand that it is but one more instrument in the hands of the powerful.\n\nIt will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men,\nwho learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such\na nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that \"civil\nservice\" is \"no good.\"\n\nAs many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact\nthat the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so\ninstances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. A young man may\nenter a saloon long after midnight, the legal closing hour, and seat\nhimself at a gambling table, perfectly secure from interruption or\narrest, because the place belongs to an alderman; but in order to secure\nthis immunity the policeman on the beat must pretend not to see into the\nwindows each time that he passes, and he knows, and the young man knows\nthat he knows, that nothing would embarrass \"Headquarters\" more than to\nhave an arrest made on those premises. A certain contempt for the whole\nmachinery of law and order is thus easily fostered.\n\nBecause of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for\nthe hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find \"jobs\" when\nwork is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all\nthe places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the\nward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he\nhad twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll.\nThis, of course, included day laborers, but each one felt under\ndistinct obligations to him for getting a position. When we reflect that\nthis is one-third of the entire vote of the ward, we realize that it is\nvery important to vote for the right man, since there is, at the least,\none chance out of three for securing work.\n\nIf we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay\nrespectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question\nof voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a\npolitical one. An Italian laborer wants a \"job\" more than anything else,\nand quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so\ndifferent from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two\nstrengthen each other.\n\nThe alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for\nan office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate\nsuffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his\nconstituents under obligations to him; but the action of such an\nindividual becomes a demoralizing element in the community when kindly\nimpulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of personal ambition, and\nwhen the plastic morals of his constituents gradually conform to his own\nundeveloped standards.\n\nThe alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes\nthese days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to\nreach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side\nit seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures\npasses from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or\nattend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for\nbenefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar\ndistress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest\nlady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the\nalderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When\nothers are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. When anxious\nrelatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful\nchildren who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both\nsides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying\noff the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five\ndollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the\nsick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly.\nHe murmurs many times, \"Never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it\nis all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too\nmany questions.\" The oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds\nof his constituents, the better he is pleased. Nothing so rapidly\nprepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. We\nsee again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered\nso praiseworthy.\n\nThere is something archaic in a community of simple people in their\nattitude toward death and burial. There is nothing so easy to collect\nmoney for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early\nreligious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. At times one\nencounters almost the Greek feeling in regard to burial. If the alderman\nseizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much\nmore does he seize upon periods of sorrow. At a funeral he has the\ndouble advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and\nsolace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to\nexpress that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment\nof quick sorrow, that desire to \"make up\" for past delinquencies, to\nshow the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is\nas natural as it is universal.\n\nIn addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social\noccasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of\nwhich almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. The\nalderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful\nhorror of burial by the county; he provides carriages for the poor, who\notherwise could not have them. It may be too much to say that all the\nrelatives and friends who ride in the carriages provided by the\nalderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly influenced by his\nkindness, and talk of his virtues during the long hours of the ride back\nand forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who would ask at such a time\nwhere all the money thus spent comes from would be considered sinister.\nThe tendency to speak lightly of the faults of the dead and to judge\nthem gently is transferred to the living, and many a man at such a time\nhas formulated a lenient judgment of political corruption, and has heard\nkindly speeches which he has remembered on election day. \"Ah, well, he\nhas a big Irish heart. He is good to the widow and the fatherless.\" \"He\nknows the poor better than the big guns who are always talking about\ncivil service and reform.\"\n\nIndeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of\nadministration make against this big manifestation of human\nfriendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of\nthe civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman\nwill keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every\nweek, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes\nprovided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into\n\"hundreds a year.