“ It cannot fail to make the careless, irresponsible girl more thoughtful to untangle many perplexities for the troubled girl and to arouse ambition for personal efficiency in all girls who read it. The emphasis for gaining success is laid almost entirely upon personal efficiency. While the necessity cannot be made too clear to the girl—who is inclined to look upon her wage-earning life less as a profession than the boy—the book is disappointing in its almost total lack of recognition of the many failures in industry to meet the reasonable claims of efficiency. ”

“ But above all else, let me repeat that the book deserves a pioneer place in vocational literature, as one of the outward proofs of that which has long been felt,—that the destiny of the wage-earning child can be safely trusted to the keen interest, stimulating sympathy and sound judgment of his or her main dependence—the most potent of our social forces—the public school teacher. ”

“ At one meeting Virginia Pearl Moore of Tennessee would tell how a mountain girl had made at the cost of a dollar or so a home canner with which she had won a prize—and rebuilt a whole community; at another E. M. Tousley of Minnesota would tell how the farmers’ corporation at Dassel in his state had procured for the consumer his share of the price of his crops—and rounded out and made full the life of the neighborhood.
These men and women who met at Richmond had their faces set toward the village and the open country. They realized that American life was becoming a pyramid set wrong end up. ”

“ These seemed to indicate that a larger output by the worker could bring about a greater reward for himself, together with a corresponding increased profit for the employer.
But, so far, the attitude of “labor” seems to be opposed to anything like an increase either of efficiency or production. Reduction of hours and minimum of output, seem to be favored. The false idea is that more “work” is thereby created, although the amount of the absolute necessaries of life which their labor produces is thereby curtailed. Their idea is that they do not get their share of the “wealth” they already produce ”

“ In the individual, then, life is a complete circle, every part of which is integral. In the whole group of individuals, there is the same circle, no part of which is complete in itself, or even significant unless considered merely as a segment.
This fundamental fact, so obvious, yet so seldom fully recognized, gave form and force to the Conference on Education in the South, recently held in Richmond. Farmers, business men, country preachers, officials, writers, editors, physicians, plain citizens, and school teachers—some 2,300—met together to discuss the problems which are common to them all. ”

“ Recently there has been a great investigation of one special phase of the life of the poor. Great business firms have been asked how certain sums of their earnings were distributed as wages to the poor, and the wage-earners have been asked what use they made of these wages. How much do working girls receive and how much does a working girl need to live decently? ”

“ Would not a very simple remedy be the employment of mothers as well as fathers? Would not they understand better than others what the children need?
When education was in the home it was proper that mothers should be teachers. With the socialization of education as of industry, a celibate class has arisen to take the place of mothers. Mothers have become the parasites of society, while constructive work in social service has devolved upon a celibate class. ”

“ The present excessive demand for prostitution which comes largely from young boys is, I believe, caused by the nature of our present social organism which abnormally emphasizes the sex relation and puts it before every other influence a boy meets. Women’s dress, current literature, musical comedies and problem plays, “smutty” stories told by boys among themselves, even our advertisements—all combine to throw a fascinating glamor around sex indulgence and develop an abnormal instinct in our boys, which takes command of their nervous system and insists that sex indulgence is necessary. ”

“ Though the South is still a section and in some respects probably wishes to remain one, still, in the words of Acting President A. J. McKelway: “Broadly speaking, all our problems are American problems. There is no peculiarly southern problem of poverty, illiteracy or crime; our problems of the city, of rural life and child welfare are the same throughout the nation.” ”

“ Yet, I do not wish to be understood as arguing against unions, as I do not believe that the union question has much bearing on the real conditions.
It is simply the character of the operators and the men themselves that determines the conditions of any mining settlement. There is much mis-understanding and mis-information among the men themselves. ”

“ While city people are complaining of the prices paid the farmer, it is an absolute fact that the farmer has a hard time to make a living profit on his business. The farmer has to face the combined problems of production and distribution and he runs the gamut of both. ”

“ This singular set of men who seek to conceal the malice of their real principles, but who cannot, are a brood of disturbers. Their doctrines are an abomination striking at the foundations of family life and religion. There is not, and cannot be, a Catholic Socialist. Certain misguided Christians may call themselves Socialists, but, objectively, a Catholic Socialist is an utter impossibility. ”

“ How can it be brought to pass that the director of enterprise on capitalist, whose brains are the creating power of the world’s wealth, shall be filled with an altruistic spirit that he may spare and increase all benefits and comforts with his manual helpers? ”

“ Thirty-five boys, winners among 75,000 boys who raised corn on a single acre of land last summer, and one little girl, leader among the girls’ canning clubs of the country, were the guests of the government for a week, and bore witness to the industry of the army of sturdy children who stayed at home. The best record of the boy visitors was 207 bushels of corn to the acre, or about eight times the average yield for the country. The girl had raised a succession of tomatoes, beans, and turnips on her tenth of an acre, sold some of it fresh and canned the rest, realizing $53. ”

“ The average boy of eighteen cannot think of marriage for economic reasons, but his nature craves action, and under these ever-present influences he comes to believe that the perfect “good time” is sex indulgence—and he will exercise all his ingenuity, when with a girl, to attain his goal. No one, who is not in the confidences of young people, has the least idea of the pressure thus brought to bear on girls. The girl finds it necessary in order to hold a boy’s attention, with the amusements and companionship that goes with it, to do as he wants ”

