Mary Ritter Beard

“ City planners have not all begun with a lamppost. Some of them began with billboards and thought of billboards exclusively for a long time; then they moved on to municipal art, education, censorship of movies, recreation, housing and labor. Some began with parks and advanced to health and transportation.
There is no one thing in city planning that stands out conspicuously today as the crowning achievement of its purpose. City planning is thus not a finished ideal, but one capable of, and exhibiting, indefinite expansion. ”

“ But the time has not yet come when woman will face her individual share of atonement for a social sin in which she has acquiesced. Ultimately, with universal suffrage, the wheel of time must place at the door of the protected woman responsibility for the prostitute. As yet she cannot see herself, in her own home, taking up the broken lives, diseased bodies, debased minds and deadened souls—the by-product of that which men tell her has always been and always must be. ”

“ Can parents inculcate high moral standards when across the street or down the block are houses of the “red-light” district? When a dry-closet blocks the one small window of the kitchen, can lack of decency be called to account? Is the world so small that there is no room left for the amenities of life? Are ground space and floor space of more value than cleanliness and health and morality?
It is certainly a fallacy that the poor do not want good housing. ”

“ It is a challenge to American chivalry to see that justice is guaranteed to all citizens regardless of race, color or religion, and especially to befriend and defend the friendless and helpless.
It is a challenge to the present generation to show its gratitude for the heritage bequeathed to it through the toil and blood of centuries, by devoting itself more earnestly to the task of making the nation a universal brotherhood. ”

“ I will not cite the hundreds of other cases where women have been the prime factors in beautifying our cities with shade trees and well-kept parks, but I will say that here is a broad and interesting field awaiting the modern woman, a field that tends to make our surroundings worth living in and our citizens better and healthier; a field that requires every virtue a woman possesses—her good taste, her moral instincts, her love of the beautiful, her patience and perseverance. ”

“ This last twenty-five years is the first time in the history of the world that any definite effort has been made to teach sex hygiene; and if each one of us will do our duty as we see it—and we must see it clearly now—and pass on our convictions (because no one has a right to receive anything for themselves or their particular group, and hold it, but each person has a tremendous responsibility to pass on to others their influence, their knowledge) , we shall awaken a world-wide conscience regarding this thing. ”

“ It is a challenge to strong young men and women to volunteer for a crusade of social service, to be enlisted for heroic warfare against all destroyers of social health and justice, and to champion all that makes for an ideal national life. ”

“ In this expansion of municipal functions there can be little dispute as to the influence of women. Their hearts touched in the beginning by human misery and their sentiments aroused, they have been led into manifold activities in attempts at amelioration, which have taught them the breeding places of disease, as well as of vice, crime, poverty and misery. Having learned that effectively to “swat the fly” they must swat its nest, women have also learned that to swat disease they must swat poor housing, evil labor conditions, ignorance, and vicious interests. ”

“ Can children raised in Jail Bottom, whose only outlook is a mountain-like dump of rotting rags and rusty tin cans on the one side, and on the other a stream which is an open sewer, smelling to heaven from the filth which it carries along, or leaves here and there in slime upon its banks, have any but debasing ideas? ”

“ Schneider’s report, which is so valuable in regard to boys’ vocational training, is no different from other reports on the subject of training for girls. One and all devote themselves to what is to be done for boys, and then in an aside mention the girls. Out of every four persons at work in this city one is a woman, and out of every four women here one is earning her livelihood. You can’t dismiss 400,000 women in a parenthesis. This will happen as long as there are not more women on the Board of Education, more women who are workers engaged in gainful employment. ”

“ Political action without philanthropy is of course like the human skeleton equipped perhaps with muscle but lacking the nervous and circulatory systems. Philanthropy on the other hand without political capacity is like an invertebrate structure, inert and incapable of efficient self-direction. ”

“ The visiting teacher is akin to the school nurse, and yet distinct in function. This new office is one of the latest creations in educational experimentation, though not based on novel ideas of education, since the sympathetic teacher has always sought to go beyond her pupils to outside influences that retarded or encouraged development. The visiting teacher comes as an aid to the regular teacher solely for educational purposes. Like the school nurse she makes the child the pivotal point on which she focuses her own experience and training. ”

“ We cannot think but with a great deal of concern and with some humiliation of the effect which America has on some of the best capacities of the foreigners who come to us. They come singing folk-songs, national songs, and snatches from their operas. We drown these beautiful melodies with the tawdry rags and popular songs of the saloon, the dance hall and cheap theater. ”

“ The question seems to me to touch the social evil and the housing problem (as shown in Chapter IV of Miss Addams’ “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil”) , the menace of child labor, of the sweat shops, and neglected childhood and starved motherhood on many sides. Why is a free chance to live and grow, for a child, any worse than free education? A child does not ask where things come from, at first. He only knows that he is cold, or hungry, or neglected. In the nature of the case he is dependent on someone. ”

“ If this new evaluation of woman’s work in civilization seems to err on the side of woman, we shall be satisfied if it helps to bring about a re-evaluation which shall include women not in an incidental way but as people of flesh and blood and brain—feeling, seeing, judging and directing, equally with men, all the great social forces which mold character and determine general comfort, well-being and happiness. ”