\" He understands what the people want, and ministers\njust as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An\nattempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at\none time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House\nnursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days\npreviously in the Cook County hospital, but no trace could be found of\nthe unfortunate mother. The little child lived for several weeks, and\nthen, in spite of every care, died. It was decided to have it buried by\nthe county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o'clock;\nabout nine o'clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached\nthe neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of\nmind, to protest. They took up a collection out of their poverty with\nwhich to defray a funeral. The residents of Hull-House were then\ncomparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were\nreally shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. In their\ncrudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended\nupon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every\nattention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even\nintimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in\nthis, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be\nburied as it had been born, at the county's expense. It is doubtful if\nHull-House has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the\nminds of some of its neighbors. It was only forgiven by the most\nindulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not\nknow a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could\npossibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the\nethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely.\n\nWe are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple\npeople. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a\nreminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and\nregrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is\nforgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and\nfaithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and\nforgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is\nthe magnanimous man, the kindly reckless villain who is always\napplauded. So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson once remarked that it\nwas surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society\ncontained.\n\nOn the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town\nwithin easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more\nimportant of his friends. Here again he has seized upon an old tradition\nand primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best\nexpressed when men drink together. The saloons offer a common meeting\nground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who\nmeet there.\n\nHe distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters,\nbut to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious\nmanagement some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of\nthat, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable\nsocieties, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for\nChristmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey\nagain. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from any hardly\nacquired philanthropic motive, there is no disposition to apply the\ncarefully evolved rules of the charitable societies to his\nbeneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect that the\nbenevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite\nfreed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the\nfact that they can thus \"soak the alderman.\" An example of this is the\nyoung man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, giving a sly\nwink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of obligation is\noften the first step downward to the position where he is willing to\nsell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as he\npleases. The writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he\ncomplained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had\n\"sold for only two dollars this year,\" and that he was \"awfully\ndisappointed.\" The writer happened to know that his income during the\nnine months previous had been but twenty-eight dollars, and that he was\nin debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well imagine the eagerness\nwith which he had counted upon this source of revenue. After some years\nthe selling of votes becomes a commonplace, and but little attempt is\nmade upon the part of the buyer or seller to conceal the fact, if the\ntransaction runs smoothly.\n\nA certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire\nhouse to a political party and was \"well paid for it too\"; but being of\na grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the\nrival party. Such an outrage could not be borne. The man was treated to\na modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held\nunder a street hydrant in November, contracted pneumonia which resulted\nin his death. No official investigation took place, since the doctor's\ncertificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and public\nsentiment sustained the action. In various conversations which the\nwriter had concerning the entire transaction, she discovered great\nindignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, but none whatever\nfor his original offence of selling out the votes of his house.\n\nA club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation\nfor political power which may later be sold out. The president and\nexecutive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the\nfunds, promise to divide with \"the boys\" who swell the size of the\nmembership. A reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are\nactive and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can\n\"deliver.\" The reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and\nonly gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the\nexpress purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most\nactive in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their\nallegiance when they are ready to sell. Reformers seeing them drop away\none by one, talk of desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power\nof money over well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand\ntemptation; but in reality the men are not deserters because they have\nnever actually been enrolled in the ranks. The money they take is\nneither a bribe nor the price of their loyalty, it is simply the\nconsummation of a long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. They\ncame into the new movement for the purpose of being bought out of it,\nand have successfully accomplished that purpose.