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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Democracy and Social Ethics
+
+Author: Jane Addams
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2005 [EBook #15487]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS ***
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+Produced by Alicia Williams, Joel Schlosberg and the Online
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+The Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and
+Sociology
+
+UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF
+
+RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D, LL.D.
+
+_Director of the School of Economics and Political Science; Professor of
+Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin_
+
+12mo. Half Leather. $1.25, net, each
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+
+*Outlines of Economics*. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D., author of
+"Monopolies and Trusts," etc.
+
+*The Economics of Distribution*. By JOHN A. HOBSON, author of "The
+Evolution of Modern Capitalism," etc.
+
+*World Politics*. By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Assistant Professor
+of Political Science, University of Wisconsin.
+
+*Economic Crises*. By EDWARD D. JONES, Ph.D., Instructor in Economics
+and Statistics, University of Wisconsin.
+
+*Government in Switzerland*. By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, Ph.D., Associate
+Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University.
+
+*Political Parties in the United States, 1846-1861*. By JESSE MACY,
+LL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College.
+
+*Essays on the Monetary History of the United States*. By CHARLES J.
+BULLOCK, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Williams College.
+
+*Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order*. By EDWARD
+ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D.
+
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+Editor of _Engineering News_.
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+       *       *       *       *       *
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+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
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+
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+*In Preparation for Early Issue*
+
+*DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS*
+
+    By JANE ADDAMS, Head of "Hull House," Chicago; joint author of
+    "Philanthropy and Social Progress." (_Now ready._)
+
+Miss Addams' Settlement Work is known to all who are interested in
+social amelioration and municipal conditions. As the title of her book
+shows, it will be occupied with the reciprocal relations of ethical
+progress and the growth of democratic thought, sentiment, and
+institutions.
+
+*CUSTOM AND COMPETITION*
+
+    By RICHARD T. ELY, LL.D., Professor of Political Economy and
+    Director of the School of Economics and Political Science in the
+    University of Wisconsin; President of the American Economic
+    Association; author of "Monopolies and Trusts," etc.
+
+Topics treated under Custom include the Rent of Land and Custom;
+Interest and Custom; The Remuneration of Personal Services and Custom;
+Custom and Commerce.
+
+Competition is first discussed with reference to the biological aspects
+of the question, and the significance of subhuman competition is
+confined and a careful classification of its various kinds is presented.
+One of the main topics of the book is Competition as a Principle of
+Distribution, and its treatment of the subject of price admirably
+supplements the theoretical discussion in "Monopolies and Trusts."
+
+*AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS*
+
+    By CHARLES ZUEBLIN, B.D., Associate Professor of Sociology in the
+    University of Chicago.
+
+This work takes up the problem of the so-called public utilities, public
+schools, libraries, children's playgrounds, public baths, public
+gymnasiums, etc. The discussion is from the standpoint of public welfare
+and is based on repeated personal investigations in leading cities of
+Europe, especially England and the United States.
+
+*COLONIAL GOVERNMENT*
+
+    By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Professor of Political Science in
+    the University of Wisconsin; Author of "World Politics at the End of
+    the Nineteenth Century as Influenced by the Oriental Situation."
+
+By the author of the "World Politics," which met so cordial a reception
+from students of modern political history. The main divisions of the
+book are: Motives and Methods of Colonization; Forms of Colonial
+Government; Relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies;
+Internal Government of the Colonies; The Special Colonial Problems of
+the United States.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
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+THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY
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+OF
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+ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND SOCIOLOGY
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+EDITED BY
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+RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
+
+DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF
+WISCONSIN
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
+
+
+
+
+*THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND
+SOCIOLOGY.*
+
+12mo. Half leather. $1.25 _net_ each.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+*MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS.*
+BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
+
+*THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION.*
+BY JOHN A. HOBSON.
+
+*WORLD POLITICS.*
+BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
+
+*ECONOMIC CRISES.*
+BY EDWARD D. JONES, PH.D.
+
+*OUTLINE OF ECONOMICS.*
+BY RICHARD T. ELY.
+
+*GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND.*
+BY JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, PH.D.
+
+*ESSAYS IN THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.*
+BY CHARLES J. BULLOCK, PH.D.
+
+*SOCIAL CONTROL.*
+BY EDWARD A. ROSS, PH.D.
+
+*HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.*
+BY JESSE MACY, LL.D.
+
+*MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION.*
+BY M.N. BAKER, PH.B.
+
+*DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS.*
+BY JANE ADDAMS.
+
+*COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.*
+BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_IN PREPARATION._
+
+*CUSTOM AND COMPETITION.*
+BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
+
+*MUNICIPAL SOCIOLOGY.*
+BY CHARLES ZUEBLIN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
+66 FIFTH AVENUE.
+
+
+
+
+_THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
+
+BY
+
+JANE ADDAMS
+HULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO
+
+_New York_
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
+1902
+
+
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped March, 1902. Reprinted
+June, September, 1902.
+
+Norwood Press
+J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+To: M.R.S.
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+The following pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures
+on "Democracy and Social Ethics" which have been delivered at various
+colleges and university extension centres.
+
+In putting them into the form of a book, no attempt has been made to
+change the somewhat informal style used in speaking. The "we" and "us"
+which originally referred to the speaker and her audience are merely
+extended to possible readers.
+
+Acknowledgment for permission to reprint is extended to _The Atlantic
+Monthly_, _The International Journal of Ethics_, _The American Journal
+of Sociology_, and to _The Commons_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I                                                           PAGE
+INTRODUCTION                                                           1
+
+CHAPTER II
+CHARITABLE EFFORT                                                     13
+
+CHAPTER III
+FILIAL RELATIONS                                                      71
+
+CHAPTER IV
+HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT                                                 102
+
+CHAPTER V
+INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION                                              137
+
+CHAPTER VI
+EDUCATIONAL METHODS                                                  178
+
+CHAPTER VII
+POLITICAL REFORM                                                     221
+
+INDEX                                                                279
+
+
+
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but
+another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of
+every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life
+becomes meaningless.
+
+Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the
+community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from
+stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much
+voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal
+would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and
+expectation which makes virtue easy. In the same way we have been
+carefully reared to a sense of family obligation, to be kindly and
+considerate to the members of our own households, and to feel
+responsible for their well-being. As the rules of conduct have become
+established in regard to our self-development and our families, so they
+have been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of
+these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and
+thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of
+right living would lie easily in their hands.
+
+But we all know that each generation has its own test, the
+contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately
+judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately
+use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed
+include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no
+more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have
+"arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.
+
+To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to
+pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands
+social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.
+
+It is perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us
+that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of
+the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are
+not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the
+poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry?
+
+All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to
+their attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round
+of uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite,
+the declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food
+which characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their
+fellow-citizens. These men and women have caught a moral challenge
+raised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered,
+others who are denied the relief which sturdy action brings are even
+seeking an escape, but all are increasingly anxious concerning their
+actual relations to the basic organization of society.
+
+The test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They
+fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal
+obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand
+involving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another
+requirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of
+social ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet
+expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a
+mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between
+their consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer
+definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a
+part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality.
+In the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is
+becoming clear: if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a
+social morality, it is inevitable that those who desire it must be
+brought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to
+procure an adequate social motive.
+
+These men and women have realized this and have disclosed the fact in
+their eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the
+life about them. They believe that experience gives the easy and
+trustworthy impulse toward right action in the broad as well as in the
+narrow relations. We may indeed imagine many of them saying: "Cast our
+experiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the
+larger social aims. We have met the obligations of our family life, not
+because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because
+of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation
+naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare
+ourselves for the larger social duties." Such a demand is reasonable,
+for by our daily experience we have discovered that we cannot
+mechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in rare moments
+of exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that even as the
+ideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the strength to
+attain it must be secured from interest in life itself. We slowly learn
+that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may
+come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from
+selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of
+Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all
+men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and
+equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well
+as a test of faith.
+
+We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by
+travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common
+road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size
+of one another's burdens. To follow the path of social morality results
+perforce in the temper if not the practice of the democratic spirit, for
+it implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy
+which are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy.
+
+There are many indications that this conception of Democracy is growing
+among us. We have come to have an enormous interest in human life as
+such, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness. We do not
+believe that genuine experience can lead us astray any more than
+scientific data can.
+
+We realize, too, that social perspective and sanity of judgment come
+only from contact with social experience; that such contact is the
+surest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and
+concerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. Indeed, it is a
+consciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and
+more thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that
+new curiosity regarding human life which has more of a moral basis than
+an intellectual one.
+
+The newspapers, in a frank reflection of popular demand, exhibit an
+omniverous curiosity equally insistent upon the trivial and the
+important. They are perhaps the most obvious manifestations of that
+desire to know, that "What is this?" and "Why do you do that?" of the
+child. The first dawn of the social consciousness takes this form, as
+the dawning intelligence of the child takes the form of constant
+question and insatiate curiosity.
+
+Literature, too, portrays an equally absorbing though better adjusted
+desire to know all kinds of life. The popular books are the novels,
+dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely
+read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a
+measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all
+sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social
+adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.
+
+Doubtless one under the conviction of sin in regard to social ills finds
+a vague consolation in reading about the lives of the poor, and derives
+a sense of complicity in doing good. He likes to feel that he knows
+about social wrongs even if he does not remedy them, and in a very
+genuine sense there is a foundation for this belief.
+
+Partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a
+new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world
+before. Evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only
+that man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the criminal.
+We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and
+hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a
+realization of the experiences of other people. Already there is a
+conviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our
+experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately
+determine our understanding of life. We know instinctively that if we
+grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse
+to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect,
+we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the
+scope of our ethics.
+
+We can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one
+common characteristic,--the conviction that they are different from
+other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they
+are more sensitive or more refined. Such people "refuse to be bound by
+any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration,
+or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed." We have
+learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the
+will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which
+deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say
+that they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on narrow and
+unprogressive issues.
+
+We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and
+democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social
+expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the
+identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of
+Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as
+though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience,
+because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry
+us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and
+jostle of the crowd.
+
+The six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who
+are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance
+of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct.
+No attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the
+assumption that the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy,
+but the quite unlooked-for result of the studies would seem to indicate
+that while the strain and perplexity of the situation is felt most
+keenly by the educated and self-conscious members of the community, the
+tentative and actual attempts at adjustment are largely coming through
+those who are simpler and less analytical.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHARITABLE EFFORT
+
+
+All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy,
+which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away
+from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to
+act upon them.
+
+Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a
+course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct,
+which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing
+moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the
+strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon
+another.
+
+Probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing
+more rapidly than the charitable relation--that relation which obtains
+between benefactor and beneficiary; at the same time there is no point
+of contact in our modern experience which reveals so clearly the lack of
+that equality which democracy implies. We have reached the moment when
+democracy has made such inroads upon this relationship, that the
+complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man is gone forever; while,
+at the same time, the very need and existence of charity, denies us the
+consolation and freedom which democracy will at last give.
+
+It is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined,
+and we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon
+convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of
+environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our
+methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was
+believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that
+the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered
+harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed
+the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior
+prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior morality. We
+have learned since that time to measure by other standards, and have
+ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive respect; while
+it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, its possession
+is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the highest moral
+qualities. We have learned to judge men by their social virtues as well
+as by their business capacity, by their devotion to intellectual and
+disinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we naturally resent
+being obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the industrial side.
+Our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is largely in this
+modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic standard, while the
+old charitable attitude commonly allowed the use of two standards, that
+much of the difficulty adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil
+becomes wearing and brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable
+if we judge large numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in
+maintaining it.
+
+The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house
+made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is
+no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her
+hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over
+against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained
+only through status.
+
+The only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those
+who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through
+sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable
+reasons; but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing, and
+must be bolstered and helped into industrial health. The charity
+visitor, let us assume, is a young college woman, well-bred and
+open-minded; when she visits the family assigned to her, she is often
+embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the stress of her
+teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to treat the
+members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the industrial
+system. She insists that they must work and be self-supporting, that the
+most dangerous of all situations is idleness, that seeking one's own
+pleasure, while ignoring claims and responsibilities, is the most
+ignoble of actions. The members of her assigned family may have other
+charms and virtues--they may possibly be kind and considerate of each
+other, generous to their friends, but it is her business to stick to the
+industrial side. As she daily holds up these standards, it often occurs
+to the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made
+tender by much talk of brotherhood and equality, that she has no right
+to say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to
+cope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family.
+
+The grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial
+preaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and
+housewifely training. In a generation our experiences have changed, and
+our views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which
+could be applied when our consciences were in line with them, but which
+are daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work
+with their hands and those who do not. The charity visitor belonging to
+the latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the
+situation forces upon her. Our democracy has taught us to apply our
+moral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so
+sensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical convictions,
+he finds it difficult to preach.
+
+Added to this is a consciousness, in the mind of the visitor, of a
+genuine misunderstanding of her motives by the recipients of her
+charity, and by their neighbors. Let us take a neighborhood of poor
+people, and test their ethical standards by those of the charity
+visitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to help them out of
+their distress. A most striking incongruity, at once apparent, is the
+difference between the emotional kindness with which relief is given by
+one poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the guarded care with
+which relief is given by a charity visitor to a charity recipient. The
+neighborhood mind is at once confronted not only by the difference of
+method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical standards.
+
+A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is
+sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly
+relations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything,
+and all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate
+family affairs of all the others. The fact that the economic condition
+of all alike is on a most precarious level makes the ready outflow of
+sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world.
+There are numberless instances of self-sacrifice quite unknown in the
+circles where greater economic advantages make that kind of intimate
+knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish family in which the
+man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling to eke out the
+scanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow and her five
+children who have been turned into the street, without a moment's
+reflection upon the physical discomforts involved. The most maligned
+landlady who lives in the house with her tenants is usually ready to
+lend a scuttle full of coal to one of them who may be out of work, or to
+share her supper. A woman for whom the writer had long tried in vain to
+find work failed to appear at the appointed time when employment was
+secured at last. Upon investigation it transpired that a neighbor
+further down the street was taken ill, that the children ran for the
+family friend, who went of course, saying simply when reasons for her
+non-appearance were demanded, "It broke me heart to leave the place, but
+what could I do?" A woman whose husband was sent up to the city prison
+for the maximum term, just three months, before the birth of her child
+found herself penniless at the end of that time, having gradually sold
+her supply of household furniture. She took refuge with a friend whom
+she supposed to be living in three rooms in another part of town. When
+she arrived, however, she discovered that her friend's husband had been
+out of work so long that they had been reduced to living in one room.
+The friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged
+to sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did
+uncomplainingly if not cheerfully. Fortunately it was summer, "and it
+only rained one night." The writer could not discover from the young
+mother that she had any special claim upon the "friend" beyond the fact
+that they had formerly worked together in the same factory. The husband
+she had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at once went
+forth in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon his promise
+of future payment.
+
+The evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid
+his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right
+and wrong. There is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many
+people with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that
+their ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged by the
+methods of these agencies. When they see the delay and caution with
+which relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious
+scruple, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. It is
+not the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors,
+and they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to "be
+good to the poor" should be so severely supervised. They feel,
+remotely, that the charity visitor is moved by motives that are alien
+and unreal. They may be superior motives, but they are different, and
+they are "agin nature." They cannot comprehend why a person whose
+intellectual perceptions are stronger than his natural impulses, should
+go into charity work at all. The only man they are accustomed to see
+whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his tenderness of
+heart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is frankly "on the make."
+If the charity visitor is such a person, why does she pretend to like
+the poor? Why does she not go into business at once?
+
+We may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus
+confuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite
+honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity
+from time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to
+say: "What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to give us, why not
+let us alone and stop your questionings and investigations?" "They
+investigated me for three weeks, and in the end gave me nothing but a
+black character," a little woman has been heard to assert. This
+indignation, which is for the most part taciturn, and a certain kindly
+contempt for her abilities, often puzzles the charity visitor. The
+latter may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the
+visited families hold. Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of
+the poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the
+opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness,
+who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of
+irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still
+admiration, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured
+landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is
+seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned
+for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to
+accumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a
+poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one
+sense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person
+who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this
+good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little
+genuine respect. The poor are accustomed to help each other and to
+respond according to their kindliness; but when it comes to worldly
+judgment, they use industrial success as the sole standard. In the case
+of the charity visitor who has neither natural kindness nor dazzling
+riches, they are deprived of both standards, and they find it of course
+utterly impossible to judge of the motive of organized charity.
+
+Even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in
+altruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something
+distasteful in the juxtaposition of the words "organized" and "charity."
+We say in defence that we are striving to turn this emotion into a
+motive, that pity is capricious, and not to be depended on; that we mean
+to give it the dignity of conscious duty. But at bottom we distrust a
+little a scheme which substitutes a theory of social conduct for the
+natural promptings of the heart, even although we appreciate the
+complexity of the situation. The poor man who has fallen into distress,
+when he first asks aid, instinctively expects tenderness, consideration,
+and forgiveness. If it is the first time, it has taken him long to make
+up his mind to take the step. He comes somewhat bruised and battered,
+and instead of being met with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at
+once chilled by an investigation and an intimation that he ought to
+work. He does not recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation.
+
+The only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by
+virtue of their professional training render services which may easily
+be interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to
+obvious needs which do not require investigation.
+
+The state of mind which an investigation arouses on both sides is most
+unfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of different standards,
+with the consequent misunderstandings, are not so bad as the moral
+deterioration which is almost sure to follow.
+
+When the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that
+under certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed
+from some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn
+what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a
+glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any
+self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is
+an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize
+that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by
+at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite
+elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor
+they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious
+observance. The deception in the first instances arises from a wondering
+inability to understand the ethical ideals which can require such
+impossible virtues, and from an innocent desire to please. It is easy to
+trace the development of the mental suggestions thus received. When A
+discovers that B, who is very little worse off than he, receives good
+things from an inexhaustible supply intended for the poor at large, he
+feels that he too has a claim for his share, and step by step there is
+developed the competitive spirit which so horrifies charity visitors
+when it shows itself in a tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies.
+
+The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the
+charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love
+and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The
+spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child
+is turned into righteous indignation against the district nurse,
+because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. Or the
+kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed
+medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary,
+because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can get well on a
+piece of paper?"
+
+If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is
+quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to
+mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty
+wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in,
+all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They
+know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she
+has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They
+imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous
+gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought
+to get new shoes for the family all round, "she sees well enough that
+they need them." It is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has
+practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The charity visitor has
+broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive
+society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources
+of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is
+judged by the ethics of that primitive society.
+
+The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their
+own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other
+things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are
+like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady
+visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as
+though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not
+intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?
+
+The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to
+a standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living
+which they formerly possessed; that saving, which seems quite
+commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a
+poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the
+children of the family do not.
+
+She feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the
+industrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago
+honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in
+comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had
+practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained
+whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for
+indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly
+untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity
+visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and
+saving money, the things I know nothing about? If it were anything else
+I had to urge, I could do it; anything like Latin prose, which I had
+worried through myself, it would not be so hard." But she finds it
+difficult to connect the experiences of her youth with the experiences
+of the visited family.
+
+Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually
+surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. She
+refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers
+that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors"
+at all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free
+lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not
+able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity
+visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. He may
+listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only
+"temperance talk."
+
+The charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward
+their children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that
+the standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children
+so much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the
+punctilious wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child. The
+standard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself,
+assisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "That
+they do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of
+mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of
+every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a
+certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement.
+It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we
+live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more
+difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened
+supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining
+children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she
+doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her
+first month of experience with the family since bereaved.
+
+The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the
+result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The
+girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable
+school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by
+all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even
+shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose
+family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to
+another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,
+knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her
+position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to
+the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social
+advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is
+judged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful
+little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the
+people whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her
+background, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact
+that girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where
+"working girls" and "young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where
+the clothes superficially look very much alike. Bright and ambitious
+girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon,
+to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might
+hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own
+neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits
+and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by
+other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same
+reason, girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little
+towns and villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the
+front parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the
+house. These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment;
+they impede the democratic relationship and add to the
+self-consciousness of all concerned. Every one who has had to do with
+down-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of
+some bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps
+wretched, and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her,
+although the working girl may not have been at home when the call was
+made, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy
+throughout. In some very successful down-town clubs the home address is
+not given at all, and only the "business address" is required. Have we
+worked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than anything
+else?
+
+The charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to
+spend much money upon clothes, to care so much for "appearances." She
+realizes dimly that the care for personal decoration over that for one's
+home or habitat is in some way primitive and undeveloped; but she is
+silenced by its obvious need. She also catches a glimpse of the fact
+that the disproportionate expenditure of the poor in the matter of
+clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of the rich who hide from
+them the interior of their houses, and their more subtle pleasures,
+while of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and their street
+manners. Every one who goes shopping at the same time may see the
+clothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to her
+receptions see the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her library.
+The poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing the
+street clothes which they have seen. They are striving to conform to a
+common standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to
+all of us. The charity visitor may regret that the Italian peasant
+woman has laid aside her picturesque kerchief and substituted a cheap
+street hat. But it is easy to recognize the first attempt toward
+democratic expression.
+
+The charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to
+consider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor; for
+she cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according
+to the conventions which have regulated her own life. She finds both of
+these fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her
+sympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight.
+She discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been, and it
+takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist
+so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit
+the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The
+charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early
+marriages, quite naturally because she comes from a family and circle
+of professional and business people. A professional man is scarcely
+equipped and started in his profession before he is thirty. A business
+man, if he is on the road to success, is much nearer prosperity at
+thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is therefore wise for these men not
+to marry in the twenties; but this does not apply to the workingman. In
+many trades he is laid upon the shelf at thirty-five, and in nearly all
+trades he receives the largest wages in his life between twenty and
+thirty. If the young workingman has all his wages to himself, he will
+probably establish habits of personal comfort, which he cannot keep up
+when he has to divide with a family--habits which he can, perhaps, never
+overcome.
+
+The sense of prudence, the necessity for saving, can never come to a
+primitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the
+necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He
+naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to
+care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very
+early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County
+poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his
+little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared
+this sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to well
+support a family when he was twenty than when he was thirty-five, for
+his wages had steadily grown less as the years went on. Another tailor
+whom I know, who is also a Socialist, always speaks of saving as a
+bourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to the genuine workingman. He
+supports a family consisting of himself, a wife and three children, and
+his two parents on eight dollars a week. He insists it would be criminal
+not to expend every penny of this amount upon food and shelter, and he
+expects his children later to care for him.
+
+This economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to
+work overyoung and thus cripple their chances for individual
+development and usefulness, and with the avaricious parent also leads to
+exploitation. "I have fed her for fourteen years, now she can help me
+pay my mortgage" is not an unusual reply when a hardworking father is
+expostulated with because he would take his bright daughter out of
+school and put her into a factory.
+
+It has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly
+urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least
+connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not
+the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been
+taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and
+more social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his
+parents, who are receiving charitable aid. She does not realize what a
+cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives
+advice.
+
+The manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children
+was able to show during a child-labor investigation, that the only
+children under fourteen years of age in his employ were protégés who had
+been urged upon him by philanthropic ladies, not only acquaintances of
+his, but valued patrons of the establishment. It is not that the charity
+visitor is less wise than other people, but she has fixed her mind so
+long upon the industrial lameness of her family that she is eager to
+seize any crutch, however weak, which may enable them to get on.
+
+She has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely support
+his widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate member to the
+community, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. As she
+has failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of
+marriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she
+fails to understand that the present conditions of employment
+surrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained
+during the energetic youth of her father.
+
+The child who is prematurely put to work is constantly oppressed by this
+never ending question of the means of subsistence, and even little
+children are sometimes almost crushed with the cares of life through
+their affectionate sympathy. The writer knows a little Italian lad of
+six to whom the problems of food, clothing, and shelter have become so
+immediate and pressing that, although an imaginative child, he is unable
+to see life from any other standpoint. The goblin or bugaboo, feared by
+the more fortunate child, in his mind, has come to be the need of coal
+which caused his father hysterical and demonstrative grief when it
+carried off his mother's inherited linen, the mosaic of St. Joseph, and,
+worst of all, his own rubber boots. He once came to a party at
+Hull-House, and was interested in nothing save a gas stove which he saw
+in the kitchen. He became excited over the discovery that fire could be
+produced without fuel. "I will tell my father of this stove. You buy no
+coal, you need only a match. Anybody will give you a match." He was
+taken to visit at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was
+paid for it. On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no
+rent for that house, he came back quite wild with interest that the
+problem was solved. "Me and my father will go to the country. You get a
+big house, all warm, without rent." Nothing else in the country
+interested him but the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an
+exclusiveness worthy of a single taxer.
+
+The struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near
+the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the
+charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents
+who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn,
+take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with
+them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the
+immature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing
+habits of obedience, so that the nerves and will may not depart from
+this control when the child is older. The charity visitor, whose family
+relation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand
+the industrial foundation for this family tyranny.
+
+The head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of
+working women, and spoke of the despotism which is often established
+over little children. She said that the so-called determination to break
+a child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged
+the ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. But many of the
+women were puzzled. One of them remarked to the writer as she came out
+of the club room, "If you did not keep control over them from the time
+they were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown
+up." Another one said, "Ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't
+have to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with
+them, because even if they don't give money to her, she can get along
+without it."
+
+There are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and
+constantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes
+receiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as
+often nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who
+for six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling
+wages which she earns in a large factory. Is it habit or virtue which
+holds her steady in this course? If love and tenderness had been
+substituted for parental despotism, would the mother have had enough
+affection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of
+money obligation through all these years? This girl who spends her
+paltry two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her
+mother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on
+those clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some
+powerful force.
+
+The charity visitor finds these subtle and elusive problems most
+harrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is a man who has become
+black-listed in a strike. He is not a very good workman, and this, added
+to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. The
+fatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less
+eager for it, and gets a "job" less and less frequently. In order to
+keep up his self-respect, and still more to keep his wife's respect for
+him, he yields to the little self-deception that this prolonged idleness
+follows because he was once blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a
+martyr. Deep down in his heart perhaps--but who knows what may be deep
+down in his heart? Whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for
+an instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her
+earn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family.
+The charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the
+other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further
+knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not skilful.
+She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce
+him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain
+intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees other
+workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many
+more hours in the public library reading good books than the average
+workman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has yielded only
+to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which come to the
+intellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would induce his
+union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a constant
+speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral attitude on the
+questions discussed there. He contributes a certain intellectuality to
+his friends, and he has undoubted social value. The neighboring women
+confide to the charity visitor their sympathy with his wife, because
+she has to work so hard, and because her husband does not "provide."
+Their remarks are sharpened by a certain resentment toward the
+superiority of the husband's education and gentle manners. The charity
+visitor is ashamed to take this point of view, for she knows that it is
+not altogether fair. She is reminded of a college friend of hers, who
+told her that she was not going to allow her literary husband to write
+unworthy potboilers for the sake of earning a living. "I insist that we
+shall live within my own income; that he shall not publish until he is
+ready, and can give his genuine message." The charity visitor recalls
+what she has heard of another acquaintance, who urged her husband to
+decline a lucrative position as a railroad attorney, because she wished
+him to be free to take municipal positions, and handle public questions
+without the inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in
+a corrupt city to a corporation attorney. The action of these two women
+seemed noble to her, but in their cases they merely lived on a lesser
+income. In the case of the workingman's wife, she faced living on no
+income at all, or on the precarious one which she might be able to get
+together.
+
+She sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she
+is utterly unwilling to condemn her while praising the friends of her
+own social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is
+changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other
+two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight
+was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The
+charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the
+finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from
+the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she
+suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into
+complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family
+altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the
+crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects
+that she will never know many finer women than the mother. She is
+unwilling, therefore, to give up the friendship, and goes on bearing her
+perplexities as best she may.
+
+The first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with
+her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their
+children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which
+receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the
+instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of
+juvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving
+no legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we
+remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house
+or regular meals.
+
+There are certain boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves
+into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid than the
+rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house,
+to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the
+nearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they buy beer and
+drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley. From
+beginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that they may be
+seen and caught by the "coppers," and are at times quite breathless with
+suspense. It is not the least unlike, in motive and execution, the
+practice of country boys who go forth in squads to set traps for rabbits
+or to round up a coon.
+
+It is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious
+training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy
+undertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very
+beginning the most enticing and exciting experiences which they have
+seen have been connected with crime. The policeman embodies all the
+majesty of successful law and established government in his brass
+buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon.
+
+The boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale
+to tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. The
+earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the
+rattling fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block,"
+and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest
+lady in our street was arrested."
+
+In the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took
+fifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their
+apathetic interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an
+omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find
+them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled by.
+Their eager little heads popped out of the windows full of questioning:
+"Was it a man or a woman?" "How many policemen inside?" and eager little
+tongues began to tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes had
+witnessed.
+
+The excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a
+fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who
+receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is
+willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest
+things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation
+schools than the conscientious charity visitor.
+
+This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of
+their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often
+leads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten
+were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of
+pilfering and destroying property. They had dug a cave under a railroad
+viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer
+vacation. They had "swiped" potatoes and other vegetables from
+hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand
+fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen
+junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations.
+The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five
+miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did not
+want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor
+paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman living near the
+viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and supper, and left
+something in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to
+work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge
+his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in the summer," or to
+investigate what he did during the day. In the meantime the three boys
+lived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous
+stories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more
+as the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic
+passing over the street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous
+exertions on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform
+School, comforting himself with the conclusive remark, "Well, we had fun
+anyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in
+the country, where we can't hurt anything."
+
+In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the
+scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of
+the young people. "Going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and
+satisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all
+their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay
+for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday afternoon. It is their
+one satisfactory glimpse of life--the moment when they "issue forth from
+themselves" and are stirred and thoroughly interested. They quite simply
+adopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see
+there. In moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the
+gestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry
+expression often conflicts hideously with the fine and genuine emotion
+of which it is the inadequate and vulgar vehicle.
+
+As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of
+expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they
+know.
+
+If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the
+spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the
+popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function
+of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries"
+and picture exhibits combined.
+
+The greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come
+sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding
+and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's own ethical
+standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had bought and sold
+school books stolen from the school fund,--books which are all plainly
+marked with a red stamp,--came to Hull House one morning in great
+distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident "to speak
+to the judge." She gave as a reason the fact that the House had known
+her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her little
+girl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her visitor knew
+the school books were stolen when buying them, and any attempt to talk
+upon that subject was evidently considered very rude. The visitor wished
+to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason why the House
+should not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she could not go
+to him. After a long conversation the visitor entirely failed to get
+another point of view and went away grieved and disappointed at a
+refusal, thinking the resident simply disobliging; wondering, no doubt,
+why such a mean woman had once been good to her; leaving the resident,
+on the other hand, utterly baffled and in the state of mind she would
+have been in, had she brutally insisted that a little child should lift
+weights too heavy for its undeveloped muscles.
+
+Such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher
+ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but
+it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in
+which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient
+is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:--
+
+A certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and
+pathos of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the well-being of
+perhaps a dozen old women to whom she sustains a sincerely affectionate
+and almost filial relation. Some of them learn to take her benefactions
+quite as if they came from their own relatives, grumbling at all she
+does, and scolding her with a family freedom. One of these poor old
+women was injured in a fire years ago. She has but the fragment of a
+hand left, and is grievously crippled in her feet. Through years of pain
+she had become addicted to opium, and when she first came under the
+visitor's care, was only held from the poorhouse by the awful thought
+that she would there perish without her drug. Five years of tender care
+have done wonders for her. She lives in two neat little rooms, where
+with her thumb and two fingers she makes innumerable quilts, which she
+sells and gives away with the greatest delight. Her opium is regulated
+to a set amount taken each day, and she has been drawn away from much
+drinking. She is a voracious reader, and has her head full of strange
+tales made up from books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed
+impossible to do anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two
+years in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and
+where she was nursed through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives
+a better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old
+woman. The neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is
+supported and comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she
+occasionally "rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar
+her in her tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that
+second standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the
+standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be
+helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the
+plums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this
+criticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't
+in the least deserve what she gets. In order to disarm them, and at the
+same time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so
+colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn in
+the suburb she discovered an awful family secret,--a horrible scandal
+connected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order
+to prevent the divulgence of this that she constantly receives her
+ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation
+as simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem. Doubtless many
+of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and
+patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. But the
+standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems
+unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people
+who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a
+certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. It is certainly
+dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.
+
+Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy
+among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is
+certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a
+comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be
+willing to make.
+
+Of what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any
+value? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity
+visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do.
+It drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they
+claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of
+a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods
+do, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so
+that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and
+thus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment.
+
+Both the tenement-house resident and the sister assume to have put
+themselves upon the industrial level of their neighbors, although they
+have left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent fear
+of starvation and a neglected old age.
+
+The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most
+precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the
+city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which
+our growing democracy forces upon her.
+
+We sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would
+doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not
+scientific enough. We dislike the entire arrangement of cards
+alphabetically classified according to streets and names of families,
+with the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. Our feeling
+of revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted the students of
+botany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were
+tabulated in alphabetical order, when geology was taught by colored
+charts and thin books. No doubt the students, wearied to death, many
+times said that it was all too scientific, and were much perplexed and
+worried when they found traces of structure and physiology which their
+so-called scientific principles were totally unable to account for. But
+all this happened before science had become evolutionary and scientific
+at all, before it had a principle of life from within. The very
+indications and discoveries which formerly perplexed, later illumined
+and made the study absorbing and vital.
+
+We are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human
+affairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education
+of children. We are at last learning to follow the development of the
+child; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt
+methods and matter to his growing mind. No "advanced educator" can allow
+himself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child ought to be
+as to exclude the discovery of what he is. But in our charitable efforts
+we think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of
+what he may become; and we ruthlessly force our conventions and
+standards upon him, with a sternness which we would consider stupid
+indeed did an educator use it in forcing his mature intellectual
+convictions upon an undeveloped mind.
+
+Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to
+bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays
+with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him.
+The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes
+that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has
+the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a
+belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after
+all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific
+parent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. He
+talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves
+him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and
+development which the child does not possess. There is no doubt that our
+development of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and
+stilted stage. We have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated
+kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere repression much as the
+stern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the
+child, who is hysterically crying upstairs and laying the foundation for
+future nervous disorders. The pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the
+undeveloped stage of our philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed
+in our tendency to lay constant stress on negative action. "Don't give;"
+"don't break down self-respect," we are constantly told. We distrust the
+human impulse as well as the teachings of our own experience, and in
+their stead substitute dogmatic rules for conduct. We forget that the
+accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally
+result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to
+life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull upon the
+sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the
+visitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an
+ultimate intellectual comprehension. Indeed, part of the perplexity in
+the administration of charity comes from the fact that the type of
+person drawn to it is the one who insists that her convictions shall not
+be unrelated to action. Her moral concepts constantly tend to float away
+from her, unless they have a basis in the concrete relation of life. She
+is confronted with the task of reducing her scruples to action, and of
+converging many wills, so as to unite the strength of all of them into
+one accomplishment, the value of which no one can foresee.
+
+On the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her
+social compunction through charitable effort finds that the wider
+social activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only
+increases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts
+her social ideals. She is chagrined to discover that in the actual task
+of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble beneficiaries are
+far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in
+self-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue of humility by
+a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits by the side of
+the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a contrite sinner,
+but she gets the dust upon her head because she has stumbled and fallen
+in the road through her efforts to push forward the mass, to march with
+her fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only through a social
+aim but by a social process.
+
+The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the
+great forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. "To love mercy" and at
+the same time "to do justly" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first
+requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving
+with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the second solely is to
+obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary
+lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is
+impossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be
+attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement--"to walk humbly
+with God," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the
+lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the
+company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with
+the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected
+whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FILIAL RELATIONS
+
+
+There are many people in every community who have not felt the "social
+compunction," who do not share the effort toward a higher social
+morality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it. Some of
+these have been shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which
+the trial of new powers involve, because they are content to attain
+standards of virtue demanded by an easy public opinion, and others of
+them have exhausted their moral energy in attaining to the current
+standard of individual and family righteousness.
+
+Such people, who form the bulk of contented society, demand that the
+radical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his
+personal and family relations, and judge most harshly any deviation
+from the established standards. There is a certain justice in this: it
+expresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of men, that none of the
+established virtues which have been so slowly and hardly acquired shall
+be sacrificed for the sake of making problematic advance; that the
+individual, in his attempt to develop and use the new and exalted
+virtue, shall not fall into the easy temptation of letting the ordinary
+ones slip through his fingers.
+
+This instinct to conserve the old standards, combined with a distrust of
+the new standard, is a constant difficulty in the way of those
+experiments and advances depending upon the initiative of women, both
+because women are the more sensitive to the individual and family
+claims, and because their training has tended to make them content with
+the response to these claims alone.
+
+There is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral energy
+necessary to work out a more satisfactory social relation, the
+individual often sacrifices the energy which should legitimately go
+into the fulfilment of personal and family claims, to what he considers
+the higher claim.
+
+In considering the changes which our increasing democracy is constantly
+making upon various relationships, it is impossible to ignore the filial
+relation. This chapter deals with the relation between parents and their
+grown-up daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the
+perplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the various attempts of
+young women to secure a more active share in the community life. We
+constantly see parents very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to
+their daughters when these daughters undertake work lying quite outside
+of traditional and family interests. These parents insist that the girl
+is carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, that she is in search of a
+career, that she is restless and does not know what she wants. They will
+give any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine and
+dignified claim. Possibly all this is due to the fact that for so many
+hundreds of years women have had no larger interests, no participation
+in the affairs lying quite outside personal and family claims. Any
+attempt that the individual woman formerly made to subordinate or
+renounce the family claim was inevitably construed to mean that she was
+setting up her own will against that of her family's for selfish ends.
+It was concluded that she could have no motive larger than a desire to
+serve her family, and her attempt to break away must therefore be wilful
+and self-indulgent.
+
+The family logically consented to give her up at her marriage, when she
+was enlarging the family tie by founding another family. It was easy to
+understand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college,
+travelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because
+these merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own
+members. When, however, she responded to her impulse to fulfil the
+social or democratic claim, she violated every tradition.
+
+The mind of each one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we
+emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family
+obligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet
+most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to
+disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. We have
+yielded at times to the temptation of ignoring them for selfish aims, of
+considering the individual and not the family convenience, and we
+remember with shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. But just as
+we have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an
+orderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps
+we are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family
+and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled.
+
+The attempt to bring about a healing compromise in which the two shall
+be adjusted in proper relation is not an easy one. It is difficult to
+distinguish between the outward act of him who in following one
+legitimate claim has been led into the temporary violation of another,
+and the outward act of him who deliberately renounces a just claim and
+throws aside all obligation for the sake of his own selfish and
+individual development. The man, for instance, who deserts his family
+that he may cultivate an artistic sensibility, or acquire what he
+considers more fulness of life for himself, must always arouse our
+contempt. Breaking the marriage tie as Ibsen's "Nora" did, to obtain a
+larger self-development, or holding to it as George Eliot's "Romola"
+did, because of the larger claim of the state and society, must always
+remain two distinct paths. The collision of interests, each of which has
+a real moral basis and a right to its own place in life, is bound to be
+more or less tragic. It is the struggle between two claims, the
+destruction of either of which would bring ruin to the ethical life.
+Curiously enough, it is almost exactly this contradiction which is the
+tragedy set forth by the Greek dramatist, who asserted that the gods who
+watch over the sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher
+claims of the gods of the state. The failure to recognize the social
+claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains
+that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not
+directed to the general good. This suspicion will never be dissipated
+until parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and
+recognize the social claim.
+
+Our democracy is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human
+institutions, and a claim is being advanced which in a certain sense is
+larger than the family claim. The claim of the state in time of war has
+long been recognized, so that in its name the family has given up sons
+and husbands and even the fathers of little children. If we can once see
+the claims of society in any such light, if its misery and need can be
+made clear and urged as an explicit claim, as the state urges its claims
+in the time of danger, then for the first time the daughter who desires
+to minister to that need will be recognized as acting conscientiously.
+This recognition may easily come first through the emotions, and may be
+admitted as a response to pity and mercy long before it is formulated
+and perceived by the intellect.
+
+The family as well as the state we are all called upon to maintain as
+the highest institutions which the race has evolved for its safeguard
+and protection. But merely to preserve these institutions is not enough.
+There come periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid upon
+a passing generation, to enlarge the function and carry forward the
+ideal of a long-established institution. There is no doubt that many
+women, consciously and unconsciously, are struggling with this task. The
+family, like every other element of human life, is susceptible of
+progress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspirations are
+enlarged, although its duties can never be abrogated and its obligations
+can never be cancelled. It is impossible to bring about the higher
+development by any self-assertion or breaking away of the individual
+will. The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at
+the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type
+of progress. The family in its entirety must be carried out into the
+larger life. Its various members together must recognize and acknowledge
+the validity of the social obligation. When this does not occur we have
+a most flagrant example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an
+ethical code is applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to
+conditions which are no longer the same as when the code was instituted,
+and for which it was never designed. We have all seen parental control
+and the family claim assert their authority in fields of effort which
+belong to the adult judgment of the child and pertain to activity quite
+outside the family life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy of
+which we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this
+authority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and
+misunderstanding. We see parents and children acting from conscientious
+motives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery
+which can scarcely be hidden.
+
+Such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in Assisi,
+when the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet,
+dramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting
+the narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. All the
+conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father
+recognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and
+adjust his own claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful
+and hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have been the most tender
+and loving of men, responsive to all possible ties, even to those of
+inanimate nature. We know that by his affections he freed the frozen
+life of his time. The elements of tragedy lay in the narrowness of the
+father's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his lack of sympathy
+with the power which was moving his son, and which was but part of the
+religious revival which swept Europe from end to end in the early part
+of the thirteenth century; the same power which built the cathedrals of
+the North, and produced the saints and sages of the South. But the
+father's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart sore and
+angry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. He could not, indeed,
+have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of the same
+revival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of himself
+and his narrower claim. It is another proof that the notion of a larger
+obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged interest
+in life and in the social movements around us.
+
+The grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen with well-defined
+duties and a need of "making his way in the world," that the family
+claim is urged much less strenuously in his case, and as a matter of
+authority, it ceases gradually to be made at all. In the case of the
+grown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity of earning a
+living, and who has no strong artistic bent, taking her to Paris to
+study painting or to Germany to study music, the years immediately
+following her graduation from college are too often filled with a
+restlessness and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear
+thinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family ethics to modern
+conditions.
+
+It is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise
+than as a family possession. From her babyhood she has been the charm
+and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her as an
+integral part of the social order, hard to believe that she has duties
+outside of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense.
+This assumption that the daughter is solely an inspiration and
+refinement to the family itself and its own immediate circle, that her
+delicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her father's protection
+and prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most part so long as her
+education was in line with it. When there was absolutely no recognition
+of the entity of woman's life beyond the family, when the outside claims
+upon her were still wholly unrecognized, the situation was simple, and
+the finishing school harmoniously and elegantly answered all
+requirements. She was fitted to grace the fireside and to add lustre to
+that social circle which her parents selected for her. But this family
+assumption has been notably broken into, and educational ideas no longer
+fit it. Modern education recognizes woman quite apart from family or
+society claims, and gives her the training which for many years has
+been deemed successful for highly developing a man's individuality and
+freeing his powers for independent action. Perplexities often occur when
+the daughter returns from college and finds that this recognition has
+been but partially accomplished. When she attempts to act upon the
+assumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring upon ideals
+which are so entwined with filial piety, so rooted in the tenderest
+affections of which the human heart is capable, that both daughter and
+parents are shocked and startled when they discover what is happening,
+and they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. The ideal for the
+education of woman has changed under the pressure of a new claim. The
+family has responded to the extent of granting the education, but they
+are jealous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over against
+it.
+
+The modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a stress of social
+obligation which her family did not in the least anticipate when they
+sent her to college. She finds herself, in addition, under an impulse to
+act her part as a citizen of the world. She accepts her family
+inheritance with loyalty and affection, but she has entered into a wider
+inheritance as well, which, for lack of a better phrase, we call the
+social claim. This claim has been recognized for four years in her
+training, but after her return from college the family claim is again
+exclusively and strenuously asserted. The situation has all the
+discomfort of transition and compromise. The daughter finds a constant
+and totally unnecessary conflict between the social and the family
+claims. In most cases the former is repressed and gives way to the
+family claim, because the latter is concrete and definitely asserted,
+while the social demand is vague and unformulated. In such instances the
+girl quietly submits, but she feels wronged whenever she allows her mind
+to dwell upon the situation. She either hides her hurt, and splendid
+reserves of enthusiasm and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and
+emotions are turned inward, and the result is an unhappy woman, whose
+heart is consumed by vain regrets and desires.
+
+If the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even
+reproached for her discontent. She is told to be devoted to her family,
+inspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of
+her time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do
+this, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even
+heroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of which she has
+dreamed so long? That life which surrounds and completes the individual
+and family life? She has been taught that it is her duty to share this
+life, and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence between
+her self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly
+more apparent. But the situation is not even so simple as a conflict
+between her affections and her intellectual convictions, although even
+that is tumultuous enough, also the emotional nature is divided against
+itself. The social claim is a demand upon the emotions as well as upon
+the intellect, and in ignoring it she represses not only her convictions
+but lowers her springs of vitality. Her life is full of contradictions.
+She looks out into the world, longing that some demand be made upon her
+powers, for they are too untrained to furnish an initiative. When her
+health gives way under this strain, as it often does, her physician
+invariably advises a rest. But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not
+what she requires. What she needs is simple, health-giving activity,
+which, involving the use of all her faculties, shall be a response to
+all the claims which she so keenly feels.
+
+It is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be
+part of a life quite outside their own, because the college woman
+frequently makes these first attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have
+not been trained in the line of action. She lacks the ability to apply
+her knowledge and theories to life itself and to its complicated
+situations. This is largely the fault of her training and of the
+one-sidedness of educational methods. The colleges have long been full
+of the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must
+ultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only
+secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. But while
+the teaching has included an ever-broadening range of obligation and has
+insisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the
+training has been singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions
+for personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost
+exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless,
+woman's education is at fault, in that it has failed to recognize
+certain needs, and has failed to cultivate and guide the larger desires
+of which all generous young hearts are full.
