Various

“ I realize that many people grow impatient when the question of widows’ pensions is related to the problem of relief. Perhaps the movement, as some people hope, will be the entering wedge of a system of state endowment of motherhood. We cannot wisely, however, begin experiments for the sake of their expected future value with a total disregard of their certain present effect. Widows’ pensions as projected by the commission would be in fact a relief problem. ”

“ Looking back as an old man upon the record he himself has helped to shape, Hugh H. Lusk, in his Social Welfare in New Zealand, points out the significance, particularly for the United States, of that method of government which he calls State Socialism. Nothing so annoys New Zealanders as the ever-recurring criticism that their experiments have been carried out upon too small a scale and under conditions too unusual to be of value to the great remote countries whose single cities contain more people than the whole dominion of New Zealand. ”

“ In a country where every workingman carries the baton of a captain of industry in his dinner pail, it is not surprising that he will not set aside the opportunities of individual effort in favor of the uncertain, remote, and, at best, meagre returns of co-operative endeavor. All other reasons, such as the mobility of our population, our improvidence, and our lack of co-operative spirit must give way before this one fundamental reason. ”

“ If a third of the charity problem—widows—were to come under the care of a new commission, that commission would be able to work out its specialized technique. Later, we might know better what to do about desertion and other problems. Meanwhile existing charities, having a lighter load, could deal better with their remaining cases.
Then as to our use of the word “worthy.” It is old-fashioned, but convenient. No person works long in charities who acts on the notion that one person is actually as good as another—else it would be folly to try to make a person better! ”

“ Yes, Smith needs help. He needs to know how to farm more scientifically. He needs a better income. He needs to know how to organize with his fellow farmers to protect themselves against the inroads of the middlemen and the tenants. He needs better markets for his crops and better transportation facilities to those markets. He needs a school for his children that will give them as good an education as they would get in any city school, a school that will instill in them a love of the country, a knowledge of farming and an appreciation of its economic significance. ”

“ The old forms of recreation have lapsed with the passing of the settled population. No new forms have taken their place except in the towns, and these are usually of a character that would not be tolerated in the country. Smith’s boy is waiting his first opportunity to get off the farm. His has been a life of all work and no play, and while it has not exactly made him a dull boy, it has made him hate farming. Smith’s wife is leading the life of a drudge, and she swears her daughters are not going to live on the farm if she can help it. ”

“ I am not arguing against widows’ pensions. I merely recognize many considerations growing out of ten years’ experience in social work which make me both dissatisfied with what we are doing and suggest the need for the most careful study before we can be sure of a remedy. ”

“ Congress at its last session appropriated $50,000 to enable the secretary of agriculture “to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with the marketing and distributing of farm products.”
Marketing, however, is only one aspect of the problem of rural organization. The General Education Board, which for several years has co-operated with the Department of Agriculture in the support of its farm demonstration work, has expressed a willingness to extend its co-operation with the department in this problem of Rural Organization Service. ”

“ The great mass of Pittsburgh’s good citizens refuse to get excited. Not all the scare heads of the interested newspapers, the Leader and the Press, or mass-meetings and parades of children arranged by still more interested individuals, have befogged the recognition by Pittsburgh people of the improvement in school affairs since 1911. ”

“ For not only have Americans been the leading exponents of political, social and religious co-operation, but they have likewise shown marked aptitude for economic co-operation. Our very [Pg 250] national life is purely co-operative. Our big business is, though not in a strict sense, in a large sense co-operative. Furthermore, were the traditional American individualism the sole or even the main cause, why has co-operation in this country met with no wider acceptance or greater success among the immigrants coming from countries where co-operation is practiced to a very high degree? ”

“ He who is not blind, however, to the evils which have followed private profit in public utilities, and who has seen governments conferring special privileges upon the few at the expense of the many, as he turns here again to New Zealand may well find inspiring faith in the ability of a whole people to legislate toward the common good. ”

“ Lee and I differ fundamentally in our approval of a proposed method of dealing with widows and that his criticism is derived from his point of view,” a clear-cut statement of the possible reason for my criticism of the Massachusetts report, is not wholly accurate. The agitation for widows’ pensions has caught so large a measure of popular support that we begin to think that every person must be for pensions, against pensions, or on the fence ready to jump to one side or the other. ”

“ General Secretary Thomas Thompson Trust
The rural leader, whether his interest is primarily in the church, the school, good roads, health, wholesome recreation or the care of the neglected, must, if he would get anywhere, be interested, also, in better farming. For one reason, there is no better way to obtain the interest of the farmer. Then, too, a normal standard of health, intelligence or morals depends, in the country as in the city, upon a normal standard of living. ”

“ The audiences in one respect at any rate seem to have lacked somewhat the university spirit of inquiry, having retained rather the normal human spirit of liking to hear views that agree with one’s own. It was noticeable, for example, that the people who came to hear the Socialist speaker were the Socialists coming to be flattered, and not the anti-Socialists coming to learn. Likewise, the anti-Socialist speaker was not listened to by so many Socialists as by those of his own opinion. ”

“ Further, this “county man,” who is helping the farmer to double his dollars, has a rare opportunity to work out with him the problem of spending them and will prove to be a vital factor in the promotion of any of the ends of community betterment.
That the government requires the formation of a county organization to direct the work and to finance it, beyond the $100 a month allowed by the government toward the agent’s salary, establishes at the outset a co-operative county agency through which other work may be taken up. ”