\n\nHull-House assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against\nthe same alderman. In the two years following the end of the first one,\nnearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office\nfrom the reelected alderman. A printer had been appointed to a clerkship\nin the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the\npolice barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in\nthe city construction department. At the beginning of the next\ncampaign, the greatest difficulty was experienced in finding a\ncandidate, and each one proposed, demanded time to consider the\nproposition. During this period he invariably became the recipient of\nthe alderman's bounty. The first one, who was foreman of a large\nfactory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that the\ncity institutions would use the product of his firm. The second one, a\nkeeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was\npromised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the\nexpiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and\nit may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and\nsuccessfully elected. The third proposed candidate received a place for\nhis son in the office of the city attorney.\n\nNot only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. Any\nrequests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the\nalderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides.\nThere is thus constant opportunity for the alderman to put his\nconstituents under obligations to him, to make it difficult for a\nconstituent to withstand him, or for one with large interests to enter\ninto political action at all. From the Italian pedler who wants a\nlicense to peddle fruit in the street, to the large manufacturing\ncompany who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of conveying pipes\nfrom one building to another, everybody is under obligations to his\nalderman, and is constantly made to feel it. In short, these very\nregulations for presenting requests to the council have been made, by\nthe aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of increasing the\ndependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting aldermanic\npower and prestige.\n\nThe alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of\nhis ward. The paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his\ndistrict, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side\nholds him responsible for this condition, and promises better paving\nunder another regime. But the paving could not be made better without a\nspecial assessment upon the property owners of the vicinity, and paying\nmore taxes is exactly what his constituents do not want to do. In\nreality, \"getting them off,\" or at the worst postponing the time of the\nimprovement, is one of the genuine favors which he performs. A movement\nto have the paving done from a general fund would doubtless be opposed\nby the property owners in other parts of the city who have already paid\nfor the asphalt bordering their own possessions, but they have no\nconception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy which repaving may\nmean to the small property owner, nor how his chief concern may be to\nelect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and pocket-books of\nhis constituents than he does for the repute and cleanliness of his\ncity.\n\nThe alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his\ndown-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars with which to\nuniform and equip a boys' temperance brigade which had been formed in\none of the ward churches a few months before his campaign. Is it strange\nthat the good leader, whose heart was filled with innocent pride as he\nlooked upon these promising young scions of virtue, should decline to\nenter into a reform campaign? Of what use to suggest that uniforms and\nbayonets for the purpose of promoting temperance, bought with money\ncontributed by a man who was proprietor of a saloon and a gambling\nhouse, might perhaps confuse the ethics of the young soldiers? Why take\nthe pains to urge that it was vain to lecture and march abstract virtues\ninto them, so long as the \"champion boodler\" of the town was the man\nwhom the boys recognized as a loyal and kindhearted friend, the\npublic-spirited citizen, whom their fathers enthusiastically voted for,\nand their mothers called \"the friend of the poor.\" As long as the actual\nand tangible success is thus embodied, marching whether in kindergartens\nor brigades, talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to change\nthe code of ethics.\n\nThe question of where does the money come from which is spent so\nsuccessfully, does of course occur to many minds. The more primitive\npeople accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to\ntheir moral sense. To their simple minds he gets it \"from the rich\" and,\nso long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true Robin Hood, with\nopen hand, they have no objections to offer. Their ethics are quite\nhonestly those of the merry-making foresters. The next less primitive\npeople of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the\n\"gang\" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he\nmakes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to\nsteer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal\npay; that he is, in short, a successful \"boodler.\" When, however, there\nis intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to\nmake the contention that this is universally done, that all the\naldermen do it more or less successfully, but that the alderman of this\nparticular ward is unique in being so generous; that such a state of\naffairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that is the way business\nis run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man who is close to the\npeople gets a large share of the spoils; that he serves franchised\ncompanies who employ men in the building and construction of their\nenterprises, and that they are bound in return to give work to his\nconstituents. It is again the justification of stealing from the rich to\ngive to the poor. Even when they are intelligent enough to complete the\ncircle, and to see that the money comes, not from the pockets of the\ncompanies' agents, but from the street-car fares of people like\nthemselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two cents more\neach time they ride than to give up the consciousness that they have a\nbig, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in an\nemergency. The sense of just dealing comes apparently much later than\nthe desire for protection and indulgence. On the whole, the gifts and\nfavors are taken quite simply as an evidence of genuine loving-kindness.\nThe alderman is really elected because he is a good friend and neighbor.\nHe is corrupt, of course, but he is not elected because he is corrupt,\nbut rather in spite of it. His standard suits his constituents. He\nexemplifies and exaggerates the popular type of a good man. He has\nattained what his constituents secretly long for.