+
+During the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no
+contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or
+the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only
+with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the
+purpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden
+to bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet
+were provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not
+differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional
+or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly
+brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently
+every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to
+begin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been
+preparing. But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have
+been trained solely for accumulation, and she has learned to utterly
+distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which would naturally have
+connected her with human interests outside of her family and her own
+immediate social circle. All through school and college the young soul
+dreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the helpless and of tenderness
+to the unfortunate. We persistently distrust these desires, and, unless
+they follow well-defined lines, we repress them with every device of
+convention and caution.
+
+One summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in East London,
+where she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds
+encountered there, directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes
+of travel filled with young English men and women who could walk many
+miles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats
+received honorable mention in Alpine journals,--a result which filled
+their families with joy and pride. These young people knew to a nicety
+the proper diet and clothing which would best contribute toward
+endurance. Everything was very fine about them save their motive power.
+The writer does not refer to the hard-worked men and women who were
+taking a vacation, but to the leisured young people, to whom this period
+was the most serious of the year, and filled with the most strenuous
+exertion. They did not, of course, thoroughly enjoy it, for we are too
+complicated to be content with mere exercise. Civilization has bound us
+too closely with our brethren for any one of us to be long happy in the
+cultivation of mere individual force or in the accumulation of mere
+muscular energy.
+
+With Whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult not to advise
+these young people to use some of this muscular energy of which they
+were so proud, in cleaning neglected alleys and paving soggy streets.
+Their stores of enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and
+women of East London and utilize latent social forces. The exercise
+would be quite as good, the need of endurance as great, the care for
+proper dress and food as important; but the motives for action would be
+turned from selfish ones into social ones. Such an appeal would
+doubtless be met with a certain response from the young people, but
+would never be countenanced by their families for an instant.
+
+Fortunately a beginning has been made in another direction, and a few
+parents have already begun to consider even their little children in
+relation to society as well as to the family. The young mothers who
+attend "Child Study" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and
+expect given characteristics from their children, at certain ages and
+under certain conditions. They quite calmly watch the various attempts
+of a child to assert his individuality, which so often takes the form of
+opposition to the wishes of the family and to the rule of the household.
+They recognize as acting under the same law of development the little
+child of three who persistently runs away and pretends not to hear his
+mother's voice, the boy of ten who violently, although temporarily,
+resents control of any sort, and the grown-up son who, by an
+individualized and trained personality, is drawn into pursuits and
+interests quite alien to those of his family.
+
+This attempt to take the parental relation somewhat away from mere
+personal experience, as well as the increasing tendency of parents to
+share their children's pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally
+result in a better understanding of the social obligation. The
+understanding, which results from identity of interests, would seem to
+confirm the conviction that in the complicated life of to-day there is
+no education so admirable as that education which comes from
+participation in the constant trend of events. There is no doubt that
+most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence,
+because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend
+each other. The old difficulties incident to the clash of two codes of
+morals must drop away, as the experiences of various members of the
+family become larger and more identical.
+
+At the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist
+and may be seen all about us. In order to illustrate the situation
+baldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to
+take an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. The
+tragedy of King Lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed
+so long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his
+two older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we
+have not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood,
+revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and
+unhappy a relation to all of his children. In our pity for Lear, we fail
+to analyze his character. The King on his throne exhibits utter lack of
+self-control. The King in the storm gives way to the same emotion, in
+repining over the wickedness of his children, which he formerly
+exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.
+
+It might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his
+old age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously
+urged the family claim with his whole conscience. At the opening of the
+drama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent
+parent expects when he has given gifts to his children. From the two
+elder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and
+fitting, but he longed to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best
+beloved child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but instead
+of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. Cordelia
+made the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and
+scrupulously to express her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and
+distressed by this attempt at self-expression. It was new to him that
+his daughter should be moved by a principle obtained outside himself,
+which even his imagination could not follow; that she had caught the
+notion of an existence in which her relation as a daughter played but a
+part. She was transformed by a dignity which recast her speech and made
+it self-contained. She found herself in the sweep of a feeling so large
+that the immediate loss of a kingdom seemed of little consequence to
+her. Even an act which might be construed as disrespect to her father
+was justified in her eyes, because she was vainly striving to fill out
+this larger conception of duty. The test which comes sooner or later to
+many parents had come to Lear, to maintain the tenderness of the
+relation between father and child, after that relation had become one
+between adults, to be content with the responses made by the adult child
+to the family claim, while at the same time she responded to the claims
+of the rest of life. The mind of Lear was not big enough for this test;
+he failed to see anything but the personal slight involved, and the
+ingratitude alone reached him. It was impossible for him to calmly watch
+his child developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy.
+
+That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to
+apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his
+anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him
+than his sense of paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the
+common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal
+inheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of himself so long as a noble
+and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might
+perceive himself in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he
+declared himself more sinned against than sinning. He could believe any
+amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no
+fidelity on the part of Cordelia unless she gave him the sign he
+demanded.
+
+At length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and
+broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first
+time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around
+him, and he came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in the
+place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and
+comfort. He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human
+contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which
+he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his
+throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.
+
+In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of
+our censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of
+tenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and
+be unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved? We see in the old
+king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet
+characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone."
+His eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are
+impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this,
+even in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense
+of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow conception that would break
+thus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part
+in the new life. We want to remind her "that pity, memory, and
+faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to be prized as is
+the development of her own soul. We do not admire the Cordelia who
+through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later admire the
+same woman who comes back from France that she may include her father in
+her happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly taken her
+salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her conscience had
+developed in her new life that she was driven back to her father, where
+she perished, drawn into the cruelty and wrath which had now become
+objective and tragic.
+
+Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was
+archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life
+since developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and
+indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without
+any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that
+they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary
+conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that
+we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate
+that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like
+misery.
+
+Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a
+modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual
+to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a
+code of ethics dealing with these larger relationships, instead of a
+code designed to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only
+between individuals.
+
+Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those
+which occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and
+believed in, are brought sharply together. The awkwardness and
+constraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners
+clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT
+
+
+If we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive,
+life would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the
+contention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as
+important as its aims. We can all recall acquaintances of whose
+integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion
+as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are
+often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of
+other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.
+
+This tendency to be so sure of integrity of purpose as to be
+unsympathetic and hardened to the means by which it is accomplished, is
+perhaps nowhere so obvious as in the household itself. It nowhere
+operates as so constant a force as in the minds of the women who in all
+the perplexity of industrial transition are striving to administer
+domestic affairs. The ethics held by them are for the most part the
+individual and family codes, untouched by the larger social conceptions.
+
+These women, rightly confident of their household and family integrity
+and holding to their own code of morals, fail to see the household in
+its social aspect. Possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to
+the social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the
+household employer and the household employee, or, as it is still
+sometimes called, that between mistress and servant.
+
+This persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may
+be partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense,
+civilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one
+place, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number
+of persons. From the familiar proposition that the home began because
+the mother was obliged to stay in one spot in order to cherish the
+child, we can see a foundation for the belief that if women are much
+away from home, the home itself will be destroyed and all ethical
+progress endangered.
+
+We have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings
+were most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore,
+the good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually
+the two--the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her
+virtue--became synonymous. A code of ethics was thus developed in regard
+to woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited
+to her own family circle. When it became impossible to adequately
+minister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who
+did not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the
+household, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs.
+When women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, dyers, spinners,
+and weavers, the soap and candle makers, they administered large
+industries, but solely from the family point of view. Only a few hundred
+years ago, woman had complete control of the manufacturing of many
+commodities which now figure so largely in commerce, and it is evident
+that she let the manufacturing of these commodities go into the hands of
+men, as soon as organization and a larger conception of their production
+were required. She felt no responsibility for their management when they
+were taken from the home to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to
+manufacture food and clothing for her family was her instinct to stay
+with them, and by isolation and care to guard them from evil.
+
+She had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own
+family, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. The British
+matron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own
+roof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals and
+health of young girls were endangered in the overcrowded and insanitary
+factories. The code of family ethics was established in her mind so
+firmly that it excluded any notion of social effort.
+
+It is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals,
+and to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of
+all that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting
+that the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of
+the structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to
+one household shall minister to that exclusively. But to make this
+distinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of
+obligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of
+domestic management. The moral issue involved in one has become
+inextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the
+other, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers,
+through the confusion of the two problems, take a difficult and
+untenable position.
+
+There are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a
+simpler code. The wife of a workingman still has a distinct economic
+value to her husband. She cooks, cleans, washes, and mends--services for
+which, before his marriage, he paid ready money. The wife of the
+successful business or professional man does not do this. He continues
+to pay for his cooking, house service, and washing. The mending,
+however, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings
+are pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated
+importance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings
+were the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they
+were formerly mistresses. But one industry, the cooking and serving of
+foods to her own family, woman has never relinquished. It has,
+therefore, never been organized, either by men or women, and is in an
+undeveloped state. Each employer of household labor views it solely
+from the family standpoint. The ethics prevailing in regard to it are
+distinctly personal and unsocial, and result in the unique isolation of
+the household employee.
+
+As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified,
+from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who
+spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and
+live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. Were this process
+complete, we should have no problem of household employment. But, even
+in households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is
+neither loved nor loving.
+
+The modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who
+spun its clothes, and, to a large extent, the woman who washes them, but
+it stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food and ministers
+directly to its individual comfort; it strangely insists that to do
+that would be to destroy the family life itself. The cook is
+uncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable; but it will not drop her as
+all her fellow-workers have been dropped, although the cook herself
+insists upon it. So far has this insistence gone that every possible
+concession is made to retain her. The writer knows an employer in one of
+the suburbs who built a bay at the back of her house so that her cook
+might have a pleasant room in which to sleep, and another in which to
+receive her friends. This employer naturally felt aggrieved when the
+cook refused to stay in her bay. Viewed in an historic light, this
+employer might quite as well have added a bay to her house for her
+shoemaker, and then deemed him ungrateful because he declined to live in
+it.
+
+A listener, attentive to a conversation between two employers of
+household labor,--and we certainly all have opportunity to hear such
+conversations,--would often discover a tone implying that the employer
+was abused and put upon; that she was struggling with the problem
+solely because she was thus serving her family and performing her social
+duties; that otherwise it would be a great relief to her to abandon the
+entire situation, and "never have a servant in her house again." Did she
+follow this impulse, she would simply yield to the trend of her times
+and accept the present system of production. She would be in line with
+the industrial organization of her age. Were she in line ethically, she
+would have to believe that the sacredness and beauty of family life do
+not consist in the processes of the separate preparation of food, but in
+sharing the corporate life of the community, and in making the family
+the unit of that life.
+
+The selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics,
+insists that those who minister to the comforts of her family shall
+minister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be
+cut off, more or less, from their natural social ties, excludes the best
+working-people from her service.
+
+A man of dignity and ability is quite willing to come into a house to
+tune a piano. Another man of mechanical skill will come to put up window
+shades. Another of less skill, but of perfect independence, will come to
+clean and relay a carpet. These men would all resent the situation and
+consider it quite impossible if it implied the giving up of their family
+and social ties, and living under the roof of the household requiring
+their services.
+
+The isolation of the household employee is perhaps inevitable so long as
+the employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even
+more difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this
+industry. In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently
+displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions.
+The workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with their
+time, quickly reorganize.
+
+The general statement may be made that the enterprising girls of the
+community go into factories, and the less enterprising go into
+households, although there are many exceptions. It is not a question of
+skill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will make a girl rise
+industrially while she is in the household; she is not in the rising
+movement. She is belated in a class composed of the unprogressive
+elements of the community, which is recruited constantly by those from
+the ranks of the incompetent, by girls who are learning the language,
+girls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life solely from the
+savings-bank point of view. The distracted housekeeper struggles with
+these unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the well-defined and
+independent relation of employer and employed, but the hazy and
+constantly changing one of mistress to servant.
+
+The latter relation is changing under pressure from various directions.
+In our increasing democracy the notion of personal service is constantly
+becoming more distasteful, conflicting, as it does, with the more
+modern notion of personal dignity. Personal ministration to the needs
+of childhood, illness, and old age seem to us reasonable, and the
+democratic adjustment in regard to them is being made. The first two are
+constantly raised nearer to the level of a profession, and there is
+little doubt that the third will soon follow. But personal ministrations
+to a normal, healthy adult, consuming the time and energy of another
+adult, we find more difficult to reconcile to our theories of democracy.
+
+A factory employer parts with his men at the factory gates at the end of
+a day's work; they go to their homes as he goes to his, in the
+assumption that they both do what they want and spend their money as
+they please; but this solace of equality outside of working hours is
+denied the bewildered employer of household labor.
+
+She is obliged to live constantly in the same house with her employee,
+and because of certain equalities in food and shelter she is brought
+more sharply face to face with the mental and social inequalities.
+
+The difficulty becomes more apparent as the character of the work
+performed by the so-called servant is less absolutely useful and may be
+merely time consuming. A kind-hearted woman who will complacently take
+an afternoon drive, leaving her cook to prepare the five courses of a
+"little dinner for only ten guests," will not be nearly so comfortable
+the next evening when she speeds her daughter to a dance, conscious that
+her waitress must spend the evening in dull solitude on the chance that
+a caller or two may ring the door-bell.
+
+A conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: "In England it
+must be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your
+daughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same
+things. But really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my
+daughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when Mary goes off to a
+frolic quite breaks my heart."
+
+Too many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from
+manual labor, and therefore constantly impose exacting duties upon
+employees, the nature of which they do not understand by experience;
+there is thus no curb of rationality imposed upon the employer's
+requirements and demands. She is totally unlike the foreman in a shop,
+who has only risen to his position by way of having actually performed
+with his own hands all the work of the men he directs. There is also
+another class of employers of domestic labor, who grow capricious and
+over-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests to occupy their
+minds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that the duties of
+the latter are not clearly defined. Tolstoy contends that an exaggerated
+notion of cleanliness has developed among such employers, which could
+never have been evolved among usefully employed people. He points to the
+fact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be immaculately
+clean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the household, and
+then is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card, in order that
+even his clean hands may not touch it; later, even his clean hands are
+covered with a pair of clean white gloves, which hold the tray upon
+which the card is placed.
+
+If it were not for the undemocratic ethics used by the employers of
+domestics, much work now performed in the household would be done
+outside, as is true of many products formerly manufactured in the feudal
+household. The worker in all other trades has complete control of his
+own time after the performance of definitely limited services, his wages
+are paid altogether in money which he may spend in the maintenance of a
+separate home life, and he has full opportunity to organize with the
+other workers in his trade.
+
+The domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her
+"mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity
+of family life.
+
+The household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other
+workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a
+corporate body. The industrial isolation of the household employee
+results, as isolation in a trade must always result, in a lack of
+progress in the methods and products of that trade, and a lack of
+aspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize this
+isolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that
+household labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements
+there have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. It is
+said that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought
+about by Count Rumford, who died a hundred years ago. This is largely
+due to the lack of _esprit de corps_ among the employees, which keeps
+them collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education
+in the individual keeps her from improving her implements.
+
+Under this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers
+purposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower
+quality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made to
+perform the fullest work, there is an amount of capital invested
+disproportionate to the product when measured by the achievement in
+other branches of industry. More important than this is the result of
+the isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing more devastating
+to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind and spirit, than
+the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of that fellowship
+which makes our public opinion. If an angry foreman reprimands a girl
+for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, and the culprit
+knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or injustice of her
+situation. In either case she bears it better for knowing that, and not
+thinking it over in solitude. If a household employee breaks a utensil
+or a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by her employer, too often
+the invisible jury is the family of the latter, who naturally uphold her
+censorious position and intensify the feeling of loneliness in the
+employee.
+
+The household employee, in addition to her industrial isolation, is also
+isolated socially. It is well to remember that the household employees
+for the better quarters of the city and suburbs are largely drawn from
+the poorer quarters, which are nothing if not gregarious. The girl is
+born and reared in a tenement house full of children. She goes to school
+with them, and there she learns to march, to read, and write in
+companionship with forty others. When she is old enough to go to
+parties, those she attends are usually held in a public hall and are
+crowded with dancers. If she works in a factory, she walks home with
+many other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly walked to
+school with them. She mingles with the young men she knows, in frank,
+economic, and social equality. Until she marries she remains at home
+with no special break or change in her family and social life. If she is
+employed in a household, this is not true. Suddenly all the conditions
+of her life are altered. This change may be wholesome for her, but it
+is not easy, and thought of the savings-bank does not cheer one much,
+when one is twenty. She is isolated from the people with whom she has
+been reared, with whom she has gone to school, and among whom she
+expects to live when she marries. She is naturally lonely and
+constrained away from them, and the "new maid" often seems "queer" to
+her employer's family. She does not care to mingle socially with the
+people in whose house she is employed, as the girl from the country
+often does, but she surfers horribly from loneliness.
+
+This wholesome, instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that,
+as every city intelligence-office can testify, the filling of situations
+is easier, or more difficult, in proportion as the place offers more or
+less companionship. Thus, the easy situation to fill is always the city
+house, with five or six employees, shading off into the more difficult
+suburban home, with two, and the utterly impossible lonely country
+house.
+
+There are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts
+to supply domestic and social life to their employees; who take the
+domestic employee to drive, arrange to have her invited out
+occasionally; who supply her with books and papers and companionship.
+Nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom
+successful in actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of
+companionship. The employee may have a genuine friendship for her
+employer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and
+the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she
+has, merely because of the propinquity.
+
+The unnaturalness of the situation is intensified by the fact that the
+employee is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from
+her natural associates, and that her employer sympathetically insists
+upon filling the vacancy in interests and affections by her own tastes
+and friendship. She may or may not succeed, but the employee should not
+be thus dependent upon the good will of her employer. That in itself is
+undemocratic.
+
+The difficulty is increasing by a sense of social discrimination which
+the household employee keenly feels is against her and in favor of the
+factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. Women
+seeking employment, understand perfectly well this feeling among
+mechanics, doubtless quite unjustifiable, but it acts as a strong
+inducement toward factory labor. The writer has long ceased to apologize
+for the views and opinions of working people, being quite sure that on
+the whole they are quite as wise and quite as foolish as the views and
+opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of
+young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily
+demonstrated. The contrast is further accentuated by the better social
+position of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for her in
+the way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and vacation homes, from which
+girls performing household labor are practically excluded by their hours
+of work, their geographical situation, and a curious feeling that they
+are not as interesting as factory girls.
+
+This separation from her natural social ties affects, of course, her
+opportunity for family life. It is well to remember that women, as a
+rule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their
+parents, their brothers and sisters, and kinsfolk, and will sacrifice
+much to accomplish this. This devotion is so universal that it is
+impossible to ignore it when we consider women as employees. Young
+unmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirements as
+young men are, and are more ready and steady in their response to the
+needs of aged parents and the helpless members of the family. But women
+performing labor in households have peculiar difficulties in responding
+to their family claims, and are practically dependent upon their
+employers for opportunities of even seeing their relatives and friends.
+
+Curiously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to
+its claims, on the part of the employer, operates against the girl
+employed in household labor, and still further contributes to her
+isolation.
+
+The employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her own family
+life intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to
+her cook, for instance, but once or twice a week, such opportunity for
+untrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family
+claims constantly. This in itself is undemocratic, in that it makes a
+distinction between the value of family life for one set of people as
+over against another; or, rather, claims that one set of people are of
+so much less importance than another, that a valuable side of life
+pertaining to them should be sacrificed for the other.
+
+This cannot be defended theoretically, and no doubt much of the talk
+among the employers of household labor, that their employees are
+carefully shielded and cared for, and that it is so much better for a
+girl's health and morals to work in a household than to work in a
+factory, comes from a certain uneasiness of conscience, and from a
+desire to make up by individual scruple what would be done much more
+freely and naturally by public opinion if it had an untrammelled chance
+to assert itself. One person, or a number of isolated persons, however
+conscientious, cannot perform this office of public opinion. Certain
+hospitals in London have contributed statistics showing that
+seventy-eight per cent of illegitimate children born there are the
+children of girls working in households. These girls are certainly not
+less virtuous than factory girls, for they come from the same families
+and have had the same training, but the girls who remain at home and
+work in factories meet their lovers naturally and easily, their fathers
+and brothers know the men, and unconsciously exercise a certain
+supervision and a certain direction in their choice of companionship.
+The household employees living in another part of the city, away from
+their natural family and social ties, depend upon chance for the lovers
+whom they meet. The lover may be the young man who delivers for the
+butcher or grocer, or the solitary friend, who follows the girl from her
+own part of town and pursues unfairly the advantage which her social
+loneliness and isolation afford him. There is no available public
+opinion nor any standard of convention which the girl can apply to her
+own situation.
+
+It would be easy to point out many inconveniences arising from the fact
+that the old economic forms are retained when moral conditions which
+befitted them have entirely disappeared, but until employers of domestic
+labor become conscious of their narrow code of ethics, and make a
+distinct effort to break through the status of mistress and servant,
+because it shocks their moral sense, there is no chance of even
+beginning a reform.
+
+A fuller social and domestic life among household employees would be
+steps toward securing their entrance into the larger industrial
+organizations by which the needs of a community are most successfully
+administered. Many a girl who complains of loneliness, and who
+relinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly tries to
+formulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. She
+sometimes says that she "feels so unnatural all the time." The writer
+has known the voice of a girl to change so much during three weeks of
+"service" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her
+home. It alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child
+"speaks a piece" and the husky gulp with which the _globus hystericus_
+is swallowed. The alertness and _bonhomie_ of the voice of the
+tenement-house child had totally disappeared. When such a girl leaves
+her employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally
+incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally concludes that she
+wishes to get away from the work and back to her dances and giddy life,
+content, if she has these, to stand many hours in an insanitary factory.
+The charge of the employer is only half a truth. These dances may be the
+only organized form of social life which the disheartened employee is
+able to mention, but the girl herself, in her discontent and her moving
+from place to place, is blindly striving to respond to a larger social
+life. Her employer thinks that she should be able to consider only the
+interests and conveniences of her employer's family, because the
+employer herself is holding to a family outlook, and refuses to allow
+her mind to take in the larger aspects of the situation.
+
+Although this household industry survives in the midst of the factory
+system, it must, of course, constantly compete with it. Women with
+little children, or those with invalids depending upon them, cannot
+enter either occupation, and they are practically confined to the sewing
+trades; but to all other untrained women seeking employment a choice is
+open between these two forms of labor.
+
+There are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or
+do some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed
+housekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her
+household. Household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and
+women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two
+forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment,
+in point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family
+and social life. Three points are easily disposed of. First, in regard
+to hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The
+average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the
+evening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. This
+leaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours
+of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night,
+with little difference in seasons. There is one afternoon a week, with
+an occasional evening, but Sunday is seldom wholly free. Even these
+evenings and afternoons take the form of a concession from the employer.
+They are called "evenings out," as if the time really belonged to her,
+but that she was graciously permitting her employee to use it. This
+attitude, of course, is in marked contrast to that maintained by the
+factory operative, who, when she works evenings is paid for "over-time."
+
+Second, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found
+clearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any
+measure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less
+competition.
+
+Third, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we
+consider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving
+money. This is greater among household employees, because they do not
+pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend
+money in recreation is less frequent. The minimum wages paid an adult
+in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week;
+the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare
+opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the
+housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.
+
+The factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be
+smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the
+minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers
+for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for
+less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last
+being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five
+dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance
+of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it
+easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board,
+in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be content with
+four dollars a week and pay no board, in a scale of wages rising toward
+six dollars; and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen
+at sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar
+housekeeper. In many cases this position is well taken economically,
+for, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employees
+in the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she
+works in a factory and lives with them. The rent is no more when she is
+at home. The two dollars and a half a week which she pays into the
+family fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night
+she can often contribute toward the family labor by helping her mother
+wash and sew.
+
+The fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in
+regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if
+the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining
+factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to
+remedy this, at least in its domestic and social aspects. To allow
+household employees to live with their own families and among their own
+friends, as factory employees now do, would be to relegate more
+production to industrial centres administered on the factory system, and
+to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the
+household.
+
+In those cases in which the household employees have no family ties,
+doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of
+residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most
+keenly felt. Indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in
+the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs,
+the household employee could have the independent life which only one's
+own abiding place can afford. This, of course, presupposes a higher
+grade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the
+other hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher
+grades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. As the
+plan of separate clubs for household employees will probably come first
+in the suburbs, where the difficulty of securing and holding "servants"
+under the present system is most keenly felt, so the plan of buying
+cooked food from an outside kitchen, and of having more and more of the
+household product relegated to the factory, will probably come from the
+comparatively poor people in the city, who feel most keenly the pressure
+of the present system. They already consume a much larger proportion of
+canned goods and bakers' wares and "prepared meats" than the more
+prosperous people do, because they cannot command the skill nor the time
+for the more tedious preparation of the raw material. The writer has
+seen a tenement-house mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door
+of a local grocery store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they
+could be easily prepared for supper and "the children liked the tinny
+taste."
+
+It is comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household
+industry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. The difficulties really
+begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be
+employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the
+difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall
+altogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in a flat, or,
+worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one set of
+utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making the
+living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly
+insupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. Such a woman, rather than
+the prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high
+standard of quality is established.
+
+The problem of domestic service, which has long been discussed in the
+United States and England, is now coming to prominence in France. As a
+well-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in
+the ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an
+"unconscious slavery," while English and American writers appeal to the
+statistics which point to the absorption of an enormous number of the
+class from which servants were formerly recruited into factory
+employments, and urge, as the natural solution, that more of the
+products used in households be manufactured in factories, and that
+personal service, at least for healthy adults, be eliminated altogether.
+Both of these lines of discussion certainly indicate that domestic
+service is yielding to the influence of a democratic movement, and is
+emerging from the narrower code of family ethics into the larger code
+governing social relations. It still remains to express the ethical
+advance through changed economic conditions by which the actual needs of
+the family may be supplied not only more effectively but more in line
+with associated effort. To fail to apprehend the tendency of one's age,
+and to fail to adapt the conditions of an industry to it, is to leave
+that industry ill-adjusted and belated on the economic side, and out of
+line ethically.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION
+
+
+There is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to
+action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we
+have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to
+fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all
+been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly
+individualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless
+attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering
+motion of a baby's arm before he has learned to coördinate his muscles.
+
+If, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism
+to one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive and
+effective action the individual still has the best of it. He will secure
+efficient results while committees are still deliberating upon the best
+method of making a beginning. And yet, if the need of the times demand
+associated effort, it may easily be true that the action which appears
+ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the more highly developed line
+of associated effort, may represent a finer social quality and have a
+greater social value than the more effective individual action. It is
+possible that an individual may be successful, largely because he
+conserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any
+of his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act
+with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his
+success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code.
+Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial relations,
+as existing between the owner of a large factory and his employees.
+
+A growing conflict may be detected between the democratic ideal, which
+urges the workmen to demand representation in the administration of
+industry, and the accepted position, that the man who owns the capital
+and takes the risks has the exclusive right of management. It is in
+reality a clash between individual or aristocratic management, and
+corporate or democratic management. A large and highly developed factory
+presents a sharp contrast between its socialized form and
+individualistic ends.
+
+It is possible to illustrate this difference by a series of events which
+occurred in Chicago during the summer of 1894. These events epitomized
+and exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics
+which regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that
+so-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an
+individual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual
+ethics.
+
+As this situation illustrates a point of great difficulty to which we
+have arrived in our development of social ethics, it may be justifiable
+to discuss it at some length. Let us recall the facts, not as they have
+been investigated and printed, but as they remain in our memories.
+
+A large manufacturing company had provided commodious workshops, and, at
+the instigation of its president, had built a model town for the use of
+its employees. After a series of years it was deemed necessary, during a
+financial depression, to reduce the wages of these employees by giving
+each workman less than full-time work "in order to keep the shops open."
+This reduction was not accepted by the men, who had become discontented
+with the factory management and the town regulations, and a strike
+ensued, followed by a complete shut-down of the works. Although these
+shops were non-union shops, the strikers were hastily organized and
+appealed for help to the American Railway Union, which at that moment
+was holding its biennial meeting in Chicago. After some days' discussion
+and some futile attempts at arbitration, a sympathetic strike was
+declared, which gradually involved railway men in all parts of the
+country, and orderly transportation was brought to a complete
+standstill. In the excitement which followed, cars were burned and
+tracks torn up. The police of Chicago did not cope with the disorder,
+and the railway companies, apparently distrusting the Governor of the
+State, and in order to protect the United States mails, called upon the
+President of the United States for the federal troops, the federal
+courts further enjoined all persons against any form of interference
+with the property or operation of the railroads, and the situation
+gradually assumed the proportions of internecine warfare. During all of
+these events the president of the manufacturing company first involved,
+steadfastly refused to have the situation submitted to arbitration, and
+this attitude naturally provoked much discussion. The discussion was
+broadly divided between those who held that the long kindness of the
+president of the company had been most ungratefully received, and those
+who maintained that the situation was the inevitable outcome of the
+social consciousness developing among working people. The first defended
+the president of the company in his persistent refusal to arbitrate,
+maintaining that arbitration was impossible after the matter had been
+taken up by other than his own employees, and they declared that a man
+must be allowed to run his own business. They considered the firm stand
+of the president a service to the manufacturing interests of the entire
+country. The others claimed that a large manufacturing concern has
+ceased to be a private matter; that not only a number of workmen and
+stockholders are concerned in its management, but that the interests of
+the public are so involved that the officers of the company are in a
+real sense administering a public trust.
+
+This prolonged strike clearly puts in a concrete form the ethics of an
+individual, in this case a benevolent employer, and the ethics of a mass
+of men, his employees, claiming what they believed to be their moral
+rights.
+
+These events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has
+become organized into a vast social operation, not with the coöperation
+of the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the
+individual owning the capital. There is a sharp divergence between the
+social form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the
+employees are more highly socialized and dependent. The president of the
+company under discussion went further than the usual employer does. He
+socialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were
+living. He built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town,
+without calling upon the workmen either for self-expression or
+self-government. He honestly believed that he knew better than they what
+was for their good, as he certainly knew better than they how to conduct
+his business. As his factory developed and increased, making money each
+year under his direction, he naturally expected the town to prosper in
+the same way.
+
+He did not realize that the men submitted to the undemocratic conditions
+of the factory organization because the economic pressure in our
+industrial affairs is so great that they could not do otherwise. Under
+this pressure they could be successfully discouraged from organization,
+and systematically treated on the individual basis.
+
+Social life, however, in spite of class distinctions, is much freer than
+industrial life, and the men resented the extension of industrial
+control to domestic and social arrangements. They felt the lack of
+democracy in the assumption that they should be taken care of in these
+matters, in which even the humblest workman has won his independence.
+The basic difficulty lay in the fact that an individual was directing
+the social affairs of many men without any consistent effort to find out
+their desires, and without any organization through which to give them
+social expression. The president of the company was, moreover, so
+confident of the righteousness of his aim that he had come to test the
+righteousness of the process by his own feelings and not by those of the
+men. He doubtless built the town from a sincere desire to give his
+employees the best surroundings. As it developed, he gradually took
+toward it the artist attitude toward his own creation, which has no
+thought for the creation itself but is absorbed in the idea it stands
+for, and he ceased to measure the usefulness of the town by the standard
+of the men's needs. This process slowly darkened his glints of memory,
+which might have connected his experience with that of his men. It is
+possible to cultivate the impulses of the benefactor until the power of
+attaining a simple human relationship with the beneficiaries, that of
+frank equality with them, is gone, and there is left no mutual interest
+in a common cause. To perform too many good deeds may be to lose the
+power of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out
+a personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral
+lesson which our times offer.
+
+The president of this company fostered his employees for many years; he
+gave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks; but in their extreme
+need, when they were struggling with the most difficult situation which
+the times could present to them, he lost his touch and had nothing
+wherewith to help them. The employer's conception of goodness for his
+men had been cleanliness, decency of living, and, above all, thrift and
+temperance. Means had been provided for all this, and opportunities had
+also been given for recreation and improvement. But this employer
+suddenly found his town in the sweep of a world-wide moral impulse. A
+movement had been going on about him and among his working men, of which
+he had been unconscious, or concerning which he had heard only by rumor.
+
+Outside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in
+many languages, that "the injury of one is the concern of all." Their
+watchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual
+and trade interests, to the good of the working classes, and they were
+moved by a determination to free that class from the untoward conditions
+under which they were laboring.
+
+Compared to these watchwords, the old ones which this philanthropic
+employer had given his town were negative and inadequate. He had
+believed strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual effort, but
+had failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined abstinence and
+concerted action. With all his fostering, the president had not attained
+to a conception of social morality for his men and had imagined that
+virtue for them largely meant absence of vice.
+
+When the labor movement finally stirred his town, or, to speak more
+fairly, when, in their distress and perplexity, his own employees
+appealed to an organized manifestation of this movement, they were quite
+sure that simply because they were workmen in distress they would not be
+deserted by it. This loyalty on the part of a widely ramified and
+well-organized union toward the workmen in a "non-union shop," who had
+contributed nothing to its cause, was certainly a manifestation of moral
+power.
+
+In none of his utterances or correspondence did the president for an
+instant recognize this touch of nobility, although one would imagine
+that he would gladly point out this bit of virtue, in what he must have
+considered the moral ruin about him. He stood throughout for the
+individual virtues, those which had distinguished the model workmen of
+his youth; those which had enabled him and so many of his
+contemporaries to rise in life, when "rising in life" was urged upon
+every promising boy as the goal of his efforts.
+
+Of the code of social ethics he had caught absolutely nothing. The
+morals he had advocated in selecting and training his men did not fail
+them in the hour of confusion. They were self-controlled, and they
+themselves destroyed no property. They were sober and exhibited no
+drunkenness, even although obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon
+hall of a neighboring town. They repaid their employer in kind, but he
+had given them no rule for the life of association into which they were
+plunged.
+
+The president of the company desired that his employees should possess
+the individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them
+the social virtues which express themselves in associated effort.
+
+Day after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires
+constantly reported the same message, "the President of the Company
+holds that there is nothing to arbitrate," one was forced to feel that
+the ideal of one-man rule was being sustained in its baldest form. A
+demand from many parts of the country and from many people was being
+made for social adjustment, against which the commercial training and
+the individualistic point of view held its own successfully.
+
+The majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of
+similar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same
+commercial experience, shared and sustained this position. It was quite
+impossible for them to catch the other point of view. They not only felt
+themselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually
+accustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they
+had come to consider their motives beyond reproach. Habit held them
+persistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions.
+
+A wise man has said that "the consent of men and your own conscience
+are two wings given you whereby you may rise to God." It is so easy for
+the good and powerful to think that they can rise by following the
+dictates of conscience, by pursuing their own ideals, that they are
+prone to leave those ideals unconnected with the consent of their
+fellow-men. The president of the company thought out within his own mind
+a beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did
+not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it.
+The most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent,
+makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious
+of social plans and experiments, ignoring this, is prone to failure.
+
+The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to
+consult the "feasible right" as well as the absolute right. He is often
+obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's "best possible," and then has the
+sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move
+along with those whom he leads toward a goal that neither he nor they
+see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people
+really want, and then "provide the channels in which the growing moral
+force of their lives shall flow." What he does attain, however, is not
+the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-climber
+beyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by
+the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower
+perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not
+taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the
+villagers to move up a few feet higher; added to this, he has made
+secure his progress. A few months after the death of the promoter of
+this model town, a court decision made it obligatory upon the company to
+divest itself of the management of the town as involving a function
+beyond its corporate powers. The parks, flowers, and fountains of this
+far-famed industrial centre were dismantled, with scarcely a protest
+from the inhabitants themselves.
+
+The man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the
+coöperation of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure.
+He does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his
+own permanent success which associated efforts afford. Genuine
+experiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic
+faith and practice than those which underlie private venture. Public
+parks and improvements, intended for the common use, are after all only
+safe in the hands of the public itself; and associated effort toward
+social progress, although much more awkward and stumbling than that same
+effort managed by a capable individual, does yet enlist deeper forces
+and evoke higher social capacities.
+
+The successful business man who is also the philanthropist is in more
+than the usual danger of getting widely separated from his employees.
+The men already have the American veneration for wealth and successful
+business capacity, and, added to this, they are dazzled by his good
+works. The workmen have the same kindly impulses as he, but while they
+organize their charity into mutual benefit associations and distribute
+their money in small amounts in relief for the widows and insurance for
+the injured, the employer may build model towns, erect college
+buildings, which are tangible and enduring, and thereby display his
+goodness in concentrated form.
+
+By the very exigencies of business demands, the employer is too often
+cut off from the social ethics developing in regard to our larger social
+relationships, and from the great moral life springing from our common
+experiences. This is sure to happen when he is good "to" people rather
+than "with" them, when he allows himself to decide what is best for them
+instead of consulting them. He thus misses the rectifying influence of
+that fellowship which is so big that it leaves no room for
+sensitiveness or gratitude. Without this fellowship we may never know
+how great the divergence between ourselves and others may become, nor
+how cruel the misunderstandings.
+
+During a recent strike of the employees of a large factory in Ohio, the
+president of the company expressed himself as bitterly disappointed by
+the results of his many kindnesses, and evidently considered the
+employees utterly unappreciative. His state of mind was the result of
+the fallacy of ministering to social needs from an individual impulse
+and expecting a socialized return of gratitude and loyalty. If the
+lunch-room was necessary, it was a necessity in order that the employees
+might have better food, and, when they had received the better food, the
+legitimate aim of the lunch-room was met. If baths were desirable, and
+the fifteen minutes of calisthenic exercise given the women in the
+middle of each half day brought a needed rest and change to their
+muscles, then the increased cleanliness and the increased bodily
+comfort of so many people should of themselves have justified the
+experiment.
+
+To demand, as a further result, that there should be no strikes in the
+factory, no revolt against the will of the employer because the
+employees were filled with loyalty as the result of the kindness, was of
+course to take the experiment from an individual basis to a social one.
+
+Large mining companies and manufacturing concerns are constantly
+appealing to their stockholders for funds, or for permission to take a
+percentage of the profits, in order that the money may be used for
+educational and social schemes designed for the benefit of the
+employees. The promoters of these schemes use as an argument and as an
+appeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes
+will be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the
+stockholders will be increased. However praiseworthy this appeal may be
+in motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory
+deserves the failure it so often meets with in practice. In the clash
+which follows a strike, the employees are accused of an ingratitude,
+when there was no legitimate reason to expect gratitude; and useless
+bitterness, which has really a factitious basis, may be developed on
+both sides.
+
+Indeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of
+misunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and
+employees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so
+far as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual
+code of ethics.
+
+There is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from
+the standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked
+industrial significance. Failing, as they do, however, to touch the
+question of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of
+trades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when
+they urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation
+existing between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance
+of strikes and other trades-union tactics. The men have individually
+accepted the kindness of the employers as it was individually offered,
+but quite as the latter urges his inability to increase wages unless he
+has the coöperation of his competitors, so the men state that they are
+bound to the trades-union struggle for an increase in wages because it
+can only be undertaken by combinations of labor.
+
+Even the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the
+profits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of
+their wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact
+that the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit
+shall accrue.
+
+Both individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and
+individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most
+useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and
+employer may in time be legally compelled to conform. Progress must
+always come through the individual who varies from the type and has
+sufficient energy to express this variation. He first holds a higher
+conception than that held by the mass of his fellows of what is
+righteous under given conditions, and expresses this conviction in
+conduct, in many instances formulating a certain scruple which the
+others share, but have not yet defined even to themselves. Progress,
+however, is not secure until the mass has conformed to this new
+righteousness. This is equally true in regard to any advance made in the
+standard of living on the part of the trades-unionists or in the
+improved conditions of industry on the part of reforming employers. The
+mistake lies, not in overpraising the advance thus inaugurated by
+individual initiative, but in regarding the achievement as complete in a
+social sense when it is still in the realm of individual action. No sane
+manufacturer regards his factory as the centre of the industrial system.
+He knows very well that the cost of material, wages, and selling prices
+are determined by industrial conditions completely beyond his control.
+Yet the same man may quite calmly regard himself and his own private
+principles as merely self-regarding, and expect results from casual
+philanthropy which can only be accomplished through those common rules
+of life and labor established by the community for the common good.
+
+Outside of and surrounding these smaller and most significant efforts
+are the larger and irresistible movements operating toward combination.
+This movement must tend to decide upon social matters from the social
+standpoint. Until then it is difficult to keep our minds free from a
+confusion of issues. Such a confusion occurs when the gift of a large
+sum to the community for a public and philanthropic purpose, throws a
+certain glamour over all the earlier acts of a man, and makes it
+difficult for the community to see possible wrongs committed against it,
+in the accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. It is possible also
+that the resolve to be thus generous unconsciously influences the man
+himself in his methods of accumulation. He keeps to a certain individual
+rectitude, meaning to make an individual restitution by the old paths of
+generosity and kindness, whereas if he had in view social restitution on
+the newer lines of justice and opportunity, he would throughout his
+course doubtless be watchful of his industrial relationships and his
+social virtues.
+
+The danger of professionally attaining to the power of the righteous
+man, of yielding to the ambition "for doing good" on a large scale,
+compared to which the ambition for politics, learning, or wealth, are
+vulgar and commonplace, ramifies through our modern life; and those most
+easily beset by this temptation are precisely the men best situated to
+experiment on the larger social lines, because they so easily dramatize
+their acts and lead public opinion. Very often, too, they have in their
+hands the preservation and advancement of large vested interests, and
+often see clearly and truly that they are better able to administer the
+affairs of the community than the community itself: sometimes they see
+that if they do not administer them sharply and quickly, as only an
+individual can, certain interests of theirs dependent upon the community
+will go to ruin.
+
+The model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will
+with which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless
+be of great public value. This again shows the advantage of individual
+management, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth,
+but this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites
+the ambition to provide other schools from public funds. The town of
+Zurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the
+vote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. Every man who
+voted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits,
+and, of course, the voluntary attendance must be larger than in a
+school accepted as a gift to the community.
+
+In the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts
+toward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is
+trying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to
+do for themselves. The result of his efforts will only attain its
+highest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by
+the community as well as for the community.
+
+There are doubtless many things which the public would never demand
+unless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because
+the public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating
+their wants. Thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until
+they become so established in the popular affections that they are
+incorporated in the public school system. Churches and missions
+establish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots
+the city with branch reading rooms and libraries. For this willingness
+to take risks for the sake of an ideal, for those experiments which must
+be undertaken with vigor and boldness in order to secure didactic value
+in failure as well as in success, society must depend upon the
+individual possessed with money, and also distinguished by earnest and
+unselfish purpose. Such experiments enable the nation to use the
+Referendum method in its public affairs. Each social experiment is thus
+tested by a few people, given wide publicity, that it may be observed
+and discussed by the bulk of the citizens before the public prudently
+makes up its mind whether or not it is wise to incorporate it into the
+functions of government. If the decision is in its favor and it is so
+incorporated, it can then be carried on with confidence and enthusiasm.
+
+But experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for
+a certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and
+social advancement. The list of those who found churches, educational
+institutions, libraries, and art galleries, is very long, as is again
+the list of those contributing to model dwellings, recreation halls, and
+athletic fields. At the present moment factory employers are doing much
+to promote "industrial betterment" in the way of sanitary surroundings,
+opportunities for bathing, lunch rooms provided with cheap and wholesome
+food, club rooms, and guild halls. But there is a line of social
+experiment involving social righteousness in its most advanced form, in
+which the number of employers and the "favored class" are so few that it
+is plain society cannot count upon them for continuous and valuable
+help. This lack is in the line of factory legislation and that sort of
+social advance implied in shorter hours and the regulation of wages; in
+short, all that organization and activity that is involved in such a
+maintenance and increase of wages as would prevent the lowering of the
+standard of life.
+
+A large body of people feel keenly that the present industrial system
+is in a state of profound disorder, and that there is no guarantee that
+the pursuit of individual ethics will ever right it. They claim that
+relief can only come through deliberate corporate effort inspired by
+social ideas and guided by the study of economic laws, and that the
+present industrial system thwarts our ethical demands, not only for
+social righteousness but for social order. Because they believe that
+each advance in ethics must be made fast by a corresponding advance in
+politics and legal enactment, they insist upon the right of state
+regulation and control. While many people representing all classes in a
+community would assent to this as to a general proposition, and would
+even admit it as a certain moral obligation, legislative enactments
+designed to control industrial conditions have largely been secured
+through the efforts of a few citizens, mostly those who constantly see
+the harsh conditions of labor and who are incited to activity by their
+sympathies as well as their convictions.
+
+This may be illustrated by the series of legal enactments regulating the
+occupations in which children may be allowed to work, also the laws in
+regard to the hours of labor permitted in those occupations, and the
+minimum age below which children may not be employed. The first child
+labor laws were enacted in England through the efforts of those members
+of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the condition of the little
+parish apprentices bound out to the early textile manufacturers of the
+north; and through the long years required to build up the code of child
+labor legislation which England now possesses, knowledge of the
+conditions has always preceded effective legislation. The efforts of
+that small number in every community who believe in legislative control
+have always been reënforced by the efforts of trades-unionists rather
+than by the efforts of employers. Partly because the employment of
+workingmen in the factories brings them in contact with the children who
+tend to lower wages and demoralize their trades, and partly because
+workingmen have no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy,
+and must perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only
+channel of redress which is open to them.
+
+We may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving
+street-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of
+the last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper. A
+comfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral
+shock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the
+little fellow, who is making his way in the world. The philanthropic
+lady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such
+a bright boy is not in school. She may make up her mind in a moment of
+compunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys' schools and
+homes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a
+chance at manual training. She probably is convinced that he alone, by
+his unaided efforts, is supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is
+moved to do all she can for him. Next to her sits a workingman trained
+in trades-union methods. He knows that the boy's natural development is
+arrested, and that the abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up
+the force which should go into growth; moreover, that this premature use
+of his powers has but a momentary and specious value. He is forced to
+these conclusions because he has seen many a man, entering the factory
+at eighteen and twenty, so worn out by premature work that he was "laid
+on the shelf" within ten or fifteen years. He knows very well that he
+can do nothing in the way of ameliorating the lot of this particular
+boy; that his only possible chance is to agitate for proper child-labor
+laws; to regulate, and if possible prohibit, street-vending by children,
+in order that the child of the poorest may have his school time secured
+to him, and may have at least his short chance for growth.
