Henry K. Rowe

“ Yet in the process of coming to her own, there is danger that the wife will forget that marriage is the most precious of human relations; that the home has the first claim upon her; that motherhood is the greatest privilege to which any woman, however socially gifted, can aspire; and that social institutions of tried worth are not lightly to be cast upon the rubbish heap. It is by no means certain that society can afford or that women ought to demand individualistic rights that will put in jeopardy the welfare of the remainder of the family. ”

“ The housing problem affects the tenant first of all, and in countless instances his unwholesome environment is ruining his health, ability, and character; but it also affects the community and the nation, for persons produced by such an environment do not make good citizens. The roots of family life are destroyed, gaunt poverty and loathsome disease hold hands along dark and dirty stairways and through the halls, foul language mingles with the foul air, and drunkenness is so common as to excite no remark. ”

“ The rural communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger circles of business and professional life, in journalism and literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl, incarnating for them the noblest ideals and stimulating them to achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect to wield. ”

“ Society cannot, through any one institution, bring itself to perfection; many elements enter into the making of prosperity. It depends on individual ability and training for industry, on an understanding of the laws of health and keeping the body and brain in a state of efficiency, on peaceful relations between groups, on the successful balancing of supply and demand, and of wages and the cost of living, on personal integrity and group co-operation. All that the government can do is to instruct and stimulate. ”

“ It is poverty that prevents fortifying the will by increasing physical stamina and moral courage, it is poverty that drives a man; to drink or desperation, and it is poverty that prescribes the unfavorable surroundings that do so much to keep a man down. Poverty is a danger flag that indicates the probability of deeper degradation and calls for the individual or [265] group that is better off to lend a hand. Poverty is a goad, a thorn in the flesh of society, that is pushing it along the road of social reform. ”

“ Undoubtedly society will find it necessary some day to devise a more equitable method of distribution. But it is a mistake to suppose that most of the rich are idle parasites on society, or that their service, as well, as their wealth, could be dispensed with in the social order. In spite of the impression fostered by a sensational press that the average person of wealth devotes himself to the gaieties and dissipations of a pleasure-loving society, the truth is that after the self-centred years of callow youth are over most men and women take life seriously and only the few are idlers. ”

“ Ever since the original divergence of population from its home nest, when groups became strange and hostile to one another because of mountain and forest barriers, changing languages, and occasionally clashing interests, the tendency of the peoples was to grow apart. But for a century past the tendency has been changing from divergence to convergence, from ignorance and distrust of one another to understanding, sympathy, and good-will, from independence and ruthlessness to interdependence and co-operation. ”

“ Making a living may seem more important than making the most of life. Persons who are absorbed in business are liable to lose their sense of proportion between people and property; the capitalist overburdens himself with business cares until he breaks down under the nervous strain, and overworks his subordinates until they often become physical wrecks, but it is not because he personally intends to do harm. Eventually the social welfare of every class will become the supreme concern and the study of social efficiency will fill a larger place than the study of economic efficiency. ”

“ This is the old principle that governed industrial relations until governmental legislation and trade-union activity compelled a recognition of the worker's rights. By that principle the capitalist and the laborer are free to work together or to fight each other, to make what arrangements they can about wages, hours, and health conditions, to share in profits if the employer is kindly disposed, but always with labor in a position of subordination and without recognized rights, as in the old political despotisms, which were sometimes benevolent but more often ruthless. ”

“ Below them in the social scale we shall expect to find a larger class who, because they were not consumed by ambition to excel, or because they lacked the means to achieve distinction, have come to occupy a place midway between the high and the low, to fill the numerous professional and business positions below the kings and great captains, and to hold the balance of power between the aristocracy and the proletariat. Below these, in turn, are the so-called masses, who fill the lower ranks of labor, and who are essential to the well-being of those who are reckoned above them. ”

“ Imagine going to school half fed and poorly clothed, sometimes the butt of a playmate's gibes because of a drunken father or a slatternly mother, required to study subjects that make no appeal to the child and in a language that is not native, and then back to the street, perhaps to sell papers until far into the night, or to run at the beck and call of the public as a messenger boy. ”

“ Learning to obey the parent is the first step toward self-control. Learning to know the beautiful from the ugly, the true from the false, the good from the evil is the foundation of a whole system of ethics. Learning to judge others according to character and attainment rather than according to wealth or social position cultivates the naturally democratic spirit of the child, and makes him a true American. Sharing in the responsibility of the home begets self-reliance and dependableness in later life. ”

“ The Story of the Home.—Marriage is the gateway of the home; the home is the shelter of the family. It is the cradle of children, the nursery of mutual affection, and the training-school for citizenship in the community. The physical comfort of its inmates depends upon the house and its furnishings, but fondness for the home develops only in an atmosphere of good-will and kindness. ”

“ Without the lines of communication that radiate from great commercial and financial centres, without the banking connections that make it possible for the fiscal centres to support any particular institution that is in temporary distress, without the consciousness of national solidarity in the great departments of business life, economic achievement in America would have come on halting feet. This unity is fostered but not created by government, and no hostile government can destroy it altogether. ”

“ Results of Activity.—The product of activity is achievement. The workers of the world are continually transforming energy into material products. To clear away a forest, to raise a thousand bushels of grain, to market a herd of cattle or a car-load of shoes, to build a sky-scraper or an ocean liner, is an achievement. But it is a greater achievement to take a child mind and educate it until it learns how to cultivate the soil profitably, how to make a machine or a building of practical value, and how to save and enrich life. ”