\n\nAt one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly\ncalled \"Con Row.\" The term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is\nnevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are\noccupied by professional office holders. This row is supposed to form a\nhappy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in\nprosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. It\nwould be difficult to justly estimate the influence which this group of\nsuccessful, prominent men, including the alderman who lives there, have\nhad upon the ideals of the youth in the vicinity. The path which leads\nto riches and success, to civic prominence and honor, is the path of\npolitical corruption. We might compare this to the path laid out by\nBenjamin Franklin, who also secured all of these things, but told young\nmen that they could be obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal\nliving, by the cultivation of the mind, and the holding fast to\nrighteousness; or, again, we might compare it to the ideals which were\nheld up to the American youth fifty years ago, lower, to be sure, than\nthe revolutionary ideal, but still fine and aspiring toward honorable\ndealing and careful living. They were told that the career of the\nself-made man was open to every American boy, if he worked hard and\nsaved his money, improved his mind, and followed a steady ambition. The\nwriter remembers that when she was ten years old, the village\nschoolmaster told his little flock, without any mitigating clauses,\nthat Jay Gould had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by always\nsaving bits of string, and that, as a result, every child in the village\nassiduously collected party-colored balls of twine. A bright Chicago boy\nmight well draw the inference that the path of the corrupt politician\nnot only leads to civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and\nphilanthropy. This lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is\nperhaps the worst of the situation, for, as we said in the first\nchapter, we determine ideals by our daily actions and decisions not only\nfor ourselves, but largely for each other.\n\nWe are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the\ncommunity stand indicted. This is the penalty of a democracy,--that we\nare bound to move forward or retrograde together. None of us can stand\naside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the\nsame air.\n\nThat the alderman has much to do with setting the standard of life and\ndesirable prosperity may be illustrated by the following incident:\nDuring one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew a poster\nrepresenting the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne\nat a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other\nrevellers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, who sat\nupon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a workingman's\ndinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of representative he\npreferred, the presumption being that at least in a workingman's\ndistrict the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the chagrin of the\nreformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular\nmind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so\ndesirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a\ndiamond in his shirt front. The district wished its representative \"to\nstand up with the best of them,\" and certainly some of the constituents\nwould have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer. It is\npart of that general desire to appear well, the optimistic and\nthoroughly American belief, that even if a man is working with his hands\nto-day, he and his children will quite likely be in a better position in\nthe swift coming to-morrow, and there is no need of being too closely\nassociated with common working people. There is an honest absence of\nclass consciousness, and a naive belief that the kind of occupation\nquite largely determines social position. This is doubtless exaggerated\nin a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact that as each nationality\nbecomes more adapted to American conditions, the scale of its occupation\nrises. Fifty years ago in America \"a Dutchman\" was used as a term of\nreproach, meaning a man whose language was not understood, and who\nperformed menial tasks, digging sewers and building railroad\nembankments. Later the Irish did the same work in the community, but as\nquickly as possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name\n\"dago\" is said to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman\nresigned to him. The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact.\nIn a political speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly\nreproached the alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day \"jobs\" of\nsitting in an office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day \"jobs\"\nof sweeping the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise\nin life, to be at least politically represented by one of the best, as\nto occupation and social status, has also its negative side. We must\nremember that the imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and\nthat the loss of social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps\nmost dreaded by the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct,\nthe power to give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but\nfeebly developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, is\nafforded by the simple desire to do what others do, in order to share\nwith them the approval of the community. Of course, the larger the\nnumber of people among whom an habitual mode of conduct obtains, the\ngreater the constraint it puts upon the individual will. Thus it is that\nthe political corruption of the city presses most heavily where it can\nbe least resisted, and is most likely to be imitated.\n\nAccording to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are\nbound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the\nwater of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant\nsprings; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes\nfrom using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not\nenforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the\ndiscomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The\nprosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat\nwith the \"boss\" politician or preserve his independence on a smaller\nincome; but to an Italian day laborer it is a choice between obeying the\ncommands of a political \"boss\" or practical starvation. Again, a more\nintelligent man may philosophize a little upon the present state of\ncorruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of our commercialism,\nfrom which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he may give himself the\nsolace of literature and ideals in other directions, but the more\nignorant man who lives only in the narrow present has no such resource;\nslowly the conviction enters his mind that politics is a matter of\nfavors and positions, that self-government means pleasing the \"boss\" and\nstanding in with the \"gang.