+
+These three people, sitting in the street car, are all honest and
+upright, and recognize a certain duty toward the forlorn children of the
+community. The self-made man is encouraging one boy's own efforts; the
+philanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the workingman alone is
+obliged to include all the boys of his class. Workingmen, because of
+their feebleness in all but numbers, have been forced to appeal to the
+state, in order to secure protection for themselves and for their
+children. They cannot all rise out of their class, as the occasionally
+successful man has done; some of them must be left to do the work in the
+factories and mines, and they have no money to spend in philanthropy.
+
+Both public agitation and a social appeal to the conscience of the
+community is necessary in order to secure help from the state, and,
+curiously enough, child-labor laws once enacted and enforced are a
+matter of great pride, and even come to be regarded as a register of the
+community's humanity and enlightenment. If the method of public
+agitation could find quiet and orderly expression in legislative
+enactment, and if labor measures could be submitted to the examination
+and judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of warfare, we
+should have the ideal development of the democratic state.
+
+But we judge labor organizations as we do other living institutions, not
+by their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their
+blundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and
+by the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual
+finds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action.
+
+The very blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a
+union, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often
+confuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust
+uncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. The situation is
+made even more complicated by the fact that those who are formulating a
+code of associated action so often break through the established code of
+law and order. As society has a right to demand of the reforming
+individual that he be sternly held to his personal and domestic claims,
+so it has a right to insist that labor organizations shall keep to the
+hardly won standards of public law and order; and the community performs
+but its plain duty when it registers its protest every time law and
+order are subverted, even in the interest of the so-called social
+effort. Yet in moments of industrial stress and strain the community is
+confronted by a moral perplexity which may arise from the mere fact that
+the good of yesterday is opposed to the good of today, and that which
+may appear as a choice between virtue and vice is really but a choice
+between virtue and virtue. In the disorder and confusion sometimes
+incident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see
+anything but the unlovely struggle itself.
+
+The writer recalls a conversation between two workingmen who were
+leaving a lecture on "Organic Evolution." The first was much puzzled,
+and anxiously inquired of the second "if evolution could mean that one
+animal turned into another." The challenged workman stopped in the rear
+of the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and expounded what he thought
+evolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the conversation can be
+recalled, is what he said: "You see a lot of fishes are living in a
+stream, which overflows in the spring and strands some of them upon the
+bank. The weak ones die up there, but others make a big effort to get
+back into the water. They dig their fins into the sand, breathe as much
+air as they can with their gills, and have a terrible time. But after a
+while their fins turn into legs and their gills into lungs, and they
+have become frogs. Of course they are further along than the sleek,
+comfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving their tails
+and despising the poor damaged things thrashing around on the bank.
+He--the lecturer--did not say anything about men, but it is easy enough
+to think of us poor devils on the dry bank, struggling without enough to
+live on, while the comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all
+they want and despise us because we thrash about." His listener did not
+reply, and was evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the
+application. Doubtless the illustration was bungling in more than its
+setting forth, but the story is suggestive.
+
+At times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so
+anxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably
+on the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for
+him to see the situation fairly. He becomes insensible to the unselfish
+impulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers
+in a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on
+the disorder which has become associated with the strike. He is
+completely side-tracked by the ugly phases of a great moral movement. It
+is always a temptation to assume that the side which has respectability,
+authority, and superior intelligence, has therefore righteousness as
+well, especially when the same side presents concrete results of
+individual effort as over against the less tangible results of
+associated effort.
+
+It is as yet most difficult for us to free ourselves from the
+individualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their
+social relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to
+produce a social result through all the difficulties of associated
+action. The philanthropist still finds his path much easier than do
+those who are attempting a social morality. In the first place, the
+public, anxious to praise what it recognizes as an undoubted moral
+effort often attended with real personal sacrifice, joyfully seizes upon
+this manifestation and overpraises it, recognizing the philanthropist
+as an old friend in the paths of righteousness, whereas the others are
+strangers and possibly to be distrusted as aliens. It is easy to confuse
+the response to an abnormal number of individual claims with the
+response to the social claim. An exaggerated personal morality is often
+mistaken for a social morality, and until it attempts to minister to a
+social situation its total inadequacy is not discovered. To attempt to
+attain a social morality without a basis of democratic experience
+results in the loss of the only possible corrective and guide, and ends
+in an exaggerated individual morality but not in social morality at all.
+We see this from time to time in the care-worn and overworked
+philanthropist, who has taxed his individual will beyond the normal
+limits and has lost his clew to the situation among a bewildering number
+of cases. A man who takes the betterment of humanity for his aim and end
+must also take the daily experiences of humanity for the constant
+correction of his process. He must not only test and guide his
+achievement by human experience, but he must succeed or fail in
+proportion as he has incorporated that experience with his own.
+Otherwise his own achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes
+to believe in his own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes
+an exception of himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank
+and file of his fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to know of the
+lives of our contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their
+integrity, which is after all but the first beginnings of social
+morality, but in order to attain to any mental or moral integrity for
+ourselves or any such hope for society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EDUCATIONAL METHODS
+
+
+As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the
+value and function of each member of the community, however humble he
+may be. We have come to believe that the most "brutish man" has a value
+in our common life, a function to perform which can be fulfilled by no
+one else. We are gradually requiring of the educator that he shall free
+the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of life. We ask
+this not merely because it is the man's right to be thus connected, but
+because we have become convinced that the social order cannot afford to
+get along without his special contribution. Just as we have come to
+resent all hindrances which keep us from untrammelled comradeship with
+our fellows, and as we throw down unnatural divisions, not in the
+spirit of the eighteenth-century reformers, but in the spirit of those
+to whom social equality has become a necessity for further social
+development, so we are impatient to use the dynamic power residing in
+the mass of men, and demand that the educator free that power. We
+believe that man's moral idealism is the constructive force of progress,
+as it has always been; but because every human being is a creative agent
+and a possible generator of fine enthusiasm, we are sceptical of the
+moral idealism of the few and demand the education of the many, that
+there may be greater freedom, strength, and subtilty of intercourse and
+hence an increase of dynamic power. We are not content to include all
+men in our hopes, but have become conscious that all men are hoping and
+are part of the same movement of which we are a part.
+
+Many people impelled by these ideas have become impatient with the slow
+recognition on the part of the educators of their manifest obligation
+to prepare and nourish the child and the citizen for social relations.
+The educators should certainly conserve the learning and training
+necessary for the successful individual and family life, but should add
+to that a preparation for the enlarged social efforts which our
+increasing democracy requires. The democratic ideal demands of the
+school that it shall give the child's own experience a social value;
+that it shall teach him to direct his own activities and adjust them to
+those of other people. We are not willing that thousands of industrial
+workers shall put all of their activity and toil into services from
+which the community as a whole reaps the benefit, while their mental
+conceptions and code of morals are narrow and untouched by any uplift
+which the consciousness of social value might give them.
+
+We are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and
+writing, suspecting them to rest upon the assumption that the ordinary
+experience of life is worth little, and that all knowledge and interest
+must be brought to the children through the medium of books. Such an
+assumption fails to give the child any clew to the life about him, or
+any power to usefully or intelligently connect himself with it. This may
+be illustrated by observations made in a large Italian colony situated
+in Chicago, the children from which are, for the most part, sent to the
+public schools.
+
+The members of the Italian colony are largely from South
+Italy,--Calabrian and Sicilian peasants, or Neapolitans from the
+workingmen's quarters of that city. They have come to America with the
+distinct aim of earning money, and finding more room for the energies of
+themselves and their children. In almost all cases they mean to go back
+again, simply because their imaginations cannot picture a continuous
+life away from the old surroundings. Their experiences in Italy have
+been those of simple outdoor activity, and their ideas have come
+directly to them from their struggle with Nature,--such a hand-to-hand
+struggle as takes place when each man gets his living largely through
+his own cultivation of the soil, or with tools simply fashioned by his
+own hands. The women, as in all primitive life, have had more
+diversified activities than the men. They have cooked, spun, and
+knitted, in addition to their almost equal work in the fields. Very few
+of the peasant men or women can either read or write. They are devoted
+to their children, strong in their family feeling, even to remote
+relationships, and clannish in their community life.
+
+The entire family has been upheaved, and is striving to adjust itself to
+its new surroundings. The men, for the most part, work on railroad
+extensions through the summer, under the direction of a _padrone_, who
+finds the work for them, regulates the amount of their wages, and
+supplies them with food. The first effect of immigration upon the women
+is that of idleness. They no longer work in the fields, nor milk the
+goats, nor pick up faggots. The mother of the family buys all the
+clothing, not only already spun and woven but made up into garments, of
+a cut and fashion beyond her powers. It is, indeed, the most economical
+thing for her to do. Her house-cleaning and cooking are of the simplest;
+the bread is usually baked outside of the house, and the macaroni bought
+prepared for boiling. All of those outdoor and domestic activities,
+which she would naturally have handed on to her daughters, have slipped
+away from her. The domestic arts are gone, with their absorbing
+interests for the children, their educational value, and incentive to
+activity. A household in a tenement receives almost no raw material. For
+the hundreds of children who have never seen wheat grow, there are
+dozens who have never seen bread baked. The occasional washings and
+scrubbings are associated only with discomfort. The child of such a
+family receives constant stimulus of most exciting sort from his city
+street life, but he has little or no opportunity to use his energies in
+domestic manufacture, or, indeed, constructively in any direction. No
+activity is supplied to take the place of that which, in Italy, he would
+naturally have found in his own surroundings, and no new union with
+wholesome life is made for him.
+
+Italian parents count upon the fact that their children learn the
+English language and American customs before they do themselves, and the
+children act not only as interpreters of the language, but as buffers
+between them and Chicago, resulting in a certain almost pathetic
+dependence of the family upon the child. When a child of the family,
+therefore, first goes to school, the event is fraught with much
+significance to all the others. The family has no social life in any
+structural form and can supply none to the child. He ought to get it in
+the school and give it to his family, the school thus becoming the
+connector with the organized society about them. It is the children
+aged six, eight, and ten, who go to school, entering, of course, the
+primary grades. If a boy is twelve or thirteen on his arrival in
+America, his parents see in him a wage-earning factor, and the girl of
+the same age is already looking toward her marriage.
+
+Let us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years
+to speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified
+with the fortunes of his family. Whatever interest has come to the minds
+of his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open
+air; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable
+accompaniments of all their experiences. Yet the first thing that the
+boy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the
+time, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the
+perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. He does not find this very
+stimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the
+schoolroom. The peasant child is perfectly indifferent to showing off
+and making a good recitation. He leaves all that to his schoolfellows,
+who are more sophisticated and equipped with better English. His parents
+are not deeply interested in keeping him in school, and will not hold
+him there against his inclination. Their experience does not point to
+the good American tradition that it is the educated man who finally
+succeeds. The richest man in the Italian colony can neither read nor
+write--even Italian. His cunning and acquisitiveness, combined with the
+credulity and ignorance of his countrymen, have slowly brought about his
+large fortune. The child himself may feel the stirring of a vague
+ambition to go on until he is as the other children are; but he is not
+popular with his schoolfellows, and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic
+interest. Even the pictures and objects presented to him, as well as the
+language, are strange.
+
+If we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the
+experiences which the child already has and to use his spontaneous and
+social activity, then the city streets begin this education for him in a
+more natural way than does the school. The South Italian peasant comes
+from a life of picking olives and oranges, and he easily sends his
+children out to pick up coal from railroad tracks, or wood from
+buildings which have been burned down. Unfortunately, this process leads
+by easy transition to petty thieving. It is easy to go from the coal on
+the railroad track to the coal and wood which stand before a dealer's
+shop; from the potatoes which have rolled from a rumbling wagon to the
+vegetables displayed by the grocer. This is apt to be the record of the
+boy who responds constantly to the stimulus and temptations of the
+street, although in the beginning his search for bits of food and fuel
+was prompted by the best of motives.
+
+The school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition
+to the distractions of the neighborhood. Nothing is more fascinating
+than that mysterious "down town," whither the boy longs to go to sell
+papers and black boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay
+all night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great
+dailies. If a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements,
+nothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and
+worthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and
+with a distaste for its dulness.
+
+On the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities
+who conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of
+the early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories,
+painstakingly performing their work year after year. These later are the
+men who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood
+of every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year
+after year without in the least knowing what it is all about. The one
+fixed habit which the boy carries away with him from the school to the
+factory is the feeling that his work is merely provisional. In school
+the next grade was continually held before him as an object of
+attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole object of
+present effort is to get ready for something else. This tentative
+attitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his factory work;
+he pursues it merely as a necessity, and his very mental attitude
+destroys his chance for a realization of its social value. As the boy in
+school contracted the habit of doing his work in certain hours and
+taking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory he earns
+his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of
+lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the school and
+in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and monotonous, his
+recreation must become more exciting and stimulating. The hopelessness
+of adding evening classes and social entertainments as a mere frill to a
+day filled with monotonous and deadening drudgery constantly becomes
+more apparent to those who are endeavoring to bring a fuller life to the
+industrial members of the community, and who are looking forward to a
+time when work shall cease to be senseless drudgery with no
+self-expression on the part of the worker. It sometimes seems that the
+public schools should contribute much more than they do to the
+consummation of this time. If the army of school children who enter the
+factories every year possessed thoroughly vitalized faculties, they
+might do much to lighten this incubus of dull factory work which presses
+so heavily upon so large a number of our fellow-citizens. Has our
+commercialism been so strong that our schools have become insensibly
+commercialized, whereas we supposed that our industrial life was
+receiving the broadening and illuminating effects of the schools? The
+training of these children, so far as it has been vocational at all, has
+been in the direction of clerical work. It is possible that the
+business men, whom we in America so tremendously admire, have really
+been dictating the curriculum of our public schools, in spite of the
+conventions of educators and the suggestions of university professors.
+The business man, of course, has not said, "I will have the public
+schools train office boys and clerks so that I may have them easily and
+cheaply," but he has sometimes said, "Teach the children to write
+legibly and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of
+punctuality and order; to be prompt to obey; and you will fit them to
+make their way in the world as I have made mine." Has the workingman
+been silent as to what he desires for his children, and allowed the
+business man to decide for him there, as he has allowed the politician
+to manage his municipal affairs, or has the workingman so far shared our
+universal optimism that he has really believed that his children would
+never need to go into industrial life at all, but that all of his sons
+would become bankers and merchants?
+
+Certain it is that no sufficient study has been made of the child who
+enters into industrial life early and stays there permanently, to give
+him some offset to its monotony and dulness, some historic significance
+of the part he is taking in the life of the community.
+
+It is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing
+democracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. As the
+political expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the
+free right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting
+that he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of
+his social and industrial value.
+
+The early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to
+exchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently
+still survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools.
+We have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres
+of production and manufacture in which a huge population is engaged, or
+we have lacked sufficient presence of mind to adjust ourselves to the
+change. We admire much more the men who accumulate riches, and who
+gather to themselves the results of industry, than the men who actually
+carry forward industrial processes; and, as has been pointed out, our
+schools still prepare children almost exclusively for commercial and
+professional life.
+
+Quite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and
+begins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so
+the school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a
+clerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation
+of ignorant and unsuccessful men. The schools do so little really to
+interest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition
+in the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost
+from the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work
+and a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for
+money with which unmeaning purchases may be made and an unmeaning
+social standing obtained.
+
+The son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses
+his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he
+comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people
+learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial
+arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption
+that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,--that every
+promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined
+for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under
+other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a
+folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister,
+who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the
+cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him
+educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress
+meanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and
+monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his
+interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom,
+who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is
+necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to our
+theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is
+covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or
+trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious
+effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial
+life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration
+regarding it.
+
+Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust
+which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To
+get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is
+still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line.
+A workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the
+brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal
+school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general
+social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are
+superior to factory or even office work. "Teacher" in the vocabulary of
+many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is
+indiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner. The same
+desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano,
+or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. The
+overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much
+the same source, and from the conviction that "an education" is wasted
+if a boy goes into a factory or shop.
+
+A Chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended
+and meant to give a start in life. He sent them both to the Athenæum for
+several winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them
+into his office, where they speedily became known as the bright one and
+the stupid one. The stupid one was finally dismissed after repeated
+trials, when to the surprise of the entire establishment, he quickly
+betook himself into the shops, where he became a wide-awake and valuable
+workman. His chagrined benefactor, in telling the story, admits that he
+himself had fallen a victim to his own business training and his early
+notion of rising in life. In reality he had merely followed the lead of
+most benevolent people who help poor boys. They test the success of
+their efforts by the number whom they have taken out of factory work
+into some other and "higher occupation."
+
+Quite in line with this commercial ideal are the night schools and
+institutions of learning most accessible to working people. First among
+them is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of
+type-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and
+methods of distribution. Commodities are treated as exports and
+imports, or solely in regard to their commercial value, and not, of
+course, in relation to their historic development or the manufacturing
+processes to which they have been subjected. These schools do not in the
+least minister to the needs of the actual factory employee, who is in
+the shop and not in the office. We assume that all men are searching for
+"puddings and power," to use Carlyle's phrase, and furnish only the
+schools which help them to those ends.
+
+The business college man, or even the man who goes through an academic
+course in order to prepare for a profession, comes to look on learning
+too much as an investment from which he will later reap the benefits in
+earning money. He does not connect learning with industrial pursuits,
+nor does he in the least lighten or illuminate those pursuits for those
+of his friends who have not risen in life. "It is as though nets were
+laid at the entrance to education, in which those who by some means or
+other escape from the masses bowed down by labor, are inevitably caught
+and held from substantial service to their fellows." The academic
+teaching which is accessible to workingmen through University Extension
+lectures and classes at settlements, is usually bookish and remote, and
+concerning subjects completely divorced from their actual experiences.
+The men come to think of learning as something to be added to the end of
+a hard day's work, and to be gained at the cost of toilsome mental
+exertion. There are, of course, exceptions, but many men who persist in
+attending classes and lectures year after year find themselves possessed
+of a mass of inert knowledge which nothing in their experience fuses
+into availability or realization.
+
+Among the many disappointments which the settlement experiment has
+brought to its promoters, perhaps none is keener than the fact that they
+have as yet failed to work out methods of education, specialized and
+adapted to the needs of adult working people in contra-distinction to
+those employed in schools and colleges, or those used in teaching
+children. There are many excellent reasons and explanations for this
+failure. In the first place, the residents themselves are for the most
+part imbued with academic methods and ideals, which it is most difficult
+to modify. To quote from a late settlement report, "The most vaunted
+educational work in settlements amounts often to the stimulation
+mentally of a select few who are, in a sense, of the academic type of
+mind, and who easily and quickly respond to the academic methods
+employed." These classes may be valuable, but they leave quite untouched
+the great mass of the factory population, the ordinary workingman of the
+ordinary workingman's street, whose attitude is best described as that
+of "acquiescence," who lives through the aimless passage of the years
+without incentive "to imagine, to design, or to aspire." These men are
+totally untouched by all the educational and philanthropic machinery
+which is designed for the young and the helpless who live on the same
+streets with them. They do not often drink to excess, they regularly
+give all their wages to their wives, they have a vague pride in their
+superior children; but they grow prematurely old and stiff in all their
+muscles, and become more and more taciturn, their entire energies
+consumed in "holding a job."
+
+Various attempts have been made to break through the inadequate
+educational facilities supplied by commercialism and scholarship, both
+of which have followed their own ideals and have failed to look at the
+situation as it actually presents itself. The most noteworthy attempt
+has been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for
+which has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who
+have from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed
+for workingmen's sons. The early schools of this type inevitably
+reflected the ideal of the self-made man. They succeeded in transferring
+a few skilled workers into the upper class of trained engineers, and a
+few less skilled workers into the class of trained mechanics, but did
+not aim to educate the many who are doomed to the unskilled work which
+the permanent specialization of the division of labor demands.
+
+The Peter Coopers and other good men honestly believed that if
+intelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully
+attended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in
+time even become an employer himself. Such schools are useful beyond
+doubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure
+satisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question.
+
+Almost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions
+founded by rich men, anxious to help "poor boys." These have been
+captured by conventional educators for the purpose of fitting young men
+for the colleges and universities. They have compromised by merely
+adding to the usual academic course manual work, applied mathematics,
+mechanical drawing and engineering. Two schools in Chicago, plainly
+founded for the sons of workingmen, afford an illustration of this
+tendency and result. On the other hand, so far as schools of this type
+have been captured by commercialism, they turn out trained engineers,
+professional chemists, and electricians. They are polytechnics of a high
+order, but do not even pretend to admit the workingman with his meagre
+intellectual equipment. They graduate machine builders, but not educated
+machine tenders. Even the textile schools are largely seized by young
+men who expect to be superintendents of factories, designers, or
+manufacturers themselves, and the textile worker who actually "holds the
+thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed, in one of the largest schools
+women are not allowed, in spite of the fact that spinning and weaving
+have traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are
+at present employed in the textile mills.
+
+It is much easier to go over the old paths of education with "manual
+training" thrown in, as it were; it is much simpler to appeal to the old
+ambitions of "getting on in life," or of "preparing for a profession,"
+or "for a commercial career," than to work out new methods on democratic
+lines. These schools gradually drop back into the conventional courses,
+modified in some slight degree, while the adaptation to workingmen's
+needs is never made, nor, indeed, vigorously attempted. In the meantime,
+the manufacturers continually protest that engineers, especially trained
+for devising machines, are not satisfactory. Three generations of
+workers have invented, but we are told that invention no longer goes on
+in the workshop, even when it is artificially stimulated by the offer of
+prizes, and that the inventions of the last quarter of the nineteenth
+century have by no means fulfilled the promise of the earlier
+three-quarters.
+
+Every foreman in a large factory has had experience with two classes of
+men: first with those who become rigid and tolerate no change in their
+work, partly because they make more money "working by the piece," when
+they stick to that work which they have learned to do rapidly, and
+partly because the entire muscular and nervous system has become by
+daily use adapted to particular motions and resents change. Secondly,
+there are the men who float in and out of the factory, in a constantly
+changing stream. They "quit work" for the slightest reason or none at
+all, and never become skilled at anything. Some of them are men of low
+intelligence, but many of them are merely too nervous and restless, too
+impatient, too easily "driven to drink," to be of any use in a modern
+factory. They are the men for whom the demanded adaptation is
+impossible.
+
+The individual from whom the industrial order demands ever larger
+drafts of time and energy, should be nourished and enriched from social
+sources, in proportion as he is drained. He, more than other men, needs
+the conception of historic continuity in order to reveal to him the
+purpose and utility of his work, and he can only be stimulated and
+dignified as he obtains a conception of his proper relation to society.
+Scholarship is evidently unable to do this for him; for, unfortunately,
+the same tendency to division of labor has also produced
+over-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that when the
+scholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the result of
+more specialization rather than an offset from it. He cannot bring
+healing and solace because he himself is suffering from the same
+disease. There is indeed a deplorable lack of perception and adaptation
+on the part of educators all along the line.
+
+It will certainly be embarrassing to have our age written down
+triumphant in the matter of inventions, in that our factories were
+filled with intricate machines, the result of advancing mathematical and
+mechanical knowledge in relation to manufacturing processes, but
+defeated in that it lost its head over the achievement and forgot the
+men. The accusation would stand, that the age failed to perform a like
+service in the extension of history and art to the factory employees who
+ran the machines; that the machine tenders, heavy and almost dehumanized
+by monotonous toil, walked about in the same streets with us, and sat in
+the same cars; but that we were absolutely indifferent and made no
+genuine effort to supply to them the artist's perception or student's
+insight, which alone could fuse them into social consciousness. It would
+further stand that the scholars among us continued with yet more
+research, that the educators were concerned only with the young and the
+promising, and the philanthropists with the criminals and helpless.
+
+There is a pitiful failure to recognize the situation in which the
+majority of working people are placed, a tendency to ignore their real
+experiences and needs, and, most stupid of all, we leave quite untouched
+affections and memories which would afford a tremendous dynamic if they
+were utilized.
+
+We constantly hear it said in educational circles, that a child learns
+only by "doing," and that education must proceed "through the eyes and
+hands to the brain"; and yet for the vast number of people all around us
+who do not need to have activities artificially provided, and who use
+their hands and eyes all the time, we do not seem able to reverse the
+process. We quote the dictum, "What is learned in the schoolroom must be
+applied in the workshop," and yet the skill and handicraft constantly
+used in the workshop have no relevance or meaning given to them by the
+school; and when we do try to help the workingman in an educational way,
+we completely ignore his everyday occupation. Yet the task is merely one
+of adaptation. It is to take actual conditions and to make them the
+basis for a large and generous method of education, to perform a
+difficult idealization doubtless, but not an impossible one.
+
+We apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life
+through his vocation. We easily recognize the historic association in
+regard to ancient buildings. We say that "generation after generation
+have stamped their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them,
+until they have become the property of all." And yet this is even more
+true of the instruments of labor, which have constantly been held in
+human hands. A machine really represents the "seasoned life of man"
+preserved and treasured up within itself, quite as much as an ancient
+building does. At present, workmen are brought in contact with the
+machinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present set of
+industrial implements had been newly created. They handle the machinery
+day by day, without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. Few
+of the men who perform the mechanical work in the great factories have
+any comprehension of the fact that the inventions upon which the factory
+depends, the instruments which they use, have been slowly worked out,
+each generation using the gifts of the last and transmitting the
+inheritance until it has become a social possession. This can only be
+understood by a man who has obtained some idea of social progress. We
+are still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of
+labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby,
+and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product
+long enough to really focus it upon the producer. Theoretically, "the
+division of labor" makes men more interdependent and human by drawing
+them together into a unity of purpose. "If a number of people decide to
+build a road, and one digs, and one brings stones, and another breaks
+them, they are quite inevitably united by their interest in the road.
+But this naturally presupposes that they know where the road is going
+to, that they have some curiosity and interest about it, and perhaps a
+chance to travel upon it." If the division of labor robs them of
+interest in any part of it, the mere mechanical fact of interdependence
+amounts to nothing.
+
+The man in the factory, as well as the man with the hoe, has a grievance
+beyond being overworked and disinherited, in that he does not know what
+it is all about. We may well regret the passing of the time when the
+variety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally
+stimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into
+contact both with the raw material and the finished product. But the
+problem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to
+supply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were. If the
+shop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem
+of the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what
+may be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to
+supply him with general information and to insist that he shall be a
+cultivated member of society with a consciousness of his industrial and
+social value.
+
+As sad a sight as an old hand-loom worker in a factory attempting to
+make his clumsy machine compete with the flying shuttles about him, is a
+workingman equipped with knowledge so meagre that he can get no meaning
+into his life nor sequence between his acts and the far-off results.
+
+Manufacturers, as a whole, however, when they attempt educational
+institutions in connection with their factories, are prone to follow
+conventional lines, and to exhibit the weakness of imitation. We find,
+indeed, that the middle-class educator constantly makes the mistakes of
+the middle-class moralist when he attempts to aid working people. The
+latter has constantly and traditionally urged upon the workingman the
+specialized virtues of thrift, industry, and sobriety--all virtues
+pertaining to the individual. When each man had his own shop, it was
+perhaps wise to lay almost exclusive stress upon the industrial virtues
+of diligence and thrift; but as industry has become more highly
+organized, life becomes incredibly complex and interdependent. If a
+workingman is to have a conception of his value at all, he must see
+industry in its unity and entirety; he must have a conception that will
+include not only himself and his immediate family and community, but the
+industrial organization as a whole. It is doubtless true that dexterity
+of hand becomes less and less imperative as the invention of machinery
+and subdivision of labor proceeds; but it becomes all the more
+necessary, if the workman is to save his life at all, that he should get
+a sense of his individual relation to the system. Feeding a machine with
+a material of which he has no knowledge, producing a product, totally
+unrelated to the rest of his life, without in the least knowing what
+becomes of it, or its connection with the community, is, of course,
+unquestionably deadening to his intellectual and moral life. To make
+the moral connection it would be necessary to give him a social
+consciousness of the value of his work, and at least a sense of
+participation and a certain joy in its ultimate use; to make the
+intellectual connection it would be essential to create in him some
+historic conception of the development of industry and the relation of
+his individual work to it.
+
+Workingmen themselves have made attempts in both directions, which it
+would be well for moralists and educators to study. It is a striking
+fact that when workingmen formulate their own moral code, and try to
+inspire and encourage each other, it is always a large and general
+doctrine which they preach. They were the first class of men to organize
+an international association, and the constant talk at a modern labor
+meeting is of solidarity and of the identity of the interests of
+workingmen the world over. It is difficult to secure a successful
+organization of men into the simplest trades organization without an
+appeal to the most abstract principles of justice and brotherhood. As
+they have formulated their own morals by laying the greatest stress upon
+the largest morality, so if they could found their own schools, it is
+doubtful whether they would be of the mechanic institute type. Courses
+of study arranged by a group of workingmen are most naïve in their
+breadth and generality. They will select the history of the world in
+preference to that of any period or nation. The "wonders of science" or
+"the story of evolution" will attract workingmen to a lecture when
+zoölogy or chemistry will drive them away. The "outlines of literature"
+or "the best in literature" will draw an audience when a lecturer in
+English poetry will be solitary. This results partly from a wholesome
+desire to have general knowledge before special knowledge, and is partly
+a rebound from the specialization of labor to which the workingman is
+subjected. When he is free from work and can direct his own mind, he
+tends to roam, to dwell upon large themes. Much the same tendency is
+found in programmes of study arranged by Woman's Clubs in country
+places. The untrained mind, wearied with meaningless detail, when it
+gets an opportunity to make its demand heard, asks for general
+philosophy and background.
+
+In a certain sense commercialism itself, at least in its larger aspect,
+tends to educate the workingman better than organized education does.
+Its interests are certainly world-wide and democratic, while it is
+absolutely undiscriminating as to country and creed, coming into contact
+with all climes and races. If this aspect of commercialism were
+utilized, it would in a measure counterbalance the tendency which
+results from the subdivision of labor.
+
+The most noteworthy attempt to utilize this democracy of commerce in
+relation to manufacturing is found at Dayton, Ohio, in the yearly
+gatherings held in a large factory there. Once a year the entire force
+is gathered together to hear the returns of the business, not so much
+in respect to the profits, as in regard to its extension. At these
+meetings, the travelling salesmen from various parts of the world--from
+Constantinople, from Berlin, from Rome, from Hong Kong--report upon the
+sales they have made, and the methods of advertisement and promotion
+adapted to the various countries.
+
+Stereopticon lectures are given upon each new country as soon as it has
+been successfully invaded by the product of the factory. The foremen in
+the various departments of the factory give accounts of the increased
+efficiency and the larger output over former years. Any man who has made
+an invention in connection with the machinery of the factory, at this
+time publicly receives a prize, and suggestions are approved that tend
+to increase the comfort and social facilities of the employees. At least
+for the moment there is a complete esprit de corps, and the youngest and
+least skilled employee sees himself in connection with the interests of
+the firm, and the spread of an invention. It is a crude example of what
+might be done in the way of giving a large framework of meaning to
+factory labor, and of putting it into a sentient background, at least on
+the commercial side.
+
+It is easy to indict the educator, to say that he has gotten entangled
+in his own material, and has fallen a victim to his own methods; but
+granting this, what has the artist done about it--he who is supposed to
+have a more intimate insight into the needs of his contemporaries, and
+to minister to them as none other can?
+
+It is quite true that a few writers are insisting that the growing
+desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its
+counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part
+of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of
+conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual
+because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult
+to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we
+have the separation of the people who think from those who work. And
+yet, since Ruskin ceased, no one has really formulated this in a
+convincing form. And even Ruskin's famous dictum, that labor without art
+brutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art could only be a sense
+of beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a sense of companionship
+with all other workers. The situation demands the consciousness of
+participation and well-being which comes to the individual when he is
+able to see himself "in connection and cooperation with the whole"; it
+needs the solace of collective art inherent in collective labor.
+
+As the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling,
+so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human
+significance--some one who shall teach him to find that which will give
+a potency to his life. His education, however simple, should tend to
+make him widely at home in the world, and to give him a sense of
+simplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality and noise to which
+he is constantly subjected. He, like other men, can learn to be content
+to see but a part, although it must be a part of something.
+
+It is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate
+him in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which
+is his by simple right. We have learned to say that the good must be
+extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one
+person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that
+statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we
+cannot even be sure that it is worth having. In spite of many attempts
+we do not really act upon either statement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+POLITICAL REFORM
+
+
+Throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical
+maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting
+upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to
+the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In
+addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is
+often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.
+
+Nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests
+itself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to
+hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social
+expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains
+to keep on common ground in our human experiences. Otherwise there is
+in various parts of the community an inevitable difference of ethical
+standards which becomes responsible for much misunderstanding.
+
+It is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals
+of those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely
+different from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the
+gains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so
+painfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. This wide
+difference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes
+toward politics. The well-to-do men of the community think of politics
+as something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political
+duty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the
+expression of their moral or social life. As a result of this
+detachment, "reform movements," started by business men and the better
+element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political
+machinery and with a concern for the better method of administration,
+rather than with the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the
+people. They fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they
+fail to consider the final aims of city government. This accounts for
+the growing tendency to put more and more responsibility upon executive
+officers and appointed commissions at the expense of curtailing the
+power of the direct representatives of the voters. Reform movements tend
+to become negative and to lose their educational value for the mass of
+the people. The reformers take the rôle of the opposition. They give
+themselves largely to criticisms of the present state of affairs, to
+writing and talking of what the future must be and of certain results
+which should be obtained. In trying to better matters, however, they
+have in mind only political achievements which they detach in a curious
+way from the rest of life, and they speak and write of the purification
+of politics as of a thing set apart from daily life.
+
+On the other hand, the real leaders of the people are part of the entire
+life of the community which they control, and so far as they are
+representative at all, are giving a social expression to democracy. They
+are often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they are proceeding
+upon a sounder theory. Although they would be totally unable to give it
+abstract expression, they are really acting upon a formulation made by a
+shrewd English observer; namely, that, "after the enfranchisement of the
+masses, social ideals enter into political programmes, and they enter
+not as something which at best can be indirectly promoted by government,
+but as something which it is the chief business of government to advance
+directly."
+
+Men living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately,
+recognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to
+social needs. They realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for
+social results, and they hold their power because they respond to that
+demand. They are corrupt and often do their work badly; but they at
+least avoid the mistake of a certain type of business men who are
+frightened by democracy, and have lost their faith in the people. The
+two standards are similar to those seen at a popular exhibition of
+pictures where the cultivated people care most for the technique of a
+given painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall be domestic and
+human.
+
+This difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a
+certain ward of Chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made
+to dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. In
+this ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people,
+representing a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated Latin,
+Teuton, Celt, Greek, and Slav who live there have little in common save
+the basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all
+conditions. In order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in
+nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any demand, it must be
+founded upon universal experiences which are perforce individual and not
+social.
+
+An instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it
+possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political
+success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for
+the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of
+which he is constantly guilty.
+
+This leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his
+constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the
+same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be
+committing. They thus free the alderman from blame because his
+corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and
+hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.
+
+In certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action
+unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his
+acquaintances, and it is a long step in moral progress to set the good
+of the many before the interest of the few, and to be concerned for the
+welfare of a community without hope of an individual return. How far the
+selfish politician befools his constituents into believing that their
+interests are identical with his own; how far he presumes upon their
+inability to distinguish between the individual and social virtues, an
+inability which he himself shares with them; and how far he dazzles them
+by the sense of his greatness, and a conviction that they participate
+therein, it is difficult to determine.
+
+Morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than
+in the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate
+upon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized
+before they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints
+have been after all "the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands
+of Christians to whom the Credo has been but mysterious words."
+
+Ethics as well as political opinions may be discussed and disseminated
+among the sophisticated by lectures and printed pages, but to the common
+people they can only come through example--through a personality which
+seizes the popular imagination. The advantage of an unsophisticated
+neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do not keep their ideas as
+treasures--they are untouched by the notion of accumulating them, as
+they might knowledge or money, and they frankly act upon those they
+have. The personal example promptly rouses to emulation. In a
+neighborhood where political standards are plastic and undeveloped, and
+where there has been little previous experience in self-government, the
+office-holder himself sets the standard, and the ideas that cluster
+around him exercise a specific and permanent influence upon the
+political morality of his constituents.
+
+Nothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous
+population, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, most admires
+is the quality of simple goodness; that the man who attracts them is the
+one whom they believe to be a good man. We all know that children long
+"to be good" with an intensity which they give to no other ambition. We
+can all remember that the earliest strivings of our childhood were in
+this direction, and that we venerated grown people because they had
+attained perfection.
+
+Primitive people, such as the South Italian peasants, are still in this
+stage. They want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire
+nothing so much as the good man. Abstract virtues are too difficult for
+their untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple
+enough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people.
+
+The successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the
+morality of his constituents. He must not attempt to hold up too high a
+standard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. His
+safety lies in doing on a large scale the good deeds which his
+constituents are able to do only on a small scale. If he believes what
+they believe and does what they are all cherishing a secret ambition to
+do, he will dazzle them by his success and win their confidence. There
+is a certain wisdom in this course. There is a common sense in the mass
+of men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just as there is sure to
+be an eccentricity in the differing and reforming individual which it is
+perhaps well to challenge.
+
+The constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a
+previous chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and
+distresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy
+themselves. The kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor
+is doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in
+distress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too
+drunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or child, when he
+is evicted for non-payment of rent, when he is arrested for a petty
+crime. It seems to such a man entirely fitting that his alderman should
+do the same thing on a larger scale--that he should help a constituent
+out of trouble, merely because he is in trouble, irrespective of the
+justice involved.
+
+The alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are
+arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear
+before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are
+likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to
+"fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a
+serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised
+by his constituents. All this conveys the impression to the
+simple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a
+powerful friend. One may instance the alderman's action in standing by
+an Italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the
+civil service regulations. The commissioners had sent out notices to
+certain Italian day-laborers who were upon the eligible list that they
+were to report for work at a given day and hour. One of the padrones
+intercepted these notifications and sold them to the men for five
+dollars apiece, making also the usual bargain for a share of their
+wages. The padrone's entire arrangement followed the custom which had
+prevailed for years before the establishment of civil service laws. Ten
+of the laborers swore out warrants against the padrone, who was
+convicted and fined seventy-five dollars. This sum was promptly paid by
+the alderman, and the padrone, assured that he would be protected from
+any further trouble, returned uninjured to the colony. The simple
+Italians were much bewildered by this show of a power stronger than that
+of the civil service, which they had trusted as they did the one in
+Italy. The first violation of its authority was made, and various
+sinister acts have followed, until no Italian who is digging a sewer or
+sweeping a street for the city feels quite secure in holding his job
+unless he is backed by the friendship of the alderman. According to the
+civil service law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are
+discharged by the foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only
+upon the aldermanic recommendation. He thus practically holds his old
+power over the laborers working for the city. The popular mind is
+convinced that an honest administration of civil service is impossible,
+and that it is but one more instrument in the hands of the powerful.
+
+It will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men,
+who learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such
+a nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that "civil
+service" is "no good."
+
+As many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact
+that the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so
+instances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. A young man may
+enter a saloon long after midnight, the legal closing hour, and seat
+himself at a gambling table, perfectly secure from interruption or
+arrest, because the place belongs to an alderman; but in order to secure
+this immunity the policeman on the beat must pretend not to see into the
+windows each time that he passes, and he knows, and the young man knows
+that he knows, that nothing would embarrass "Headquarters" more than to
+have an arrest made on those premises. A certain contempt for the whole
+machinery of law and order is thus easily fostered.
+
+Because of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for
+the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when
+work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all
+the places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the
+ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he
+had twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll.
+This, of course, included day laborers, but each one felt under
+distinct obligations to him for getting a position. When we reflect that
+this is one-third of the entire vote of the ward, we realize that it is
+very important to vote for the right man, since there is, at the least,
+one chance out of three for securing work.
+
+If we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay
+respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question
+of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a
+political one. An Italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else,
+and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so
+different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two
+strengthen each other.
+
+The alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for
+an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate
+suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his
+constituents under obligations to him; but the action of such an
+individual becomes a demoralizing element in the community when kindly
+impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of personal ambition, and
+when the plastic morals of his constituents gradually conform to his own
+undeveloped standards.
+
+The alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes
+these days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to
+reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side
+it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures
+passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or
+attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for
+benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar
+distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest
+lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the
+alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When
+others are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. When anxious
+relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful
+children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both
+sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying
+off the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five
+dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the
+sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly.
+He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it
+is all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too
+many questions." The oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds
+of his constituents, the better he is pleased. Nothing so rapidly
+prepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. We
+see again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered
+so praiseworthy.
+
+There is something archaic in a community of simple people in their
+attitude toward death and burial. There is nothing so easy to collect
+money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early
+religious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. At times one
+encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard to burial. If the alderman
+seizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much
+more does he seize upon periods of sorrow. At a funeral he has the
+double advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and
+solace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to
+express that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment
+of quick sorrow, that desire to "make up" for past delinquencies, to
+show the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is
+as natural as it is universal.
+
+In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social
+occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of
+which almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. The
+alderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful
+horror of burial by the county; he provides carriages for the poor, who
+otherwise could not have them. It may be too much to say that all the
+relatives and friends who ride in the carriages provided by the
+alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly influenced by his
+kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long hours of the ride back
+and forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who would ask at such a time
+where all the money thus spent comes from would be considered sinister.
+The tendency to speak lightly of the faults of the dead and to judge
+them gently is transferred to the living, and many a man at such a time
+has formulated a lenient judgment of political corruption, and has heard
+kindly speeches which he has remembered on election day. "Ah, well, he
+has a big Irish heart. He is good to the widow and the fatherless." "He
+knows the poor better than the big guns who are always talking about
+civil service and reform."
+
+Indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of
+administration make against this big manifestation of human
+friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of
+the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman
+will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every
+week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes
+provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into
+"hundreds a year." He understands what the people want, and ministers
+just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An
+attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at
+one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House
+nursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days
+previously in the Cook County hospital, but no trace could be found of
+the unfortunate mother. The little child lived for several weeks, and
+then, in spite of every care, died. It was decided to have it buried by
+the county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o'clock;
+about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached
+the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of
+mind, to protest. They took up a collection out of their poverty with
+which to defray a funeral. The residents of Hull-House were then
+comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were
+really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. In their
+crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended
+upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every
+attention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even
+intimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in
+this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be
+buried as it had been born, at the county's expense. It is doubtful if
+Hull-House has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the
+minds of some of its neighbors. It was only forgiven by the most
+indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not
+know a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could
+possibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the
+ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely.
+
+We are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple
+people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a
+reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and
+regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is
+forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and
+faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and
+forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is
+the magnanimous man, the kindly reckless villain who is always
+applauded. So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson once remarked that it
+was surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society
+contained.
+
+On the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town
+within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more
+important of his friends. Here again he has seized upon an old tradition
+and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best
+expressed when men drink together. The saloons offer a common meeting
+ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who
+meet there.
+
+He distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters,
+but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious
+management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of
+that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable
+societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for
+Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey
+again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from any hardly
+acquired philanthropic motive, there is no disposition to apply the
+carefully evolved rules of the charitable societies to his
+beneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect that the
+benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite
+freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the
+fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example of this is the
+young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, giving a sly
+wink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of obligation is
+often the first step downward to the position where he is willing to
+sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as he
+pleases. The writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he
+complained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had
+"sold for only two dollars this year," and that he was "awfully
+disappointed." The writer happened to know that his income during the
+nine months previous had been but twenty-eight dollars, and that he was
+in debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well imagine the eagerness
+with which he had counted upon this source of revenue. After some years
+the selling of votes becomes a commonplace, and but little attempt is
+made upon the part of the buyer or seller to conceal the fact, if the
+transaction runs smoothly.
+
+A certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire
+house to a political party and was "well paid for it too"; but being of
+a grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the
+rival party. Such an outrage could not be borne. The man was treated to
+a modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held
+under a street hydrant in November, contracted pneumonia which resulted
+in his death. No official investigation took place, since the doctor's
+certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and public
+sentiment sustained the action. In various conversations which the
+writer had concerning the entire transaction, she discovered great
+indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, but none whatever
+for his original offence of selling out the votes of his house.
+
+A club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation
+for political power which may later be sold out. The president and
+executive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the
+funds, promise to divide with "the boys" who swell the size of the
+membership. A reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are
+active and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can
+"deliver." The reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and
+only gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the
+express purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most
+active in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their
+allegiance when they are ready to sell. Reformers seeing them drop away
+one by one, talk of desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power
+of money over well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand
+temptation; but in reality the men are not deserters because they have
+never actually been enrolled in the ranks. The money they take is
+neither a bribe nor the price of their loyalty, it is simply the
+consummation of a long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. They
+came into the new movement for the purpose of being bought out of it,
+and have successfully accomplished that purpose.
+
+Hull-House assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against
+the same alderman. In the two years following the end of the first one,
+nearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office
+from the reëlected alderman. A printer had been appointed to a clerkship
+in the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the
+police barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in
+the city construction department. At the beginning of the next
+campaign, the greatest difficulty was experienced in finding a
+candidate, and each one proposed, demanded time to consider the
+proposition. During this period he invariably became the recipient of
+the alderman's bounty. The first one, who was foreman of a large
+factory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that the
+city institutions would use the product of his firm. The second one, a
+keeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was
+promised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the
+expiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and
+it may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and
+successfully elected. The third proposed candidate received a place for
+his son in the office of the city attorney.
+
+Not only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. Any
+requests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the
+alderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides.
+There is thus constant opportunity for the alderman to put his
+constituents under obligations to him, to make it difficult for a
+constituent to withstand him, or for one with large interests to enter
+into political action at all. From the Italian pedler who wants a
+license to peddle fruit in the street, to the large manufacturing
+company who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of conveying pipes
+from one building to another, everybody is under obligations to his
+alderman, and is constantly made to feel it. In short, these very
+regulations for presenting requests to the council have been made, by
+the aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of increasing the
+dependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting aldermanic
+power and prestige.