“ He shows how crowded streets, lack of play space, poverty, sickness, insanitary houses, criminal companions and parental neglect provide a fruitful soil in which to breed neglected and delinquent boys and girls. These conditions he charges to the greed of individuals and to the careless, neglectful indifference of society. ”

“ The statement is, however, that labor received only 20 per cent of the value of the product which it served to create.
Even with a superficial knowledge of economics and industrial processes one ought to perceive that the laborers employed in manufacturing industries by no means create the full value of the products which these industries place upon the market. The laborer in the factory does not create the raw material which the factory uses; labor on the farm, in the mine or in the forest entered into that. ”

“ Persons incompetent to discern the presence of factors that make non-removal desirable will scarcely remove for proper cause only. The letters of these agencies would repay reading.
What these letters say about local relief resources is more than borne out by the reports of policy contained in the letters from the overseers. Most widows are in their hands. Our schedules, further, show that actually $2 to $2.50 a week per family is usually given. None of our critics attack these statements. There is a problem and present agents do not cope with it. ”

“ Ford’s hook is his discussion of general co-operative principles. The economic conditions for successful co-operation are wanting in this country. People will co-operate either because they are driven to it by necessity, as is the case in Europe, or because they see in it special inducement to make it worth their while. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, these conditions do not exist in the United States so far. ”

“ It was agreed that the social worker who can satisfy only the bare material needs of life is poorly equipped for his task, that religion must lend its strength to every effort towards individual or social reconstruction, and that the call of the church is a call to service. ”

“ Our charities constantly protest that they have insufficient funds. Before me lies a circular of the Associated Charities of a city of 100,000 people, which has many well-to-do persons and few recent foreigners. The resources “to meet the needs of families in distress are wholly inadequate, as is well known to all familiar with the conditions.... We still use existing resources to the utmost.... Still we fall far short of being able to meet the demands upon us. Must we allow widows with young children to be overburdened and underfed,” etc? ”

“ The Washington act does not even relate the award to the dead man’s wages. Usually the award increases with the number of children. German statutes have all had the comfort of the survivors in view. No abstract desire to compensate for loss would ever secure legislation if, as a consequence, the efficiency and comfort of the population were to decrease.
Not only is Mr. Lee anxious to find whether relief is now adequate or not, but he wants to know where the flaw in the service is. Both questions are answered by our information as to the policies of the child-helping and relief-giving agencies. ”

“ The economic pinch has left its marks upon his social life. Many of his old neighbors have sold their farms and moved away. Some have left their farms in the hands of tenants who are robbing the land of its fertility. ”

“ Most communities in Massachusetts have a poorer population and a weaker organized charity for dealing with the problem.
But, further, our opponents suggest an alternative bill, providing for “adequate” aid for all mothers with dependent children. If existing relief is adequate, this bill is a sham. The only alternative is to regard these opponents as agreeing that existing relief is inadequate.
The Legislature that gave us $1,000 hardly expected a wealth of figures. Mr. Lee does not in other matters rely on figures, I am happy to observe. ”

“ A committee of nine governors appointed at the last conference of governors is awaiting the report of the American commission in order to draft appropriate state legislation in regard to farmers’ credit and co-operative organizations. Few commissions have gone abroad with the backing and the enthusiasm that accompanies this one. Representative of national and state public authorities, business men, and farmers, its report promises to hasten practical measures for the relief of the financial burden of the American farmer. ”

“ Turn the present corps out and put in such incompetents and grafters as we have in many of our state departments in America, and the whole New Zealand structure would come tumbling down immediately. Not until law and public opinion make it possible, can we have here such administration of labor laws, for instance, as Edward Tregear has given these many years to New Zealand, and not until then will new labor laws be of much more avail to us than old ones are now. ”

“ Such a choice of alternatives has little attraction for any one who approaches the question out of thoughtful experience with relief problems and the long struggle to procure for the widow and others who live in misery adequate reinforcements—reinforcements of income, health, recreation, education for children and decent living conditions. ”

“ As a result the right person and the right place frequently fail to make connections.
This difficulty it has been felt was only partially overcome by the existing employment agencies and employment departments of colleges and schools of philanthropy. In an effort to meet the needs more completely the Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations, with the co-operation of the New York School of Philanthropy and of the Russell Sage Foundation, has established a separate department to serve as a clearing-house for workers and positions in social work. ”

“ Its optimism is the culture-soil out of which we may expect to see develop that happy adaptation of the two races, which after all is the solution of the race problem.
This incident, and what it goes to show, would alone justify the existence of a southern congress separate and distinct from the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The peculiar problems that faced the conference on courts and prisons make this separate treatment even more desirable. In the South there are not many of those great central, highly organized penal institutions known as penitentiaries. ”

“ Lusk shows how in New Zealand, government-built railroads became a necessity in a sparsely settled country where private capital would not venture, and how an extensive scheme of legislation for the benefit of settlers on the land was forced upon a people whose appetite for mutual help grew with what it fed upon. ”

“ The New York Charities Directory lists 3500 organizations, a large part of which employ paid workers. This is but a local index of the number of societies that need trained workers. Yet the individual who is looking for a position in social work, soon learns that the task of finding the right opening is not easy. ”