\" This slowly acquired knowledge he hands on\nto his family. During the month of February his boy may come home from\nschool with rather incoherent tales about Washington and Lincoln, and\nthe father may for the moment be fired to tell of Garibaldi, but such\ntalk is only periodic, and the long year round the fortunes of the\nentire family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend\nupon the \"boss.\"\n\nIn a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation\ndepend upon him. To use a former illustration, if a man happens to have\na taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes\nto those houses which are protected by political influence. If he and\nhis friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to\nhear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he\nis breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be\nexempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is\nfriendly to him and expects his allegiance in return.\n\nDuring the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local\nspeakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from\nother parts of the town, from the so-called \"better element.\" Suddenly\nit was rumored on all sides that, while the money and speakers for the\nreform candidate were coming from the swells, the money which was\nbacking the corrupt alderman also came from a swell source; that the\npresident of a street-car combination, for whom he performed constant\noffices in the city council, was ready to back him to the extent of\nfifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a good man, and\nsat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum of money to\nan educational institution and was therefore as philanthropic, not to\nsay good and upright, as any man in town; that the corrupt alderman had\nthe sanction of the highest authorities, and that the lecturers who were\ntalking against corruption, and the selling and buying of franchises,\nwere only the cranks, and not the solid business men who had developed\nand built up Chicago.\n\nAll parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. If\nthe so-called more enlightened members accept corporate gifts from the\nman who buys up the council, and the so-called less enlightened members\naccept individual gifts from the man who sells out the council, we\nsurely must take our punishment together. There is the difference, of\ncourse, that in the first case we act collectively, and in the second\ncase individually; but is the punishment which follows the first any\nlighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the more obvious\none which follows the second?\n\nHave our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use Mr. Chapman's\ngeneralization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or\neducational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked\nwhen the saloon interest is thus served?\n\nThe street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do\nbusiness without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral\nlevel with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a\nsaloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal class, and\nquestionable money with which to debauch his constituents. Both sets of\nmen assume that the only appeal possible is along the line of\nself-interest. They frankly acknowledge money getting as their own\nmotive power, and they believe in the cupidity of all the men whom they\nencounter. No attempt in either case is made to put forward the claims\nof the public, or to find a moral basis for action. As the corrupt\npolitician assumes that public morality is impossible, so many business\nmen become convinced that to pay tribute to the corrupt aldermen is on\nthe whole cheaper than to have taxes too high; that it is better to pay\nexorbitant rates for franchises, than to be made unwilling partners in\ntransportation experiments. Such men come to regard political reformers\nas a sort of monomaniac, who are not reasonable enough to see the\nnecessity of the present arrangement which has slowly been evolved and\ndeveloped, and upon which business is safely conducted. A reformer who\nreally knew the people and their great human needs, who believed that\nit was the business of government to serve them, and who further\nrecognized the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would\npossess a clew by which he might analyze the situation. He would find\nout what needs, which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which\nthe city itself could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which\npander to the lower instincts of the constituency. A mother who eats her\nChristmas turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman\nwho gave it to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of\nappreciation and gratitude to the city which supplies her little\nchildren with a Kindergarten, or, to the Board of Health which properly\nplacarded a case of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless\nnights and wearing anxiety, as well as the money paid with such\ndifficulty to the doctor and the druggist. The man who in his emotional\ngratitude almost kneels before his political friend who gets his boy out\nof jail, might be made to see the kindness and good sense of the city\nauthorities who provided the boy with a playground and reading room,\nwhere he might spend his hours of idleness and restlessness, and through\nwhich his temptations to petty crime might be averted. A man who is\ngrateful to the alderman who sees that his gambling and racing are not\ninterfered with, might learn to feel loyal and responsible to the city\nwhich supplied him with a gymnasium and swimming tank where manly and\nwell-conducted sports are possible. The voter who is eager to serve the\nalderman at all times, because the tenure of his job is dependent upon\naldermanic favor, might find great relief and pleasure in working for\nthe city in which his place was secured by a well-administered civil\nservice law.