+
+The alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of
+his ward. The paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his
+district, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side
+holds him responsible for this condition, and promises better paving
+under another régime. But the paving could not be made better without a
+special assessment upon the property owners of the vicinity, and paying
+more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not want to do. In
+reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing the time of the
+improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he performs. A movement
+to have the paving done from a general fund would doubtless be opposed
+by the property owners in other parts of the city who have already paid
+for the asphalt bordering their own possessions, but they have no
+conception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy which repaving may
+mean to the small property owner, nor how his chief concern may be to
+elect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and pocket-books of
+his constituents than he does for the repute and cleanliness of his
+city.
+
+The alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his
+down-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars with which to
+uniform and equip a boys' temperance brigade which had been formed in
+one of the ward churches a few months before his campaign. Is it strange
+that the good leader, whose heart was filled with innocent pride as he
+looked upon these promising young scions of virtue, should decline to
+enter into a reform campaign? Of what use to suggest that uniforms and
+bayonets for the purpose of promoting temperance, bought with money
+contributed by a man who was proprietor of a saloon and a gambling
+house, might perhaps confuse the ethics of the young soldiers? Why take
+the pains to urge that it was vain to lecture and march abstract virtues
+into them, so long as the "champion boodler" of the town was the man
+whom the boys recognized as a loyal and kindhearted friend, the
+public-spirited citizen, whom their fathers enthusiastically voted for,
+and their mothers called "the friend of the poor." As long as the actual
+and tangible success is thus embodied, marching whether in kindergartens
+or brigades, talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to change
+the code of ethics.
+
+The question of where does the money come from which is spent so
+successfully, does of course occur to many minds. The more primitive
+people accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to
+their moral sense. To their simple minds he gets it "from the rich" and,
+so long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true Robin Hood, with
+open hand, they have no objections to offer. Their ethics are quite
+honestly those of the merry-making foresters. The next less primitive
+people of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the
+"gang" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he
+makes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to
+steer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal
+pay; that he is, in short, a successful "boodler." When, however, there
+is intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to
+make the contention that this is universally done, that all the
+aldermen do it more or less successfully, but that the alderman of this
+particular ward is unique in being so generous; that such a state of
+affairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that is the way business
+is run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man who is close to the
+people gets a large share of the spoils; that he serves franchised
+companies who employ men in the building and construction of their
+enterprises, and that they are bound in return to give work to his
+constituents. It is again the justification of stealing from the rich to
+give to the poor. Even when they are intelligent enough to complete the
+circle, and to see that the money comes, not from the pockets of the
+companies' agents, but from the street-car fares of people like
+themselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two cents more
+each time they ride than to give up the consciousness that they have a
+big, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in an
+emergency. The sense of just dealing comes apparently much later than
+the desire for protection and indulgence. On the whole, the gifts and
+favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of genuine loving-kindness.
+The alderman is really elected because he is a good friend and neighbor.
+He is corrupt, of course, but he is not elected because he is corrupt,
+but rather in spite of it. His standard suits his constituents. He
+exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type of a good man. He has
+attained what his constituents secretly long for.
+
+At one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly
+called "Con Row." The term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is
+nevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are
+occupied by professional office holders. This row is supposed to form a
+happy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in
+prosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. It
+would be difficult to justly estimate the influence which this group of
+successful, prominent men, including the alderman who lives there, have
+had upon the ideals of the youth in the vicinity. The path which leads
+to riches and success, to civic prominence and honor, is the path of
+political corruption. We might compare this to the path laid out by
+Benjamin Franklin, who also secured all of these things, but told young
+men that they could be obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal
+living, by the cultivation of the mind, and the holding fast to
+righteousness; or, again, we might compare it to the ideals which were
+held up to the American youth fifty years ago, lower, to be sure, than
+the revolutionary ideal, but still fine and aspiring toward honorable
+dealing and careful living. They were told that the career of the
+self-made man was open to every American boy, if he worked hard and
+saved his money, improved his mind, and followed a steady ambition. The
+writer remembers that when she was ten years old, the village
+schoolmaster told his little flock, without any mitigating clauses,
+that Jay Gould had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by always
+saving bits of string, and that, as a result, every child in the village
+assiduously collected party-colored balls of twine. A bright Chicago boy
+might well draw the inference that the path of the corrupt politician
+not only leads to civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and
+philanthropy. This lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is
+perhaps the worst of the situation, for, as we said in the first
+chapter, we determine ideals by our daily actions and decisions not only
+for ourselves, but largely for each other.
+
+We are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the
+community stand indicted. This is the penalty of a democracy,--that we
+are bound to move forward or retrograde together. None of us can stand
+aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the
+same air.
+
+That the alderman has much to do with setting the standard of life and
+desirable prosperity may be illustrated by the following incident:
+During one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew a poster
+representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne
+at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other
+revellers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, who sat
+upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a workingman's
+dinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of representative he
+preferred, the presumption being that at least in a workingman's
+district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the chagrin of the
+reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular
+mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so
+desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a
+diamond in his shirt front. The district wished its representative "to
+stand up with the best of them," and certainly some of the constituents
+would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer. It is
+part of that general desire to appear well, the optimistic and
+thoroughly American belief, that even if a man is working with his hands
+to-day, he and his children will quite likely be in a better position in
+the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no need of being too closely
+associated with common working people. There is an honest absence of
+class consciousness, and a naïve belief that the kind of occupation
+quite largely determines social position. This is doubtless exaggerated
+in a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact that as each nationality
+becomes more adapted to American conditions, the scale of its occupation
+rises. Fifty years ago in America "a Dutchman" was used as a term of
+reproach, meaning a man whose language was not understood, and who
+performed menial tasks, digging sewers and building railroad
+embankments. Later the Irish did the same work in the community, but as
+quickly as possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name
+"dago" is said to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman
+resigned to him. The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact.
+In a political speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly
+reproached the alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of
+sitting in an office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs"
+of sweeping the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise
+in life, to be at least politically represented by one of the best, as
+to occupation and social status, has also its negative side. We must
+remember that the imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and
+that the loss of social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps
+most dreaded by the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct,
+the power to give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but
+feebly developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, is
+afforded by the simple desire to do what others do, in order to share
+with them the approval of the community. Of course, the larger the
+number of people among whom an habitual mode of conduct obtains, the
+greater the constraint it puts upon the individual will. Thus it is that
+the political corruption of the city presses most heavily where it can
+be least resisted, and is most likely to be imitated.
+
+According to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are
+bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the
+water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant
+springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes
+from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not
+enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the
+discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The
+prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat
+with the "boss" politician or preserve his independence on a smaller
+income; but to an Italian day laborer it is a choice between obeying the
+commands of a political "boss" or practical starvation. Again, a more
+intelligent man may philosophize a little upon the present state of
+corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of our commercialism,
+from which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he may give himself the
+solace of literature and ideals in other directions, but the more
+ignorant man who lives only in the narrow present has no such resource;
+slowly the conviction enters his mind that politics is a matter of
+favors and positions, that self-government means pleasing the "boss" and
+standing in with the "gang." This slowly acquired knowledge he hands on
+to his family. During the month of February his boy may come home from
+school with rather incoherent tales about Washington and Lincoln, and
+the father may for the moment be fired to tell of Garibaldi, but such
+talk is only periodic, and the long year round the fortunes of the
+entire family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend
+upon the "boss."
+
+In a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation
+depend upon him. To use a former illustration, if a man happens to have
+a taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes
+to those houses which are protected by political influence. If he and
+his friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to
+hear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he
+is breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be
+exempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is
+friendly to him and expects his allegiance in return.
+
+During the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local
+speakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from
+other parts of the town, from the so-called "better element." Suddenly
+it was rumored on all sides that, while the money and speakers for the
+reform candidate were coming from the swells, the money which was
+backing the corrupt alderman also came from a swell source; that the
+president of a street-car combination, for whom he performed constant
+offices in the city council, was ready to back him to the extent of
+fifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a good man, and
+sat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum of money to
+an educational institution and was therefore as philanthropic, not to
+say good and upright, as any man in town; that the corrupt alderman had
+the sanction of the highest authorities, and that the lecturers who were
+talking against corruption, and the selling and buying of franchises,
+were only the cranks, and not the solid business men who had developed
+and built up Chicago.
+
+All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. If
+the so-called more enlightened members accept corporate gifts from the
+man who buys up the council, and the so-called less enlightened members
+accept individual gifts from the man who sells out the council, we
+surely must take our punishment together. There is the difference, of
+course, that in the first case we act collectively, and in the second
+case individually; but is the punishment which follows the first any
+lighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the more obvious
+one which follows the second?
+
+Have our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use Mr. Chapman's
+generalization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or
+educational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked
+when the saloon interest is thus served?
+
+The street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do
+business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral
+level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a
+saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal class, and
+questionable money with which to debauch his constituents. Both sets of
+men assume that the only appeal possible is along the line of
+self-interest. They frankly acknowledge money getting as their own
+motive power, and they believe in the cupidity of all the men whom they
+encounter. No attempt in either case is made to put forward the claims
+of the public, or to find a moral basis for action. As the corrupt
+politician assumes that public morality is impossible, so many business
+men become convinced that to pay tribute to the corrupt aldermen is on
+the whole cheaper than to have taxes too high; that it is better to pay
+exorbitant rates for franchises, than to be made unwilling partners in
+transportation experiments. Such men come to regard political reformers
+as a sort of monomaniac, who are not reasonable enough to see the
+necessity of the present arrangement which has slowly been evolved and
+developed, and upon which business is safely conducted. A reformer who
+really knew the people and their great human needs, who believed that
+it was the business of government to serve them, and who further
+recognized the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would
+possess a clew by which he might analyze the situation. He would find
+out what needs, which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which
+the city itself could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which
+pander to the lower instincts of the constituency. A mother who eats her
+Christmas turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman
+who gave it to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of
+appreciation and gratitude to the city which supplies her little
+children with a Kindergarten, or, to the Board of Health which properly
+placarded a case of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless
+nights and wearing anxiety, as well as the money paid with such
+difficulty to the doctor and the druggist. The man who in his emotional
+gratitude almost kneels before his political friend who gets his boy out
+of jail, might be made to see the kindness and good sense of the city
+authorities who provided the boy with a playground and reading room,
+where he might spend his hours of idleness and restlessness, and through
+which his temptations to petty crime might be averted. A man who is
+grateful to the alderman who sees that his gambling and racing are not
+interfered with, might learn to feel loyal and responsible to the city
+which supplied him with a gymnasium and swimming tank where manly and
+well-conducted sports are possible. The voter who is eager to serve the
+alderman at all times, because the tenure of his job is dependent upon
+aldermanic favor, might find great relief and pleasure in working for
+the city in which his place was secured by a well-administered civil
+service law.
+
+After all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and
+largely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is
+good to you, who understands you, and who gets you out of trouble. All
+the social life of the voter from the time he was a little boy and
+played "craps" with his "own push," and not with some other "push," has
+been founded on this sense of loyalty and of standing in with his
+friends. Now that he is a man, he likes the sense of being inside a
+political organization, of being trusted with political gossip, of
+belonging to a set of fellows who understand things, and whose interests
+are being cared for by a strong friend in the city council itself. All
+this is perfectly legitimate, and all in the line of the development of
+a strong civic loyalty, if it were merely socialized and enlarged. Such
+a voter has already proceeded in the forward direction in so far as he
+has lost the sense of isolation, and has abandoned the conviction that
+city government does not touch his individual affairs. Even Mill claims
+that the social feelings of man, his desire to be at unity with his
+fellow-creatures, are the natural basis for morality, and he defines a
+man of high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an
+isolated individual, but as a part in a social organism.
+
+Upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure
+of civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that
+his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that
+they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied
+for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen
+into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual
+for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of
+life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the
+community, and rises into a sense of the common weal.
+
+In order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual
+needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important
+as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of
+self-interest. The demand should be universalized; in this process it
+would also become clarified, and the basis of our political organization
+become perforce social and ethical.
+
+Would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself,
+because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social
+development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made
+over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? The former at least
+are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express
+itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a
+whole.
+
+The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good
+citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to
+make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that
+curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous
+do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient,
+and that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to
+the self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly
+regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for
+the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences"
+singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand
+quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the
+surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are akin to that
+state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the
+eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have
+ever and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in
+revolt against the conventionalized good.
+
+The success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of
+administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly
+elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and
+selfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister
+to genuine social needs, through the political machinery, and at the
+same time to remodel that machinery so that it shall be adequate to its
+new task, is to encounter the inevitable discomfort of a transition into
+a new type of democratic relation. The perplexing experiences of the
+actual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own. The
+economist who treats the individual cases as mere data, and the social
+reformer who labors to make such cases impossible, solely because of the
+appeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they
+feel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth, working
+outward from within; before they can gain the exhilaration and uplift
+which comes when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into
+the forward intuitive movement of the mass. This general movement is not
+without its intellectual aspects, but it has to be transferred from the
+region of perception to that of emotion before it is really
+apprehended. The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional
+incentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of the
+perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great source of
+vitality.
+
+Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are
+attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises
+from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their
+efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are
+reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social
+conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression
+for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the
+sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but
+observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that
+a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with
+the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged
+to act upon our theory. A stirring appeal has lately been made by a
+recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that "It is insanity to
+expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. We arrive at moral
+knowledge only by tentative and observant practice. We learn how to
+apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the old and having
+found it to fail."
+
+This necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the
+undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those
+who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with
+the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that
+not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social
+morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often
+at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.
+
+The power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious
+mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible
+intelligence. In the range of individual morals, we have learned to
+distrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the
+world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. The result, as well as
+the process of virtues attained by repression, has become distasteful to
+us. When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the
+cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result
+may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over
+with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. In this effort
+toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that
+the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal
+achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in
+connection with the activity of the many.
+
+The cry of "Back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when
+we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of
+"Back to Christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows and
+believe in our common experiences as a preparation for a new moral
+struggle.
+
+As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it
+has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the
+curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the
+whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us
+whatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in
+"Master and Man." The former saves his servant from freezing, by
+protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled
+with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of
+which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living
+that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great
+multitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead
+understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and
+therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the
+misunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and
+all life's fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and
+Great Experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and
+forgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and its manifold
+experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX[1]
+
+
+Alderman, basis of his political success, 226, 228, 240, 243, 248, 267;
+  his influence on morals of the American boy, 251, 255, 256;
+  on standard of life, 257;
+  his power, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260;
+  his social duties, 234, 236, 243, 250.
+
+Art and the workingman, 219, 225.
+
+
+"Boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, 260, 266.
+
+Business college, the, 197.
+
+
+Charity, administration of, 14, 22;
+  neighborly relations in, 29, 230;
+  organized, 25;
+  standards in, 15, 27, 32, 38, 49, 58;
+  scientific _vs._ human relations in, 64.
+
+Child labor, premature work, 41, 188;
+  first laws concerning, 167, 170.
+
+City, responsibilities of, 266.
+
+Civil service law, its enforcement, 231, 233.
+
+Commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, 193.
+
+Commercialism and education, 190-199, 216;
+  morals captured by, 264;
+  polytechnic schools taken by, 202.
+
+Coöperation, 153, 158.
+
+Cooper, Peter, 202.
+
+
+Dayton, Ohio, factory at, 216.
+
+Death and burials among simple people, 238.
+
+Domestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, 135;
+  industrial difficulty of, 106;
+  moral issues of, 106.
+
+
+Education, attempts at industrial, 201;
+  commercialism in, 196, 201;
+  in commercialism, 216;
+  in technical schools, 201;
+  lack of adaptation in, 199, 208, 212;
+  of industrial workers, 180, 193, 199, 219;
+  offset to overspecialization, 211;
+  public school and, 190, 192;
+  relation of, to the child, 180, 185, 193;
+  relation of, to the immigrant, 181-186;
+  university extension lectures and settlements, 199;
+  workingmen's lecture courses, 214.
+
+Educators, mistakes of, 212;
+  new demands on, 178, 192, 201, 211.
+
+
+Family claim, the, 4, 74, 78;
+  daughter's college education, 82;
+  employer's _vs._ domestic's, 123, 124;
+  on the daughter, 82;
+  on the son, _ibid._
+
+Family life, misconception of, 116.
+
+Filial relations, clash of moral codes, 94.
+
+Funerals, attitude of simple people toward, 238.
+
+
+Household employee, the, 108, 109;
+  character of, 112;
+  domestic _vs._ factory, 116, 118, 119, 122;
+  isolation of, 109, 111, 117, 120, 132;
+  morals of, 125;
+  unnatural relation of, 113, 120, 121, 126, 127;
+  unreasonable demands on, 113, 115;
+  residence clubs for, 133;
+  social position of, 114, 119, 122.
+
+Household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, 116;
+  reform of, in relation to employee, 126.
+
+Household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, 129;
+  competition of factory work with, 128;
+  difficulties of the small, 135;
+  industrial isolation of, 117;
+  industry of, transferred to factory, 104, 105;
+  lack of progress in, 117;
+  origin of, 104;
+  social _vs._ individual aspects of, 103;
+  suburban difficulties of, 134;
+  wages in, 131.
+
+Hull-house experiences, 43, 53, 58, 59, 240, 247.
+
+Human life, value of, 7, 178.
+
+
+Individual action _vs._ associated, 137, 153, 158;
+  advantages of, 158, 162;
+  limitations of, 165;
+  moral evolution involved in, 226.
+
+Individual _vs._ social needs, 155, 269.
+
+Individual _vs._ social virtues, 224, 227, 265.
+
+Italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, 229;
+  dependence of, on their children, 184;
+  education of, 185;
+  new conditions of life of, 181.
+
+
+Juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, 53-56, 187.
+
+
+Labor, division of, 210, 213;
+  reaction from, 215.
+
+Law and order, 172, 174, 234.
+
+
+Moral fact and moral idea, 227, 229, 273.
+
+Morality, natural basis of, 268;
+  personal and social, 6, 176, 103.
+
+
+Philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, 150, 155-157.
+
+Philanthropist, the, 154, 175-176.
+
+Political corruption, ethical development in, 270;
+  formation of reform clubs, 246;
+  greatest pressure of, 260;
+  individual and social aspect of, 264;
+  leniency in regard to, 239;
+  responsibility for, 256, 263;
+  selling of votes, 244-246;
+  street railway and saloon interest, 262.
+
+Political leaders, causes of success of, 224.
+
+Political standards, 228, 229, 251-253, 261;
+  compared with Benjamin Franklin's, 255.
+
+
+Referendum method, the, 164.
+
+Reformer, the, ethics of, 270.
+
+Reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, 222, 240, 262, 272, 274;
+  business men's attitude toward, 265.
+
+Rumford, Count, 117.
+
+Ruskin, 219.
+
+
+Saloon, the, 243, 264.
+
+Social claim, the, 4, 77;
+  child study and, 92, 180;
+  misplaced energy and, 90.
+
+Social virtues, code of employer, 143, 148;
+  code of laboring man, _ibid._
+
+
+Technical schools, 201;
+  adaptation of, to workingmen, 204;
+  compromises in, 203;
+  polytechnic institutions, 202;
+  textile schools, 203;
+  women in, _ibid._
+
+Thrift, individualism of, 31, 40, 212.
+
+Trades unions, 148, 158, 167, 169, 171;
+  sympathetic strikes, 174.
+
+
+Workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, 191, 258;
+  art in relation to, 218;
+  charity of, 154;
+  evening classes and social entertainment for, 189;
+  grievance of, 211;
+  historical perspective in the work of, _ibid._;
+  organizations of, 214;
+  standards for political candidate, 257.
+
+[Footnote 1: This index is not intended to be exhaustive.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Democracy and Social Ethics
+
+Author: Jane Addams
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2005 [EBook #15487]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alicia Williams, Joel Schlosberg and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_i">The Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and
+Sociology</a></h2>
+
+<h6>UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF</h6>
+
+<h4>RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D, LL.D.</h4>
+
+<p><small><i>Director of the School of Economics and Political Science; Professor of
+Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin</i></small></p>
+
+<h5>12mo.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Half Leather.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$1.25, net, each</h5></center>
+
+<hr width="25%">
+
+<p><b>Monopolies and Trusts</b>. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D.<br>
+
+<small>"It is admirable. It is the soundest contribution on the subject that
+has appeared."&mdash;Professor JOHN R. COMMONS.<br>
+
+"By all odds the best written of Professor Ely's work."<br>&mdash;
+Professor SIMON N. PATTEN, <i>University of Pennsylvania</i>.</small><br>
+
+<b>Outlines of Economics</b>. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D., author of
+"Monopolies and Trusts," etc.<br>
+
+<b>The Economics of Distribution</b>. By JOHN A. HOBSON, author of "The
+Evolution of Modern Capitalism," etc.<br>
+
+<b>World Politics</b>. By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Assistant Professor
+of Political Science, University of Wisconsin.<br>
+
+<b>Economic Crises</b>. By EDWARD D. JONES, Ph.D., Instructor in Economics
+and Statistics, University of Wisconsin.<br>
+
+<b>Government in Switzerland</b>. By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, Ph.D., Associate
+Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University.<br>
+
+<b>Political Parties in the United States, 1846-1861</b>. By JESSE MACY,
+LL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College.<br>
+
+<b>Essays on the Monetary History of the United States</b>. By CHARLES J.
+BULLOCK, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Williams College.<br>
+
+<b>Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order</b>. By EDWARD
+ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D.<br>
+
+<b>Municipal Engineering and Sanitation</b>. By W.N. BAKER, Ph.B., Associate
+Editor of <i>Engineering News</i>.</p>
+
+<hr width="25%">
+
+<center><h3>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h3>
+
+<h5>66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK</h5></center>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<center><h3><a name="page_ii"><b><u>In Preparation for Early Issue</u></b></a></h3></center>
+
+<h3>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>By JANE ADDAMS, Head of "Hull House," Chicago; joint author of
+"Philanthropy and Social Progress." (<i>Now ready.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><small>Miss Addams' Settlement Work is known to all who are interested in
+social amelioration and municipal conditions. As the title of her book
+shows, it will be occupied with the reciprocal relations of ethical
+progress and the growth of democratic thought, sentiment, and
+institutions.</small></p>
+
+<h3>CUSTOM AND COMPETITION</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>By RICHARD T. ELY, LL.D., Professor of Political Economy and Director of
+the School of Economics and Political Science in the University of
+Wisconsin; President of the American Economic Association; author of
+"Monopolies and Trusts," etc.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><small>Topics treated under Custom include the Rent of Land and Custom;
+Interest and Custom; The Remuneration of Personal Services and Custom;
+Custom and Commerce.</small></p>
+
+<p><small>Competition is first discussed with reference to the biological aspects
+of the question, and the significance of subhuman competition is
+confined and a careful classification of its various kinds is presented.
+One of the main topics of the book is Competition as a Principle of
+Distribution, and its treatment of the subject of price admirably
+supplements the theoretical discussion in "Monopolies and Trusts."</small></p>
+
+<h3>AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>By CHARLES ZUEBLIN, B.D., Associate Professor of Sociology in the
+University of Chicago.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><small>This work takes up the problem of the so-called public utilities, public
+schools, libraries, children's playgrounds, public baths, public
+gymnasiums, etc. The discussion is from the standpoint of public welfare
+and is based on repeated personal investigations in leading cities of
+Europe, especially England and the United States.</small></p>
+
+<h3>COLONIAL GOVERNMENT</h3>
+
+<blockquote><p>By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Professor of Political Science in the
+University of Wisconsin; Author of "World Politics at the End of the
+Nineteenth Century as Influenced by the Oriental Situation."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><small>By the author of the "World Politics," which met so cordial a reception
+from students of modern political history. The main divisions of the
+book are: Motives and Methods of Colonization; Forms of Colonial
+Government; Relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies;
+Internal Government of the Colonies; The Special Colonial Problems of
+the United States.</small></p>
+
+<hr width="25%">
+
+<center><h2>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h2>
+
+<h4>66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK</h4></center>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<center><a name="page_iii"></a><h4>THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY</h4>
+
+<h6>OF</h6>
+
+<h3>ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND SOCIOLOGY</h3>
+
+<h5>EDITED BY</h5>
+
+<h4>RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.</h4>
+
+<h6>DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF
+WISCONSIN</h6>
+
+<hr width="10%">
+
+<h4>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</h4></center>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<table width="60%" border="1" align="center" summary="The Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and Sociology">
+<tr>
+<td align="center"><a name="page_iv"><b>THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND
+SOCIOLOGY.</b></a><br>
+
+12mo.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Half leather.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$1.25 <i>net</i> each.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="center"><b>MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS.</b><br>
+BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.<br>
+
+<b>THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION.</b><br>
+BY JOHN A. HOBSON.<br>
+
+<b>WORLD POLITICS.</b><br>
+BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.<br>
+
+<b>ECONOMIC CRISES.</b><br>
+BY EDWARD D. JONES, PH.D.<br>
+
+<b>OUTLINE OF ECONOMICS.</b><br>
+BY RICHARD T. ELY.<br>
+
+<b>GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND.</b><br>
+BY JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, PH.D.<br>
+
+<b>ESSAYS IN THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.</b><br>
+BY CHARLES J. BULLOCK, PH.D.<br>
+
+<b>SOCIAL CONTROL.</b><br>
+BY EDWARD A. ROSS, PH.D.<br>
+
+<b>HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.</b><br>
+BY JESSE MACY, LL.D.<br>
+
+<b>MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION.</b><br>
+BY M.N. BAKER, PH.B.<br>
+
+<b>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS.</b><br>
+BY JANE ADDAMS.<br>
+
+<b>COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.</b><br>
+BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.<br>
+
+<hr width="25%">
+
+<i>IN PREPARATION.</i><br>
+
+<b>CUSTOM AND COMPETITION.</b><br>
+BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.<br>
+
+<b>MUNICIPAL SOCIOLOGY.</b><br>
+BY CHARLES ZUEBLIN.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,<br>
+66 FIFTH AVENUE.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr>
+
+<center><h4><a name="page_v"><i>THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY</i></a></h4>
+
+<hr width="15%">
+
+<br>
+
+<h1>DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</h1>
+
+<br>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+<h3>JANE ADDAMS</h3>
+<h6>HULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO</h6>
+
+<br>
+
+<h4>New York</h4>
+<h3>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</h3>
+<h5>LONDON: MACMILLAN &amp; CO., LTD.</h5>
+<h5>1902</h5></center>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<p><a name="page_vi"></a>Set up and electrotyped March, 1902. Reprinted
+June, September, 1902.</p>
+
+<center><p>Norwood Press<br>
+J.S. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith<br>
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.</p></center>
+
+<hr>
+<p>To: M.R.S.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_vii">PREFATORY NOTE</a></h2></center>
+
+
+<p>The following pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures
+on "Democracy and Social Ethics" which have been delivered at various
+colleges and university extension centres.</p>
+
+<p>In putting them into the form of a book, no attempt has been made to
+change the somewhat informal style used in speaking. The "we" and "us"
+which originally referred to the speaker and her audience are merely
+extended to possible readers.</p>
+
+<p>Acknowledgment for permission to reprint is extended to <i>The Atlantic
+Monthly</i>, <i>The International Journal of Ethics</i>, <i>The American Journal
+of Sociology</i>, and to <i>The Commons</i>.</p>
+
+<a name="page_viii"></a>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_ix">CONTENTS</a></h2></center>
+
+<br>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER I</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Introduction, page 1">
+<tr>
+<td></td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_001">INTRODUCTION</a></td><td align="right">1</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER II</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Charitable Effort, page 13">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_013">CHARITABLE EFFORT</A></td><td align="right">13</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER III</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Filial Relations, page 71">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_071">FILIAL RELATIONS</a></td><td align="right">71</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER IV</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Household Adjustment, page 102">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_102">HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT</a></td><td align="right">102</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER V</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Industrial Amelioration, page 137">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_137">INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION</a></td><td align="right">137</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER VI</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Educational Methods, page 178">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_178">EDUCATIONAL METHODS</a></td><td align="right">178</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<center><h4>CHAPTER VII</h4></center>
+
+<table width="100%" summary="Political Reform, page 221; Index, page 279">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_221">POLITICAL REFORM</a></td><td align="right">221</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#page_279">INDEX</a></td><td align="right">279</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr>
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_001">DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS</a></h2>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h4>INTRODUCTION</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but
+another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of
+every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life
+becomes meaningless.</p>
+
+<p>Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the
+community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from
+stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much
+voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal
+would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and
+expectation which makes virtue easy. In the same way we have been
+carefully reared to a sense <a name="page_002"></a> of family
+obligation, to be kindly and considerate to the members of our own
+households, and to feel responsible for their well-being. As the rules
+of conduct have become established in regard to our self-development and
+our families, so they have been in regard to limited circles of friends.
+If the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life
+required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and
+women, and the clew of right living would lie easily in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>But we all know that each generation has its own test, the
+contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately
+judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately
+use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed
+include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no
+more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have
+"arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.</p>
+
+<p>To attain individual morality in an age <a name="page_003"></a>
+demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of
+personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to
+fail to apprehend the situation.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us
+that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of
+the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are
+not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the
+poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry?</p>
+
+<p>All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to
+their attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round
+of uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite,
+the declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food
+which characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their
+fellow-citizens. These men and women have caught a moral challenge
+raised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered,
+others who are denied <a name="page_004"></a> the relief which sturdy
+action brings are even seeking an escape, but all are increasingly
+anxious concerning their actual relations to the basic organization of
+society.</p>
+
+<p>The test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They
+fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal
+obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand
+involving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another
+requirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of
+social ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet
+expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a
+mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between
+their consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer
+definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a
+part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality.
+In the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is
+becoming clear: if the latter <a name="page_005"></a> day moral ideal
+is in reality that of a social morality, it is inevitable that those who
+desire it must be brought in contact with the moral experiences of the
+many in order to procure an adequate social motive.</p>
+
+<p>These men and women have realized this and have disclosed the fact in
+their eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the
+life about them. They believe that experience gives the easy and
+trustworthy impulse toward right action in the broad as well as in the
+narrow relations. We may indeed imagine many of them saying: "Cast our
+experiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the
+larger social aims. We have met the obligations of our family life, not
+because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because
+of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation
+naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare
+ourselves for the larger social duties." Such a demand is reasonable,
+for by our daily experience we have <a name="page_006"></a> discovered
+that we cannot mechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in
+rare moments of exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that
+even as the ideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the
+strength to attain it must be secured from interest in life itself. We
+slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and
+that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of
+one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a
+conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the
+well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the
+essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a
+rule of living as well as a test of faith.</p>
+
+<p>We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by
+travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common
+road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size
+of one another's burdens. To follow the path <a name="page_007"></a> of
+social morality results perforce in the temper if not the practice of
+the democratic spirit, for it implies that diversified human experience
+and resultant sympathy which are the foundation and guarantee of
+Democracy.</p>
+
+<p>There are many indications that this conception of Democracy is growing
+among us. We have come to have an enormous interest in human life as
+such, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness. We do not
+believe that genuine experience can lead us astray any more than
+scientific data can.</p>
+
+<p>We realize, too, that social perspective and sanity of judgment come
+only from contact with social experience; that such contact is the
+surest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and
+concerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. Indeed, it is a
+consciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and
+more thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that
+new curiosity <a name="page_008"></a> regarding human life which has
+more of a moral basis than an intellectual one.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers, in a frank reflection of popular demand, exhibit an
+omniverous curiosity equally insistent upon the trivial and the
+important. They are perhaps the most obvious manifestations of that
+desire to know, that "What is this?" and "Why do you do that?" of the
+child. The first dawn of the social consciousness takes this form, as
+the dawning intelligence of the child takes the form of constant
+question and insatiate curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Literature, too, portrays an equally absorbing though better adjusted
+desire to know all kinds of life. The popular books are the novels,
+dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely
+read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a
+measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all
+sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social
+adjustment&mdash;for the remedying of social ills.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_009"></a>Doubtless one under the conviction of sin in
+regard to social ills finds a vague consolation in reading about the
+lives of the poor, and derives a sense of complicity in doing good. He
+likes to feel that he knows about social wrongs even if he does not
+remedy them, and in a very genuine sense there is a foundation for this
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>Partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a
+new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world
+before. Evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only
+that man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the criminal.
+We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and
+hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a
+realization of the experiences of other people. Already there is a
+conviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our
+experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately <a
+name="page_010"></a> determine our understanding of life. We know
+instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and
+consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we
+have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously
+circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics.</p>
+
+<p>We can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one
+common characteristic,&mdash;the conviction that they are different from
+other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they
+are more sensitive or more refined. Such people "refuse to be bound by
+any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration,
+or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed." We have
+learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the
+will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which
+deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say
+that they illustrate the danger of <a name="page_011"></a>
+concentrating the mind on narrow and unprogressive issues.</p>
+
+<p>We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and
+democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social
+expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the
+identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of
+Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as
+though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience,
+because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry
+us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and
+jostle of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who
+are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance
+of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct.
+No attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the
+assumption that the cure for the ills of <a name="page_012"></a>
+Democracy is more Democracy, but the quite unlooked-for result of the
+studies would seem to indicate that while the strain and perplexity of
+the situation is felt most keenly by the educated and self-conscious
+members of the community, the tentative and actual attempts at
+adjustment are largely coming through those who are simpler and less
+analytical.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_013">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+<h4>CHARITABLE EFFORT</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy,
+which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away
+from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to
+act upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a
+course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct,
+which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing
+moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the
+strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon
+another.</p>
+
+<p>Probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing
+more <a name="page_014"></a> rapidly than the charitable relation&mdash;that
+relation which obtains between benefactor and beneficiary; at the same
+time there is no point of contact in our modern experience which reveals
+so clearly the lack of that equality which democracy implies. We have
+reached the moment when democracy has made such inroads upon this
+relationship, that the complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man
+is gone forever; while, at the same time, the very need and existence of
+charity, denies us the consolation and freedom which democracy will at
+last give.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined,
+and we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon
+convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of
+environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our
+methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was
+believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that <a
+name="page_015"></a> the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity
+was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable
+agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of
+his own superior prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior
+morality. We have learned since that time to measure by other standards,
+and have ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive
+respect; while it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other,
+its possession is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the
+highest moral qualities. We have learned to judge men by their social
+virtues as well as by their business capacity, by their devotion to
+intellectual and disinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we
+naturally resent being obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the
+industrial side. Our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is
+largely in this modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic
+standard, while the old charitable <a name="page_016"></a> attitude
+commonly allowed the use of two standards, that much of the difficulty
+adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil becomes wearing and
+brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable if we judge large
+numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in maintaining it.</p>
+
+<p>The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house
+made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is
+no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her
+hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over
+against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained
+only through status.</p>
+
+<p>The only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those
+who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through
+sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable
+reasons; but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing, and
+must be bolstered and helped into industrial health. The charity
+visitor, <a name="page_017"></a> let us assume, is a young college
+woman, well-bred and open-minded; when she visits the family assigned to
+her, she is often embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the
+stress of her teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to
+treat the members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the
+industrial system. She insists that they must work and be
+self-supporting, that the most dangerous of all situations is idleness,
+that seeking one's own pleasure, while ignoring claims and
+responsibilities, is the most ignoble of actions. The members of her
+assigned family may have other charms and virtues&mdash;they may possibly be
+kind and considerate of each other, generous to their friends, but it is
+her business to stick to the industrial side. As she daily holds up
+these standards, it often occurs to the mind of the sensitive visitor,
+whose conscience has been made tender by much talk of brotherhood and
+equality, that she has no right to say these things; that her untrained
+<a name="page_018"></a> hands are no more fitted to cope with actual
+conditions than those of her broken-down family.</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial
+preaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and
+housewifely training. In a generation our experiences have changed, and
+our views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which
+could be applied when our consciences were in line with them, but which
+are daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work
+with their hands and those who do not. The charity visitor belonging to
+the latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the
+situation forces upon her. Our democracy has taught us to apply our
+moral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so
+sensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical convictions,
+he finds it difficult to preach.</p>
+
+<p>Added to this is a consciousness, in the <a name="page_019"></a> mind
+of the visitor, of a genuine misunderstanding of her motives by the
+recipients of her charity, and by their neighbors. Let us take a
+neighborhood of poor people, and test their ethical standards by those
+of the charity visitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to
+help them out of their distress. A most striking incongruity, at once
+apparent, is the difference between the emotional kindness with which
+relief is given by one poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the
+guarded care with which relief is given by a charity visitor to a
+charity recipient. The neighborhood mind is at once confronted not only
+by the difference of method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical
+standards.</p>
+
+<p>A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is
+sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly
+relations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything,
+and all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate
+family affairs of all the others. <a name="page_020"></a> The fact that
+the economic condition of all alike is on a most precarious level makes
+the ready outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural
+thing in the world. There are numberless instances of self-sacrifice
+quite unknown in the circles where greater economic advantages make that
+kind of intimate knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish
+family in which the man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling
+to eke out the scanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow and
+her five children who have been turned into the street, without a
+moment's reflection upon the physical discomforts involved. The most
+maligned landlady who lives in the house with her tenants is usually
+ready to lend a scuttle full of coal to one of them who may be out of
+work, or to share her supper. A woman for whom the writer had long tried
+in vain to find work failed to appear at the appointed time when
+employment was secured at last. Upon investigation it transpired that a
+neighbor further <a name="page_021"></a> down the street was taken ill,
+that the children ran for the family friend, who went of course, saying
+simply when reasons for her non-appearance were demanded, "It broke me
+heart to leave the place, but what could I do?" A woman whose husband
+was sent up to the city prison for the maximum term, just three months,
+before the birth of her child found herself penniless at the end of that
+time, having gradually sold her supply of household furniture. She took
+refuge with a friend whom she supposed to be living in three rooms in
+another part of town. When she arrived, however, she discovered that her
+friend's husband had been out of work so long that they had been reduced
+to living in one room. The friend, however, took her in, and the
+friend's husband was obliged to sleep upon a bench in the park every
+night for a week, which he did uncomplainingly if not cheerfully.
+Fortunately it was summer, "and it only rained one night." The writer
+could not discover from the young mother that she had <a
+name="page_022"></a> any special claim upon the "friend" beyond the
+fact that they had formerly worked together in the same factory. The
+husband she had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at
+once went forth in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon
+his promise of future payment.</p>
+
+<p>The evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid
+his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right
+and wrong. There is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many
+people with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that
+their ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged by the
+methods of these agencies. When they see the delay and caution with
+which relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious
+scruple, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. It is
+not the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors,
+and they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to "be
+good to the poor" <a name="page_023"></a> should be so severely
+supervised. They feel, remotely, that the charity visitor is moved by
+motives that are alien and unreal. They may be superior motives, but
+they are different, and they are "agin nature." They cannot comprehend
+why a person whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his
+natural impulses, should go into charity work at all. The only man they
+are accustomed to see whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than
+his tenderness of heart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is
+frankly "on the make." If the charity visitor is such a person, why does
+she pretend to like the poor? Why does she not go into business at once?</p>
+
+<p>We may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus
+confuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite
+honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity
+from time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to
+say: "What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to <a
+name="page_024"></a> give us, why not let us alone and stop your
+questionings and investigations?" "They investigated me for three weeks,
+and in the end gave me nothing but a black character," a little woman
+has been heard to assert. This indignation, which is for the most part
+taciturn, and a certain kindly contempt for her abilities, often puzzles
+the charity visitor. The latter may be explained by the standard of
+worldly success which the visited families hold. Success does not
+ordinarily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and
+kind-heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. The rich
+landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and
+will have his own. There are moments of irritation and of real
+bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is
+rich and successful. The good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares
+his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. He often lives in the back
+of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited;
+but he has been able to accumulate <a name="page_025"></a> little. He
+commands the genuine love and devotion of many a poor soul, but he is
+treated with a certain lack of respect. In one sense he is a failure.
+The charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself
+with the poor, receives a certain amount of this good-natured and kindly
+contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect. The poor
+are accustomed to help each other and to respond according to their
+kindliness; but when it comes to worldly judgment, they use industrial
+success as the sole standard. In the case of the charity visitor who has
+neither natural kindness nor dazzling riches, they are deprived of both
+standards, and they find it of course utterly impossible to judge of the
+motive of organized charity.</p>
+
+<p>Even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in
+altruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something
+distasteful in the juxtaposition of the words "organized" and "charity."
+We say in defence that we are striving to turn this <a
+name="page_026"></a> emotion into a motive, that pity is capricious,
+and not to be depended on; that we mean to give it the dignity of
+conscious duty. But at bottom we distrust a little a scheme which
+substitutes a theory of social conduct for the natural promptings of the
+heart, even although we appreciate the complexity of the situation. The
+poor man who has fallen into distress, when he first asks aid,
+instinctively expects tenderness, consideration, and forgiveness. If it
+is the first time, it has taken him long to make up his mind to take the
+step. He comes somewhat bruised and battered, and instead of being met
+with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at once chilled by an
+investigation and an intimation that he ought to work. He does not
+recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>The only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by
+virtue of their professional training render services which may easily
+be interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to
+obvious needs which do not require investigation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_027"></a>The state of mind which an investigation arouses
+on both sides is most unfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of
+different standards, with the consequent misunderstandings, are not so
+bad as the moral deterioration which is almost sure to follow.</p>
+
+<p>When the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that
+under certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed
+from some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn
+what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a
+glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any
+self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is
+an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize
+that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by
+at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite
+elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor
+they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift <a
+name="page_028"></a> and religious observance. The deception in the
+first instances arises from a wondering inability to understand the
+ethical ideals which can require such impossible virtues, and from an
+innocent desire to please. It is easy to trace the development of the
+mental suggestions thus received. When A discovers that B, who is very
+little worse off than he, receives good things from an inexhaustible
+supply intended for the poor at large, he feels that he too has a claim
+for his share, and step by step there is developed the competitive
+spirit which so horrifies charity visitors when it shows itself in a
+tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies.</p>
+
+<p>The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the
+charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love
+and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The
+spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child
+is turned into righteous indignation against <a name="page_029"></a>
+the district nurse, because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do
+it herself. Or the kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase
+of much needed medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the
+dispensary, because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can
+get well on a piece of paper?"</p>
+
+<p>If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is
+quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to
+mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty
+wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in,
+all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They
+know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she
+has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They
+imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous
+gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought
+to get new shoes for the <a name="page_030"></a> family all round, "she
+sees well enough that they need them." It is no more than the neighbor
+herself would do, has practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The
+charity visitor has broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in
+a primitive society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and
+the resources of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble
+when she is judged by the ethics of that primitive society.</p>
+
+<p>The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their
+own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other
+things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are
+like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady
+visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as
+though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not
+intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?</p>
+
+<p>The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding <a name="page_031"></a>
+her poor family so hard to a standard of thrift she is really breaking
+down a rule of higher living which they formerly possessed; that saving,
+which seems quite commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears
+almost criminal in a poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs
+food, even if the children of the family do not.</p>
+
+<p>She feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the
+industrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago
+honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in
+comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had
+practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained
+whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for
+indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly
+untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity
+visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and
+saving money, the things <a name="page_032"></a> I know nothing about?
+If it were anything else I had to urge, I could do it; anything like
+Latin prose, which I had worried through myself, it would not be so
+hard." But she finds it difficult to connect the experiences of her
+youth with the experiences of the visited family.</p>
+
+<p>Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually
+surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. She
+refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers
+that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors"
+at all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free
+lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not
+able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity
+visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. He may
+listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only
+"temperance talk."</p>
+
+<p>The charity visitor may blame the women <a name="page_033"></a> for
+lack of gentleness toward their children, for being hasty and rude to
+them, until she learns that the standard of breeding is not that of
+gentleness toward the children so much as the observance of certain
+conventions, such as the punctilious wearing of mourning garments after
+the death of a child. The standard of gentleness each mother has to work
+out largely by herself, assisted only by the occasional shame-faced
+remark of a neighbor, "That they do better when you are not too hard on
+them"; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the
+definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street. The mother
+would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism, if she
+failed to comply with that requirement. It is not comfortable to outrage
+the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be
+a narrow one, it is still more difficult. The visitor may choke a little
+when she sees the lessened supply of food and the scanty clothing
+provided for the remaining children in order that one <a
+name="page_034"></a> may be conventionally mourned, but she doesn't
+talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her first
+month of experience with the family since bereaved.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the
+result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The
+girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable
+school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by
+all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even
+shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose
+family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to
+another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,
+knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her
+position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to
+the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social
+advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is
+judged <a name="page_035"></a> largely by her clothes. Her house
+furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations, her scanty supply of
+books, are never seen by the people whose social opinions she most
+values. Her clothes are her background, and from them she is largely
+judged. It is due to this fact that girls' clubs succeed best in the
+business part of town, where "working girls" and "young ladies" meet
+upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially look very
+much alike. Bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town
+clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and
+listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time before joining
+a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be
+judged not solely on their own merits and the unconscious social
+standing afforded by good clothes, but by other surroundings which are
+not nearly up to these. For the same reason, girls' clubs are infinitely
+more difficult to organize in little towns and villages, where every <a
+name="page_036"></a> one knows every one else, just how the front
+parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the house.
+These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment; they
+impede the democratic relationship and add to the self-consciousness of
+all concerned. Every one who has had to do with down-town girls' clubs
+has had the experience of going into the home of some bright,
+well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps wretched,
+and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her, although the
+working girl may not have been at home when the call was made, and the
+visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy throughout. In
+some very successful down-town clubs the home address is not given at
+all, and only the "business address" is required. Have we worked out our
+democracy further in regard to clothes than anything else?</p>
+
+<p>The charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to
+spend <a name="page_037"></a> much money upon clothes, to care so much
+for "appearances." She realizes dimly that the care for personal
+decoration over that for one's home or habitat is in some way primitive
+and undeveloped; but she is silenced by its obvious need. She also
+catches a glimpse of the fact that the disproportionate expenditure of
+the poor in the matter of clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of
+the rich who hide from them the interior of their houses, and their more
+subtle pleasures, while of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and
+their street manners. Every one who goes shopping at the same time may
+see the clothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to
+her receptions see the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her
+library. The poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing
+the street clothes which they have seen. They are striving to conform to
+a common standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to
+all of us. The charity visitor <a name="page_038"></a> may regret that
+the Italian peasant woman has laid aside her picturesque kerchief and
+substituted a cheap street hat. But it is easy to recognize the first
+attempt toward democratic expression.</p>
+
+<p>The charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to
+consider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor; for
+she cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according
+to the conventions which have regulated her own life. She finds both of
+these fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her
+sympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight.