“ Babies’ milk thus becomes essentially a social-economic problem. It is so recognized by many women and is becoming more and more recognized as such by those who work along baby-saving lines. No one sees this fact more clearly perhaps than Miss Lathrop who joins in the ever-growing cry for a “war on poverty.” Mothers’ pensions, and every attempt to increase the wage of the husband or of the wife before the child-bearing experience has entered into her life, that she may lay by a sum for that function, reaches infant mortality more fundamentally and directly than do milk stations. ”

“ The children of today are destined to be the units of a society whose point of view is to make it unique in the world’s history. It will be characterized by a single standard of morality for both sexes. The child must be so trained and educated that it will later be possible and natural for him to live up to the high standard which the women of his age shall demand of him.
The ideals of society must be so changed that young men may not be weakened and corrupted by the passive acceptance of false standards of morals. ”

“ In a wonderful address, given last spring at the Child Welfare Conference, in Richmond, a negro speaker said in substance: “We would use the bath tub as frequently and enjoy it as much as our white brother and sister, if we could afford to rent houses which have the bath tub in them. We do not prefer dilapidation and discomfort, nor being forced to live in districts where there is only depravity and low surroundings; but the better ones of us have too much self-respect to force ourselves on our white brothers, if they do not want us living alongside of them.” ”

“ Because it is our endeavor to make our city a true home for the people, it is not enough that we should merely make it a house, though it be clean and healthful to live in; for even health, though essential, is not all-sufficient. We must also insure that there shall be within it recreation, enjoyment and happiness for all. In our great house—the city—a great need exists and it is to supply this that our Committee for Social Centers was formed. ”

“ Because the keynote to all modern social activity is prevention and because prevention is cheaper than cure always, recreation today is of public concern. That the public’s interest and belief in municipal recreation has been guided into faith in its educational advantages is due in no small degree to the patient work of women in behalf of amusement facilities. In their recreational work, women have also sought to make recreation serve the purposes of family unity, community spirit, and an increase in the real joy of living. ”

“ Together they must attack “the conditions which injuriously affect child life” until all children shall have opportunity for development into useful citizens. This being true no one can deny that Social Service is woman’s work.
The day is past when we deluded ourselves with the thought that our responsibility ceased with the performance of our individual duties. We are jointly responsible for the existing conditions, and only by a joint effort can they be improved. Our neighbor’s welfare is our business and our neighbor is all mankind. ”

“ If it be objected that school attendance could not be secured on account of the length of working hours, the obvious answer is that hours of labor which shut out all opportunity for exercise of the mental faculties or the social instincts, are thereby shown to be too long and should be reduced.
Should these two requirements be met, we need no longer be troubled whether immigration is heavy or light. Whether few or many, we should have in our immigrants an intelligent working force who can help develop our country, and for whom we may be grateful and of whom we may be proud. ”

“ No woman can read this story without being moved to see what effect bad housing has on the community and woman’s responsibility toward her fellow-creatures in this as in other civic questions. Mrs. Bacon in her observations out from her own threshold has been forced to see that the war on bad homes is a war on poverty and its manifold products, vice and disease among others. She well illustrates the logic and the fearlessness with which even the most sheltered women often face facts when once their human sympathy is awakened and their eyes are opened to a public question. ”

“ The aim of the social center is that public money shall provide simply the basic physical opportunity for recreation, while the people themselves, through the effort of organized voluntary groups, shall make their own recreation, govern it and pay for it. The social center is not a form of paternalism, for it merely provides the channels through which the social life can flow, just as the street provides the channel through which the physical city is able to move. ”

“ Pure Milk In the education of public opinion on the question of reducing infant mortality, it is inevitable that great attention should be given to the matter of pure milk. One cannot think of a baby without thinking of milk, so that the effort to provide pure milk is directly associated with every effort to reduce infant mortality and make children strong. The problem of milk is twofold: to supply the best possible grade for bottle-fed babies, on the one hand, and on the other to provide the mother of the breast-fed baby with necessary conditions for nursing her infant properly. ”

“ In other words, the signers of the memorandum regard public recreation as being as much a public function as education. “It is impossible,” says the memorandum, “for the individual to buy wholesome recreation. Wholesome recreation, in which the social and civic elements are present, can only be provided through community coöperation.” Public recreation is net only for the poor, but for everyone, and without it the rich are nearly as helpless as the poor. ”

“ Men have been willing, for a wonderfully long time, that women should work—provided it was for small pay and did not imply any reputation or a possible swelling up beyond the nice, faithful limits of their sphere. And this not because men are mean—but because they are slow. They have even permitted certain emoluments and rewards of merit to accrue to certain professions—like those of nursing sick or spoiled children of larger and smaller growth, and school ma’aming—for which they had neither much taste nor aptitude. ”

“ In no other part of Chicago, not even in the Ghetto, was there found a whole neighborhood so conspicuously dilapidated as the black belt on the South Side. No other group suffered so much from decaying buildings, leaking roofs, doors without hinges, broken windows, insanitary plumbing, rotting floors, and a general lack of repairs. In no other neighborhood were landlords so obdurate, so unwilling to make necessary improvements or to cancel leases so that tenants might seek better accommodations elsewhere. ”