\n\nAfter all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and\nlargely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is\ngood to you, who understands you, and who gets you out of trouble. All\nthe social life of the voter from the time he was a little boy and\nplayed \"craps\" with his \"own push,\" and not with some other \"push,\" has\nbeen founded on this sense of loyalty and of standing in with his\nfriends. Now that he is a man, he likes the sense of being inside a\npolitical organization, of being trusted with political gossip, of\nbelonging to a set of fellows who understand things, and whose interests\nare being cared for by a strong friend in the city council itself. All\nthis is perfectly legitimate, and all in the line of the development of\na strong civic loyalty, if it were merely socialized and enlarged. Such\na voter has already proceeded in the forward direction in so far as he\nhas lost the sense of isolation, and has abandoned the conviction that\ncity government does not touch his individual affairs. Even Mill claims\nthat the social feelings of man, his desire to be at unity with his\nfellow-creatures, are the natural basis for morality, and he defines a\nman of high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an\nisolated individual, but as a part in a social organism.\n\nUpon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure\nof civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that\nhis individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that\nthey can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied\nfor all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen\ninto a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual\nfor decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of\nlife may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the\ncommunity, and rises into a sense of the common weal.\n\nIn order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual\nneeds must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important\nas they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of\nself-interest. The demand should be universalized; in this process it\nwould also become clarified, and the basis of our political organization\nbecome perforce social and ethical.\n\nWould it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself,\nbecause he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social\ndevelopment than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made\nover by \"good citizens\" and governed by \"experts\"? The former at least\nare engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express\nitself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a\nwhole.\n\nThe wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good\ncitizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to\nmake it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that\ncurious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous\ndo not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient,\nand that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to\nthe self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly\nregarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for\nthe fatal mistake of making the surroundings of \"good influences\"\nsingularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand\nquite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the\nsurroundings of \"evil influences\" so beguiling. Both are akin to that\nstate of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the\neye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have\never and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in\nrevolt against the conventionalized good.\n\nThe success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of\nadministration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly\nelements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and\nselfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister\nto genuine social needs, through the political machinery, and at the\nsame time to remodel that machinery so that it shall be adequate to its\nnew task, is to encounter the inevitable discomfort of a transition into\na new type of democratic relation. The perplexing experiences of the\nactual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own. The\neconomist who treats the individual cases as mere data, and the social\nreformer who labors to make such cases impossible, solely because of the\nappeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they\nfeel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth, working\noutward from within; before they can gain the exhilaration and uplift\nwhich comes when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into\nthe forward intuitive movement of the mass. This general movement is not\nwithout its intellectual aspects, but it has to be transferred from the\nregion of perception to that of emotion before it is really\napprehended. The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional\nincentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of the\nperplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great source of\nvitality.\n\nPerhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are\nattempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises\nfrom the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their\nefforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are\nreduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social\nconduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression\nfor ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the\nsphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but\nobservation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that\na situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with\nthe question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged\nto act upon our theory. A stirring appeal has lately been made by a\nrecognized ethical lecturer who has declared that \"It is insanity to\nexpect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. We arrive at moral\nknowledge only by tentative and observant practice. We learn how to\napply the new insight by having attempted to apply the old and having\nfound it to fail.\"\n\nThis necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the\nundertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those\nwho shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with\nthe cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that\nnot untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social\nmorality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often\nat the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.\n\nThe power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious\nmistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible\nintelligence. In the range of individual morals, we have learned to\ndistrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the\nworld, or by merely speculating upon its evils. The result, as well as\nthe process of virtues attained by repression, has become distasteful to\nus. When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the\ncultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result\nmay become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over\nwith the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. In this effort\ntoward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that\nthe individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal\nachievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in\nconnection with the activity of the many.