+She discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been, and it
+takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist
+so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit
+the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The
+charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early
+marriages, quite naturally <a name="page_039"></a> because she comes
+from a family and circle of professional and business people. A
+professional man is scarcely equipped and started in his profession
+before he is thirty. A business man, if he is on the road to success, is
+much nearer prosperity at thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is
+therefore wise for these men not to marry in the twenties; but this does
+not apply to the workingman. In many trades he is laid upon the shelf at
+thirty-five, and in nearly all trades he receives the largest wages in
+his life between twenty and thirty. If the young workingman has all his
+wages to himself, he will probably establish habits of personal comfort,
+which he cannot keep up when he has to divide with a family&mdash;habits
+which he can, perhaps, never overcome.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of prudence, the necessity for saving, can never come to a
+primitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the
+necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He
+naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he <a
+name="page_040"></a> expects them to care for him when he gets old, and
+in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite
+lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at
+the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years
+older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. He was,
+in fact, better able to well support a family when he was twenty than
+when he was thirty-five, for his wages had steadily grown less as the
+years went on. Another tailor whom I know, who is also a Socialist,
+always speaks of saving as a bourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to
+the genuine workingman. He supports a family consisting of himself, a
+wife and three children, and his two parents on eight dollars a week. He
+insists it would be criminal not to expend every penny of this amount
+upon food and shelter, and he expects his children later to care for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>This economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to
+work overyoung <a name="page_041"></a> and thus cripple their chances
+for individual development and usefulness, and with the avaricious
+parent also leads to exploitation. "I have fed her for fourteen years,
+now she can help me pay my mortgage" is not an unusual reply when a
+hardworking father is expostulated with because he would take his bright
+daughter out of school and put her into a factory.</p>
+
+<p>It has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly
+urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least
+connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not
+the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been
+taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and
+more social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his
+parents, who are receiving charitable aid. She does not realize what a
+cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>The manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children
+was able <a name="page_042"></a> to show during a child-labor
+investigation, that the only children under fourteen years of age in his
+employ were protégés who had been urged upon him by philanthropic
+ladies, not only acquaintances of his, but valued patrons of the
+establishment. It is not that the charity visitor is less wise than
+other people, but she has fixed her mind so long upon the industrial
+lameness of her family that she is eager to seize any crutch, however
+weak, which may enable them to get on.</p>
+
+<p>She has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely support
+his widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate member to the
+community, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. As she
+has failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of
+marriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she
+fails to understand that the present conditions of employment
+surrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained
+during the energetic youth of her father.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_043"></a>The child who is prematurely put to work is
+constantly oppressed by this never ending question of the means of
+subsistence, and even little children are sometimes almost crushed with
+the cares of life through their affectionate sympathy. The writer knows
+a little Italian lad of six to whom the problems of food, clothing, and
+shelter have become so immediate and pressing that, although an
+imaginative child, he is unable to see life from any other standpoint.
+The goblin or bugaboo, feared by the more fortunate child, in his mind,
+has come to be the need of coal which caused his father hysterical and
+demonstrative grief when it carried off his mother's inherited linen,
+the mosaic of St. Joseph, and, worst of all, his own rubber boots. He
+once came to a party at Hull-House, and was interested in nothing save a
+gas stove which he saw in the kitchen. He became excited over the
+discovery that fire could be produced without fuel. "I will tell my
+father of this stove. You buy no coal, you need only a match. Anybody
+will <a name="page_044"></a> give you a match." He was taken to visit
+at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was paid for it.
+On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no rent for that
+house, he came back quite wild with interest that the problem was
+solved. "Me and my father will go to the country. You get a big house,
+all warm, without rent." Nothing else in the country interested him but
+the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an exclusiveness worthy
+of a single taxer.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near
+the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the
+charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents
+who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn,
+take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with
+them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the
+immature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing
+habits <a name="page_045"></a> of obedience, so that the nerves and
+will may not depart from this control when the child is older. The
+charity visitor, whose family relation is lifted quite out of this, does
+not in the least understand the industrial foundation for this family
+tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>The head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of
+working women, and spoke of the despotism which is often established
+over little children. She said that the so-called determination to break
+a child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged
+the ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. But many of the
+women were puzzled. One of them remarked to the writer as she came out
+of the club room, "If you did not keep control over them from the time
+they were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown
+up." Another one said, "Ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't
+have to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with
+them, <a name="page_046"></a> because even if they don't give money to
+her, she can get along without it."</p>
+
+<p>There are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and
+constantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes
+receiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as
+often nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who
+for six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling
+wages which she earns in a large factory. Is it habit or virtue which
+holds her steady in this course? If love and tenderness had been
+substituted for parental despotism, would the mother have had enough
+affection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of
+money obligation through all these years? This girl who spends her
+paltry two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her
+mother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on
+those clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some
+powerful force.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_047"></a>The charity visitor finds these subtle and
+elusive problems most harrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is
+a man who has become black-listed in a strike. He is not a very good
+workman, and this, added to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of
+work for a long time. The fatal result of being long out of work
+follows: he becomes less and less eager for it, and gets a "job" less
+and less frequently. In order to keep up his self-respect, and still
+more to keep his wife's respect for him, he yields to the little
+self-deception that this prolonged idleness follows because he was once
+blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a martyr. Deep down in his heart
+perhaps&mdash;but who knows what may be deep down in his heart? Whatever may
+be in his wife's, she does not show for an instant that she thinks he
+has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her earn, by sewing and cleaning,
+most of the scanty income for the family. The charity visitor, however,
+does see this, and she also sees that the other men who <a
+name="page_048"></a> were in the strike have gone back to work. She
+further knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not
+skilful. She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and
+denounce him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of
+certain intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees
+other workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends
+many more hours in the public library reading good books than the
+average workman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has
+yielded only to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which
+come to the intellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would
+induce his union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a
+constant speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral
+attitude on the questions discussed there. He contributes a certain
+intellectuality to his friends, and he has undoubted social value. The
+neighboring women confide to the charity visitor their <a
+name="page_049"></a> sympathy with his wife, because she has to work so
+hard, and because her husband does not "provide." Their remarks are
+sharpened by a certain resentment toward the superiority of the
+husband's education and gentle manners. The charity visitor is ashamed
+to take this point of view, for she knows that it is not altogether
+fair. She is reminded of a college friend of hers, who told her that she
+was not going to allow her literary husband to write unworthy potboilers
+for the sake of earning a living. "I insist that we shall live within my
+own income; that he shall not publish until he is ready, and can give
+his genuine message." The charity visitor recalls what she has heard of
+another acquaintance, who urged her husband to decline a lucrative
+position as a railroad attorney, because she wished him to be free to
+take municipal positions, and handle public questions without the
+inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in a corrupt
+city to a corporation attorney. The action of these two <a
+name="page_050"></a> women seemed noble to her, but in their cases they
+merely lived on a lesser income. In the case of the workingman's wife,
+she faced living on no income at all, or on the precarious one which she
+might be able to get together.</p>
+
+<p>She sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she
+is utterly unwilling to condemn her while praising the friends of her
+own social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is
+changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other
+two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight
+was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The
+charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the
+finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from
+the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she
+suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into
+complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting <a
+name="page_051"></a> the family altogether, but she has become much
+interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates
+her visits, and she also suspects that she will never know many finer
+women than the mother. She is unwilling, therefore, to give up the
+friendship, and goes on bearing her perplexities as best she may.</p>
+
+<p>The first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with
+her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their
+children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which
+receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the
+instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of
+juvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving
+no legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we
+remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house
+or regular meals.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_052"></a>There are certain boys in many city neighborhoods
+who form themselves into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more
+intrepid than the rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an
+untenanted house, to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which
+they sell to the nearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they
+buy beer and drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the
+alley. From beginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that
+they may be seen and caught by the "coppers," and are at times quite
+breathless with suspense. It is not the least unlike, in motive and
+execution, the practice of country boys who go forth in squads to set
+traps for rabbits or to round up a coon.</p>
+
+<p>It is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious
+training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy
+undertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very
+beginning the most enticing and exciting <a name="page_053"></a>
+experiences which they have seen have been connected with crime. The
+policeman embodies all the majesty of successful law and established
+government in his brass buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon.</p>
+
+<p>The boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale
+to tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. The
+earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the
+rattling fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block,"
+and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest
+lady in our street was arrested."</p>
+
+<p>In the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took
+fifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their
+apathetic interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an
+omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find
+them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled <a
+name="page_054"></a> by. Their eager little heads popped out of the
+windows full of questioning: "Was it a man or a woman?" "How many
+policemen inside?" and eager little tongues began to tell experiences of
+arrests which baby eyes had witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a
+fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who
+receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is
+willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest
+things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation
+schools than the conscientious charity visitor.</p>
+
+<p>This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of
+their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often
+leads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten
+were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of
+pilfering and destroying property. They <a name="page_055"></a> had dug
+a cave under a railroad viaduct in which they had spent many days and
+nights of the summer vacation. They had "swiped" potatoes and other
+vegetables from hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in
+true brigand fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation
+with stolen junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic
+imaginations. The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a
+building five miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The
+landlord did not want an active boy in the building, and his mother was
+dead; the janitor paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman
+living near the viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and
+supper, and left something in the house for his dinner every morning
+when she went to work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by
+night to challenge his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in
+the summer," or to investigate what he did during the day. In <a
+name="page_056"></a> the meantime the three boys lived in a world of
+their own, made up from the reading of adventurous stories and their
+vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more as the days went
+by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic passing over the
+street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous exertions on
+their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform School, comforting
+himself with the conclusive remark, "Well, we had fun anyway, and maybe
+they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in the country, where
+we can't hurt anything."</p>
+
+<p>In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the
+scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of
+the young people. "Going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and
+satisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all
+their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay
+for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday <a
+name="page_057"></a> afternoon. It is their one satisfactory glimpse of
+life&mdash;the moment when they "issue forth from themselves" and are stirred
+and thoroughly interested. They quite simply adopt as their own, and
+imitate as best they can, all that they see there. In moments of genuine
+grief and excitement the words and the gestures they employ are those
+copied from the stage, and the tawdry expression often conflicts
+hideously with the fine and genuine emotion of which it is the
+inadequate and vulgar vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of
+expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they
+know.</p>
+
+<p>If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the
+spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the
+popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function
+of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries"
+and picture exhibits combined.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_058"></a>The greatest difficulty is experienced when the
+two standards come sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt
+at understanding and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's
+own ethical standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had
+bought and sold school books stolen from the school fund,&mdash;books which
+are all plainly marked with a red stamp,&mdash;came to Hull House one morning
+in great distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident
+"to speak to the judge." She gave as a reason the fact that the House
+had known her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her
+little girl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her
+visitor knew the school books were stolen when buying them, and any
+attempt to talk upon that subject was evidently considered very rude.
+The visitor wished to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason
+why the House should not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she
+could not go <a name="page_059"></a> to him. After a long conversation
+the visitor entirely failed to get another point of view and went away
+grieved and disappointed at a refusal, thinking the resident simply
+disobliging; wondering, no doubt, why such a mean woman had once been
+good to her; leaving the resident, on the other hand, utterly baffled
+and in the state of mind she would have been in, had she brutally
+insisted that a little child should lift weights too heavy for its
+undeveloped muscles.</p>
+
+<p>Such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher
+ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but
+it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in
+which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient
+is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and
+pathos of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the <a
+name="page_060"></a> well-being of perhaps a dozen old women to whom
+she sustains a sincerely affectionate and almost filial relation. Some
+of them learn to take her benefactions quite as if they came from their
+own relatives, grumbling at all she does, and scolding her with a family
+freedom. One of these poor old women was injured in a fire years ago.
+She has but the fragment of a hand left, and is grievously crippled in
+her feet. Through years of pain she had become addicted to opium, and
+when she first came under the visitor's care, was only held from the
+poorhouse by the awful thought that she would there perish without her
+drug. Five years of tender care have done wonders for her. She lives in
+two neat little rooms, where with her thumb and two fingers she makes
+innumerable quilts, which she sells and gives away with the greatest
+delight. Her opium is regulated to a set amount taken each day, and she
+has been drawn away from much drinking. She is a voracious reader, and
+has her head full of strange tales made up from <a name="page_061"></a>
+books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed impossible to do
+anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two years in a suburb,
+where the family of the charity visitor lived, and where she was nursed
+through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives a better life than
+she did, but she is still far from being a model old woman. The
+neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is supported and
+comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she occasionally
+"rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar her in her
+tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that second
+standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the
+standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be
+helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the
+plums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this
+criticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't
+in the least deserve what she gets. In order to <a name="page_062"></a>
+disarm them, and at the same time to explain what would otherwise seem
+loving-kindness so colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that
+during her sojourn in the suburb she discovered an awful family
+secret,&mdash;a horrible scandal connected with the long-suffering charity
+visitor; that it is in order to prevent the divulgence of this that she
+constantly receives her ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors
+accept this explanation as simple and offering a solution of this vexed
+problem. Doubtless many of them have a glimpse of the real state of
+affairs, of the love and patience which ministers to need
+irrespective of worth. But the standard is too high for most of them,
+and it sometimes seems unfortunate to break down the second standard,
+which holds that people who "rush the growler" are not worthy of
+charity, and that there is a certain justice attained when they go to
+the poorhouse. It is certainly dangerous to break down the lower, unless
+the higher is made clear.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_063"></a>Just when our affection becomes large enough to
+care for the unworthy among the poor as we would care for the unworthy
+among our own kin, is certainly a perplexing question. To say that it
+should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them
+which few of us would be willing to make.</p>
+
+<p>Of what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any
+value? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity
+visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do.
+It drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they
+claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of
+a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods
+do, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so
+that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and
+thus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_064"></a>Both the tenement-house resident and the sister
+assume to have put themselves upon the industrial level of their
+neighbors, although they have left out the most awful element of
+poverty, that of imminent fear of starvation and a neglected old age.</p>
+
+<p>The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most
+precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the
+city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which
+our growing democracy forces upon her.</p>
+
+<p>We sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would
+doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not
+scientific enough. We dislike the entire arrangement of cards
+alphabetically classified according to streets and names of families,
+with the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. Our feeling
+of revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted the students of
+botany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were
+tabulated in alphabetical order, <a name="page_065"></a> when geology
+was taught by colored charts and thin books. No doubt the students,
+wearied to death, many times said that it was all too scientific, and
+were much perplexed and worried when they found traces of structure and
+physiology which their so-called scientific principles were totally
+unable to account for. But all this happened before science had become
+evolutionary and scientific at all, before it had a principle of life
+from within. The very indications and discoveries which formerly
+perplexed, later illumined and made the study absorbing and vital.</p>
+
+<p>We are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human
+affairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education
+of children. We are at last learning to follow the development of the
+child; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt
+methods and matter to his growing mind. No "advanced educator" can allow
+himself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child <a
+name="page_066"></a> ought to be as to exclude the discovery of what he
+is. But in our charitable efforts we think much more of what a man ought
+to be than of what he is or of what he may become; and we ruthlessly
+force our conventions and standards upon him, with a sternness which we
+would consider stupid indeed did an educator use it in forcing his
+mature intellectual convictions upon an undeveloped mind.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to
+bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays
+with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him.
+The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes
+that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has
+the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a
+belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after
+all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific
+parent, who acts from dogmatic <a name="page_067"></a> conviction and
+is sure he is right. He talks of developing his child's self-respect and
+good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of
+self-control and development which the child does not possess. There is
+no doubt that our development of charity methods has reached this
+pseudo-scientific and stilted stage. We have learned to condemn
+unthinking, ill-regulated kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in
+mere repression much as the stern parent tells the visitor below how
+admirably he is rearing the child, who is hysterically crying upstairs
+and laying the foundation for future nervous disorders. The
+pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the undeveloped stage of our
+philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed in our tendency to lay
+constant stress on negative action. "Don't give;" "don't break down
+self-respect," we are constantly told. We distrust the human impulse as
+well as the teachings of our own experience, and in their stead
+substitute dogmatic rules for <a name="page_068"></a> conduct. We
+forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions
+must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those
+convictions to life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull
+upon the sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the
+possession of the visitor is constantly applied, and she has a
+reasonable chance for an ultimate intellectual comprehension. Indeed,
+part of the perplexity in the administration of charity comes from the
+fact that the type of person drawn to it is the one who insists that her
+convictions shall not be unrelated to action. Her moral concepts
+constantly tend to float away from her, unless they have a basis in the
+concrete relation of life. She is confronted with the task of reducing
+her scruples to action, and of converging many wills, so as to unite the
+strength of all of them into one accomplishment, the value of which no
+one can foresee.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her
+social compunction <a name="page_069"></a> through charitable effort
+finds that the wider social activity, and the contact with the larger
+experience, not only increases her sense of social obligation but at the
+same time recasts her social ideals. She is chagrined to discover that
+in the actual task of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble
+beneficiaries are far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of
+purpose, but in self-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue
+of humility by a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits
+by the side of the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a
+contrite sinner, but she gets the dust upon her head because she has
+stumbled and fallen in the road through her efforts to push forward the
+mass, to march with her fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only
+through a social aim but by a social process.</p>
+
+<p>The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the
+great forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. "To love mercy" and at
+the same time "to <a name="page_070"></a> do justly" is the difficult
+task; to fulfil the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of
+indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the
+second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it
+results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the
+establishment of justice is impossible. It may be that the combination
+of the two can never be attained save as we fulfil still the third
+requirement&mdash;"to walk humbly with God," which may mean to walk for many
+dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures, not even in that
+peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to
+afford, but rather with the pangs and throes to which the poor human
+understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to comprehend the
+meaning of life.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_071">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+<h4>FILIAL RELATIONS</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>There are many people in every community who have not felt the "social
+compunction," who do not share the effort toward a higher social
+morality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it. Some of
+these have been shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which
+the trial of new powers involve, because they are content to attain
+standards of virtue demanded by an easy public opinion, and others of
+them have exhausted their moral energy in attaining to the current
+standard of individual and family righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>Such people, who form the bulk of contented society, demand that the
+radical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his
+personal and family relations, and <a name="page_072"></a> judge most
+harshly any deviation from the established standards. There is a certain
+justice in this: it expresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of
+men, that none of the established virtues which have been so slowly and
+hardly acquired shall be sacrificed for the sake of making problematic
+advance; that the individual, in his attempt to develop and use the new
+and exalted virtue, shall not fall into the easy temptation of letting
+the ordinary ones slip through his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>This instinct to conserve the old standards, combined with a distrust of
+the new standard, is a constant difficulty in the way of those
+experiments and advances depending upon the initiative of women, both
+because women are the more sensitive to the individual and family
+claims, and because their training has tended to make them content with
+the response to these claims alone.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral energy
+necessary to work out a more satisfactory social relation, the <a
+name="page_073"></a> individual often sacrifices the energy which
+should legitimately go into the fulfilment of personal and family
+claims, to what he considers the higher claim.</p>
+
+<p>In considering the changes which our increasing democracy is constantly
+making upon various relationships, it is impossible to ignore the filial
+relation. This chapter deals with the relation between parents and their
+grown-up daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the
+perplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the various attempts of
+young women to secure a more active share in the community life. We
+constantly see parents very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to
+their daughters when these daughters undertake work lying quite outside
+of traditional and family interests. These parents insist that the girl
+is carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, that she is in search of a
+career, that she is restless and does not know what she wants. They will
+give any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine <a
+name="page_074"></a> and dignified claim. Possibly all this is due to
+the fact that for so many hundreds of years women have had no larger
+interests, no participation in the affairs lying quite outside personal
+and family claims. Any attempt that the individual woman formerly made
+to subordinate or renounce the family claim was inevitably construed to
+mean that she was setting up her own will against that of her family's
+for selfish ends. It was concluded that she could have no motive larger
+than a desire to serve her family, and her attempt to break away must
+therefore be wilful and self-indulgent.</p>
+
+<p>The family logically consented to give her up at her marriage, when she
+was enlarging the family tie by founding another family. It was easy to
+understand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college,
+travelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because
+these merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own
+members. When, however, she responded to her impulse to <a
+name="page_075"></a> fulfil the social or democratic claim, she
+violated every tradition.</p>
+
+<p>The mind of each one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we
+emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family
+obligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet
+most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to
+disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. We have
+yielded at times to the temptation of ignoring them for selfish aims, of
+considering the individual and not the family convenience, and we
+remember with shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. But just as
+we have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an
+orderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps
+we are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family
+and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt to bring about a healing <a name="page_076"></a> compromise
+in which the two shall be adjusted in proper relation is not an easy
+one. It is difficult to distinguish between the outward act of him who
+in following one legitimate claim has been led into the temporary
+violation of another, and the outward act of him who deliberately
+renounces a just claim and throws aside all obligation for the sake of
+his own selfish and individual development. The man, for instance, who
+deserts his family that he may cultivate an artistic sensibility, or
+acquire what he considers more fulness of life for himself, must always
+arouse our contempt. Breaking the marriage tie as Ibsen's "Nora" did, to
+obtain a larger self-development, or holding to it as George Eliot's
+"Romola" did, because of the larger claim of the state and society, must
+always remain two distinct paths. The collision of interests, each of
+which has a real moral basis and a right to its own place in life, is
+bound to be more or less tragic. It is the struggle between two claims,
+the destruction of either of which would bring <a name="page_077"></a>
+ruin to the ethical life. Curiously enough, it is almost exactly this
+contradiction which is the tragedy set forth by the Greek dramatist, who
+asserted that the gods who watch over the sanctity of the family bond
+must yield to the higher claims of the gods of the state. The failure to
+recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the
+suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely
+selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. This
+suspicion will never be dissipated until parents, as well as daughters,
+feel the democratic impulse and recognize the social claim.</p>
+
+<p>Our democracy is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human
+institutions, and a claim is being advanced which in a certain sense is
+larger than the family claim. The claim of the state in time of war has
+long been recognized, so that in its name the family has given up sons
+and husbands and even the fathers of little children. If we can once see
+the claims of society in any such <a name="page_078"></a> light, if its
+misery and need can be made clear and urged as an explicit claim, as the
+state urges its claims in the time of danger, then for the first time
+the daughter who desires to minister to that need will be recognized as
+acting conscientiously. This recognition may easily come first through
+the emotions, and may be admitted as a response to pity and mercy long
+before it is formulated and perceived by the intellect.</p>
+
+The family as well as the state we are all called upon to maintain as
+<p>the highest institutions which the race has evolved for its safeguard
+and protection. But merely to preserve these institutions is not enough.
+There come periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid upon
+a passing generation, to enlarge the function and carry forward the
+ideal of a long-established institution. There is no doubt that many
+women, consciously and unconsciously, are struggling with this task. The
+family, like every other element of human life, is susceptible of
+progress, and from epoch to <a name="page_079"></a> epoch its
+tendencies and aspirations are enlarged, although its duties can never
+be abrogated and its obligations can never be cancelled. It is
+impossible to bring about the higher development by any self-assertion
+or breaking away of the individual will. The new growth in the plant
+swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and
+protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. The family in
+its entirety must be carried out into the larger life. Its various
+members together must recognize and acknowledge the validity of the
+social obligation. When this does not occur we have a most flagrant
+example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an ethical code is
+applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to conditions which are
+no longer the same as when the code was instituted, and for which it was
+never designed. We have all seen parental control and the family claim
+assert their authority in fields of effort which belong to the adult
+judgment of the child and <a name="page_080"></a> pertain to activity
+quite outside the family life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy
+of which we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this
+authority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and
+misunderstanding. We see parents and children acting from conscientious
+motives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery
+which can scarcely be hidden.</p>
+
+<p>Such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in Assisi,
+when the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet,
+dramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting
+the narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. All the
+conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father
+recognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and
+adjust his own claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful
+and hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have been the most tender
+and <a name="page_081"></a> loving of men, responsive to all possible
+ties, even to those of inanimate nature. We know that by his affections
+he freed the frozen life of his time. The elements of tragedy lay in the
+narrowness of the father's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his
+lack of sympathy with the power which was moving his son, and which was
+but part of the religious revival which swept Europe from end to end in
+the early part of the thirteenth century; the same power which built the
+cathedrals of the North, and produced the saints and sages of the South.
+But the father's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart
+sore and angry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. He could not,
+indeed, have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of
+the same revival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of
+himself and his narrower claim. It is another proof that the notion of a
+larger obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged
+interest <a name="page_082"></a> in life and in the social movements
+around us.</p>
+
+<p>The grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen with well-defined
+duties and a need of "making his way in the world," that the family
+claim is urged much less strenuously in his case, and as a matter of
+authority, it ceases gradually to be made at all. In the case of the
+grown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity of earning a
+living, and who has no strong artistic bent, taking her to Paris to
+study painting or to Germany to study music, the years immediately
+following her graduation from college are too often filled with a
+restlessness and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear
+thinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family ethics to modern
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>It is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise
+than as a family possession. From her babyhood she has been the charm
+and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her <a
+name="page_083"></a> as an integral part of the social order, hard to
+believe that she has duties outside of the family, to the state and to
+society in the larger sense. This assumption that the daughter is solely
+an inspiration and refinement to the family itself and its own immediate
+circle, that her delicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her
+father's protection and prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most
+part so long as her education was in line with it. When there was
+absolutely no recognition of the entity of woman's life beyond the
+family, when the outside claims upon her were still wholly unrecognized,
+the situation was simple, and the finishing school harmoniously and
+elegantly answered all requirements. She was fitted to grace the
+fireside and to add lustre to that social circle which her parents
+selected for her. But this family assumption has been notably broken
+into, and educational ideas no longer fit it. Modern education
+recognizes woman quite apart from family or society claims, and gives <a
+name="page_084"></a> her the training which for many years has been
+deemed successful for highly developing a man's individuality and
+freeing his powers for independent action. Perplexities often occur when
+the daughter returns from college and finds that this recognition has
+been but partially accomplished. When she attempts to act upon the
+assumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring upon ideals
+which are so entwined with filial piety, so rooted in the tenderest
+affections of which the human heart is capable, that both daughter and
+parents are shocked and startled when they discover what is happening,
+and they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. The ideal for the
+education of woman has changed under the pressure of a new claim. The
+family has responded to the extent of granting the education, but they
+are jealous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over against
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a stress of social
+obligation <a name="page_085"></a> which her family did not in the
+least anticipate when they sent her to college. She finds herself, in
+addition, under an impulse to act her part as a citizen of the world.
+She accepts her family inheritance with loyalty and affection, but she
+has entered into a wider inheritance as well, which, for lack of a
+better phrase, we call the social claim. This claim has been recognized
+for four years in her training, but after her return from college the
+family claim is again exclusively and strenuously asserted. The
+situation has all the discomfort of transition and compromise. The
+daughter finds a constant and totally unnecessary conflict between the
+social and the family claims. In most cases the former is repressed and
+gives way to the family claim, because the latter is concrete and
+definitely asserted, while the social demand is vague and unformulated.
+In such instances the girl quietly submits, but she feels wronged
+whenever she allows her mind to dwell upon the situation. She <a
+name="page_086"></a> either hides her hurt, and splendid reserves of
+enthusiasm and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and emotions are turned
+inward, and the result is an unhappy woman, whose heart is consumed by
+vain regrets and desires.</p>
+
+<p>If the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even
+reproached for her discontent. She is told to be devoted to her family,
+inspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of
+her time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do
+this, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even
+heroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of which she has
+dreamed so long? That life which surrounds and completes the individual
+and family life? She has been taught that it is her duty to share this
+life, and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence between
+her self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly
+more apparent. But the situation is not even so simple <a
+name="page_087"></a> as a conflict between her affections and her
+intellectual convictions, although even that is tumultuous enough, also
+the emotional nature is divided against itself. The social claim is a
+demand upon the emotions as well as upon the intellect, and in ignoring
+it she represses not only her convictions but lowers her springs of
+vitality. Her life is full of contradictions. She looks out into the
+world, longing that some demand be made upon her powers, for they are
+too untrained to furnish an initiative. When her health gives way under
+this strain, as it often does, her physician invariably advises a rest.
+But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not what she requires. What she
+needs is simple, health-giving activity, which, involving the use of all
+her faculties, shall be a response to all the claims which she so keenly
+feels.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be
+part of a life quite outside their own, because the <a
+name="page_088"></a> college woman frequently makes these first
+attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have not been trained in the line
+of action. She lacks the ability to apply her knowledge and theories to
+life itself and to its complicated situations. This is largely the fault
+of her training and of the one-sidedness of educational methods. The
+colleges have long been full of the best ethical teaching, insisting
+that the good of the whole must ultimately be the measure of effort, and
+that the individual can only secure his own rights as he labors to
+secure those of others. But while the teaching has included an
+ever-broadening range of obligation and has insisted upon the
+recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the training has been
+singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions for personal
+distinction, and has trained the faculties almost exclusively in the
+direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless, woman's education is
+at fault, in that it has failed to recognize certain needs, and has
+failed to cultivate and <a name="page_089"></a> guide the larger
+desires of which all generous young hearts are full.</p>
+
+<p>During the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no
+contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or
+the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only
+with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the
+purpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden
+to bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet
+were provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not
+differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional
+or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly
+brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently
+every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to
+begin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been
+preparing. But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have
+been trained solely for accumulation, <a name="page_090"></a> and she
+has learned to utterly distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which
+would naturally have connected her with human interests outside of her
+family and her own immediate social circle. All through school and
+college the young soul dreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the
+helpless and of tenderness to the unfortunate. We persistently distrust
+these desires, and, unless they follow well-defined lines, we repress
+them with every device of convention and caution.</p>
+
+<p>One summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in East London,
+where she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds
+encountered there, directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes
+of travel filled with young English men and women who could walk many
+miles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats
+received honorable mention in Alpine journals,&mdash;a result which filled
+their families with joy and pride. These young people knew to <a
+name="page_091"></a> a nicety the proper diet and clothing which would
+best contribute toward endurance. Everything was very fine about them
+save their motive power. The writer does not refer to the hard-worked
+men and women who were taking a vacation, but to the leisured young
+people, to whom this period was the most serious of the year, and filled
+with the most strenuous exertion. They did not, of course, thoroughly
+enjoy it, for we are too complicated to be content with mere exercise.
+Civilization has bound us too closely with our brethren for any one of
+us to be long happy in the cultivation of mere individual force or in
+the accumulation of mere muscular energy.</p>
+
+<p>With Whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult not to advise
+these young people to use some of this muscular energy of which they
+were so proud, in cleaning neglected alleys and paving soggy streets.
+Their stores of enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and
+women of East London and utilize latent social <a name="page_092"></a>
+forces. The exercise would be quite as good, the need of endurance as
+great, the care for proper dress and food as important; but the motives
+for action would be turned from selfish ones into social ones. Such an
+appeal would doubtless be met with a certain response from the young
+people, but would never be countenanced by their families for an
+instant.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately a beginning has been made in another direction, and a few
+parents have already begun to consider even their little children in
+relation to society as well as to the family. The young mothers who
+attend "Child Study" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and
+expect given characteristics from their children, at certain ages and
+under certain conditions. They quite calmly watch the various attempts
+of a child to assert his individuality, which so often takes the form of
+opposition to the wishes of the family and to the rule of the household.
+They recognize as acting under the same law of development the little
+child of <a name="page_093"></a> three who persistently runs away and
+pretends not to hear his mother's voice, the boy of ten who violently,
+although temporarily, resents control of any sort, and the grown-up son
+who, by an individualized and trained personality, is drawn into
+pursuits and interests quite alien to those of his family.</p>
+
+<p>This attempt to take the parental relation somewhat away from mere
+personal experience, as well as the increasing tendency of parents to
+share their children's pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally
+result in a better understanding of the social obligation. The
+understanding, which results from identity of interests, would seem to
+confirm the conviction that in the complicated life of to-day there is
+no education so admirable as that education which comes from
+participation in the constant trend of events. There is no doubt that
+most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence,
+because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend
+each other. The old <a name="page_094"></a> difficulties incident to
+the clash of two codes of morals must drop away, as the experiences of
+various members of the family become larger and more identical.</p>
+
+<p>At the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist
+and may be seen all about us. In order to illustrate the situation
+baldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to
+take an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. The
+tragedy of King Lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed
+so long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his
+two older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we
+have not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood,
+revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and
+unhappy a relation to all of his children. In our pity for Lear, we fail
+to analyze his character. The King on his throne exhibits utter lack of
+self-control. The King in the storm gives way <a name="page_095"></a>
+to the same emotion, in repining over the wickedness of his children,
+which he formerly exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.</p>
+
+<p>It might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his
+old age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously
+urged the family claim with his whole conscience. At the opening of the
+drama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent
+parent expects when he has given gifts to his children. From the two
+elder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and
+fitting, but he longed to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best
+beloved child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but instead
+of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. Cordelia
+made the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and
+scrupulously to express her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and
+distressed by this attempt at self-expression. <a name="page_096"></a>
+It was new to him that his daughter should be moved by a principle
+obtained outside himself, which even his imagination could not follow;
+that she had caught the notion of an existence in which her relation as
+a daughter played but a part. She was transformed by a dignity which
+recast her speech and made it self-contained. She found herself in the
+sweep of a feeling so large that the immediate loss of a kingdom seemed
+of little consequence to her. Even an act which might be construed as
+disrespect to her father was justified in her eyes, because she was
+vainly striving to fill out this larger conception of duty. The test
+which comes sooner or later to many parents had come to Lear, to
+maintain the tenderness of the relation between father and child, after
+that relation had become one between adults, to be content with the
+responses made by the adult child to the family claim, while at the same
+time she responded to the claims of the rest of life. The mind of Lear
+was <a name="page_097"></a> not big enough for this test; he failed to
+see anything but the personal slight involved, and the ingratitude alone
+reached him. It was impossible for him to calmly watch his child
+developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to
+apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his
+anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him
+than his sense of paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the
+common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal
+inheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of himself so long as a noble
+and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might
+perceive himself in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he
+declared himself more sinned against than sinning. He could believe any
+amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no
+fidelity on <a name="page_098"></a> the part of Cordelia unless she
+gave him the sign he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>At length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and
+broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first
+time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around
+him, and he came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in the
+place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and
+comfort. He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human
+contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which
+he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his
+throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of
+our censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of
+tenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and
+be unwilling to give him <a name="page_099"></a> what he so obviously
+craved? We see in the old king "the over-mastering desire of being
+beloved, selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving
+and kindly nature alone." His eagerness produces in us a strange pity
+for him, and we are impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child
+cannot feel this, even in the midst of her search for truth and her
+newly acquired sense of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow
+conception that would break thus abruptly with the past and would assume
+that her father had no part in the new life. We want to remind her "that
+pity, memory, and faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to
+be prized as is the development of her own soul. We do not admire the
+Cordelia who through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later
+admire the same woman who comes back from France that she may include
+her father in her happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly
+taken her salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her
+conscience had developed <a name="page_100"></a> in her new life that
+she was driven back to her father, where she perished, drawn into the
+cruelty and wrath which had now become objective and tragic.</p>
+
+<p>Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was
+archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life
+since developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and
+indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without
+any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that
+they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary
+conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that
+we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate
+that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like
+misery.</p>
+
+<p>Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a
+modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual
+to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a
+code <a name="page_101"></a> of ethics dealing with these larger
+relationships, instead of a code designed to apply so exclusively to
+relationships obtaining only between individuals.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those
+which occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and
+believed in, are brought sharply together. The awkwardness and
+constraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners
+clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_102">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+<h4>HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>If we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive,
+life would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the
+contention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as
+important as its aims. We can all recall acquaintances of whose
+integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion
+as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are
+often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of
+other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.</p>
+
+<p>This tendency to be so sure of integrity of purpose as to be
+unsympathetic and hardened to the means by which it is accomplished, is
+perhaps nowhere so obvious as <a name="page_103"></a> in the household
+itself. It nowhere operates as so constant a force as in the minds of
+the women who in all the perplexity of industrial transition are
+striving to administer domestic affairs. The ethics held by them are for
+the most part the individual and family codes, untouched by the larger
+social conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>These women, rightly confident of their household and family integrity
+and holding to their own code of morals, fail to see the household in
+its social aspect. Possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to
+the social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the
+household employer and the household employee, or, as it is still
+sometimes called, that between mistress and servant.</p>
+
+<p>This persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may
+be partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense,
+civilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one
+place, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number
+of persons. From the <a name="page_104"></a> familiar proposition that
+the home began because the mother was obliged to stay in one spot in
+order to cherish the child, we can see a foundation for the belief that
+if women are much away from home, the home itself will be destroyed and
+all ethical progress endangered.</p>
+
+<p>We have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings
+were most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore,
+the good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually
+the two&mdash;the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her
+virtue&mdash;became synonymous. A code of ethics was thus developed in regard
+to woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited
+to her own family circle. When it became impossible to adequately
+minister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who
+did not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the
+household, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs.
+When women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, <a
+name="page_105"></a> dyers, spinners, and weavers, the soap and candle
+makers, they administered large industries, but solely from the family
+point of view. Only a few hundred years ago, woman had complete control
+of the manufacturing of many commodities which now figure so largely in
+commerce, and it is evident that she let the manufacturing of these
+commodities go into the hands of men, as soon as organization and a
+larger conception of their production were required. She felt no
+responsibility for their management when they were taken from the home
+to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to manufacture food and
+clothing for her family was her instinct to stay with them, and by
+isolation and care to guard them from evil.</p>
+
+<p>She had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own
+family, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. The British
+matron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own
+roof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals <a
+name="page_106"></a> and health of young girls were endangered in the
+overcrowded and insanitary factories. The code of family ethics was
+established in her mind so firmly that it excluded any notion of social
+effort.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals,
+and to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of
+all that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting
+that the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of
+the structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to
+one household shall minister to that exclusively. But to make this
+distinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of
+obligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of
+domestic management. The moral issue involved in one has become
+inextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the
+other, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers,
+through the confusion of the two <a name="page_107"></a> problems, take
+a difficult and untenable position.</p>
+
+<p>There are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a
+simpler code. The wife of a workingman still has a distinct economic
+value to her husband. She cooks, cleans, washes, and mends&mdash;services for
+which, before his marriage, he paid ready money. The wife of the
+successful business or professional man does not do this. He continues
+to pay for his cooking, house service, and washing. The mending,
+however, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings
+are pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated
+importance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings
+were the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they
+were formerly mistresses. But one industry, the cooking and serving of
+foods to her own family, woman has never relinquished. It has,
+therefore, never been organized, either by men or women, and is in an
+undeveloped <a name="page_108"></a> state. Each employer of household
+labor views it solely from the family standpoint. The ethics prevailing
+in regard to it are distinctly personal and unsocial, and result in the
+unique isolation of the household employee.</p>
+
+<p>As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified,
+from the mediæval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who
+spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and
+live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. Were this process
+complete, we should have no problem of household employment. But, even
+in households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is
+neither loved nor loving.</p>
+
+<p>The modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who
+spun its clothes, and, to a large extent, the woman who washes them, but
+it stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food and ministers
+directly to its individual comfort; it strangely insists that to do <a
+name="page_109"></a> that would be to destroy the family life itself.
+The cook is uncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable; but it will not
+drop her as all her fellow-workers have been dropped, although the cook
+herself insists upon it. So far has this insistence gone that every
+possible concession is made to retain her. The writer knows an employer
+in one of the suburbs who built a bay at the back of her house so that
+her cook might have a pleasant room in which to sleep, and another in
+which to receive her friends. This employer naturally felt aggrieved
+when the cook refused to stay in her bay. Viewed in an historic light,
+this employer might quite as well have added a bay to her house for her
+shoemaker, and then deemed him ungrateful because he declined to live in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>A listener, attentive to a conversation between two employers of
+household labor,&mdash;and we certainly all have opportunity to hear such
+conversations,&mdash;would often discover a tone implying that the employer
+was abused <a name="page_110"></a> and put upon; that she was
+struggling with the problem solely because she was thus serving her
+family and performing her social duties; that otherwise it would be a
+great relief to her to abandon the entire situation, and "never have a
+servant in her house again." Did she follow this impulse, she would
+simply yield to the trend of her times and accept the present system of
+production. She would be in line with the industrial organization of her
+age. Were she in line ethically, she would have to believe that the
+sacredness and beauty of family life do not consist in the processes of
+the separate preparation of food, but in sharing the corporate life of
+the community, and in making the family the unit of that life.</p>
+
+<p>The selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics,
+insists that those who minister to the comforts of her family shall
+minister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be
+cut off, more or less, from their natural social ties, excludes the best
+working-people from her service.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_111"></a>A man of dignity and ability is quite willing to
+come into a house to tune a piano. Another man of mechanical skill will
+come to put up window shades. Another of less skill, but of perfect
+independence, will come to clean and relay a carpet. These men would all
+resent the situation and consider it quite impossible if it implied the
+giving up of their family and social ties, and living under the roof of
+the household requiring their services.</p>
+
+<p>The isolation of the household employee is perhaps inevitable so long as
+the employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even
+more difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this
+industry. In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently
+displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions.
+The workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with their
+time, quickly reorganize.</p>
+
+<p>The general statement may be made that the enterprising girls of the
+community go <a name="page_112"></a> into factories, and the less
+enterprising go into households, although there are many exceptions. It
+is not a question of skill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will
+make a girl rise industrially while she is in the household; she is not
+in the rising movement. She is belated in a class composed of the
+unprogressive elements of the community, which is recruited constantly
+by those from the ranks of the incompetent, by girls who are learning
+the language, girls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life
+solely from the savings-bank point of view. The distracted housekeeper
+struggles with these unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the
+well-defined and independent relation of employer and employed, but the
+hazy and constantly changing one of mistress to servant.</p>
+
+<p>The latter relation is changing under pressure from various directions.
+In our increasing democracy the notion of personal service is constantly
+becoming more distasteful, conflicting, as it does, with the more <a
+name="page_113"></a> modern notion of personal dignity. Personal
+ministration to the needs of childhood, illness, and old age seem to us
+reasonable, and the democratic adjustment in regard to them is being
+made. The first two are constantly raised nearer to the level of a
+profession, and there is little doubt that the third will soon follow.
+But personal ministrations to a normal, healthy adult, consuming the
+time and energy of another adult, we find more difficult to reconcile to
+our theories of democracy.</p>
+
+<p>A factory employer parts with his men at the factory gates at the end of
+a day's work; they go to their homes as he goes to his, in the
+assumption that they both do what they want and spend their money as
+they please; but this solace of equality outside of working hours is
+denied the bewildered employer of household labor.</p>
+
+<p>She is obliged to live constantly in the same house with her employee,
+and because of certain equalities in food and shelter she is brought
+more sharply face to face with the mental and social inequalities.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_114"></a>The difficulty becomes more apparent as the
+character of the work performed by the so-called servant is less
+absolutely useful and may be merely time consuming. A kind-hearted woman
+who will complacently take an afternoon drive, leaving her cook to
+prepare the five courses of a "little dinner for only ten guests," will
+not be nearly so comfortable the next evening when she speeds her
+daughter to a dance, conscious that her waitress must spend the evening
+in dull solitude on the chance that a caller or two may ring the
+door-bell.</p>
+
+<p>A conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: "In England it
+must be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your
+daughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same
+things. But really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my
+daughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when Mary goes off to a
+frolic quite breaks my heart."</p>
+
+<p>Too many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from
+manual labor, <a name="page_115"></a> and therefore constantly impose
+exacting duties upon employees, the nature of which they do not
+understand by experience; there is thus no curb of rationality imposed
+upon the employer's requirements and demands. She is totally unlike the
+foreman in a shop, who has only risen to his position by way of having
+actually performed with his own hands all the work of the men he
+directs. There is also another class of employers of domestic labor, who
+grow capricious and over-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests
+to occupy their minds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that
+the duties of the latter are not clearly defined. Tolstoy contends that
+an exaggerated notion of cleanliness has developed among such employers,
+which could never have been evolved among usefully employed people. He
+points to the fact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be
+immaculately clean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the
+household, and then is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card,
+in <a name="page_116"></a> order that even his clean hands may not
+touch it; later, even his clean hands are covered with a pair of clean
+white gloves, which hold the tray upon which the card is placed.</p>
+
+<p>If it were not for the undemocratic ethics used by the employers of
+domestics, much work now performed in the household would be done
+outside, as is true of many products formerly manufactured in the feudal
+household. The worker in all other trades has complete control of his
+own time after the performance of definitely limited services, his wages
+are paid altogether in money which he may spend in the maintenance of a
+separate home life, and he has full opportunity to organize with the
+other workers in his trade.</p>
+
+<p>The domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her
+"mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity
+of family life.</p>
+
+<p>The household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other
+workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a
+corporate body. The industrial isolation <a name="page_117"></a> of the
+household employee results, as isolation in a trade must always result,
+in a lack of progress in the methods and products of that trade, and a
+lack of aspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize
+this isolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that
+household labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements
+there have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. It is
+said that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought
+about by Count Rumford, who died a hundred years ago. This is largely
+due to the lack of <i>esprit de corps</i> among the employees, which keeps
+them collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education
+in the individual keeps her from improving her implements.</p>
+
+<p>Under this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers
+purposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower
+quality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made <a
+name="page_118"></a> to perform the fullest work, there is an amount of
+capital invested disproportionate to the product when measured by the
+achievement in other branches of industry. More important than this is
+the result of the isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing
+more devastating to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind
+and spirit, than the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of
+that fellowship which makes our public opinion. If an angry foreman
+reprimands a girl for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him,
+and the culprit knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or
+injustice of her situation. In either case she bears it better for
+knowing that, and not thinking it over in solitude. If a household
+employee breaks a utensil or a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by
+her employer, too often the invisible jury is the family of the latter,
+who naturally uphold her censorious position and intensify the feeling
+of loneliness in the employee.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_119"></a>The household employee, in addition to her
+industrial isolation, is also isolated socially. It is well to remember
+that the household employees for the better quarters of the city and
+suburbs are largely drawn from the poorer quarters, which are nothing if
+not gregarious. The girl is born and reared in a tenement house full of
+children. She goes to school with them, and there she learns to march,
+to read, and write in companionship with forty others. When she is old
+enough to go to parties, those she attends are usually held in a public
+hall and are crowded with dancers. If she works in a factory, she walks
+home with many other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly
+walked to school with them. She mingles with the young men she knows, in
+frank, economic, and social equality. Until she marries she remains at
+home with no special break or change in her family and social life. If
+she is employed in a household, this is not true. Suddenly all the
+conditions of her <a name="page_120"></a> life are altered. This change
+may be wholesome for her, but it is not easy, and thought of the
+savings-bank does not cheer one much, when one is twenty. She is
+isolated from the people with whom she has been reared, with whom she
+has gone to school, and among whom she expects to live when she marries.