“ The whole subject of city trees and its vast opportunities for helping mankind has been greatly overlooked. Our schools and many other forms of civic improvement have received our attention because we have realized their importance to our health and development, but our trees, both in the parks and on the streets, have been slighted in spite of the fact that as a civic problem they are as important to our health and development and are as influential in the making of our future citizens as any other institution or form of civic improvement today. ”

“ Miss Montgomery contends that the labor of girls under sixteen is not necessary to the continuation of any business, and, as a buttress for her position, quotes one of the largest employers of child labor as saying: “If we could not by law employ the girl under sixteen years, we should find some way to make the machine do her work,” and points to the frank declaration of another, that: “As an employer, I can and do make money out of the work of little girls. As a man, I know it would be better for them and for the state if I were forbidden by law to employ them.” ”

“ But what does stand clearly out of these mists of uncertainty is that Chicago has struck a heavy, perhaps fatal, blow at the belief so confidently expressed by every suffragist that the woman voters in any community would stand together and exert, whether successfully or not, all their influence in behalf of the causes that especially interested them as a sex. ”

“ There is deep significance in the fact that women are rejecting the idea of keeping silent about vice problems. There is strong enthusiasm for the suppression of the social evil. A well-known New York club woman said the other day: “I attend committee meetings and discuss the facts about the social evil in as impersonal a manner as I do child labor or the high cost of living. Twenty years ago I would have blushed with embarrassment at the mention of the social evil in a mixed company of men and women. ”

“ District Nursing Care of the sick in hospitals, as everyone knows, depends almost as much upon efficient nursing as upon the skill of the physician—in many cases, far more. Of the labors of nurses for humanity, it is not necessary to speak here. But in our present public health campaign, a new type of nurse has appeared, “the visiting nurse,” who watches homes to guard against disease as well as to cure, and she is now regarded by competent observers as the strategic point in the battle for improved health in our cities and towns. ”

“ Mangrum, the superintendent of the schools, who began five months in advance, the New Harmony pageant soon proved its educational value. It has made community interest and coöperation a living reality; it has telescoped the history of the town and the region in the minds of the children and taught them of people and events more vividly than could have been otherwise possible; it has united the entire school system of the place by giving every child some active part in preparing for the great historic event of celebrating the founding of the town. ”

“ Jane Addams, Louise Bowen, Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald, and other social leaders, who have originated many movements, see distinctly that city functions must be extended to absorb their activities as well as those more directly connected with charity. An example is furnished by the work they have done for schools. They feel that private aid should not obscure public responsibility for the welfare of all the people of a community, but rather that interested citizens with constructive programs should but point the way to better assumption of public duties by the city. ”

“ As far as care and time and money for children’s needs are concerned, they, and they alone, feel that they know how imperative those needs are, and from the mere fact of being able to gain more aid for more mothers by state subsidies the idea seems to them of value. They, and perhaps they only, can also feel the importance of preserving self-respect as an asset to be saved by the new attitude of the states. ”

“ In this development of the passion for good music through coöperation among the people, we are just beginning to recognize the needs of the negroes who, by poverty or the sharp color line, have been excluded from the proper encouragement of their own talents and tastes. The Music School Settlement for Colored People in New York City is becoming the nucleus of a recreation center for colored people in which the dramatic and musical instincts of the race will be developed in an interesting and creditable way. ”

“ For when a notorious politician follows his luck with a notorious political régime in the institutions of his state they actually hold him and his appointer responsible, and strangely enough seldom say anything about his sex.
Let but another individual—a woman individual—make the mistakes inherent in human nature—in an appointive position—and the most logical and the kindest man one knows will refer the whole thing finally and forever to—her sex. ”

“ Women have always been naturally idealistic and always will be, but the difference between their present and past idealism lies in the fact that today it is more far-reaching, extending to the interests of their neighbors and the community at large.
There is a new field opening for women as factors in civic improvement. Women have always set the moral and esthetic standard in the community in which they lived, and when they once get into this new field of making our cities more beautiful—a field which is really closest to their natural bent, they ought to accomplish wonders. ”

“ It seemed worth while to collect and to present the facts relating to housing conditions in the negro districts of Chicago because one must hope that they would not be tolerated if the great mass of white people knew of their existence. Most people stand for fair play. The persecutions which the negro endures because of race prejudice undoubtedly express the feeling of but a small minority of his fellow-citizens of the white race. Their continuance must be due to the fact that the great majority are completely ignorant of the heavy burden of injustice that the negro carries. ”

“ The Children’s Agencies and the churches stimulated to a stock-taking of progress and furnished an exact basis for mapping out the next steps ahead.
One of the women social workers at an Exhibit said: “We are all of us learning, for the first time, what place our work has in the city’s life. We have worked over our exhibits, trying to state in concrete terms our purpose and our success; then we see our organization placed here beside all the others, and we find out how inadequate we all are, and yet how important, each at our own job. ”