“ Group influence asserts its power over the individual.
Along with the influence of the group mind goes the influence of what may be called the electrical atmosphere of the city. The newcomer from the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. ”

“ Along the same routes passengers are transported, journeying in all directions on a multitude of errands, jostling for a moment as they hurry to and from the means of conveyance, and then swinging away, each on its individual orbit, like comet or giant sun that nods acquaintance but once in a thousand years.
The business of transportation occupies the time and attention of thousands of workers, and its ramifications are endless. It is not limited to a particular region like agriculture, or to towns and cities like manufacturing; it is not stopped by tariff walls or ocean boundaries. ”

“ The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives, and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and impulses for the enrichment of life. ”

“ It is not possible to separate social life into compartments and designate an institution as purely recreational or cultural or religious. There is a blending of interests and of functions in such an organization as the grange or the church, as there is in one individual or group a variety of interests and activities. The whole social system is complex, interwoven with a multitude of separate strands of personal desires and prejudices, group clannishness and conservatism, rival institutions developing friction and continually compelled to find new adjustments. ”

“ In the country an unfriendly man can live by himself much of the time; in the city he is continually feeling somebody's elbows in his ribs. It is not strange that there is as yet much crudeness about the city. Its growth has been dominated by the economic motive, and everything has been sacrificed to the desire to make money. Dirty slums, crowded tenements, uncouth business blocks, garish bill-boards and electric signs, dumped rubbish on vacant lots, constant repairs of streets and buildings—these all are marks of crudity and experimentation, evidences that the city is still in the making. ”

“ Without specific allotment of lands as on the feudal estate, or distribution of tasks as in a socialistic commonwealth, the community accomplishes a natural division of labor and diversification of industry, supports its own institutions by self-imposed taxes and voluntary contributions, and supplies its quota to the larger State of which it forms a democratic part. In spite of the constant exercise of individual independence and competition, there is at the foundation of every rural community the principle of co-operation and service as the only working formula for human life. ”

“ In a word, it is the efficient functioning of every social group. The family, the community, the nation, and every minor group, will serve effectually the economic, cultural, social, and spiritual needs of the individuals of whom it is composed. Perfect functioning can follow only after a long period of progress. Such progress is the ideal that society sets for itself. In that process there must be full recognition of all the factors that enter into social life. There is the individual with his rights and obligations, who must be protected and encouraged to grow. ”

“ The Crucial Test of Democracy.—World events have shown clearly since the outbreak of the European war that intelligent planning and persistent enforcement of a political programme can long contend successfully against great odds, when there is autocratic power behind it all. Democracy must show itself just as capable of planning and execution, if it is to hold its own against the control of a few, whether plutocrats, political bosses, or a centralized state, but its power to make good depends on the enlistment of all the abilities of city or nation in co-operative effort. ”

“ The Fact of Misery.—A brief study of the conditions in which a city's toilers live and work and play makes it plain that the people have to contend with numerous difficulties. Large numbers of them are in misery, and there are few who are not living in constant fear of it. To a foreigner who did not understand America, it would seem incredible that misery should be prevalent in the midst of wealth and unbounded natural resources, when mines and factories are making record-breaking outputs, when harbors are thronged with ships and the call for workers goes across the sea. ”

“ The Chances of Progress.—Every economic problem resolves itself into a social problem. The satisfaction of human wants is the province of the manufacturer, the merchant, and the transporter, but it is not limited to any one or all of these, nor is society under their control. The range of wants is so great, the desires of social beings branch out into so many broad interests, that no one line of enterprise or one group of men can control more than a small portion of society. ”

“ Those who are unfamiliar with rural spaces and are accustomed to live in crowded tenements find it lonesome in the country, and prefer the discomfort of their congested quarters in town to the pure air and unspoiled beauty of the country. They love the stir of the streets, and enjoy sitting on the door-steps and wandering up and down the sidewalks, feeling the push of the motley crowd. ”

“ To hand a man a ballot before he feels himself a part of the nation to which he has come, before he is stirred to something more than selfish achievement, before he is conscious of the real meaning of citizenship, is to court disaster, yet in being generous with the ballot the people of America are arming thousands of ignorant, irresponsible immigrants with weapons against themselves.
The race problem of America is not at all simple. It is more than a problem of immigration. The problem of the European immigrant is one part of it. ”

“ Noise and hurry furnish a mental tension that charges the urban atmosphere with excitement. Purveyors of news and amusement have learned to cater to the love of excitement. The newspaper editor hunts continually for sensations, and sometimes does not scruple to twist sober fact into stirring fiction. The book-stall and the circulating library supply the novel and the cheap magazine to give smack to the jaded palate that cannot relish good literature. The theatre panders to the appetite for a thrill. ”

“ It deserves kindly reception in the struggle to reform and reconstruct society where society is weak.
The present situation deserves not abuse, but the most careful consideration from every man. In countless cases woman has not only been repressed from activities outside of the family group, but has been oppressed in her own home also. America prides itself on its consideration for woman in comparison with the general European attitude toward her, but too often chivalry is not exercised in the home. Often the wife has been a slave in the household where she should have been queen. ”

“ There was a bond of unity that was felt by every member of the family, and a spirit of mutual affection and self-sacrifice that stood a hard strain through poverty, sickness, and ill fortune of every sort. Father and mother, boys and girls were not afraid to work, and when the time came for relaxation there was little to attract away from the home circle. People had less to enjoy, but they were better contented with what they had. They had little money to spend, but their frugal tastes and habits of thrift fortified them against want, and there was little need of public or private charity. ”