+She is naturally lonely and constrained away from them, and the "new
+maid" often seems "queer" to her employer's family. She does not care to
+mingle socially with the people in whose house she is employed, as the
+girl from the country often does, but she surfers horribly from
+loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>This wholesome, instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that,
+as every city intelligence-office can testify, the filling of situations
+is easier, or more difficult, in proportion as the place offers more or
+less companionship. Thus, the easy situation to fill is always the city
+house, with five or six employees, shading off into the more difficult
+suburban home, with two, <a name="page_121"></a> and the utterly
+impossible lonely country house.</p>
+
+<p>There are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts
+to supply domestic and social life to their employees; who take the
+domestic employee to drive, arrange to have her invited out
+occasionally; who supply her with books and papers and companionship.
+Nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom
+successful in actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of
+companionship. The employee may have a genuine friendship for her
+employer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and
+the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she
+has, merely because of the propinquity.</p>
+
+<p>The unnaturalness of the situation is intensified by the fact that the
+employee is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from
+her natural associates, and that her employer sympathetically insists
+upon filling the vacancy in interests <a name="page_122"></a> and
+affections by her own tastes and friendship. She may or may not succeed,
+but the employee should not be thus dependent upon the good will of her
+employer. That in itself is undemocratic.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty is increasing by a sense of social discrimination which
+the household employee keenly feels is against her and in favor of the
+factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. Women
+seeking employment, understand perfectly well this feeling among
+mechanics, doubtless quite unjustifiable, but it acts as a strong
+inducement toward factory labor. The writer has long ceased to apologize
+for the views and opinions of working people, being quite sure that on
+the whole they are quite as wise and quite as foolish as the views and
+opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of
+young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily
+demonstrated. The contrast is further accentuated by the better social
+position of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for <a
+name="page_123"></a> her in the way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and
+vacation homes, from which girls performing household labor are
+practically excluded by their hours of work, their geographical
+situation, and a curious feeling that they are not as interesting as
+factory girls.</p>
+
+<p>This separation from her natural social ties affects, of course, her
+opportunity for family life. It is well to remember that women, as a
+rule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their
+parents, their brothers and sisters, and kinsfolk, and will sacrifice
+much to accomplish this. This devotion is so universal that it is
+impossible to ignore it when we consider women as employees. Young
+unmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirements as
+young men are, and are more ready and steady in their response to the
+needs of aged parents and the helpless members of the family. But women
+performing labor in households have peculiar difficulties in responding
+to their family <a name="page_124"></a> claims, and are practically
+dependent upon their employers for opportunities of even seeing their
+relatives and friends.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to
+its claims, on the part of the employer, operates against the girl
+employed in household labor, and still further contributes to her
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>The employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her own family
+life intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to
+her cook, for instance, but once or twice a week, such opportunity for
+untrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family
+claims constantly. This in itself is undemocratic, in that it makes a
+distinction between the value of family life for one set of people as
+over against another; or, rather, claims that one set of people are of
+so much less importance than another, that a valuable side of life
+pertaining to them should be sacrificed for the other.</p>
+
+<p>This cannot be defended theoretically, and no doubt much of the talk
+among the employers <a name="page_125"></a> of household labor, that
+their employees are carefully shielded and cared for, and that it is so
+much better for a girl's health and morals to work in a household than
+to work in a factory, comes from a certain uneasiness of conscience, and
+from a desire to make up by individual scruple what would be done much
+more freely and naturally by public opinion if it had an untrammelled
+chance to assert itself. One person, or a number of isolated persons,
+however conscientious, cannot perform this office of public opinion.
+Certain hospitals in London have contributed statistics showing that
+seventy-eight per cent of illegitimate children born there are the
+children of girls working in households. These girls are certainly not
+less virtuous than factory girls, for they come from the same families
+and have had the same training, but the girls who remain at home and
+work in factories meet their lovers naturally and easily, their fathers
+and brothers know the men, and unconsciously exercise a certain
+supervision and a certain <a name="page_126"></a> direction in their
+choice of companionship. The household employees living in another part
+of the city, away from their natural family and social ties, depend upon
+chance for the lovers whom they meet. The lover may be the young man who
+delivers for the butcher or grocer, or the solitary friend, who follows
+the girl from her own part of town and pursues unfairly the advantage
+which her social loneliness and isolation afford him. There is no
+available public opinion nor any standard of convention which the girl
+can apply to her own situation.</p>
+
+<p>It would be easy to point out many inconveniences arising from the fact
+that the old economic forms are retained when moral conditions which
+befitted them have entirely disappeared, but until employers of domestic
+labor become conscious of their narrow code of ethics, and make a
+distinct effort to break through the status of mistress and servant,
+because it shocks their moral sense, there is no chance of even
+beginning a reform.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_127"></a>A fuller social and domestic life among household
+employees would be steps toward securing their entrance into the larger
+industrial organizations by which the needs of a community are most
+successfully administered. Many a girl who complains of loneliness, and
+who relinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly
+tries to formulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. She
+sometimes says that she "feels so unnatural all the time." The writer
+has known the voice of a girl to change so much during three weeks of
+"service" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her
+home. It alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child
+"speaks a piece" and the husky gulp with which the <i>globus hystericus</i>
+is swallowed. The alertness and <i>bonhomie</i> of the voice of the
+tenement-house child had totally disappeared. When such a girl leaves
+her employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally
+incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally <a
+name="page_128"></a> concludes that she wishes to get away from the
+work and back to her dances and giddy life, content, if she has these,
+to stand many hours in an insanitary factory. The charge of the employer
+is only half a truth. These dances may be the only organized form of
+social life which the disheartened employee is able to mention, but the
+girl herself, in her discontent and her moving from place to place, is
+blindly striving to respond to a larger social life. Her employer thinks
+that she should be able to consider only the interests and conveniences
+of her employer's family, because the employer herself is holding to a
+family outlook, and refuses to allow her mind to take in the larger
+aspects of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>Although this household industry survives in the midst of the factory
+system, it must, of course, constantly compete with it. Women with
+little children, or those with invalids depending upon them, cannot
+enter either occupation, and they are practically confined to the sewing
+trades; but <a name="page_129"></a> to all other untrained women
+seeking employment a choice is open between these two forms of labor.</p>
+
+<p>There are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or
+do some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed
+housekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her
+household. Household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and
+women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two
+forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment,
+in point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family
+and social life. Three points are easily disposed of. First, in regard
+to hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The
+average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the
+evening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. This
+leaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours
+of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night,
+with <a name="page_130"></a> little difference in seasons. There is one
+afternoon a week, with an occasional evening, but Sunday is seldom
+wholly free. Even these evenings and afternoons take the form of a
+concession from the employer. They are called "evenings out," as if the
+time really belonged to her, but that she was graciously permitting her
+employee to use it. This attitude, of course, is in marked contrast to
+that maintained by the factory operative, who, when she works evenings
+is paid for "over-time."</p>
+
+<p>Second, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found
+clearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any
+measure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less
+competition.</p>
+
+<p>Third, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we
+consider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving
+money. This is greater among household employees, because they do not
+pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend
+money in <a name="page_131"></a> recreation is less frequent. The
+minimum wages paid an adult in household labor may be fairly put at two
+dollars and a half a week; the maximum at six dollars, this excluding
+the comparatively rare opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars
+a month, and the housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.</p>
+
+<p>The factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be
+smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the
+minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers
+for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for
+less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last
+being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five
+dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance
+of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it
+easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board,
+in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be <a
+name="page_132"></a> content with four dollars a week and pay no board,
+in a scale of wages rising toward six dollars; and the girl well knows
+that there are scores of forewomen at sixty dollars a month for one
+forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar housekeeper. In many cases this
+position is well taken economically, for, although the opportunity for
+saving may be better for the employees in the household than in the
+factory, her family saves more when she works in a factory and lives
+with them. The rent is no more when she is at home. The two dollars and
+a half a week which she pays into the family fund more than covers the
+cost of her actual food, and at night she can often contribute toward
+the family labor by helping her mother wash and sew.</p>
+
+<p>The fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in
+regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if
+the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining
+factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to
+remedy this, at least in its domestic <a name="page_133"></a> and
+social aspects. To allow household employees to live with their own
+families and among their own friends, as factory employees now do, would
+be to relegate more production to industrial centres administered on the
+factory system, and to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be
+done in the household.</p>
+
+<p>In those cases in which the household employees have no family ties,
+doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of
+residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most
+keenly felt. Indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in
+the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs,
+the household employee could have the independent life which only one's
+own abiding place can afford. This, of course, presupposes a higher
+grade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the
+other hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher
+grades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. <a
+name="page_134"></a> As the plan of separate clubs for household
+employees will probably come first in the suburbs, where the difficulty
+of securing and holding "servants" under the present system is most
+keenly felt, so the plan of buying cooked food from an outside kitchen,
+and of having more and more of the household product relegated to the
+factory, will probably come from the comparatively poor people in the
+city, who feel most keenly the pressure of the present system. They
+already consume a much larger proportion of canned goods and bakers'
+wares and "prepared meats" than the more prosperous people do, because
+they cannot command the skill nor the time for the more tedious
+preparation of the raw material. The writer has seen a tenement-house
+mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door of a local grocery
+store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they could be easily
+prepared for supper and "the children liked the tinny taste."</p>
+
+<p>It is comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household
+industry with a <a name="page_135"></a> cook, a laundress, a waitress.
+The difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that
+but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied
+functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable
+as they fall altogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in
+a flat, or, worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one
+set of utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making
+the living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly
+insupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. Such a woman, rather than
+the prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high
+standard of quality is established.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of domestic service, which has long been discussed in the
+United States and England, is now coming to prominence in France. As a
+well-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in
+the ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an
+"unconscious slavery," while English and <a name="page_136"></a>
+American writers appeal to the statistics which point to the absorption
+of an enormous number of the class from which servants were formerly
+recruited into factory employments, and urge, as the natural solution,
+that more of the products used in households be manufactured in
+factories, and that personal service, at least for healthy adults, be
+eliminated altogether. Both of these lines of discussion certainly
+indicate that domestic service is yielding to the influence of a
+democratic movement, and is emerging from the narrower code of family
+ethics into the larger code governing social relations. It still remains
+to express the ethical advance through changed economic conditions by
+which the actual needs of the family may be supplied not only more
+effectively but more in line with associated effort. To fail to
+apprehend the tendency of one's age, and to fail to adapt the conditions
+of an industry to it, is to leave that industry ill-adjusted and belated
+on the economic side, and out of line ethically.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_137">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+<h4>INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>There is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to
+action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we
+have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to
+fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all
+been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly
+individualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless
+attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering
+motion of a baby's arm before he has learned to coördinate his muscles.</p>
+
+<p>If, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism
+to one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive <a
+name="page_138"></a> and effective action the individual still has the
+best of it. He will secure efficient results while committees are still
+deliberating upon the best method of making a beginning. And yet, if the
+need of the times demand associated effort, it may easily be true that
+the action which appears ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the
+more highly developed line of associated effort, may represent a finer
+social quality and have a greater social value than the more effective
+individual action. It is possible that an individual may be successful,
+largely because he conserves all his powers for individual achievement
+and does not put any of his energy into the training which will give him
+the ability to act with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are
+dazzled by his success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of
+his code. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial
+relations, as existing between the owner of a large factory and his
+employees.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_139"></a>A growing conflict may be detected between the
+democratic ideal, which urges the workmen to demand representation in
+the administration of industry, and the accepted position, that the man
+who owns the capital and takes the risks has the exclusive right of
+management. It is in reality a clash between individual or aristocratic
+management, and corporate or democratic management. A large and highly
+developed factory presents a sharp contrast between its socialized form
+and individualistic ends.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to illustrate this difference by a series of events which
+occurred in Chicago during the summer of 1894. These events epitomized
+and exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics
+which regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that
+so-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an
+individual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual
+ethics.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_140"></a>As this situation illustrates a point of great
+difficulty to which we have arrived in our development of social ethics,
+it may be justifiable to discuss it at some length. Let us recall the
+facts, not as they have been investigated and printed, but as they
+remain in our memories.</p>
+
+<p>A large manufacturing company had provided commodious workshops, and, at
+the instigation of its president, had built a model town for the use of
+its employees. After a series of years it was deemed necessary, during a
+financial depression, to reduce the wages of these employees by giving
+each workman less than full-time work "in order to keep the shops open."
+This reduction was not accepted by the men, who had become discontented
+with the factory management and the town regulations, and a strike
+ensued, followed by a complete shut-down of the works. Although these
+shops were non-union shops, the strikers were hastily organized and
+appealed for help to the American <a name="page_141"></a> Railway
+Union, which at that moment was holding its biennial meeting in Chicago.
+After some days' discussion and some futile attempts at arbitration, a
+sympathetic strike was declared, which gradually involved railway men in
+all parts of the country, and orderly transportation was brought to a
+complete standstill. In the excitement which followed, cars were burned
+and tracks torn up. The police of Chicago did not cope with the
+disorder, and the railway companies, apparently distrusting the Governor
+of the State, and in order to protect the United States mails, called
+upon the President of the United States for the federal troops, the
+federal courts further enjoined all persons against any form of
+interference with the property or operation of the railroads, and the
+situation gradually assumed the proportions of internecine warfare.
+During all of these events the president of the manufacturing company
+first involved, steadfastly refused to have the situation submitted to
+arbitration, <a name="page_142"></a> and this attitude naturally
+provoked much discussion. The discussion was broadly divided between
+those who held that the long kindness of the president of the company
+had been most ungratefully received, and those who maintained that the
+situation was the inevitable outcome of the social consciousness
+developing among working people. The first defended the president of the
+company in his persistent refusal to arbitrate, maintaining that
+arbitration was impossible after the matter had been taken up by other
+than his own employees, and they declared that a man must be allowed to
+run his own business. They considered the firm stand of the president a
+service to the manufacturing interests of the entire country. The others
+claimed that a large manufacturing concern has ceased to be a private
+matter; that not only a number of workmen and stockholders are concerned
+in its management, but that the interests of the public are so involved
+that the <a name="page_143"></a> officers of the company are in a real
+sense administering a public trust.</p>
+
+<p>This prolonged strike clearly puts in a concrete form the ethics of an
+individual, in this case a benevolent employer, and the ethics of a mass
+of men, his employees, claiming what they believed to be their moral
+rights.</p>
+
+<p>These events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has
+become organized into a vast social operation, not with the coöperation
+of the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the
+individual owning the capital. There is a sharp divergence between the
+social form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the
+employees are more highly socialized and dependent. The president of the
+company under discussion went further than the usual employer does. He
+socialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were
+living. He built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town,
+without calling upon the workmen <a name="page_144"></a> either for
+self-expression or self-government. He honestly believed that he knew
+better than they what was for their good, as he certainly knew better
+than they how to conduct his business. As his factory developed and
+increased, making money each year under his direction, he naturally
+expected the town to prosper in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>He did not realize that the men submitted to the undemocratic conditions
+of the factory organization because the economic pressure in our
+industrial affairs is so great that they could not do otherwise. Under
+this pressure they could be successfully discouraged from organization,
+and systematically treated on the individual basis.</p>
+
+<p>Social life, however, in spite of class distinctions, is much freer than
+industrial life, and the men resented the extension of industrial
+control to domestic and social arrangements. They felt the lack of
+democracy in the assumption that they should be taken care of in these
+matters, in which even the humblest <a name="page_145"></a> workman has
+won his independence. The basic difficulty lay in the fact that an
+individual was directing the social affairs of many men without any
+consistent effort to find out their desires, and without any
+organization through which to give them social expression. The president
+of the company was, moreover, so confident of the righteousness of his
+aim that he had come to test the righteousness of the process by his own
+feelings and not by those of the men. He doubtless built the town from a
+sincere desire to give his employees the best surroundings. As it
+developed, he gradually took toward it the artist attitude toward his
+own creation, which has no thought for the creation itself but is
+absorbed in the idea it stands for, and he ceased to measure the
+usefulness of the town by the standard of the men's needs. This process
+slowly darkened his glints of memory, which might have connected his
+experience with that of his men. It is possible to cultivate the
+impulses of the benefactor <a name="page_146"></a> until the power of
+attaining a simple human relationship with the beneficiaries, that of
+frank equality with them, is gone, and there is left no mutual interest
+in a common cause. To perform too many good deeds may be to lose the
+power of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out
+a personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral
+lesson which our times offer.</p>
+
+<p>The president of this company fostered his employees for many years; he
+gave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks; but in their extreme
+need, when they were struggling with the most difficult situation which
+the times could present to them, he lost his touch and had nothing
+wherewith to help them. The employer's conception of goodness for his
+men had been cleanliness, decency of living, and, above all, thrift and
+temperance. Means had been provided for all this, and opportunities had
+also been given for recreation and improvement. But this employer
+suddenly found <a name="page_147"></a> his town in the sweep of a
+world-wide moral impulse. A movement had been going on about him and
+among his working men, of which he had been unconscious, or concerning
+which he had heard only by rumor.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in
+many languages, that "the injury of one is the concern of all." Their
+watchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual
+and trade interests, to the good of the working classes, and they were
+moved by a determination to free that class from the untoward conditions
+under which they were laboring.</p>
+
+<p>Compared to these watchwords, the old ones which this philanthropic
+employer had given his town were negative and inadequate. He had
+believed strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual effort, but
+had failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined abstinence and
+concerted action. With all his fostering, the president had not attained
+to a conception <a name="page_148"></a> of social morality for his men
+and had imagined that virtue for them largely meant absence of vice.</p>
+
+<p>When the labor movement finally stirred his town, or, to speak more
+fairly, when, in their distress and perplexity, his own employees
+appealed to an organized manifestation of this movement, they were quite
+sure that simply because they were workmen in distress they would not be
+deserted by it. This loyalty on the part of a widely ramified and
+well-organized union toward the workmen in a "non-union shop," who had
+contributed nothing to its cause, was certainly a manifestation of moral
+power.</p>
+
+<p>In none of his utterances or correspondence did the president for an
+instant recognize this touch of nobility, although one would imagine
+that he would gladly point out this bit of virtue, in what he must have
+considered the moral ruin about him. He stood throughout for the
+individual virtues, those which had distinguished the model workmen of
+his youth; those <a name="page_149"></a> which had enabled him and so
+many of his contemporaries to rise in life, when "rising in life" was
+urged upon every promising boy as the goal of his efforts.</p>
+
+<p>Of the code of social ethics he had caught absolutely nothing. The
+morals he had advocated in selecting and training his men did not fail
+them in the hour of confusion. They were self-controlled, and they
+themselves destroyed no property. They were sober and exhibited no
+drunkenness, even although obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon
+hall of a neighboring town. They repaid their employer in kind, but he
+had given them no rule for the life of association into which they were
+plunged.</p>
+
+<p>The president of the company desired that his employees should possess
+the individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them
+the social virtues which express themselves in associated effort.</p>
+
+<p>Day after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires
+constantly reported the same message, "the President <a
+name="page_150"></a> of the Company holds that there is nothing to
+arbitrate," one was forced to feel that the ideal of one-man rule was
+being sustained in its baldest form. A demand from many parts of the
+country and from many people was being made for social adjustment,
+against which the commercial training and the individualistic point of
+view held its own successfully.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of
+similar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same
+commercial experience, shared and sustained this position. It was quite
+impossible for them to catch the other point of view. They not only felt
+themselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually
+accustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they
+had come to consider their motives beyond reproach. Habit held them
+persistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions.</p>
+
+<p>A wise man has said that "the consent <a name="page_151"></a> of men
+and your own conscience are two wings given you whereby you may rise to
+God." It is so easy for the good and powerful to think that they can
+rise by following the dictates of conscience, by pursuing their own
+ideals, that they are prone to leave those ideals unconnected with the
+consent of their fellow-men. The president of the company thought out
+within his own mind a beautiful town. He had power with which to build
+this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men
+who were living in it. The most unambitious reform, recognizing the
+necessity for this consent, makes for slow but sane and strenuous
+progress, while the most ambitious of social plans and experiments,
+ignoring this, is prone to failure.</p>
+
+<p>The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to
+consult the "feasible right" as well as the absolute right. He is often
+obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's "best possible," and then has the
+sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move
+along <a name="page_152"></a> with those whom he leads toward a goal
+that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has
+to discover what people really want, and then "provide the channels in
+which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow." What he does
+attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a
+solitary mountain-climber beyond that of the valley multitude but it is
+sustained and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others.
+Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater
+because lateral. He has not taught his contemporaries to climb
+mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet
+higher; added to this, he has made secure his progress. A few months
+after the death of the promoter of this model town, a court decision
+made it obligatory upon the company to divest itself of the management
+of the town as involving a function beyond its corporate powers. The
+parks, flowers, and fountains of this far-famed industrial centre <a
+name="page_153"></a> were dismantled, with scarcely a protest from the
+inhabitants themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the
+coöperation of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure.
+He does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his
+own permanent success which associated efforts afford. Genuine
+experiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic
+faith and practice than those which underlie private venture. Public
+parks and improvements, intended for the common use, are after all only
+safe in the hands of the public itself; and associated effort toward
+social progress, although much more awkward and stumbling than that same
+effort managed by a capable individual, does yet enlist deeper forces
+and evoke higher social capacities.</p>
+
+<p>The successful business man who is also the philanthropist is in more
+than the usual danger of getting widely separated from his employees.
+The men already have the <a name="page_154"></a> American veneration
+for wealth and successful business capacity, and, added to this, they
+are dazzled by his good works. The workmen have the same kindly impulses
+as he, but while they organize their charity into mutual benefit
+associations and distribute their money in small amounts in relief for
+the widows and insurance for the injured, the employer may build model
+towns, erect college buildings, which are tangible and enduring, and
+thereby display his goodness in concentrated form.</p>
+
+<p>By the very exigencies of business demands, the employer is too often
+cut off from the social ethics developing in regard to our larger social
+relationships, and from the great moral life springing from our common
+experiences. This is sure to happen when he is good "to" people rather
+than "with" them, when he allows himself to decide what is best for them
+instead of consulting them. He thus misses the rectifying influence of
+that fellowship which is so big that it leaves no room for <a
+name="page_155"></a> sensitiveness or gratitude. Without this
+fellowship we may never know how great the divergence between ourselves
+and others may become, nor how cruel the misunderstandings.</p>
+
+<p>During a recent strike of the employees of a large factory in Ohio, the
+president of the company expressed himself as bitterly disappointed by
+the results of his many kindnesses, and evidently considered the
+employees utterly unappreciative. His state of mind was the result of
+the fallacy of ministering to social needs from an individual impulse
+and expecting a socialized return of gratitude and loyalty. If the
+lunch-room was necessary, it was a necessity in order that the employees
+might have better food, and, when they had received the better food, the
+legitimate aim of the lunch-room was met. If baths were desirable, and
+the fifteen minutes of calisthenic exercise given the women in the
+middle of each half day brought a needed rest and change to their
+muscles, then the increased cleanliness and the increased bodily <a
+name="page_156"></a> comfort of so many people should of themselves
+have justified the experiment.</p>
+
+<p>To demand, as a further result, that there should be no strikes in the
+factory, no revolt against the will of the employer because the
+employees were filled with loyalty as the result of the kindness, was of
+course to take the experiment from an individual basis to a social one.</p>
+
+<p>Large mining companies and manufacturing concerns are constantly
+appealing to their stockholders for funds, or for permission to take a
+percentage of the profits, in order that the money may be used for
+educational and social schemes designed for the benefit of the
+employees. The promoters of these schemes use as an argument and as an
+appeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes
+will be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the
+stockholders will be increased. However praiseworthy this appeal may be
+in motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory
+deserves the failure it so often <a name="page_157"></a> meets with in
+practice. In the clash which follows a strike, the employees are accused
+of an ingratitude, when there was no legitimate reason to expect
+gratitude; and useless bitterness, which has really a factitious basis,
+may be developed on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of
+misunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and
+employees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so
+far as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual
+code of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from
+the standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked
+industrial significance. Failing, as they do, however, to touch the
+question of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of
+trades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when
+they urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation
+existing between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance
+<a name="page_158"></a> of strikes and other trades-union tactics. The
+men have individually accepted the kindness of the employers as it was
+individually offered, but quite as the latter urges his inability to
+increase wages unless he has the coöperation of his competitors, so the
+men state that they are bound to the trades-union struggle for an
+increase in wages because it can only be undertaken by combinations of
+labor.</p>
+
+<p>Even the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the
+profits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of
+their wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact
+that the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit
+shall accrue.</p>
+
+<p>Both individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and
+individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most
+useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and
+employer may in time be legally compelled to conform. Progress must
+always come through the individual <a name="page_159"></a> who varies
+from the type and has sufficient energy to express this variation. He
+first holds a higher conception than that held by the mass of his
+fellows of what is righteous under given conditions, and expresses this
+conviction in conduct, in many instances formulating a certain scruple
+which the others share, but have not yet defined even to themselves.
+Progress, however, is not secure until the mass has conformed to this
+new righteousness. This is equally true in regard to any advance made in
+the standard of living on the part of the trades-unionists or in the
+improved conditions of industry on the part of reforming employers. The
+mistake lies, not in overpraising the advance thus inaugurated by
+individual initiative, but in regarding the achievement as complete in a
+social sense when it is still in the realm of individual action. No sane
+manufacturer regards his factory as the centre of the industrial system.
+He knows very well that the cost of material, wages, and selling prices
+are determined by <a name="page_160"></a> industrial conditions
+completely beyond his control. Yet the same man may quite calmly regard
+himself and his own private principles as merely self-regarding, and
+expect results from casual philanthropy which can only be accomplished
+through those common rules of life and labor established by the
+community for the common good.</p>
+
+<p>Outside of and surrounding these smaller and most significant efforts
+are the larger and irresistible movements operating toward combination.
+This movement must tend to decide upon social matters from the social
+standpoint. Until then it is difficult to keep our minds free from a
+confusion of issues. Such a confusion occurs when the gift of a large
+sum to the community for a public and philanthropic purpose, throws a
+certain glamour over all the earlier acts of a man, and makes it
+difficult for the community to see possible wrongs committed against it,
+in the accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. It is possible also
+that the resolve to <a name="page_161"></a> be thus generous
+unconsciously influences the man himself in his methods of accumulation.
+He keeps to a certain individual rectitude, meaning to make an
+individual restitution by the old paths of generosity and kindness,
+whereas if he had in view social restitution on the newer lines of
+justice and opportunity, he would throughout his course doubtless be
+watchful of his industrial relationships and his social virtues.</p>
+
+<p>The danger of professionally attaining to the power of the righteous
+man, of yielding to the ambition "for doing good" on a large scale,
+compared to which the ambition for politics, learning, or wealth, are
+vulgar and commonplace, ramifies through our modern life; and those most
+easily beset by this temptation are precisely the men best situated to
+experiment on the larger social lines, because they so easily dramatize
+their acts and lead public opinion. Very often, too, they have in their
+hands the preservation and advancement of large vested interests, <a
+name="page_162"></a> and often see clearly and truly that they are
+better able to administer the affairs of the community than the
+community itself: sometimes they see that if they do not administer them
+sharply and quickly, as only an individual can, certain interests of
+theirs dependent upon the community will go to ruin.</p>
+
+<p>The model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will
+with which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless
+be of great public value. This again shows the advantage of individual
+management, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth,
+but this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites
+the ambition to provide other schools from public funds. The town of
+Zurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the
+vote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. Every man who
+voted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits,
+and, of course, the voluntary attendance must be <a
+name="page_163"></a> larger than in a school accepted as a gift to the
+community.</p>
+
+<p>In the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts
+toward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is
+trying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to
+do for themselves. The result of his efforts will only attain its
+highest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by
+the community as well as for the community.</p>
+
+<p>There are doubtless many things which the public would never demand
+unless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because
+the public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating
+their wants. Thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until
+they become so established in the popular affections that they are
+incorporated in the public school system. Churches and missions
+establish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots
+the city with branch <a name="page_164"></a> reading rooms and
+libraries. For this willingness to take risks for the sake of an ideal,
+for those experiments which must be undertaken with vigor and boldness
+in order to secure didactic value in failure as well as in success,
+society must depend upon the individual possessed with money, and also
+distinguished by earnest and unselfish purpose. Such experiments enable
+the nation to use the Referendum method in its public affairs. Each
+social experiment is thus tested by a few people, given wide publicity,
+that it may be observed and discussed by the bulk of the citizens before
+the public prudently makes up its mind whether or not it is wise to
+incorporate it into the functions of government. If the decision is in
+its favor and it is so incorporated, it can then be carried on with
+confidence and enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>But experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for
+a certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and
+social advancement. <a name="page_165"></a> The list of those who found
+churches, educational institutions, libraries, and art galleries, is
+very long, as is again the list of those contributing to model
+dwellings, recreation halls, and athletic fields. At the present moment
+factory employers are doing much to promote "industrial betterment" in
+the way of sanitary surroundings, opportunities for bathing, lunch rooms
+provided with cheap and wholesome food, club rooms, and guild halls. But
+there is a line of social experiment involving social righteousness in
+its most advanced form, in which the number of employers and the
+"favored class" are so few that it is plain society cannot count upon
+them for continuous and valuable help. This lack is in the line of
+factory legislation and that sort of social advance implied in shorter
+hours and the regulation of wages; in short, all that organization and
+activity that is involved in such a maintenance and increase of wages as
+would prevent the lowering of the standard of life.</p>
+
+<p>A large body of people feel keenly that <a name="page_166"></a> the
+present industrial system is in a state of profound disorder, and that
+there is no guarantee that the pursuit of individual ethics will ever
+right it. They claim that relief can only come through deliberate
+corporate effort inspired by social ideas and guided by the study of
+economic laws, and that the present industrial system thwarts our
+ethical demands, not only for social righteousness but for social order.
+Because they believe that each advance in ethics must be made fast by a
+corresponding advance in politics and legal enactment, they insist upon
+the right of state regulation and control. While many people
+representing all classes in a community would assent to this as to a
+general proposition, and would even admit it as a certain moral
+obligation, legislative enactments designed to control industrial
+conditions have largely been secured through the efforts of a few
+citizens, mostly those who constantly see the harsh conditions of labor
+and who are incited to activity by their sympathies as well as their
+convictions.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_167"></a> This may be illustrated by the series of legal
+enactments regulating the occupations in which children may be allowed
+to work, also the laws in regard to the hours of labor permitted in
+those occupations, and the minimum age below which children may not be
+employed. The first child labor laws were enacted in England through the
+efforts of those members of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the
+condition of the little parish apprentices bound out to the early
+textile manufacturers of the north; and through the long years required
+to build up the code of child labor legislation which England now
+possesses, knowledge of the conditions has always preceded effective
+legislation. The efforts of that small number in every community who
+believe in legislative control have always been reënforced by the
+efforts of trades-unionists rather than by the efforts of employers.
+Partly because the employment of workingmen in the factories brings them
+in contact with the children who tend to lower wages and demoralize <a
+name="page_168"></a> their trades, and partly because workingmen have
+no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy, and must
+perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only channel of
+redress which is open to them.</p>
+
+<p>We may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving
+street-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of
+the last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper. A
+comfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral
+shock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the
+little fellow, who is making his way in the world. The philanthropic
+lady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such
+a bright boy is not in school. She may make up her mind in a moment of
+compunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys' schools and
+homes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a
+chance at manual training. She probably is convinced <a
+name="page_169"></a> that he alone, by his unaided efforts, is
+supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is moved to do all she can
+for him. Next to her sits a workingman trained in trades-union methods.
+He knows that the boy's natural development is arrested, and that the
+abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up the force which should go
+into growth; moreover, that this premature use of his powers has but a
+momentary and specious value. He is forced to these conclusions because
+he has seen many a man, entering the factory at eighteen and twenty, so
+worn out by premature work that he was "laid on the shelf" within ten or
+fifteen years. He knows very well that he can do nothing in the way of
+ameliorating the lot of this particular boy; that his only possible
+chance is to agitate for proper child-labor laws; to regulate, and if
+possible prohibit, street-vending by children, in order that the child
+of the poorest may have his school time secured to him, and may have at
+least his short chance for growth.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_170"></a> These three people, sitting in the street car,
+are all honest and upright, and recognize a certain duty toward the
+forlorn children of the community. The self-made man is encouraging one
+boy's own efforts; the philanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the
+workingman alone is obliged to include all the boys of his class.
+Workingmen, because of their feebleness in all but numbers, have been
+forced to appeal to the state, in order to secure protection for
+themselves and for their children. They cannot all rise out of their
+class, as the occasionally successful man has done; some of them must be
+left to do the work in the factories and mines, and they have no money
+to spend in philanthropy.</p>
+
+<p>Both public agitation and a social appeal to the conscience of the
+community is necessary in order to secure help from the state, and,
+curiously enough, child-labor laws once enacted and enforced are a
+matter of great pride, and even come to be regarded as a register of the
+community's humanity and <a name="page_171"></a> enlightenment. If the
+method of public agitation could find quiet and orderly expression in
+legislative enactment, and if labor measures could be submitted to the
+examination and judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of
+warfare, we should have the ideal development of the democratic state.</p>
+
+<p>But we judge labor organizations as we do other living institutions, not
+by their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their
+blundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and
+by the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual
+finds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action.</p>
+
+<p>The very blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a
+union, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often
+confuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust
+uncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. The situation is
+made even more complicated by the fact that <a name="page_172"></a>
+those who are formulating a code of associated action so often break
+through the established code of law and order. As society has a right to
+demand of the reforming individual that he be sternly held to his
+personal and domestic claims, so it has a right to insist that labor
+organizations shall keep to the hardly won standards of public law and
+order; and the community performs but its plain duty when it registers
+its protest every time law and order are subverted, even in the interest
+of the so-called social effort. Yet in moments of industrial stress and
+strain the community is confronted by a moral perplexity which may arise
+from the mere fact that the good of yesterday is opposed to the good of
+today, and that which may appear as a choice between virtue and vice is
+really but a choice between virtue and virtue. In the disorder and
+confusion sometimes incident to growth and progress, the community may
+be unable to see anything but the unlovely struggle itself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_173"></a>The writer recalls a conversation between two
+workingmen who were leaving a lecture on "Organic Evolution." The first
+was much puzzled, and anxiously inquired of the second "if evolution
+could mean that one animal turned into another." The challenged workman
+stopped in the rear of the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and
+expounded what he thought evolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the
+conversation can be recalled, is what he said: "You see a lot of fishes
+are living in a stream, which overflows in the spring and strands some
+of them upon the bank. The weak ones die up there, but others make a big
+effort to get back into the water. They dig their fins into the sand,
+breathe as much air as they can with their gills, and have a terrible
+time. But after a while their fins turn into legs and their gills into
+lungs, and they have become frogs. Of course they are further along than
+the sleek, comfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving
+their tails and <a name="page_174"></a> despising the poor damaged
+things thrashing around on the bank. He&mdash;the lecturer&mdash;did not say
+anything about men, but it is easy enough to think of us poor devils on
+the dry bank, struggling without enough to live on, while the
+comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all they want and
+despise us because we thrash about." His listener did not reply, and was
+evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the application.
+Doubtless the illustration was bungling in more than its setting forth,
+but the story is suggestive.</p>
+
+<p>At times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so
+anxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably
+on the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for
+him to see the situation fairly. He becomes insensible to the unselfish
+impulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers
+in a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on
+the disorder which has <a name="page_175"></a> become associated with
+the strike. He is completely side-tracked by the ugly phases of a great
+moral movement. It is always a temptation to assume that the side which
+has respectability, authority, and superior intelligence, has therefore
+righteousness as well, especially when the same side presents concrete
+results of individual effort as over against the less tangible results
+of associated effort.</p>
+
+<p>It is as yet most difficult for us to free ourselves from the
+individualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their
+social relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to
+produce a social result through all the difficulties of associated
+action. The philanthropist still finds his path much easier than do
+those who are attempting a social morality. In the first place, the
+public, anxious to praise what it recognizes as an undoubted moral
+effort often attended with real personal sacrifice, joyfully seizes upon
+this manifestation and overpraises it, recognizing the philanthropist <a
+name="page_176"></a> as an old friend in the paths of righteousness,
+whereas the others are strangers and possibly to be distrusted as
+aliens. It is easy to confuse the response to an abnormal number of
+individual claims with the response to the social claim. An exaggerated
+personal morality is often mistaken for a social morality, and until it
+attempts to minister to a social situation its total inadequacy is not
+discovered. To attempt to attain a social morality without a basis of
+democratic experience results in the loss of the only possible
+corrective and guide, and ends in an exaggerated individual morality but
+not in social morality at all. We see this from time to time in the
+care-worn and overworked philanthropist, who has taxed his individual
+will beyond the normal limits and has lost his clew to the situation
+among a bewildering number of cases. A man who takes the betterment of
+humanity for his aim and end must also take the daily experiences of
+humanity for the constant correction of his process. He must not only <a
+name="page_177"></a> test and guide his achievement by human
+experience, but he must succeed or fail in proportion as he has
+incorporated that experience with his own. Otherwise his own
+achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes to believe in his
+own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes an exception of
+himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank and file of his
+fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to know of the lives of our
+contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their integrity, which
+is after all but the first beginnings of social morality, but in order
+to attain to any mental or moral integrity for ourselves or any such
+hope for society.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_178">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+
+<h4>EDUCATIONAL METHODS</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the
+value and function of each member of the community, however humble he
+may be. We have come to believe that the most "brutish man" has a value
+in our common life, a function to perform which can be fulfilled by no
+one else. We are gradually requiring of the educator that he shall free
+the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of life. We ask
+this not merely because it is the man's right to be thus connected, but
+because we have become convinced that the social order cannot afford to
+get along without his special contribution. Just as we have come to
+resent all hindrances which keep us from untrammelled comradeship with
+<a name="page_179"></a> our fellows, and as we throw down unnatural
+divisions, not in the spirit of the eighteenth-century reformers, but in
+the spirit of those to whom social equality has become a necessity for
+further social development, so we are impatient to use the dynamic power
+residing in the mass of men, and demand that the educator free that
+power. We believe that man's moral idealism is the constructive force of
+progress, as it has always been; but because every human being is a
+creative agent and a possible generator of fine enthusiasm, we are
+sceptical of the moral idealism of the few and demand the education of
+the many, that there may be greater freedom, strength, and subtilty of
+intercourse and hence an increase of dynamic power. We are not content
+to include all men in our hopes, but have become conscious that all men
+are hoping and are part of the same movement of which we are a part.</p>
+
+<p>Many people impelled by these ideas have become impatient with the slow
+recognition <a name="page_180"></a> on the part of the educators of
+their manifest obligation to prepare and nourish the child and the
+citizen for social relations. The educators should certainly conserve
+the learning and training necessary for the successful individual and
+family life, but should add to that a preparation for the enlarged
+social efforts which our increasing democracy requires. The democratic
+ideal demands of the school that it shall give the child's own
+experience a social value; that it shall teach him to direct his own
+activities and adjust them to those of other people. We are not willing
+that thousands of industrial workers shall put all of their activity and
+toil into services from which the community as a whole reaps the
+benefit, while their mental conceptions and code of morals are narrow
+and untouched by any uplift which the consciousness of social value
+might give them.</p>
+
+<p>We are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and
+writing, suspecting them to rest upon the assumption <a
+name="page_181"></a> that the ordinary experience of life is worth
+little, and that all knowledge and interest must be brought to the
+children through the medium of books. Such an assumption fails to give
+the child any clew to the life about him, or any power to usefully or
+intelligently connect himself with it. This may be illustrated by
+observations made in a large Italian colony situated in Chicago, the
+children from which are, for the most part, sent to the public schools.</p>
+
+<p>The members of the Italian colony are largely from South
+Italy,&mdash;Calabrian and Sicilian peasants, or Neapolitans from the
+workingmen's quarters of that city. They have come to America with the
+distinct aim of earning money, and finding more room for the energies of
+themselves and their children. In almost all cases they mean to go back
+again, simply because their imaginations cannot picture a continuous
+life away from the old surroundings. Their experiences in Italy have
+been those of simple outdoor activity, and their ideas have come <a
+name="page_182"></a> directly to them from their struggle with
+Nature,&mdash;such a hand-to-hand struggle as takes place when each man gets
+his living largely through his own cultivation of the soil, or with
+tools simply fashioned by his own hands. The women, as in all primitive
+life, have had more diversified activities than the men. They have
+cooked, spun, and knitted, in addition to their almost equal work in the
+fields. Very few of the peasant men or women can either read or write.
+They are devoted to their children, strong in their family feeling, even
+to remote relationships, and clannish in their community life.</p>
+
+<p>The entire family has been upheaved, and is striving to adjust itself to
+its new surroundings. The men, for the most part, work on railroad
+extensions through the summer, under the direction of a <i>padrone</i>, who
+finds the work for them, regulates the amount of their wages, and
+supplies them with food. The first effect of immigration upon the women
+is that of idleness. They no <a name="page_183"></a> longer work in the
+fields, nor milk the goats, nor pick up faggots. The mother of the
+family buys all the clothing, not only already spun and woven but made
+up into garments, of a cut and fashion beyond her powers. It is, indeed,
+the most economical thing for her to do. Her house-cleaning and cooking
+are of the simplest; the bread is usually baked outside of the house,
+and the macaroni bought prepared for boiling. All of those outdoor and
+domestic activities, which she would naturally have handed on to her
+daughters, have slipped away from her. The domestic arts are gone, with
+their absorbing interests for the children, their educational value, and
+incentive to activity. A household in a tenement receives almost no raw
+material. For the hundreds of children who have never seen wheat grow,
+there are dozens who have never seen bread baked. The occasional
+washings and scrubbings are associated only with discomfort. The child
+of such a family receives constant stimulus of most exciting sort from
+his city <a name="page_184"></a> street life, but he has little or no
+opportunity to use his energies in domestic manufacture, or, indeed,
+constructively in any direction. No activity is supplied to take the
+place of that which, in Italy, he would naturally have found in his own
+surroundings, and no new union with wholesome life is made for him.</p>
+
+<p>Italian parents count upon the fact that their children learn the
+English language and American customs before they do themselves, and the
+children act not only as interpreters of the language, but as buffers
+between them and Chicago, resulting in a certain almost pathetic
+dependence of the family upon the child. When a child of the family,
+therefore, first goes to school, the event is fraught with much
+significance to all the others. The family has no social life in any
+structural form and can supply none to the child. He ought to get it in
+the school and give it to his family, the school thus becoming the
+connector with the organized society <a name="page_185"></a> about
+them. It is the children aged six, eight, and ten, who go to school,
+entering, of course, the primary grades. If a boy is twelve or thirteen
+on his arrival in America, his parents see in him a wage-earning factor,
+and the girl of the same age is already looking toward her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years
+to speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified
+with the fortunes of his family. Whatever interest has come to the minds
+of his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open
+air; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable
+accompaniments of all their experiences. Yet the first thing that the
+boy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the
+time, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the
+perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. He does not find this very
+stimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the
+schoolroom. The <a name="page_186"></a> peasant child is perfectly
+indifferent to showing off and making a good recitation. He leaves all
+that to his schoolfellows, who are more sophisticated and equipped with
+better English. His parents are not deeply interested in keeping him in
+school, and will not hold him there against his inclination. Their
+experience does not point to the good American tradition that it is the
+educated man who finally succeeds. The richest man in the Italian colony
+can neither read nor write&mdash;even Italian. His cunning and
+acquisitiveness, combined with the credulity and ignorance of his
+countrymen, have slowly brought about his large fortune. The child
+himself may feel the stirring of a vague ambition to go on until he is
+as the other children are; but he is not popular with his schoolfellows,
+and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic interest. Even the pictures and
+objects presented to him, as well as the language, are strange.</p>
+
+<p>If we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the
+experiences which <a name="page_187"></a> the child already has and to
+use his spontaneous and social activity, then the city streets begin
+this education for him in a more natural way than does the school. The
+South Italian peasant comes from a life of picking olives and oranges,
+and he easily sends his children out to pick up coal from railroad
+tracks, or wood from buildings which have been burned down.
+Unfortunately, this process leads by easy transition to petty thieving.
+It is easy to go from the coal on the railroad track to the coal and
+wood which stand before a dealer's shop; from the potatoes which have
+rolled from a rumbling wagon to the vegetables displayed by the grocer.
+This is apt to be the record of the boy who responds constantly to the
+stimulus and temptations of the street, although in the beginning his
+search for bits of food and fuel was prompted by the best of motives.</p>
+
+<p>The school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition
+to the distractions of the neighborhood. Nothing <a
+name="page_188"></a> is more fascinating than that mysterious "down
+town," whither the boy longs to go to sell papers and black boots, to
+attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay all night on the pretence of
+waiting for the early edition of the great dailies. If a boy is once
+thoroughly caught in these excitements, nothing can save him from
+over-stimulation and consequent debility and worthlessness; he arrives
+at maturity with no habits of regular work and with a distaste for its
+dulness.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities
+who conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of
+the early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories,
+painstakingly performing their work year after year. These later are the
+men who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood
+of every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year
+after year without in the least knowing what it is all about. The one
+fixed habit which the boy carries away with <a name="page_189"></a> him
+from the school to the factory is the feeling that his work is merely
+provisional. In school the next grade was continually held before him as
+an object of attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole
+object of present effort is to get ready for something else. This
+tentative attitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his
+factory work; he pursues it merely as a necessity, and his very mental
+attitude destroys his chance for a realization of its social value. As
+the boy in school contracted the habit of doing his work in certain
+hours and taking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory
+he earns his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three
+hours of lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the
+school and in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and
+monotonous, his recreation must become more exciting and stimulating.