\n\nThe cry of \"Back to the people\" is always heard at the same time, when\nwe have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of\n\"Back to Christ,\" as though we would seek refuge with our fellows and\nbelieve in our common experiences as a preparation for a new moral\nstruggle.\n\nAs the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it\nhas its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the\ncurious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the\nwhole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us\nwhatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in\n\"Master and Man.\" The former saves his servant from freezing, by\nprotecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled\nwith an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of\nwhich we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living\nthat peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great\nmultitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead\nunderstand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and\ntherefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the\nmisunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and\nall life's fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and\nGreat Experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and\nforgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and its manifold\nexperiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX[1]\n\n\nAlderman, basis of his political success, 226, 228, 240, 243, 248, 267;\n  his influence on morals of the American boy, 251, 255, 256;\n  on standard of life, 257;\n  his power, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260;\n  his social duties, 234, 236, 243, 250.\n\nArt and the workingman, 219, 225.\n\n\n\"Boss,\" the, ignorant man's dependence on, 260, 266.\n\nBusiness college, the, 197.\n\n\nCharity, administration of, 14, 22;\n  neighborly relations in, 29, 230;\n  organized, 25;\n  standards in, 15, 27, 32, 38, 49, 58;\n  scientific _vs._ human relations in, 64.\n\nChild labor, premature work, 41, 188;\n  first laws concerning, 167, 170.\n\nCity, responsibilities of, 266.\n\nCivil service law, its enforcement, 231, 233.\n\nCommercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, 193.\n\nCommercialism and education, 190-199, 216;\n  morals captured by, 264;\n  polytechnic schools taken by, 202.\n\nCooeperation, 153, 158.\n\nCooper, Peter, 202.\n\n\nDayton, Ohio, factory at, 216.\n\nDeath and burials among simple people, 238.\n\nDomestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, 135;\n  industrial difficulty of, 106;\n  moral issues of, 106.\n\n\nEducation, attempts at industrial, 201;\n  commercialism in, 196, 201;\n  in commercialism, 216;\n  in technical schools, 201;\n  lack of adaptation in, 199, 208, 212;\n  of industrial workers, 180, 193, 199, 219;\n  offset to overspecialization, 211;\n  public school and, 190, 192;\n  relation of, to the child, 180, 185, 193;\n  relation of, to the immigrant, 181-186;\n  university extension lectures and settlements, 199;\n  workingmen's lecture courses, 214.\n\nEducators, mistakes of, 212;\n  new demands on, 178, 192, 201, 211.\n\n\nFamily claim, the, 4, 74, 78;\n  daughter's college education, 82;\n  employer's _vs._ domestic's, 123, 124;\n  on the daughter, 82;\n  on the son, _ibid._\n\nFamily life, misconception of, 116.\n\nFilial relations, clash of moral codes, 94.\n\nFunerals, attitude of simple people toward, 238.\n\n\nHousehold employee, the, 108, 109;\n  character of, 112;\n  domestic _vs._ factory, 116, 118, 119, 122;\n  isolation of, 109, 111, 117, 120, 132;\n  morals of, 125;\n  unnatural relation of, 113, 120, 121, 126, 127;\n  unreasonable demands on, 113, 115;\n  residence clubs for, 133;\n  social position of, 114, 119, 122.\n\nHousehold employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, 116;\n  reform of, in relation to employee, 126.\n\nHousehold, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, 129;\n  competition of factory work with, 128;\n  difficulties of the small, 135;\n  industrial isolation of, 117;\n  industry of, transferred to factory, 104, 105;\n  lack of progress in, 117;\n  origin of, 104;\n  social _vs._ individual aspects of, 103;\n  suburban difficulties of, 134;\n  wages in, 131.\n\nHull-house experiences, 43, 53, 58, 59, 240, 247.\n\nHuman life, value of, 7, 178.\n\n\nIndividual action _vs._ associated, 137, 153, 158;\n  advantages of, 158, 162;\n  limitations of, 165;\n  moral evolution involved in, 226.\n\nIndividual _vs._ social needs, 155, 269.\n\nIndividual _vs._ social virtues, 224, 227, 265.\n\nItalian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, 229;\n  dependence of, on their children, 184;\n  education of, 185;\n  new conditions of life of, 181.\n\n\nJuvenile criminal, the, evolution of, 53-56, 187.\n\n\nLabor, division of, 210, 213;\n  reaction from, 215.\n\nLaw and order, 172, 174, 234.\n\n\nMoral fact and moral idea, 227, 229, 273.\n\nMorality, natural basis of, 268;\n  personal and social, 6, 176, 103.\n\n\nPhilanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, 150, 155-157.\n\nPhilanthropist, the, 154, 175-176.\n\nPolitical corruption, ethical development in, 270;\n  formation of reform clubs, 246;\n  greatest pressure of, 260;\n  individual and social aspect of, 264;\n  leniency in regard to, 239;\n  responsibility for, 256, 263;\n  selling of votes, 244-246;\n  street railway and saloon interest, 262.\n\nPolitical leaders, causes of success of, 224.\n\nPolitical standards, 228, 229, 251-253, 261;\n  compared with Benjamin Franklin's, 255.\n\n\nReferendum method, the, 164.\n\nReformer, the, ethics of, 270.\n\nReform movements in politics, causes of failure in, 222, 240, 262, 272, 274;\n  business men's attitude toward, 265.\n\nRumford, Count, 117.\n\nRuskin, 219.\n\n\nSaloon, the, 243, 264.\n\nSocial claim, the, 4, 77;\n  child study and, 92, 180;\n  misplaced energy and, 90.\n\nSocial virtues, code of employer, 143, 148;\n  code of laboring man, _ibid._\n\n\nTechnical schools, 201;\n  adaptation of, to workingmen, 204;\n  compromises in, 203;\n  polytechnic institutions, 202;\n  textile schools, 203;\n  women in, _ibid._\n\nThrift, individualism of, 31, 40, 212.\n\nTrades unions, 148, 158, 167, 169, 171;\n  sympathetic strikes, 174.\n\n\nWorkingman, the, ambition of, for his children, 191, 258;\n  art in relation to, 218;\n  charity of, 154;\n  evening classes and social entertainment for, 189;\n  grievance of, 211;\n  historical perspective in the work of, _ibid._;\n  organizations of, 214;\n  standards for political candidate, 257.\n\n[Footnote 1: This index is not intended to be exhaustive.]","title":"Democracy and Social Ethics","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":48115}