“ New York City.
228 SEGREGATING VICE
To the Editor: It is not a little curious that in all the agitation on the vice question no one has suggested what has always seemed to me the evident solution of the whole matter. Without a second thought, if there were no men there would be no prostitutes; the men are the sole and only source of the whole evil. I am aware that segregation has its drawbacks. It does stimulate clandestine prostitution. It has the fault of legalizing a shameful business. ”

“ To have been the first woman to enter the Institute of Technology and to have opened the way for other women was for her a life-long satisfaction. She was never weary in fighting the battle for the higher education of women. ”

“ One real difficulty with the miners is a lack of constructive leadership. When they are taught such anarchistic ideas as that voiced by Mr. Houston at the investigation of the commission, it is no wonder that such men, under the leadership of individuals, whose past history will hardly bear the light of day, band themselves together for desperate purposes. Mr. Houston stated that the miner should be paid every cent that the coal brings in the market, except what the railroad gets for transportation, and there are many mine workers who actually believe this. ”

“ The waste of labor involved is over 40 per cent of the world’s full output; fifty women doing work for fifty men, which could be done by ten women if specialized, organized and interchanging their products. The ‘waste of plant,’ the kitchen space, cooking apparatus, dishes and utensils, fuel, with breakage, etc., is at least 90 per cent. The waste in purchasing is the difference between the cost of a steady supply at wholesale and the entire expense of all retail service and delivery equal to at least 60 per cent. ”

“ He showed that in an increasing number of neighborhoods the neighbors are forming federations of their own, made up of representatives of the various local societies. While this sort of community organization is sometimes sporadic or indefinite the settlements should be willing to support it both with money and workers. He warned the neighborhood worker never to forget that the primary duty of the settlement is to build up neighborhood life. He must, therefore, not permit what sometimes seems the larger aspects or implications of neighborhood life to sap his work at the roots. ”

“ Immigrants are another class who will in the future be more and more in need of constructive human service, especially at the point of entrance on citizenship. The city, either through its officers or by delegating the work to others, should surround the gift of citizenship with appropriate safeguards and should make the process itself educational. The minimum wage is now becoming a significant problem all over the country and Mr. Davis believed that settlement workers should take their place among the pioneers in endeavoring to push its benefits. ”

“ W. J. Spillman, chief of the Bureau of Farm Management of the federal Department of Agriculture, estimated that the average farm income in this country is about $655 a year; of this amount about $1 a day is the entire return for labor. This labor income, he asserted, holds throughout the states. After computing the interest on his investment, the farmer averages $1 for every day he works. In states such as Illinois, he said, where the investment is greater, the farm family has a larger sum to use without impairing the capital than in a state like New York. ”

“ It was all matter-of-fact for them, and I believe they are forerunners of new generations of women who will insist in their youth on knowing life as it is, on facing the world clear-eyed and changing these things which we of my generation, in our youth, shirked and preferred not to know. ”

“ Still others told of the ways in which, by labor saving devices and by the promotion of a closer social life, the drudgery for women in the country homes can be alleviated. Business men from the cities told how chambers of commerce, railroads and other organizations centering in the city could help to stimulate the prosperity of the country. Throughout the conference the chief emphasis was not so much upon benefits for individuals, but upon the chance for individuals to work together for the benefit of whole communities. ”

“ To the Editor: The excuses of the St. Louis firms quoted by the Consumers’ League of that city are all too familiar to those who have been interested in the Saturday half-holiday elsewhere. There is always one department at least under the roof of every reluctant merchant which positively cannot be closed on Saturday afternoon and evenings for the two summer months, either because of the heavy trade on that day, or because competitors among the single-line stores keep open. Then there is the alleged hardship to working people in that their only shopping time would be taken away. ”

“ We want to know more about the employment conditions of the “Four Hundred.” Perhaps a law should be made in the interests of health limiting the number of continuous hours spent in certain social activities. We want to know more about the lives of boys and girls in wealthy boarding-schools. We desire to find out just how a working girl spends $8 a week, but we also wish to learn just how the dividend receiver spends $800 a week. The poor need visiting housekeepers to instruct them, but may not the wealthy need visiting home-keepers? ”

“ On a co-operative basis, Free Acres affords an opportunity to own a rural home without having to buy land. But it is as secure as buying, for the lease is a perpetual lease and can be transferred. At present it is pioneering; there are no established industries there as yet, but opportunity is open to anyone to establish them. You can lose yourself in the woods which surround the farm, although it’s only twenty-seven miles from the City Hall in New York. ”

“ The waste in efficiency is the difference between highly specialized professional work, and the grade of labor possible to the lowest average—practically all women, under conditions of overwork, if it is done by the housewife, or, of eternal apprenticeship, if done by servants. ”

“ The problem of sickness is an important one. Girls must often struggle along half sick because they can not afford a doctor or medicine or because they are afraid of losing their position. The inn has an endowed bed in the Norton Infirmary, and the services of some of our best physicians, also a discount of 25 per cent on all drugs and prescriptions. I find a word from the house mother is always received kindly by the employer and in my experience of eighteen months I have never had a girl lose her work on account of sickness. ”

“ In front of the boy sat southern farmers, teachers, demonstration leaders and superintendents of schools. Behind him, upon the platform sat the men who have made possible his work and the success of thousands like him in southern states. The men on the platform, like the boy, told their story simply and slowly to the men on the floor.
The immediate aim of the conference, as its name implies, was to stimulate progress in the South, but the speakers were not drawn from the South only. ”