+The hopelessness of adding evening classes and social entertainments as
+a mere frill to a day filled with monotonous and deadening <a
+name="page_190"></a> drudgery constantly becomes more apparent to those
+who are endeavoring to bring a fuller life to the industrial members of
+the community, and who are looking forward to a time when work shall
+cease to be senseless drudgery with no self-expression on the part of
+the worker. It sometimes seems that the public schools should contribute
+much more than they do to the consummation of this time. If the army of
+school children who enter the factories every year possessed thoroughly
+vitalized faculties, they might do much to lighten this incubus of dull
+factory work which presses so heavily upon so large a number of our
+fellow-citizens. Has our commercialism been so strong that our schools
+have become insensibly commercialized, whereas we supposed that our
+industrial life was receiving the broadening and illuminating effects of
+the schools? The training of these children, so far as it has been
+vocational at all, has been in the direction of clerical work. It is
+possible that the business <a name="page_191"></a> men, whom we in
+America so tremendously admire, have really been dictating the
+curriculum of our public schools, in spite of the conventions of
+educators and the suggestions of university professors. The business
+man, of course, has not said, "I will have the public schools train
+office boys and clerks so that I may have them easily and cheaply," but
+he has sometimes said, "Teach the children to write legibly and to
+figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of punctuality and
+order; to be prompt to obey; and you will fit them to make their way in
+the world as I have made mine." Has the workingman been silent as to
+what he desires for his children, and allowed the business man to decide
+for him there, as he has allowed the politician to manage his municipal
+affairs, or has the workingman so far shared our universal optimism that
+he has really believed that his children would never need to go into
+industrial life at all, but that all of his sons would become bankers
+and merchants?</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_192"></a>Certain it is that no sufficient study has been
+made of the child who enters into industrial life early and stays there
+permanently, to give him some offset to its monotony and dulness, some
+historic significance of the part he is taking in the life of the
+community.</p>
+
+<p>It is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing
+democracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. As the
+political expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the
+free right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting
+that he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of
+his social and industrial value.</p>
+
+<p>The early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to
+exchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently
+still survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools.
+We have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres
+of production and manufacture in which a huge population is <a
+name="page_193"></a> engaged, or we have lacked sufficient presence of
+mind to adjust ourselves to the change. We admire much more the men who
+accumulate riches, and who gather to themselves the results of industry,
+than the men who actually carry forward industrial processes; and, as
+has been pointed out, our schools still prepare children almost
+exclusively for commercial and professional life.</p>
+
+<p>Quite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and
+begins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so
+the school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a
+clerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation
+of ignorant and unsuccessful men. The schools do so little really to
+interest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition
+in the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost
+from the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work
+and a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for
+money with which unmeaning <a name="page_194"></a> purchases may be
+made and an unmeaning social standing obtained.</p>
+
+<p>The son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses
+his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he
+comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people
+learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial
+arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption
+that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,&mdash;that every
+promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined
+for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under
+other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a
+folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister,
+who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the
+cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him
+educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress
+meanly, the life of the average laborer <a name="page_195"></a> tends
+to become flat and monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind
+or hold his interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at
+the bottom, who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the
+work is necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to
+our theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is
+covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or
+trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious
+effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial
+life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration
+regarding it.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust
+which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To
+get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is
+still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line.
+A workingman's family will make every effort and <a
+name="page_196"></a> sacrifice that the brightest daughter be sent to
+the high school and through the normal school, quite as much because a
+teacher in the family raises the general social standing and sense of
+family consequence, as that the returns are superior to factory or even
+office work. "Teacher" in the vocabulary of many children is a synonym
+for women-folk gentry, and the name is indiscriminately applied to women
+of certain dress and manner. The same desire for social advancement is
+expressed by the purchasing of a piano, or the fact that the son is an
+office boy, and not a factory hand. The overcrowding of the professions
+by poorly equipped men arises from much the same source, and from the
+conviction that "an education" is wasted if a boy goes into a factory or
+shop.</p>
+
+<p>A Chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended
+and meant to give a start in life. He sent them both to the Athenæum for
+several winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them
+into his office, where they speedily <a name="page_197"></a> became
+known as the bright one and the stupid one. The stupid one was finally
+dismissed after repeated trials, when to the surprise of the entire
+establishment, he quickly betook himself into the shops, where he became
+a wide-awake and valuable workman. His chagrined benefactor, in telling
+the story, admits that he himself had fallen a victim to his own
+business training and his early notion of rising in life. In reality he
+had merely followed the lead of most benevolent people who help poor
+boys. They test the success of their efforts by the number whom they
+have taken out of factory work into some other and "higher occupation."</p>
+
+<p>Quite in line with this commercial ideal are the night schools and
+institutions of learning most accessible to working people. First among
+them is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of
+type-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and
+methods of distribution. Commodities are treated as <a
+name="page_198"></a> exports and imports, or solely in regard to their
+commercial value, and not, of course, in relation to their historic
+development or the manufacturing processes to which they have been
+subjected. These schools do not in the least minister to the needs of
+the actual factory employee, who is in the shop and not in the office.
+We assume that all men are searching for "puddings and power," to use
+Carlyle's phrase, and furnish only the schools which help them to those
+ends.</p>
+
+<p>The business college man, or even the man who goes through an academic
+course in order to prepare for a profession, comes to look on learning
+too much as an investment from which he will later reap the benefits in
+earning money. He does not connect learning with industrial pursuits,
+nor does he in the least lighten or illuminate those pursuits for those
+of his friends who have not risen in life. "It is as though nets were
+laid at the entrance to education, in which those who by some <a
+name="page_199"></a> means or other escape from the masses bowed down
+by labor, are inevitably caught and held from substantial service to
+their fellows." The academic teaching which is accessible to workingmen
+through University Extension lectures and classes at settlements, is
+usually bookish and remote, and concerning subjects completely divorced
+from their actual experiences. The men come to think of learning as
+something to be added to the end of a hard day's work, and to be gained
+at the cost of toilsome mental exertion. There are, of course,
+exceptions, but many men who persist in attending classes and lectures
+year after year find themselves possessed of a mass of inert knowledge
+which nothing in their experience fuses into availability or
+realization.</p>
+
+<p>Among the many disappointments which the settlement experiment has
+brought to its promoters, perhaps none is keener than the fact that they
+have as yet failed to work out methods of education, specialized <a
+name="page_200"></a> and adapted to the needs of adult working people
+in contra-distinction to those employed in schools and colleges, or
+those used in teaching children. There are many excellent reasons and
+explanations for this failure. In the first place, the residents
+themselves are for the most part imbued with academic methods and
+ideals, which it is most difficult to modify. To quote from a late
+settlement report, "The most vaunted educational work in settlements
+amounts often to the stimulation mentally of a select few who are, in a
+sense, of the academic type of mind, and who easily and quickly respond
+to the academic methods employed." These classes may be valuable, but
+they leave quite untouched the great mass of the factory population, the
+ordinary workingman of the ordinary workingman's street, whose attitude
+is best described as that of "acquiescence," who lives through the
+aimless passage of the years without incentive "to imagine, to design,
+or to aspire." <a name="page_201"></a> These men are totally untouched
+by all the educational and philanthropic machinery which is designed for
+the young and the helpless who live on the same streets with them. They
+do not often drink to excess, they regularly give all their wages to
+their wives, they have a vague pride in their superior children; but
+they grow prematurely old and stiff in all their muscles, and become
+more and more taciturn, their entire energies consumed in "holding a
+job."</p>
+
+<p>Various attempts have been made to break through the inadequate
+educational facilities supplied by commercialism and scholarship, both
+of which have followed their own ideals and have failed to look at the
+situation as it actually presents itself. The most noteworthy attempt
+has been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for
+which has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who
+have from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed
+for workingmen's sons. The early schools of this <a
+name="page_202"></a> type inevitably reflected the ideal of the
+self-made man. They succeeded in transferring a few skilled workers into
+the upper class of trained engineers, and a few less skilled workers
+into the class of trained mechanics, but did not aim to educate the many
+who are doomed to the unskilled work which the permanent specialization
+of the division of labor demands.</p>
+
+<p>The Peter Coopers and other good men honestly believed that if
+intelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully
+attended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in
+time even become an employer himself. Such schools are useful beyond
+doubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure
+satisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question.</p>
+
+<p>Almost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions
+founded by rich men, anxious to help "poor boys." These have been
+captured by conventional educators <a name="page_203"></a> for the
+purpose of fitting young men for the colleges and universities. They
+have compromised by merely adding to the usual academic course manual
+work, applied mathematics, mechanical drawing and engineering. Two
+schools in Chicago, plainly founded for the sons of workingmen, afford
+an illustration of this tendency and result. On the other hand, so far
+as schools of this type have been captured by commercialism, they turn
+out trained engineers, professional chemists, and electricians. They are
+polytechnics of a high order, but do not even pretend to admit the
+workingman with his meagre intellectual equipment. They graduate machine
+builders, but not educated machine tenders. Even the textile schools are
+largely seized by young men who expect to be superintendents of
+factories, designers, or manufacturers themselves, and the textile
+worker who actually "holds the thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed,
+in one of the largest schools women are not allowed, in spite of the
+fact that spinning and weaving have <a name="page_204"></a>
+traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are at
+present employed in the textile mills.</p>
+
+<p>It is much easier to go over the old paths of education with "manual
+training" thrown in, as it were; it is much simpler to appeal to the old
+ambitions of "getting on in life," or of "preparing for a profession,"
+or "for a commercial career," than to work out new methods on democratic
+lines. These schools gradually drop back into the conventional courses,
+modified in some slight degree, while the adaptation to workingmen's
+needs is never made, nor, indeed, vigorously attempted. In the meantime,
+the manufacturers continually protest that engineers, especially trained
+for devising machines, are not satisfactory. Three generations of
+workers have invented, but we are told that invention no longer goes on
+in the workshop, even when it is artificially stimulated by the offer of
+prizes, and that the inventions of the last quarter of the nineteenth
+century have by no means fulfilled <a name="page_205"></a> the promise
+of the earlier three-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Every foreman in a large factory has had experience with two classes of
+men: first with those who become rigid and tolerate no change in their
+work, partly because they make more money "working by the piece," when
+they stick to that work which they have learned to do rapidly, and
+partly because the entire muscular and nervous system has become by
+daily use adapted to particular motions and resents change. Secondly,
+there are the men who float in and out of the factory, in a constantly
+changing stream. They "quit work" for the slightest reason or none at
+all, and never become skilled at anything. Some of them are men of low
+intelligence, but many of them are merely too nervous and restless, too
+impatient, too easily "driven to drink," to be of any use in a modern
+factory. They are the men for whom the demanded adaptation is
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The individual from whom the industrial <a name="page_206"></a> order
+demands ever larger drafts of time and energy, should be nourished and
+enriched from social sources, in proportion as he is drained. He, more
+than other men, needs the conception of historic continuity in order to
+reveal to him the purpose and utility of his work, and he can only be
+stimulated and dignified as he obtains a conception of his proper
+relation to society. Scholarship is evidently unable to do this for him;
+for, unfortunately, the same tendency to division of labor has also
+produced over-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that
+when the scholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the
+result of more specialization rather than an offset from it. He cannot
+bring healing and solace because he himself is suffering from the same
+disease. There is indeed a deplorable lack of perception and adaptation
+on the part of educators all along the line.</p>
+
+<p>It will certainly be embarrassing to have our age written down
+triumphant in the matter of inventions, in that our factories <a
+name="page_207"></a> were filled with intricate machines, the result of
+advancing mathematical and mechanical knowledge in relation to
+manufacturing processes, but defeated in that it lost its head over the
+achievement and forgot the men. The accusation would stand, that the age
+failed to perform a like service in the extension of history and art to
+the factory employees who ran the machines; that the machine tenders,
+heavy and almost dehumanized by monotonous toil, walked about in the
+same streets with us, and sat in the same cars; but that we were
+absolutely indifferent and made no genuine effort to supply to them the
+artist's perception or student's insight, which alone could fuse them
+into social consciousness. It would further stand that the scholars
+among us continued with yet more research, that the educators were
+concerned only with the young and the promising, and the philanthropists
+with the criminals and helpless.</p>
+
+<p>There is a pitiful failure to recognize the situation in which the
+majority of working <a name="page_208"></a> people are placed, a
+tendency to ignore their real experiences and needs, and, most stupid of
+all, we leave quite untouched affections and memories which would afford
+a tremendous dynamic if they were utilized.</p>
+
+<p>We constantly hear it said in educational circles, that a child learns
+only by "doing," and that education must proceed "through the eyes and
+hands to the brain"; and yet for the vast number of people all around us
+who do not need to have activities artificially provided, and who use
+their hands and eyes all the time, we do not seem able to reverse the
+process. We quote the dictum, "What is learned in the schoolroom must be
+applied in the workshop," and yet the skill and handicraft constantly
+used in the workshop have no relevance or meaning given to them by the
+school; and when we do try to help the workingman in an educational way,
+we completely ignore his everyday occupation. Yet the task is merely one
+of adaptation. It is to take actual conditions and to make them the <a
+name="page_209"></a> basis for a large and generous method of
+education, to perform a difficult idealization doubtless, but not an
+impossible one.</p>
+
+<p>We apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life
+through his vocation. We easily recognize the historic association in
+regard to ancient buildings. We say that "generation after generation
+have stamped their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them,
+until they have become the property of all." And yet this is even more
+true of the instruments of labor, which have constantly been held in
+human hands. A machine really represents the "seasoned life of man"
+preserved and treasured up within itself, quite as much as an ancient
+building does. At present, workmen are brought in contact with the
+machinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present set of
+industrial implements had been newly created. They handle the machinery
+day by day, without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. Few
+of the men who perform the mechanical work <a name="page_210"></a> in
+the great factories have any comprehension of the fact that the
+inventions upon which the factory depends, the instruments which they
+use, have been slowly worked out, each generation using the gifts of the
+last and transmitting the inheritance until it has become a social
+possession. This can only be understood by a man who has obtained some
+idea of social progress. We are still childishly pleased when we see the
+further subdivision of labor going on, because the quantity of the
+output is increased thereby, and we apparently are unable to take our
+attention away from the product long enough to really focus it upon the
+producer. Theoretically, "the division of labor" makes men more
+interdependent and human by drawing them together into a unity of
+purpose. "If a number of people decide to build a road, and one digs,
+and one brings stones, and another breaks them, they are quite
+inevitably united by their interest in the road. But this naturally
+presupposes that they know where the road is going to, that <a
+name="page_211"></a> they have some curiosity and interest about it,
+and perhaps a chance to travel upon it." If the division of labor robs
+them of interest in any part of it, the mere mechanical fact of
+interdependence amounts to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The man in the factory, as well as the man with the hoe, has a grievance
+beyond being overworked and disinherited, in that he does not know what
+it is all about. We may well regret the passing of the time when the
+variety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally
+stimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into
+contact both with the raw material and the finished product. But the
+problem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to
+supply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were. If the
+shop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem
+of the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what
+may be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to
+supply him with general information and <a name="page_212"></a> to
+insist that he shall be a cultivated member of society with a
+consciousness of his industrial and social value.</p>
+
+<p>As sad a sight as an old hand-loom worker in a factory attempting to
+make his clumsy machine compete with the flying shuttles about him, is a
+workingman equipped with knowledge so meagre that he can get no meaning
+into his life nor sequence between his acts and the far-off results.</p>
+
+<p>Manufacturers, as a whole, however, when they attempt educational
+institutions in connection with their factories, are prone to follow
+conventional lines, and to exhibit the weakness of imitation. We find,
+indeed, that the middle-class educator constantly makes the mistakes of
+the middle-class moralist when he attempts to aid working people. The
+latter has constantly and traditionally urged upon the workingman the
+specialized virtues of thrift, industry, and sobriety&mdash;all virtues
+pertaining to the individual. When each man had his own shop, it was
+perhaps wise to lay almost <a name="page_213"></a> exclusive stress
+upon the industrial virtues of diligence and thrift; but as industry has
+become more highly organized, life becomes incredibly complex and
+interdependent. If a workingman is to have a conception of his value at
+all, he must see industry in its unity and entirety; he must have a
+conception that will include not only himself and his immediate family
+and community, but the industrial organization as a whole. It is
+doubtless true that dexterity of hand becomes less and less imperative
+as the invention of machinery and subdivision of labor proceeds; but it
+becomes all the more necessary, if the workman is to save his life at
+all, that he should get a sense of his individual relation to the
+system. Feeding a machine with a material of which he has no knowledge,
+producing a product, totally unrelated to the rest of his life, without
+in the least knowing what becomes of it, or its connection with the
+community, is, of course, unquestionably deadening to his intellectual
+<a name="page_214"></a> and moral life. To make the moral connection it
+would be necessary to give him a social consciousness of the value of
+his work, and at least a sense of participation and a certain joy in its
+ultimate use; to make the intellectual connection it would be essential
+to create in him some historic conception of the development of industry
+and the relation of his individual work to it.</p>
+
+<p>Workingmen themselves have made attempts in both directions, which it
+would be well for moralists and educators to study. It is a striking
+fact that when workingmen formulate their own moral code, and try to
+inspire and encourage each other, it is always a large and general
+doctrine which they preach. They were the first class of men to organize
+an international association, and the constant talk at a modern labor
+meeting is of solidarity and of the identity of the interests of
+workingmen the world over. It is difficult to secure a successful
+organization of men into the simplest trades organization <a
+name="page_215"></a> without an appeal to the most abstract principles
+of justice and brotherhood. As they have formulated their own morals by
+laying the greatest stress upon the largest morality, so if they could
+found their own schools, it is doubtful whether they would be of the
+mechanic institute type. Courses of study arranged by a group of
+workingmen are most naïve in their breadth and generality. They will
+select the history of the world in preference to that of any period or
+nation. The "wonders of science" or "the story of evolution" will
+attract workingmen to a lecture when zoölogy or chemistry will drive
+them away. The "outlines of literature" or "the best in literature" will
+draw an audience when a lecturer in English poetry will be solitary.
+This results partly from a wholesome desire to have general knowledge
+before special knowledge, and is partly a rebound from the
+specialization of labor to which the workingman is subjected. When he is
+free from work and can direct his own <a name="page_216"></a> mind, he
+tends to roam, to dwell upon large themes. Much the same tendency is
+found in programmes of study arranged by Woman's Clubs in country
+places. The untrained mind, wearied with meaningless detail, when it
+gets an opportunity to make its demand heard, asks for general
+philosophy and background.</p>
+
+<p>In a certain sense commercialism itself, at least in its larger aspect,
+tends to educate the workingman better than organized education does.
+Its interests are certainly world-wide and democratic, while it is
+absolutely undiscriminating as to country and creed, coming into contact
+with all climes and races. If this aspect of commercialism were
+utilized, it would in a measure counterbalance the tendency which
+results from the subdivision of labor.</p>
+
+<p>The most noteworthy attempt to utilize this democracy of commerce in
+relation to manufacturing is found at Dayton, Ohio, in the yearly
+gatherings held in a large factory there. Once a year the entire force
+<a name="page_217"></a> is gathered together to hear the returns of the
+business, not so much in respect to the profits, as in regard to its
+extension. At these meetings, the travelling salesmen from various parts
+of the world&mdash;from Constantinople, from Berlin, from Rome, from Hong
+Kong&mdash;report upon the sales they have made, and the methods of
+advertisement and promotion adapted to the various countries.</p>
+
+<p>Stereopticon lectures are given upon each new country as soon as it has
+been successfully invaded by the product of the factory. The foremen in
+the various departments of the factory give accounts of the increased
+efficiency and the larger output over former years. Any man who has made
+an invention in connection with the machinery of the factory, at this
+time publicly receives a prize, and suggestions are approved that tend
+to increase the comfort and social facilities of the employees. At least
+for the moment there is a complete esprit de corps, and the youngest and
+least skilled employee sees himself in connection with the interests <a
+name="page_218"></a> of the firm, and the spread of an invention. It is
+a crude example of what might be done in the way of giving a large
+framework of meaning to factory labor, and of putting it into a sentient
+background, at least on the commercial side.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to indict the educator, to say that he has gotten entangled
+in his own material, and has fallen a victim to his own methods; but
+granting this, what has the artist done about it&mdash;he who is supposed to
+have a more intimate insight into the needs of his contemporaries, and
+to minister to them as none other can?</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that a few writers are insisting that the growing
+desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its
+counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part
+of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of
+conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual
+because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult
+to bring together, <a name="page_219"></a> is found on a large scale in
+society itself, when we have the separation of the people who think from
+those who work. And yet, since Ruskin ceased, no one has really
+formulated this in a convincing form. And even Ruskin's famous dictum,
+that labor without art brutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art
+could only be a sense of beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a
+sense of companionship with all other workers. The situation demands the
+consciousness of participation and well-being which comes to the
+individual when he is able to see himself "in connection and cooperation
+with the whole"; it needs the solace of collective art inherent in
+collective labor.</p>
+
+<p>As the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling,
+so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human
+significance&mdash;some one who shall teach him to find that which will give
+a potency to his life. His education, however simple, should tend to
+make him <a name="page_220"></a> widely at home in the world, and to
+give him a sense of simplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality
+and noise to which he is constantly subjected. He, like other men, can
+learn to be content to see but a part, although it must be a part of
+something.</p>
+
+<p>It is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate
+him in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which
+is his by simple right. We have learned to say that the good must be
+extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one
+person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that
+statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we
+cannot even be sure that it is worth having. In spite of many attempts
+we do not really act upon either statement.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_221">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>
+
+<h4>POLITICAL REFORM</h4></center>
+
+
+<p>Throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical
+maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting
+upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to
+the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In
+addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is
+often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.</p>
+
+<p>Nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests
+itself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to
+hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social
+expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains
+to keep on common <a name="page_222"></a> ground in our human
+experiences. Otherwise there is in various parts of the community an
+inevitable difference of ethical standards which becomes responsible for
+much misunderstanding.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals
+of those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely
+different from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the
+gains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so
+painfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. This wide
+difference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes
+toward politics. The well-to-do men of the community think of politics
+as something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political
+duty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the
+expression of their moral or social life. As a result of this
+detachment, "reform movements," started by business men and the better
+element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political
+machinery <a name="page_223"></a> and with a concern for the better
+method of administration, rather than with the ultimate purpose of
+securing the welfare of the people. They fix their attention so
+exclusively on methods that they fail to consider the final aims of city
+government. This accounts for the growing tendency to put more and more
+responsibility upon executive officers and appointed commissions at the
+expense of curtailing the power of the direct representatives of the
+voters. Reform movements tend to become negative and to lose their
+educational value for the mass of the people. The reformers take the
+rôle of the opposition. They give themselves largely to criticisms of
+the present state of affairs, to writing and talking of what the future
+must be and of certain results which should be obtained. In trying to
+better matters, however, they have in mind only political achievements
+which they detach in a curious way from the rest of life, and they speak
+and write of the purification of politics as of a thing set apart from
+daily life.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_224"></a>On the other hand, the real leaders of the people
+are part of the entire life of the community which they control, and so
+far as they are representative at all, are giving a social expression to
+democracy. They are often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they
+are proceeding upon a sounder theory. Although they would be totally
+unable to give it abstract expression, they are really acting upon a
+formulation made by a shrewd English observer; namely, that, "after the
+enfranchisement of the masses, social ideals enter into political
+programmes, and they enter not as something which at best can be
+indirectly promoted by government, but as something which it is the
+chief business of government to advance directly."</p>
+
+<p>Men living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately,
+recognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to
+social needs. They realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for
+social results, and they hold their power because they respond to that
+demand. They are <a name="page_225"></a> corrupt and often do their
+work badly; but they at least avoid the mistake of a certain type of
+business men who are frightened by democracy, and have lost their faith
+in the people. The two standards are similar to those seen at a popular
+exhibition of pictures where the cultivated people care most for the
+technique of a given painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall
+be domestic and human.</p>
+
+<p>This difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a
+certain ward of Chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made
+to dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. In
+this ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people,
+representing a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated Latin,
+Teuton, Celt, Greek, and Slav who live there have little in common save
+the basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all
+conditions. In order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in
+nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any <a
+name="page_226"></a> demand, it must be founded upon universal
+experiences which are perforce individual and not social.</p>
+
+<p>An instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it
+possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political
+success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for
+the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of
+which he is constantly guilty.</p>
+
+<p>This leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his
+constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the
+same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be
+committing. They thus free the alderman from blame because his
+corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and
+hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.</p>
+
+<p>In certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action
+unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his
+acquaintances, <a name="page_227"></a> and it is a long step in moral
+progress to set the good of the many before the interest of the few, and
+to be concerned for the welfare of a community without hope of an
+individual return. How far the selfish politician befools his
+constituents into believing that their interests are identical with his
+own; how far he presumes upon their inability to distinguish between the
+individual and social virtues, an inability which he himself shares with
+them; and how far he dazzles them by the sense of his greatness, and a
+conviction that they participate therein, it is difficult to determine.</p>
+
+<p>Morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than
+in the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate
+upon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized
+before they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints
+have been after all "the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands
+of Christians to whom the Credo has been but mysterious words."</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_228"></a>Ethics as well as political opinions may be
+discussed and disseminated among the sophisticated by lectures and
+printed pages, but to the common people they can only come through
+example&mdash;through a personality which seizes the popular imagination. The
+advantage of an unsophisticated neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do
+not keep their ideas as treasures&mdash;they are untouched by the notion of
+accumulating them, as they might knowledge or money, and they frankly
+act upon those they have. The personal example promptly rouses to
+emulation. In a neighborhood where political standards are plastic and
+undeveloped, and where there has been little previous experience in
+self-government, the office-holder himself sets the standard, and the
+ideas that cluster around him exercise a specific and permanent
+influence upon the political morality of his constituents.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous
+population, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, <a
+name="page_229"></a> most admires is the quality of simple goodness;
+that the man who attracts them is the one whom they believe to be a good
+man. We all know that children long "to be good" with an intensity which
+they give to no other ambition. We can all remember that the earliest
+strivings of our childhood were in this direction, and that we venerated
+grown people because they had attained perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Primitive people, such as the South Italian peasants, are still in this
+stage. They want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire
+nothing so much as the good man. Abstract virtues are too difficult for
+their untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple
+enough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people.</p>
+
+<p>The successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the
+morality of his constituents. He must not attempt to hold up too high a
+standard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. His
+<a name="page_230"></a> safety lies in doing on a large scale the good
+deeds which his constituents are able to do only on a small scale. If he
+believes what they believe and does what they are all cherishing a
+secret ambition to do, he will dazzle them by his success and win their
+confidence. There is a certain wisdom in this course. There is a common
+sense in the mass of men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just
+as there is sure to be an eccentricity in the differing and reforming
+individual which it is perhaps well to challenge.</p>
+
+<p>The constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a
+previous chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and
+distresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy
+themselves. The kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor
+is doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in
+distress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too
+drunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or <a
+name="page_231"></a> child, when he is evicted for non-payment of rent,
+when he is arrested for a petty crime. It seems to such a man entirely
+fitting that his alderman should do the same thing on a larger
+scale&mdash;that he should help a constituent out of trouble, merely because
+he is in trouble, irrespective of the justice involved.</p>
+
+<p>The alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are
+arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear
+before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are
+likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to
+"fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a
+serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised
+by his constituents. All this conveys the impression to the
+simple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a
+powerful friend. One may instance the alderman's action in standing by
+an Italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the
+civil service regulations. The commissioners had <a
+name="page_232"></a> sent out notices to certain Italian day-laborers
+who were upon the eligible list that they were to report for work at a
+given day and hour. One of the padrones intercepted these notifications
+and sold them to the men for five dollars apiece, making also the usual
+bargain for a share of their wages. The padrone's entire arrangement
+followed the custom which had prevailed for years before the
+establishment of civil service laws. Ten of the laborers swore out
+warrants against the padrone, who was convicted and fined seventy-five
+dollars. This sum was promptly paid by the alderman, and the padrone,
+assured that he would be protected from any further trouble, returned
+uninjured to the colony. The simple Italians were much bewildered by
+this show of a power stronger than that of the civil service, which they
+had trusted as they did the one in Italy. The first violation of its
+authority was made, and various sinister acts have followed, until no
+Italian who is digging a sewer or sweeping a street for the city feels
+quite secure in holding his <a name="page_233"></a> job unless he is
+backed by the friendship of the alderman. According to the civil service
+law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are discharged by the
+foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only upon the aldermanic
+recommendation. He thus practically holds his old power over the
+laborers working for the city. The popular mind is convinced that an
+honest administration of civil service is impossible, and that it is but
+one more instrument in the hands of the powerful.</p>
+
+<p>It will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men,
+who learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such
+a nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that "civil
+service" is "no good."</p>
+
+<p>As many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact
+that the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so
+instances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. A young man may
+enter a saloon long after midnight, the legal <a name="page_234"></a>
+closing hour, and seat himself at a gambling table, perfectly secure
+from interruption or arrest, because the place belongs to an alderman;
+but in order to secure this immunity the policeman on the beat must
+pretend not to see into the windows each time that he passes, and he
+knows, and the young man knows that he knows, that nothing would
+embarrass "Headquarters" more than to have an arrest made on those
+premises. A certain contempt for the whole machinery of law and order is
+thus easily fostered.</p>
+
+<p>Because of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for
+the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when
+work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all
+the places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the
+ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he
+had twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll.
+This, of course, included day <a name="page_235"></a> laborers, but
+each one felt under distinct obligations to him for getting a position.
+When we reflect that this is one-third of the entire vote of the ward,
+we realize that it is very important to vote for the right man, since
+there is, at the least, one chance out of three for securing work.</p>
+
+<p>If we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay
+respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question
+of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a
+political one. An Italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else,
+and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so
+different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two
+strengthen each other.</p>
+
+<p>The alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for
+an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate
+suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his
+constituents under obligations to him; but the <a name="page_236"></a>
+action of such an individual becomes a demoralizing element in the
+community when kindly impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of
+personal ambition, and when the plastic morals of his constituents
+gradually conform to his own undeveloped standards.</p>
+
+<p>The alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes
+these days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to
+reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side
+it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures
+passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or
+attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for
+benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar
+distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest
+lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the
+alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When
+others <a name="page_237"></a> are spending pennies, he is spending
+dollars. When anxious relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the
+two most beautiful children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys
+votes from both sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes
+best, buying off the young lady who is persistently determined to find
+out, with five dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to
+be sent to the sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar
+suits him exactly. He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all
+goes to the poor; it is all straight enough if the church gets it, the
+poor won't ask too many questions." The oftener he can put such
+sentiments into the minds of his constituents, the better he is pleased.
+Nothing so rapidly prepares them to take his view of money getting and
+money spending. We see again the process disregarded, because the end
+itself is considered so praiseworthy.</p>
+
+<p>There is something archaic in a community <a name="page_238"></a> of
+simple people in their attitude toward death and burial. There is
+nothing so easy to collect money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily
+remembers that the early religious tithes were paid to ward off death
+and ghosts. At times one encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard
+to burial. If the alderman seizes upon times of festivities for
+expressions of his good-will, much more does he seize upon periods of
+sorrow. At a funeral he has the double advantage of ministering to a
+genuine craving for comfort and solace, and at the same time of
+assisting a bereaved constituent to express that curious feeling of
+remorse, which is ever an accompaniment of quick sorrow, that desire to
+"make up" for past delinquencies, to show the world how much he loved
+the person who has just died, which is as natural as it is universal.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social
+occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the <a
+name="page_239"></a> grade of which almost determines their social
+standing in the neighborhood. The alderman saves the very poorest of his
+constituents from that awful horror of burial by the county; he provides
+carriages for the poor, who otherwise could not have them. It may be too
+much to say that all the relatives and friends who ride in the carriages
+provided by the alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly
+influenced by his kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long
+hours of the ride back and forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who
+would ask at such a time where all the money thus spent comes from would
+be considered sinister. The tendency to speak lightly of the faults of
+the dead and to judge them gently is transferred to the living, and many
+a man at such a time has formulated a lenient judgment of political
+corruption, and has heard kindly speeches which he has remembered on
+election day. "Ah, well, he has a big Irish heart. He is good to the <a
+name="page_240"></a> widow and the fatherless." "He knows the poor
+better than the big guns who are always talking about civil service and
+reform."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of
+administration make against this big manifestation of human
+friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of
+the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman
+will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every
+week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes
+provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into
+"hundreds a year." He understands what the people want, and ministers
+just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An
+attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at
+one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House
+nursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days
+previously in the <a name="page_241"></a> Cook County hospital, but no
+trace could be found of the unfortunate mother. The little child lived
+for several weeks, and then, in spite of every care, died. It was
+decided to have it buried by the county authorities, and the wagon was
+to arrive at eleven o'clock; about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor
+of this awful deed reached the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in
+a very excited state of mind, to protest. They took up a collection out
+of their poverty with which to defray a funeral. The residents of
+Hull-House were then comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not
+realize that they were really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the
+community. In their crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness
+which had been expended upon the little creature while it was alive;
+that it had had every attention from a skilled physician and a trained
+nurse, and even intimated that the excited members of the group had not
+taken part in this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that
+it should be buried as <a name="page_242"></a> it had been born, at the
+county's expense. It is doubtful if Hull-House has ever done anything
+which injured it so deeply in the minds of some of its neighbors. It was
+only forgiven by the most indulgent on the ground that the residents
+were spinsters, and could not know a mother's heart. No one born and
+reared in the community could possibly have made a mistake like that. No
+one who had studied the ethical standards with any care could have
+bungled so completely.</p>
+
+<p>We are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple
+people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a
+reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and
+regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is
+forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and
+faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and
+forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is
+the magnanimous <a name="page_243"></a> man, the kindly reckless
+villain who is always applauded. So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson
+once remarked that it was surprising to find how much more kindness than
+justice society contained.</p>
+
+<p>On the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town
+within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more
+important of his friends. Here again he has seized upon an old tradition
+and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best
+expressed when men drink together. The saloons offer a common meeting
+ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who
+meet there.</p>
+
+<p>He distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters,
+but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious
+management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of
+that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable
+societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys <a
+name="page_244"></a> for Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be
+allowed to eat turkey again. As he does not distribute his Christmas
+favors from any hardly acquired philanthropic motive, there is no
+disposition to apply the carefully evolved rules of the charitable
+societies to his beneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect
+that the benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel
+themselves quite freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further
+and glory in the fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example
+of this is the young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars,
+giving a sly wink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of
+obligation is often the first step downward to the position where he is
+willing to sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as
+he pleases. The writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he
+complained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had
+"sold for only two dollars this year," and that he was "awfully <a
+name="page_245"></a> disappointed." The writer happened to know that
+his income during the nine months previous had been but twenty-eight
+dollars, and that he was in debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well
+imagine the eagerness with which he had counted upon this source of
+revenue. After some years the selling of votes becomes a commonplace,
+and but little attempt is made upon the part of the buyer or seller to
+conceal the fact, if the transaction runs smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>A certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire
+house to a political party and was "well paid for it too"; but being of
+a grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the
+rival party. Such an outrage could not be borne. The man was treated to
+a modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held
+under a street hydrant in November, contracted pneumonia which resulted
+in his death. No official investigation took place, since the doctor's
+certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and <a
+name="page_246"></a> public sentiment sustained the action. In various
+conversations which the writer had concerning the entire transaction,
+she discovered great indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery,
+but none whatever for his original offence of selling out the votes of
+his house.</p>
+
+<p>A club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation
+for political power which may later be sold out. The president and
+executive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the
+funds, promise to divide with "the boys" who swell the size of the
+membership. A reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are
+active and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can
+"deliver." The reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and
+only gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the
+express purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most
+active in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their
+allegiance when they are ready to sell. Reformers <a
+name="page_247"></a> seeing them drop away one by one, talk of
+desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power of money over
+well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand temptation; but in
+reality the men are not deserters because they have never actually been
+enrolled in the ranks. The money they take is neither a bribe nor the
+price of their loyalty, it is simply the consummation of a
+long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. They came into the new
+movement for the purpose of being bought out of it, and have
+successfully accomplished that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Hull-House assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against
+the same alderman. In the two years following the end of the first one,
+nearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office
+from the reëlected alderman. A printer had been appointed to a clerkship
+in the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the
+police barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in
+the city construction department. At the beginning of <a
+name="page_248"></a> the next campaign, the greatest difficulty was
+experienced in finding a candidate, and each one proposed, demanded time
+to consider the proposition. During this period he invariably became the
+recipient of the alderman's bounty. The first one, who was foreman of a
+large factory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that
+the city institutions would use the product of his firm. The second one,
+a keeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was
+promised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the
+expiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and
+it may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and
+successfully elected. The third proposed candidate received a place for
+his son in the office of the city attorney.</p>
+
+<p>Not only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. Any
+requests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the
+alderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides. <a
+name="page_249"></a> There is thus constant opportunity for the
+alderman to put his constituents under obligations to him, to make it
+difficult for a constituent to withstand him, or for one with large
+interests to enter into political action at all. From the Italian pedler
+who wants a license to peddle fruit in the street, to the large
+manufacturing company who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of
+conveying pipes from one building to another, everybody is under
+obligations to his alderman, and is constantly made to feel it. In
+short, these very regulations for presenting requests to the council
+have been made, by the aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of
+increasing the dependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting
+aldermanic power and prestige.</p>
+
+<p>The alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of
+his ward. The paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his
+district, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side
+holds him responsible for this condition, and <a name="page_250"></a>
+promises better paving under another régime. But the paving could not be
+made better without a special assessment upon the property owners of the
+vicinity, and paying more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not
+want to do. In reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing
+the time of the improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he
+performs. A movement to have the paving done from a general fund would
+doubtless be opposed by the property owners in other parts of the city
+who have already paid for the asphalt bordering their own possessions,
+but they have no conception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy
+which repaving may mean to the small property owner, nor how his chief
+concern may be to elect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and
+pocket-books of his constituents than he does for the repute and
+cleanliness of his city.</p>
+
+<p>The alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his
+down-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars <a
+name="page_251"></a> with which to uniform and equip a boys' temperance
+brigade which had been formed in one of the ward churches a few months
+before his campaign. Is it strange that the good leader, whose heart was
+filled with innocent pride as he looked upon these promising young
+scions of virtue, should decline to enter into a reform campaign? Of
+what use to suggest that uniforms and bayonets for the purpose of
+promoting temperance, bought with money contributed by a man who was
+proprietor of a saloon and a gambling house, might perhaps confuse the
+ethics of the young soldiers? Why take the pains to urge that it was
+vain to lecture and march abstract virtues into them, so long as the
+"champion boodler" of the town was the man whom the boys recognized as a
+loyal and kindhearted friend, the public-spirited citizen, whom their
+fathers enthusiastically voted for, and their mothers called "the friend
+of the poor." As long as the actual and tangible success is thus
+embodied, marching whether in kindergartens or brigades, <a
+name="page_252"></a> talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to
+change the code of ethics.</p>
+
+<p>The question of where does the money come from which is spent so
+successfully, does of course occur to many minds. The more primitive
+people accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to
+their moral sense. To their simple minds he gets it "from the rich" and,
+so long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true Robin Hood, with
+open hand, they have no objections to offer. Their ethics are quite
+honestly those of the merry-making foresters. The next less primitive
+people of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the
+"gang" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he
+makes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to
+steer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal
+pay; that he is, in short, a successful "boodler." When, however, there
+is intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to
+make the contention <a name="page_253"></a> that this is universally
+done, that all the aldermen do it more or less successfully, but that
+the alderman of this particular ward is unique in being so generous;
+that such a state of affairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that
+is the way business is run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man
+who is close to the people gets a large share of the spoils; that he
+serves franchised companies who employ men in the building and
+construction of their enterprises, and that they are bound in return to
+give work to his constituents. It is again the justification of stealing
+from the rich to give to the poor. Even when they are intelligent enough
+to complete the circle, and to see that the money comes, not from the
+pockets of the companies' agents, but from the street-car fares of
+people like themselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two
+cents more each time they ride than to give up the consciousness that
+they have a big, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in
+an emergency. <a name="page_254"></a> The sense of just dealing comes
+apparently much later than the desire for protection and indulgence. On
+the whole, the gifts and favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of
+genuine loving-kindness. The alderman is really elected because he is a
+good friend and neighbor. He is corrupt, of course, but he is not
+elected because he is corrupt, but rather in spite of it. His standard
+suits his constituents. He exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type
+of a good man. He has attained what his constituents secretly long for.</p>
+
+<p>At one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly
+called "Con Row." The term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is
+nevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are
+occupied by professional office holders. This row is supposed to form a
+happy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in
+prosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. It
+would be difficult to justly estimate the influence <a
+name="page_255"></a> which this group of successful, prominent men,
+including the alderman who lives there, have had upon the ideals of the
+youth in the vicinity. The path which leads to riches and success, to
+civic prominence and honor, is the path of political corruption. We
+might compare this to the path laid out by Benjamin Franklin, who also
+secured all of these things, but told young men that they could be
+obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal living, by the cultivation
+of the mind, and the holding fast to righteousness; or, again, we might
+compare it to the ideals which were held up to the American youth fifty
+years ago, lower, to be sure, than the revolutionary ideal, but still
+fine and aspiring toward honorable dealing and careful living. They were
+told that the career of the self-made man was open to every American
+boy, if he worked hard and saved his money, improved his mind, and
+followed a steady ambition. The writer remembers that when she was ten
+years old, the village schoolmaster <a name="page_256"></a> told his
+little flock, without any mitigating clauses, that Jay Gould had laid
+the foundation of his colossal fortune by always saving bits of string,
+and that, as a result, every child in the village assiduously collected
+party-colored balls of twine. A bright Chicago boy might well draw the
+inference that the path of the corrupt politician not only leads to
+civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and philanthropy. This
+lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is perhaps the worst of
+the situation, for, as we said in the first chapter, we determine ideals
+by our daily actions and decisions not only for ourselves, but largely
+for each other.</p>
+
+<p>We are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the
+community stand indicted. This is the penalty of a democracy,&mdash;that we
+are bound to move forward or retrograde together. None of us can stand
+aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the
+same air.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_257"></a>That the alderman has much to do with setting the
+standard of life and desirable prosperity may be illustrated by the
+following incident: During one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew
+a poster representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking
+champagne at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by
+other revellers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer,
+who sat upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a
+workingman's dinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of
+representative he preferred, the presumption being that at least in a
+workingman's district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the
+chagrin of the reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in
+the popular mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly
+so desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a
+diamond in his shirt front. The district wished its representative "to
+stand up with the best of them," <a name="page_258"></a> and certainly
+some of the constituents would have been ashamed to have been
+represented by a bricklayer. It is part of that general desire to appear
+well, the optimistic and thoroughly American belief, that even if a man
+is working with his hands to-day, he and his children will quite likely
+be in a better position in the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no
+need of being too closely associated with common working people. There
+is an honest absence of class consciousness, and a naïve belief that the
+kind of occupation quite largely determines social position. This is
+doubtless exaggerated in a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact
+that as each nationality becomes more adapted to American conditions,
+the scale of its occupation rises. Fifty years ago in America "a
+Dutchman" was used as a term of reproach, meaning a man whose language
+was not understood, and who performed menial tasks, digging sewers and
+building railroad embankments. Later the Irish did <a
+name="page_259"></a> the same work in the community, but as quickly as
+possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name "dago" is said
+to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman resigned to him.
+The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact. In a political
+speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly reproached the
+alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of sitting in an
+office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs" of sweeping
+the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise in life, to
+be at least politically represented by one of the best, as to occupation
+and social status, has also its negative side. We must remember that the
+imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and that the loss of
+social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps most dreaded by
+the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct, the power to
+give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but feebly
+developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, <a
+name="page_260"></a> is afforded by the simple desire to do what others
+do, in order to share with them the approval of the community. Of
+course, the larger the number of people among whom an habitual mode of
+conduct obtains, the greater the constraint it puts upon the individual
+will. Thus it is that the political corruption of the city presses most
+heavily where it can be least resisted, and is most likely to be
+imitated.</p>
+
+<p>According to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are
+bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the
+water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant
+springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes
+from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not
+enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the
+discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The
+prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat
+with <a name="page_261"></a> the "boss" politician or preserve his
+independence on a smaller income; but to an Italian day laborer it is a
+choice between obeying the commands of a political "boss" or practical
+starvation. Again, a more intelligent man may philosophize a little upon
+the present state of corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of
+our commercialism, from which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he
+may give himself the solace of literature and ideals in other
+directions, but the more ignorant man who lives only in the narrow
+present has no such resource; slowly the conviction enters his mind that
+politics is a matter of favors and positions, that self-government means
+pleasing the "boss" and standing in with the "gang." This slowly
+acquired knowledge he hands on to his family. During the month of
+February his boy may come home from school with rather incoherent tales
+about Washington and Lincoln, and the father may for the moment be fired
+to tell of Garibaldi, but such talk is only periodic, <a
+name="page_262"></a> and the long year round the fortunes of the entire
+family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend upon
+the "boss."</p>
+
+<p>In a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation
+depend upon him. To use a former illustration, if a man happens to have
+a taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes
+to those houses which are protected by political influence. If he and
+his friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to
+hear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he
+is breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be
+exempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is
+friendly to him and expects his allegiance in return.</p>
+
+<p>During the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local
+speakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from
+other parts of the town, from the so-called "better element." <a
+name="page_263"></a> Suddenly it was rumored on all sides that, while
+the money and speakers for the reform candidate were coming from the
+swells, the money which was backing the corrupt alderman also came from
+a swell source; that the president of a street-car combination, for whom
+he performed constant offices in the city council, was ready to back him
+to the extent of fifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a
+good man, and sat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum
+of money to an educational institution and was therefore as
+philanthropic, not to say good and upright, as any man in town; that the
+corrupt alderman had the sanction of the highest authorities, and that
+the lecturers who were talking against corruption, and the selling and
+buying of franchises, were only the cranks, and not the solid business
+men who had developed and built up Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. If
+the so-called more enlightened members accept <a name="page_264"></a>
+corporate gifts from the man who buys up the council, and the so-called
+less enlightened members accept individual gifts from the man who sells
+out the council, we surely must take our punishment together. There is
+the difference, of course, that in the first case we act collectively,
+and in the second case individually; but is the punishment which follows
+the first any lighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the
+more obvious one which follows the second?</p>
+
+<p>Have our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use Mr. Chapman's
+generalization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or
+educational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked
+when the saloon interest is thus served?</p>
+
+<p>The street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do
+business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral
+level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a
+saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal <a
+name="page_265"></a> class, and questionable money with which to
+debauch his constituents. Both sets of men assume that the only appeal
+possible is along the line of self-interest. They frankly acknowledge
+money getting as their own motive power, and they believe in the
+cupidity of all the men whom they encounter. No attempt in either case
+is made to put forward the claims of the public, or to find a moral
+basis for action. As the corrupt politician assumes that public morality
+is impossible, so many business men become convinced that to pay tribute
+to the corrupt aldermen is on the whole cheaper than to have taxes too
+high; that it is better to pay exorbitant rates for franchises, than to
+be made unwilling partners in transportation experiments. Such men come
+to regard political reformers as a sort of monomaniac, who are not
+reasonable enough to see the necessity of the present arrangement which
+has slowly been evolved and developed, and upon which business is safely
+conducted. A reformer who really knew the people <a
+name="page_266"></a> and their great human needs, who believed that it
+was the business of government to serve them, and who further recognized
+the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would possess a clew
+by which he might analyze the situation. He would find out what needs,
+which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which the city itself
+could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which pander to the
+lower instincts of the constituency. A mother who eats her Christmas
+turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman who gave it
+to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of appreciation
+and gratitude to the city which supplies her little children with a
+Kindergarten, or, to the Board of Health which properly placarded a case
+of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless nights and wearing
+anxiety, as well as the money paid with such difficulty to the doctor
+and the druggist. The man who in his emotional gratitude almost kneels
+before his political friend who gets his boy out of jail, <a
+name="page_267"></a> might be made to see the kindness and good sense
+of the city authorities who provided the boy with a playground and
+reading room, where he might spend his hours of idleness and
+restlessness, and through which his temptations to petty crime might be
+averted. A man who is grateful to the alderman who sees that his
+gambling and racing are not interfered with, might learn to feel loyal
+and responsible to the city which supplied him with a gymnasium and
+swimming tank where manly and well-conducted sports are possible. The
+voter who is eager to serve the alderman at all times, because the
+tenure of his job is dependent upon aldermanic favor, might find great
+relief and pleasure in working for the city in which his place was
+secured by a well-administered civil service law.</p>
+
+<p>After all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and
+largely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is
+good to you, who understands you, and who gets you <a
+name="page_268"></a> out of trouble. All the social life of the voter
+from the time he was a little boy and played "craps" with his "own
+push," and not with some other "push," has been founded on this sense of
+loyalty and of standing in with his friends. Now that he is a man, he
+likes the sense of being inside a political organization, of being
+trusted with political gossip, of belonging to a set of fellows who
+understand things, and whose interests are being cared for by a strong
+friend in the city council itself. All this is perfectly legitimate, and
+all in the line of the development of a strong civic loyalty, if it were
+merely socialized and enlarged. Such a voter has already proceeded in
+the forward direction in so far as he has lost the sense of isolation,
+and has abandoned the conviction that city government does not touch his
+individual affairs. Even Mill claims that the social feelings of man,
+his desire to be at unity with his fellow-creatures, are the natural
+basis for morality, and he defines <a name="page_269"></a> a man of
+high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an isolated
+individual, but as a part in a social organism.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure
+of civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that
+his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that
+they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied
+for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen
+into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual
+for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of
+life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the
+community, and rises into a sense of the common weal.</p>
+
+<p>In order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual
+needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important
+as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of
+self-interest. The demand <a name="page_270"></a> should be
+universalized; in this process it would also become clarified, and the
+basis of our political organization become perforce social and ethical.</p>
+
+<p>Would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself,
+because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social
+development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made
+over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? The former at least
+are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express
+itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a
+whole.</p>
+
+<p>The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good
+citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to
+make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that
+curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous
+do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient,
+and that they can leave the arts and <a name="page_271"></a> wiles of
+securing popular favor to the self-seeking. This results in a certain
+repellent manner, commonly regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and
+is further responsible for the fatal mistake of making the surroundings
+of "good influences" singularly unattractive; a mistake which really
+deserves a reprimand quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed
+of making the surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are
+akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider
+morality to the eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new
+moral movements have ever and again been inaugurated by those who have
+found themselves in revolt against the conventionalized good.</p>
+
+<p>The success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of
+administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly
+elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and
+selfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister <a
+name="page_272"></a> to genuine social needs, through the political
+machinery, and at the same time to remodel that machinery so that it
+shall be adequate to its new task, is to encounter the inevitable
+discomfort of a transition into a new type of democratic relation. The
+perplexing experiences of the actual administration, however, have a
+genuine value of their own. The economist who treats the individual
+cases as mere data, and the social reformer who labors to make such
+cases impossible, solely because of the appeal to his reason, may have
+to share these perplexities before they feel themselves within the grasp
+of a principle of growth, working outward from within; before they can
+gain the exhilaration and uplift which comes when the individual
+sympathy and intelligence is caught into the forward intuitive movement
+of the mass. This general movement is not without its intellectual
+aspects, but it has to be transferred from the region of perception to
+that of emotion before it is really apprehended. <a
+name="page_273"></a> The mass of men seldom move together without an
+emotional incentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of
+the perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great
+source of vitality.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are
+attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises
+from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their
+efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are
+reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social
+conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression
+for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the
+sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but
+observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that
+a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with
+the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged
+to act upon <a name="page_274"></a> our theory. A stirring appeal has
+lately been made by a recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that
+"It is insanity to expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on.
+We arrive at moral knowledge only by tentative and observant practice.
+We learn how to apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the
+old and having found it to fail."</p>
+
+<p>This necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the
+undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those
+who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with
+the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that
+not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social
+morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often
+at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.</p>
+
+<p>The power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious
+mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible
+intelligence. In the <a name="page_275"></a> range of individual
+morals, we have learned to distrust him who would reach spirituality by
+simply renouncing the world, or by merely speculating upon its evils.
+The result, as well as the process of virtues attained by repression,
+has become distasteful to us. When the entire moral energy of an
+individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know
+how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course,
+but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be
+attractive. In this effort toward a higher morality in our social
+relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose
+the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his
+activity only in connection with the activity of the many.</p>
+
+<p>The cry of "Back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when
+we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of
+"Back to Christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows <a
+name="page_276"></a> and believe in our common experiences as a
+preparation for a new moral struggle.</p>
+
+<p>As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it
+has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the
+curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the
+whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us
+whatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in
+"Master and Man." The former saves his servant from freezing, by
+protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled
+with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of
+which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living
+that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great
+multitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead
+understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and
+therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the
+misunderstandings <a name="page_277"></a> we have in life are due to
+partial experience, and all life's fretting comes of our limited
+intelligence; when the last and Great Experience comes, it is, perforce,
+attended by mercy and forgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and
+its manifold experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.</p>
+
+<a name="page_278"></a>
+
+
+
+
+<center><h2><a name="page_279"></a>INDEX<sup><small><a href="#page_279_note">1</a></small></sup></h2></center>
+
+
+<p>Alderman, basis of his political success, <a href="#page_226">226</a>, <a href="#page_228">228</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_248">248</a>, <a href="#page_267">267</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;his influence on morals of the American boy, <a href="#page_251">251</a>, <a href="#page_255">255</a>, <a href="#page_256">256</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;on standard of life, <a href="#page_257">257</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;his power, <a href="#page_232">232</a>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>, <a href="#page_235">235</a>, <a href="#page_246">246</a>, <a href="#page_260">260</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;his social duties, <a href="#page_234">234</a>, <a href="#page_236">236</a>, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_250">250</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Art and the workingman, <a href="#page_219">219</a>, <a href="#page_225">225</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>"Boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, <a href="#page_260">260</a>, <a href="#page_266">266</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Business college, the, <a href="#page_197">197</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Charity, administration of, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_022">22</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;neighborly relations in, <a href="#page_029">29</a>, <a href="#page_230">230</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;organized, <a href="#page_025">25</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;standards in, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_032">32</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_049">49</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;scientific <i>vs.</i> human relations in, <a href="#page_064">64</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Child labor, premature work, <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_188">188</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;first laws concerning, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_170">170</a>.</p>
+
+<p>City, responsibilities of, <a href="#page_266">266</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Civil service law, its enforcement, <a href="#page_231">231</a>, <a href="#page_233">233</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, <a href="#page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Commercialism and education, <a href="#page_190">190</a>-<a href="#page_199">199</a>, <a href="#page_216">216</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;morals captured by, <a href="#page_264">264</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;polytechnic schools taken by, <a href="#page_202">202</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Coöperation, <a href="#page_153">153</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cooper, Peter, <a href="#page_202">202</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Dayton, Ohio, factory at, <a href="#page_216">216</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Death and burials among simple people, <a href="#page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Domestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, <a href="#page_135">135</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;industrial difficulty of, <a href="#page_106">106</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;moral issues of, <a href="#page_106">106</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Education, attempts at industrial, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;commercialism in, <a href="#page_196">196</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;in commercialism, <a href="#page_216">216</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;in technical schools, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;lack of adaptation in, <a href="#page_199">199</a>, <a href="#page_208">208</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;of industrial workers, <a href="#page_180">180</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>, <a href="#page_199">199</a>, <a href="#page_219">219</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;offset to overspecialization, <a href="#page_211">211</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;public school and, <a href="#page_190">190</a>, <a href="#page_192">192</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;relation of, to the child, <a href="#page_180">180</a>, <a href="#page_185">185</a>, <a href="#page_193">193</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;relation of, to the immigrant, <a href="#page_181">181</a>-<a href="#page_186">186</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;university extension lectures and settlements, <a href="#page_199">199</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;workingmen's lecture courses, <a href="#page_214">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Educators, mistakes of, <a href="#page_212">212</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;new demands on, <a href="#page_178">178</a>, <a href="#page_192">192</a>, <a href="#page_201">201</a>, <a href="#page_211">211</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Family claim, the, <a href="#page_004">4</a>, <a href="#page_074">74</a>, <a href="#page_078">78</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;daughter's college education, <a href="#page_082">82</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;employer's <i>vs.</i> domestic's, <a href="#page_123">123</a>, <a href="#page_124">124</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;on the daughter, <a href="#page_082">82</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;on the son, <i>ibid.</i></p>
+
+<p>Family life, misconception of, <a href="#page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Filial relations, clash of moral codes, <a href="#page_094">94</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Funerals, attitude of simple people toward, <a href="#page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Household employee, the, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;character of, <a href="#page_112">112</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;domestic <i>vs.</i> <a name="page_280"></a> factory, <a href="#page_116">116</a>, <a href="#page_118">118</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;isolation of, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a>, <a href="#page_117">117</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_132">132</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;morals of, <a href="#page_125">125</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;unnatural relation of, <a href="#page_113">113</a>, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_126">126</a>, <a href="#page_127">127</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;unreasonable demands on, <a href="#page_113">113</a>, <a href="#page_115">115</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;residence clubs for, <a href="#page_133">133</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;social position of, <a href="#page_114">114</a>, <a href="#page_119">119</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, <a href="#page_116">116</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;reform of, in relation to employee, <a href="#page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, <a href="#page_129">129</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;competition of factory work with, <a href="#page_128">128</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;difficulties of the small, <a href="#page_135">135</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;industrial isolation of, <a href="#page_117">117</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;industry of, transferred to factory, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_105">105</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;lack of progress in, <a href="#page_117">117</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;origin of, <a href="#page_104">104</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;social <i>vs.</i> individual aspects of, <a href="#page_103">103</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;suburban difficulties of, <a href="#page_134">134</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;wages in, <a href="#page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hull-house experiences, <a href="#page_043">43</a>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_058">58</a>, <a href="#page_059">59</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Human life, value of, <a href="#page_007">7</a>, <a href="#page_178">178</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Individual action <i>vs.</i> associated, <a href="#page_137">137</a>, <a href="#page_153">153</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;advantages of, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_162">162</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;limitations of, <a href="#page_165">165</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;moral evolution involved in, <a href="#page_226">226</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Individual <i>vs.</i> social needs, <a href="#page_155">155</a>, <a href="#page_269">269</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Individual <i>vs.</i> social virtues, <a href="#page_224">224</a>, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_265">265</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, <a href="#page_229">229</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;dependence of, on their children, <a href="#page_184">184</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;education of, <a href="#page_185">185</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;new conditions of life of, <a href="#page_181">181</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, <a href="#page_053">53</a>-<a href="#page_056">56</a>, <a href="#page_187">187</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Labor, division of, <a href="#page_210">210</a>, <a href="#page_213">213</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;reaction from, <a href="#page_215">215</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Law and order, <a href="#page_172">172</a>, <a href="#page_174">174</a>, <a href="#page_234">234</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Moral fact and moral idea, <a href="#page_227">227</a>, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_273">273</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Morality, natural basis of, <a href="#page_268">268</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;personal and social, <a href="#page_006">6</a>, <a href="#page_176">176</a>, <a href="#page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, <a href="#page_150">150</a>, <a href="#page_155">155</a>-<a href="#page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Philanthropist, the, <a href="#page_154">154</a>, <a href="#page_175">175</a>-<a href="#page_176">176</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Political corruption, ethical development in, <a href="#page_270">270</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;formation of reform clubs, <a href="#page_246">246</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;greatest pressure of, <a href="#page_260">260</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;individual and social aspect of, <a href="#page_264">264</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;leniency in regard to, <a href="#page_239">239</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;responsibility for, <a href="#page_256">256</a>, <a href="#page_263">263</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;selling of votes, <a href="#page_244">244</a>-<a href="#page_246">246</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;street railway and saloon interest, <a href="#page_262">262</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Political leaders, causes of success of, <a href="#page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Political standards, <a href="#page_228">228</a>, <a href="#page_229">229</a>, <a href="#page_251">251</a>-<a href="#page_253">253</a>, <a href="#page_261">261</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;compared with Benjamin Franklin's, <a href="#page_255">255</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Referendum method, the, <a href="#page_164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reformer, the, ethics of, <a href="#page_270">270</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, <a href="#page_222">222</a>, <a href="#page_240">240</a>, <a href="#page_262">262</a>, <a href="#page_272">272</a>, <a href="#page_274">274</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;business men's attitude toward, <a href="#page_265">265</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Rumford, Count, <a href="#page_117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ruskin, <a href="#page_219">219</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Saloon, the, <a href="#page_243">243</a>, <a href="#page_264">264</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Social claim, the, <a href="#page_004">4</a>, <a href="#page_077">77</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;child study and, <a href="#page_092">92</a>, <a href="#page_180">180</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;misplaced energy and, <a href="#page_090">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Social virtues, code of employer, <a href="#page_143">143</a>, <a href="#page_148">148</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;code of laboring man, <i>ibid.</i></p>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Technical schools, <a href="#page_201">201</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;adaptation of, to workingmen, <a href="#page_204">204</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;compromises in, <a href="#page_203">203</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;polytechnic institutions, <a href="#page_202">202</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;textile schools, <a href="#page_203">203</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;women in, <i>ibid.</i></p>
+
+<p>Thrift, individualism of, <a href="#page_031">31</a>, <a href="#page_040">40</a>, <a href="#page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Trades unions, <a href="#page_148">148</a>, <a href="#page_158">158</a>, <a href="#page_167">167</a>, <a href="#page_169">169</a>, <a href="#page_171">171</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;sympathetic strikes, <a href="#page_174">174</a>.</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<a name="page_281"></a>
+
+<p>Workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, <a href="#page_191">191</a>, <a href="#page_258">258</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;art in relation to, <a href="#page_218">218</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;charity of, <a href="#page_154">154</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;evening classes and social entertainment for, <a href="#page_189">189</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;grievance of, <a href="#page_211">211</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;historical perspective in the work of, <i>ibid.</i>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;organizations of, <a href="#page_214">214</a>;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;standards for political candidate, <a href="#page_257">257</a>.</p>
+
+<a name="page_279_note"></a><p><small><a href="#page_279"><sup>1</sup></a> This index is not intended to be exhaustive.</small></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams
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diff --git a/15487.txt b/15487.txt
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+++ b/15487.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5255 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Democracy and Social Ethics
+
+Author: Jane Addams
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2005 [EBook #15487]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alicia Williams, Joel Schlosberg and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Citizen's Library of Economics, Politics, and
+Sociology
+
+UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF
+
+RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D, LL.D.
+
+_Director of the School of Economics and Political Science; Professor of
+Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin_
+
+12mo. Half Leather. $1.25, net, each
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+*Monopolies and Trusts*. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D.
+
+"It is admirable. It is the soundest contribution on the subject that
+has appeared."--Professor JOHN R. COMMONS.
+
+"By all odds the best written of Professor Ely's work."--Professor SIMON
+N. PATTEN, _University of Pennsylvania_.
+
+*Outlines of Economics*. By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D., author of
+"Monopolies and Trusts," etc.
+
+*The Economics of Distribution*. By JOHN A. HOBSON, author of "The
+Evolution of Modern Capitalism," etc.
+
+*World Politics*. By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Assistant Professor
+of Political Science, University of Wisconsin.
+
+*Economic Crises*. By EDWARD D. JONES, Ph.D., Instructor in Economics
+and Statistics, University of Wisconsin.
+
+*Government in Switzerland*. By JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, Ph.D., Associate
+Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University.
+
+*Political Parties in the United States, 1846-1861*. By JESSE MACY,
+LL.D., Professor of Political Science in Iowa College.
+
+*Essays on the Monetary History of the United States*. By CHARLES J.
+BULLOCK, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics, Williams College.
+
+*Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order*. By EDWARD
+ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D.
+
+*Municipal Engineering and Sanitation*. By W.N. BAKER, Ph.B., Associate
+Editor of _Engineering News_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+*In Preparation for Early Issue*
+
+*DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS*
+
+    By JANE ADDAMS, Head of "Hull House," Chicago; joint author of
+    "Philanthropy and Social Progress." (_Now ready._)
+
+Miss Addams' Settlement Work is known to all who are interested in
+social amelioration and municipal conditions. As the title of her book
+shows, it will be occupied with the reciprocal relations of ethical
+progress and the growth of democratic thought, sentiment, and
+institutions.
+
+*CUSTOM AND COMPETITION*
+
+    By RICHARD T. ELY, LL.D., Professor of Political Economy and
+    Director of the School of Economics and Political Science in the
+    University of Wisconsin; President of the American Economic
+    Association; author of "Monopolies and Trusts," etc.
+
+Topics treated under Custom include the Rent of Land and Custom;
+Interest and Custom; The Remuneration of Personal Services and Custom;
+Custom and Commerce.
+
+Competition is first discussed with reference to the biological aspects
+of the question, and the significance of subhuman competition is
+confined and a careful classification of its various kinds is presented.
+One of the main topics of the book is Competition as a Principle of
+Distribution, and its treatment of the subject of price admirably
+supplements the theoretical discussion in "Monopolies and Trusts."
+
+*AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS*
+
+    By CHARLES ZUEBLIN, B.D., Associate Professor of Sociology in the
+    University of Chicago.
+
+This work takes up the problem of the so-called public utilities, public
+schools, libraries, children's playgrounds, public baths, public
+gymnasiums, etc. The discussion is from the standpoint of public welfare
+and is based on repeated personal investigations in leading cities of
+Europe, especially England and the United States.
+
+*COLONIAL GOVERNMENT*
+
+    By PAUL S. REINSCH, Ph.D., LL.B., Professor of Political Science in
+    the University of Wisconsin; Author of "World Politics at the End of
+    the Nineteenth Century as Influenced by the Oriental Situation."
+
+By the author of the "World Politics," which met so cordial a reception
+from students of modern political history. The main divisions of the
+book are: Motives and Methods of Colonization; Forms of Colonial
+Government; Relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies;
+Internal Government of the Colonies; The Special Colonial Problems of
+the United States.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY
+
+OF
+
+ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND SOCIOLOGY
+
+EDITED BY
+
+RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
+
+DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF
+WISCONSIN
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
+
+
+
+
+*THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND
+SOCIOLOGY.*
+
+12mo. Half leather. $1.25 _net_ each.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+*MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS.*
+BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
+
+*THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION.*
+BY JOHN A. HOBSON.
+
+*WORLD POLITICS.*
+BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
+
+*ECONOMIC CRISES.*
+BY EDWARD D. JONES, PH.D.
+
+*OUTLINE OF ECONOMICS.*
+BY RICHARD T. ELY.
+
+*GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND.*
+BY JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, PH.D.
+
+*ESSAYS IN THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.*
+BY CHARLES J. BULLOCK, PH.D.
+
+*SOCIAL CONTROL.*
+BY EDWARD A. ROSS, PH.D.
+
+*HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.*
+BY JESSE MACY, LL.D.
+
+*MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION.*
+BY M.N. BAKER, PH.B.
+
+*DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS.*
+BY JANE ADDAMS.
+
+*COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.*
+BY PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_IN PREPARATION._
+
+*CUSTOM AND COMPETITION.*
+BY RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
+
+*MUNICIPAL SOCIOLOGY.*
+BY CHARLES ZUEBLIN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
+66 FIFTH AVENUE.
+
+
+
+
+_THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
+
+BY
+
+JANE ADDAMS
+HULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO
+
+_New York_
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
+1902
+
+
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped March, 1902. Reprinted
+June, September, 1902.
+
+Norwood Press
+J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+To: M.R.S.
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+The following pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures
+on "Democracy and Social Ethics" which have been delivered at various
+colleges and university extension centres.
+
+In putting them into the form of a book, no attempt has been made to
+change the somewhat informal style used in speaking. The "we" and "us"
+which originally referred to the speaker and her audience are merely
+extended to possible readers.
+
+Acknowledgment for permission to reprint is extended to _The Atlantic
+Monthly_, _The International Journal of Ethics_, _The American Journal
+of Sociology_, and to _The Commons_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I                                                           PAGE
+INTRODUCTION                                                           1
+
+CHAPTER II
+CHARITABLE EFFORT                                                     13
+
+CHAPTER III
+FILIAL RELATIONS                                                      71
+
+CHAPTER IV
+HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT                                                 102
+
+CHAPTER V
+INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION                                              137
+
+CHAPTER VI
+EDUCATIONAL METHODS                                                  178
+
+CHAPTER VII
+POLITICAL REFORM                                                     221
+
+INDEX                                                                279
+
+
+
+
+DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but
+another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of
+every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life
+becomes meaningless.
+
+Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the
+community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from
+stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much
+voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. To steal
+would be for us to fall sadly below the standard of habit and
+expectation which makes virtue easy. In the same way we have been
+carefully reared to a sense of family obligation, to be kindly and
+considerate to the members of our own households, and to feel
+responsible for their well-being. As the rules of conduct have become
+established in regard to our self-development and our families, so they
+have been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of
+these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and
+thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of
+right living would lie easily in their hands.
+
+But we all know that each generation has its own test, the
+contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately
+judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately
+use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed
+include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no
+more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have
+"arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.
+
+To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to
+pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands
+social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.
+
+It is perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us
+that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of
+the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are
+not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the
+poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed the hungry?
+
+All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to
+their attitude toward the social order itself; toward the dreary round
+of uninteresting work, the pleasures narrowed down to those of appetite,
+the declining consciousness of brain power, and the lack of mental food
+which characterizes the lot of the large proportion of their
+fellow-citizens. These men and women have caught a moral challenge
+raised by the exigencies of contemporaneous life; some are bewildered,
+others who are denied the relief which sturdy action brings are even
+seeking an escape, but all are increasingly anxious concerning their
+actual relations to the basic organization of society.
+
+The test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They
+fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal
+obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand
+involving a social obligation; they have become conscious of another
+requirement, and the contribution they would make is toward a code of
+social ethics. The conception of life which they hold has not yet
+expressed itself in social changes or legal enactment, but rather in a
+mental attitude of maladjustment, and in a sense of divergence between
+their consciences and their conduct. They desire both a clearer
+definition of the code of morality adapted to present day demands and a
+part in its fulfilment, both a creed and a practice of social morality.
+In the perplexity of this intricate situation at least one thing is
+becoming clear: if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a
+social morality, it is inevitable that those who desire it must be
+brought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to
+procure an adequate social motive.
+
+These men and women have realized this and have disclosed the fact in
+their eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the
+life about them. They believe that experience gives the easy and
+trustworthy impulse toward right action in the broad as well as in the
+narrow relations. We may indeed imagine many of them saying: "Cast our
+experiences in a larger mould if our lives are to be animated by the
+larger social aims. We have met the obligations of our family life, not
+because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because
+of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation
+naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare
+ourselves for the larger social duties." Such a demand is reasonable,
+for by our daily experience we have discovered that we cannot
+mechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in rare moments
+of exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that even as the
+ideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the strength to
+attain it must be secured from interest in life itself. We slowly learn
+that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may
+come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from
+selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of
+Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all
+men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and
+equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well
+as a test of faith.
+
+We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by
+travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common
+road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size
+of one another's burdens. To follow the path of social morality results
+perforce in the temper if not the practice of the democratic spirit, for
+it implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy
+which are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy.
+
+There are many indications that this conception of Democracy is growing
+among us. We have come to have an enormous interest in human life as
+such, accompanied by confidence in its essential soundness. We do not
+believe that genuine experience can lead us astray any more than
+scientific data can.
+
+We realize, too, that social perspective and sanity of judgment come
+only from contact with social experience; that such contact is the
+surest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and
+concerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. Indeed, it is a
+consciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and
+more thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that
+new curiosity regarding human life which has more of a moral basis than
+an intellectual one.
+
+The newspapers, in a frank reflection of popular demand, exhibit an
+omniverous curiosity equally insistent upon the trivial and the
+important. They are perhaps the most obvious manifestations of that
+desire to know, that "What is this?" and "Why do you do that?" of the
+child. The first dawn of the social consciousness takes this form, as
+the dawning intelligence of the child takes the form of constant
+question and insatiate curiosity.
+
+Literature, too, portrays an equally absorbing though better adjusted
+desire to know all kinds of life. The popular books are the novels,
+dealing with life under all possible conditions, and they are widely
+read not only because they are entertaining, but also because they in a
+measure satisfy an unformulated belief that to see farther, to know all
+sorts of men, in an indefinite way, is a preparation for better social
+adjustment--for the remedying of social ills.
+
+Doubtless one under the conviction of sin in regard to social ills finds
+a vague consolation in reading about the lives of the poor, and derives
+a sense of complicity in doing good. He likes to feel that he knows
+about social wrongs even if he does not remedy them, and in a very
+genuine sense there is a foundation for this belief.
+
+Partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a
+new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world
+before. Evil itself does not shock us as it once did, and we count only
+that man merciful in whom we recognize an understanding of the criminal.
+We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and
+hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a
+realization of the experiences of other people. Already there is a
+conviction that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our
+experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately
+determine our understanding of life. We know instinctively that if we
+grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse
+to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect,
+we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the
+scope of our ethics.
+
+We can recall among the selfish people of our acquaintance at least one
+common characteristic,--the conviction that they are different from
+other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration because they
+are more sensitive or more refined. Such people "refuse to be bound by
+any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration,
+or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed." We have
+learned to recognize them as selfish, although we blame them not for the
+will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which
+deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say
+that they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on narrow and
+unprogressive issues.
+
+We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and
+democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social
+expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the
+identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of
+Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as
+though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience,
+because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry
+us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and
+jostle of the crowd.
+
+The six following chapters are studies of various types and groups who
+are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance
+of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct.
+No attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the
+assumption that the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy,
+but the quite unlooked-for result of the studies would seem to indicate
+that while the strain and perplexity of the situation is felt most
+keenly by the educated and self-conscious members of the community, the
+tentative and actual attempts at adjustment are largely coming through
+those who are simpler and less analytical.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHARITABLE EFFORT
+
+
+All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy,
+which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away
+from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to
+act upon them.
+
+Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a
+course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct,
+which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing
+moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the
+strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon
+another.
+
+Probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing
+more rapidly than the charitable relation--that relation which obtains
+between benefactor and beneficiary; at the same time there is no point
+of contact in our modern experience which reveals so clearly the lack of
+that equality which democracy implies. We have reached the moment when
+democracy has made such inroads upon this relationship, that the
+complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man is gone forever; while,
+at the same time, the very need and existence of charity, denies us the
+consolation and freedom which democracy will at last give.
+
+It is quite obvious that the ethics of none of us are clearly defined,
+and we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon
+convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of
+environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our
+methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was
+believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that
+the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered
+harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed
+the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior
+prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior morality. We
+have learned since that time to measure by other standards, and have
+ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive respect; while
+it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, its possession
+is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the highest moral
+qualities. We have learned to judge men by their social virtues as well
+as by their business capacity, by their devotion to intellectual and
+disinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we naturally resent
+being obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the industrial side.
+Our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is largely in this
+modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic standard, while the
+old charitable attitude commonly allowed the use of two standards, that
+much of the difficulty adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil
+becomes wearing and brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable
+if we judge large numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in
+maintaining it.
+
+The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house
+made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is
+no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her
+hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over
+against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained
+only through status.
+
+The only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those
+who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through
+sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable
+reasons; but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing, and
+must be bolstered and helped into industrial health. The charity
+visitor, let us assume, is a young college woman, well-bred and
+open-minded; when she visits the family assigned to her, she is often
+embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the stress of her
+teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to treat the
+members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the industrial
+system. She insists that they must work and be self-supporting, that the
+most dangerous of all situations is idleness, that seeking one's own
+pleasure, while ignoring claims and responsibilities, is the most
+ignoble of actions. The members of her assigned family may have other
+charms and virtues--they may possibly be kind and considerate of each
+other, generous to their friends, but it is her business to stick to the
+industrial side. As she daily holds up these standards, it often occurs
+to the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made
+tender by much talk of brotherhood and equality, that she has no right
+to say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to
+cope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family.
+
+The grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial
+preaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and
+housewifely training. In a generation our experiences have changed, and
+our views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which
+could be applied when our consciences were in line with them, but which
+are daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work
+with their hands and those who do not. The charity visitor belonging to
+the latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the
+situation forces upon her. Our democracy has taught us to apply our
+moral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so
+sensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical convictions,
+he finds it difficult to preach.
+
+Added to this is a consciousness, in the mind of the visitor, of a
+genuine misunderstanding of her motives by the recipients of her
+charity, and by their neighbors. Let us take a neighborhood of poor
+people, and test their ethical standards by those of the charity
+visitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to help them out of
+their distress. A most striking incongruity, at once apparent, is the
+difference between the emotional kindness with which relief is given by
+one poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the guarded care with
+which relief is given by a charity visitor to a charity recipient. The
+neighborhood mind is at once confronted not only by the difference of
+method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical standards.
+
+A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is
+sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly
+relations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything,
+and all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate
+family affairs of all the others. The fact that the economic condition
+of all alike is on a most precarious level makes the ready outflow of
+sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world.
+There are numberless instances of self-sacrifice quite unknown in the
+circles where greater economic advantages make that kind of intimate
+knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish family in which the
+man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling to eke out the
+scanty savings by day's work, will take in the widow and her five
+children who have been turned into the street, without a moment's
+reflection upon the physical discomforts involved. The most maligned
+landlady who lives in the house with her tenants is usually ready to
+lend a scuttle full of coal to one of them who may be out of work, or to
+share her supper. A woman for whom the writer had long tried in vain to
+find work failed to appear at the appointed time when employment was
+secured at last. Upon investigation it transpired that a neighbor
+further down the street was taken ill, that the children ran for the
+family friend, who went of course, saying simply when reasons for her
+non-appearance were demanded, "It broke me heart to leave the place, but
+what could I do?" A woman whose husband was sent up to the city prison
+for the maximum term, just three months, before the birth of her child
+found herself penniless at the end of that time, having gradually sold
+her supply of household furniture. She took refuge with a friend whom
+she supposed to be living in three rooms in another part of town. When
+she arrived, however, she discovered that her friend's husband had been
+out of work so long that they had been reduced to living in one room.
+The friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged
+to sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did
+uncomplainingly if not cheerfully. Fortunately it was summer, "and it
+only rained one night." The writer could not discover from the young
+mother that she had any special claim upon the "friend" beyond the fact
+that they had formerly worked together in the same factory. The husband
+she had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at once went
+forth in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon his promise
+of future payment.
+
+The evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid
+his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right
+and wrong. There is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many
+people with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that
+their ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged by the
+methods of these agencies. When they see the delay and caution with
+which relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious
+scruple, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. It is
+not the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors,
+and they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to "be
+good to the poor" should be so severely supervised. They feel,
+remotely, that the charity visitor is moved by motives that are alien
+and unreal. They may be superior motives, but they are different, and
+they are "agin nature." They cannot comprehend why a person whose
+intellectual perceptions are stronger than his natural impulses, should
+go into charity work at all. The only man they are accustomed to see
+whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his tenderness of
+heart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is frankly "on the make."
+If the charity visitor is such a person, why does she pretend to like
+the poor? Why does she not go into business at once?
+
+We may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus
+confuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite
+honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity
+from time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to
+say: "What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to give us, why not
+let us alone and stop your questionings and investigations?" "They
+investigated me for three weeks, and in the end gave me nothing but a
+black character," a little woman has been heard to assert. This
+indignation, which is for the most part taciturn, and a certain kindly
+contempt for her abilities, often puzzles the charity visitor. The
+latter may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the
+visited families hold. Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of
+the poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the
+opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness,
+who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of
+irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still
+admiration, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured
+landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is
+seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned
+for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to
+accumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a
+poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one
+sense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person
+who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this
+good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little
+genuine respect. The poor are accustomed to help each other and to
+respond according to their kindliness; but when it comes to worldly
+judgment, they use industrial success as the sole standard. In the case
+of the charity visitor who has neither natural kindness nor dazzling
+riches, they are deprived of both standards, and they find it of course
+utterly impossible to judge of the motive of organized charity.
+
+Even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in
+altruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something
+distasteful in the juxtaposition of the words "organized" and "charity."
+We say in defence that we are striving to turn this emotion into a
+motive, that pity is capricious, and not to be depended on; that we mean
+to give it the dignity of conscious duty. But at bottom we distrust a
+little a scheme which substitutes a theory of social conduct for the
+natural promptings of the heart, even although we appreciate the
+complexity of the situation. The poor man who has fallen into distress,
+when he first asks aid, instinctively expects tenderness, consideration,
+and forgiveness. If it is the first time, it has taken him long to make
+up his mind to take the step. He comes somewhat bruised and battered,
+and instead of being met with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at
+once chilled by an investigation and an intimation that he ought to
+work. He does not recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation.
+
+The only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by
+virtue of their professional training render services which may easily
+be interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to
+obvious needs which do not require investigation.
+
+The state of mind which an investigation arouses on both sides is most
+unfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of different standards,
+with the consequent misunderstandings, are not so bad as the moral
+deterioration which is almost sure to follow.
+
+When the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that
+under certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed
+from some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn
+what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a
+glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any
+self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is
+an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize
+that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by
+at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite
+elusive of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor
+they gravely laud temperance and cleanliness and thrift and religious
+observance. The deception in the first instances arises from a wondering
+inability to understand the ethical ideals which can require such
+impossible virtues, and from an innocent desire to please. It is easy to
+trace the development of the mental suggestions thus received. When A
+discovers that B, who is very little worse off than he, receives good
+things from an inexhaustible supply intended for the poor at large, he
+feels that he too has a claim for his share, and step by step there is
+developed the competitive spirit which so horrifies charity visitors
+when it shows itself in a tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies.
+
+The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the
+charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love
+and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The
+spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child
+is turned into righteous indignation against the district nurse,
+because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. Or the
+kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed
+medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary,
+because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can get well on a
+piece of paper?"
+
+If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is
+quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to
+mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty
+wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in,
+all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They
+know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she
+has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They
+imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous
+gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought
+to get new shoes for the family all round, "she sees well enough that
+they need them." It is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has
+practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The charity visitor has
+broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive
+society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources
+of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is
+judged by the ethics of that primitive society.
+
+The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their
+own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other
+things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are
+like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady
+visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as
+though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not
+intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?
+
+The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to
+a standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living
+which they formerly possessed; that saving, which seems quite
+commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a
+poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the
+children of the family do not.
+
+She feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the
+industrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago
+honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in
+comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had
+practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained
+whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for
+indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly
+untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity
+visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and
+saving money, the things I know nothing about? If it were anything else
+I had to urge, I could do it; anything like Latin prose, which I had
+worried through myself, it would not be so hard." But she finds it
+difficult to connect the experiences of her youth with the experiences
+of the visited family.
+
+Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually
+surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. She
+refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers
+that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors"
+at all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free
+lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not
+able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity
+visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. He may
+listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only
+"temperance talk."
+
+The charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward
+their children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that
+the standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children
+so much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the
+punctilious wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child. The
+standard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself,
+assisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "That
+they do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of
+mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of
+every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a
+certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement.
+It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we
+live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more
+difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened
+supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining
+children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she
+doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her
+first month of experience with the family since bereaved.
+
+The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the
+result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The
+girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable
+school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by
+all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even
+shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose
+family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to
+another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,
+knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her
+position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to
+the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social
+advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is
+judged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful
+little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the
+people whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her
+background, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact
+that girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where
+"working girls" and "young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where
+the clothes superficially look very much alike. Bright and ambitious
+girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon,
+to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might
+hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own
+neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits
+and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by
+other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same
+reason, girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little
+towns and villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the
+front parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the
+house. These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment;
+they impede the democratic relationship and add to the
+self-consciousness of all concerned. Every one who has had to do with
+down-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of
+some bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps
+wretched, and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her,
+although the working girl may not have been at home when the call was
+made, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy
+throughout. In some very successful down-town clubs the home address is
+not given at all, and only the "business address" is required. Have we
+worked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than anything
+else?
+
+The charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to
+spend much money upon clothes, to care so much for "appearances." She
+realizes dimly that the care for personal decoration over that for one's
+home or habitat is in some way primitive and undeveloped; but she is
+silenced by its obvious need. She also catches a glimpse of the fact
+that the disproportionate expenditure of the poor in the matter of
+clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of the rich who hide from
+them the interior of their houses, and their more subtle pleasures,
+while of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and their street
+manners. Every one who goes shopping at the same time may see the
+clothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to her
+receptions see the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her library.
+The poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing the
+street clothes which they have seen. They are striving to conform to a
+common standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to
+all of us. The charity visitor may regret that the Italian peasant
+woman has laid aside her picturesque kerchief and substituted a cheap
+street hat. But it is easy to recognize the first attempt toward
+democratic expression.
+
+The charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to
+consider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor; for
+she cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according
+to the conventions which have regulated her own life. She finds both of
+these fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her
+sympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight.
+She discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been, and it
+takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist
+so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit
+the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The
+charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early
+marriages, quite naturally because she comes from a family and circle
+of professional and business people. A professional man is scarcely
+equipped and started in his profession before he is thirty. A business
+man, if he is on the road to success, is much nearer prosperity at
+thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is therefore wise for these men not
+to marry in the twenties; but this does not apply to the workingman. In
+many trades he is laid upon the shelf at thirty-five, and in nearly all
+trades he receives the largest wages in his life between twenty and
+thirty. If the young workingman has all his wages to himself, he will
+probably establish habits of personal comfort, which he cannot keep up
+when he has to divide with a family--habits which he can, perhaps, never
+overcome.
+
+The sense of prudence, the necessity for saving, can never come to a
+primitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the
+necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He
+naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to
+care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very
+early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County
+poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his
+little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared
+this sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to well
+support a family when he was twenty than when he was thirty-five, for
+his wages had steadily grown less as the years went on. Another tailor
+whom I know, who is also a Socialist, always speaks of saving as a
+bourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to the genuine workingman. He
+supports a family consisting of himself, a wife and three children, and
+his two parents on eight dollars a week. He insists it would be criminal
+not to expend every penny of this amount upon food and shelter, and he
+expects his children later to care for him.
+
+This economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to
+work overyoung and thus cripple their chances for individual
+development and usefulness, and with the avaricious parent also leads to
+exploitation. "I have fed her for fourteen years, now she can help me
+pay my mortgage" is not an unusual reply when a hardworking father is
+expostulated with because he would take his bright daughter out of
+school and put her into a factory.
+
+It has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly
+urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least
+connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not
+the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been
+taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and
+more social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his
+parents, who are receiving charitable aid. She does not realize what a
+cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives
+advice.
+
+The manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children
+was able to show during a child-labor investigation, that the only
+children under fourteen years of age in his employ were proteges who had
+been urged upon him by philanthropic ladies, not only acquaintances of
+his, but valued patrons of the establishment. It is not that the charity
+visitor is less wise than other people, but she has fixed her mind so
+long upon the industrial lameness of her family that she is eager to
+seize any crutch, however weak, which may enable them to get on.
+
+She has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely support
+his widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate member to the
+community, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. As she
+has failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of
+marriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she
+fails to understand that the present conditions of employment
+surrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained
+during the energetic youth of her father.
+
+The child who is prematurely put to work is constantly oppressed by this
+never ending question of the means of subsistence, and even little
+children are sometimes almost crushed with the cares of life through
+their affectionate sympathy. The writer knows a little Italian lad of
+six to whom the problems of food, clothing, and shelter have become so
+immediate and pressing that, although an imaginative child, he is unable
+to see life from any other standpoint. The goblin or bugaboo, feared by
+the more fortunate child, in his mind, has come to be the need of coal
+which caused his father hysterical and demonstrative grief when it
+carried off his mother's inherited linen, the mosaic of St. Joseph, and,
+worst of all, his own rubber boots. He once came to a party at
+Hull-House, and was interested in nothing save a gas stove which he saw
+in the kitchen. He became excited over the discovery that fire could be
+produced without fuel. "I will tell my father of this stove. You buy no
+coal, you need only a match. Anybody will give you a match." He was
+taken to visit at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was
+paid for it. On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no
+rent for that house, he came back quite wild with interest that the
+problem was solved. "Me and my father will go to the country. You get a
+big house, all warm, without rent." Nothing else in the country
+interested him but the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an
+exclusiveness worthy of a single taxer.
+
+The struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near
+the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the
+charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents
+who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn,
+take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with
+them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the
+immature nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing
+habits of obedience, so that the nerves and will may not depart from
+this control when the child is older. The charity visitor, whose family
+relation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand
+the industrial foundation for this family tyranny.
+
+The head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of
+working women, and spoke of the despotism which is often established
+over little children. She said that the so-called determination to break
+a child's will many times arose from a lust of dominion, and she urged
+the ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. But many of the
+women were puzzled. One of them remarked to the writer as she came out
+of the club room, "If you did not keep control over them from the time
+they were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown
+up." Another one said, "Ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't
+have to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with
+them, because even if they don't give money to her, she can get along
+without it."
+
+There are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and
+constantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes
+receiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as
+often nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who
+for six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling
+wages which she earns in a large factory. Is it habit or virtue which
+holds her steady in this course? If love and tenderness had been
+substituted for parental despotism, would the mother have had enough
+affection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of
+money obligation through all these years? This girl who spends her
+paltry two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her
+mother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on
+those clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some
+powerful force.
+
+The charity visitor finds these subtle and elusive problems most
+harrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is a man who has become
+black-listed in a strike. He is not a very good workman, and this, added
+to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. The
+fatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less
+eager for it, and gets a "job" less and less frequently. In order to
+keep up his self-respect, and still more to keep his wife's respect for
+him, he yields to the little self-deception that this prolonged idleness
+follows because he was once blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a
+martyr. Deep down in his heart perhaps--but who knows what may be deep
+down in his heart? Whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for
+an instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her
+earn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family.
+The charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the
+other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further
+knows by inquiry and a little experience that the man is not skilful.
+She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce
+him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain
+intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees other
+workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many
+more hours in the public library reading good books than the average
+workman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has yielded only
+to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which come to the
+intellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would induce his
+union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a constant
+speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral attitude on the
+questions discussed there. He contributes a certain intellectuality to
+his friends, and he has undoubted social value. The neighboring women
+confide to the charity visitor their sympathy with his wife, because
+she has to work so hard, and because her husband does not "provide."
+Their remarks are sharpened by a certain resentment toward the
+superiority of the husband's education and gentle manners. The charity
+visitor is ashamed to take this point of view, for she knows that it is
+not altogether fair. She is reminded of a college friend of hers, who
+told her that she was not going to allow her literary husband to write
+unworthy potboilers for the sake of earning a living. "I insist that we
+shall live within my own income; that he shall not publish until he is
+ready, and can give his genuine message." The charity visitor recalls
+what she has heard of another acquaintance, who urged her husband to
+decline a lucrative position as a railroad attorney, because she wished
+him to be free to take municipal positions, and handle public questions
+without the inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in
+a corrupt city to a corporation attorney. The action of these two women
+seemed noble to her, but in their cases they merely lived on a lesser
+income. In the case of the workingman's wife, she faced living on no
+income at all, or on the precarious one which she might be able to get
+together.
+
+She sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she
+is utterly unwilling to condemn her while praising the friends of her
+own social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is
+changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other
+two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight
+was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The
+charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the
+finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from
+the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she
+suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into
+complaining drudgery. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family
+altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the
+crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects
+that she will never know many finer women than the mother. She is
+unwilling, therefore, to give up the friendship, and goes on bearing her
+perplexities as best she may.
+
+The first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with
+her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their
+children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which
+receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the
+instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of
+juvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving
+no legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we
+remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house
+or regular meals.
+
+There are certain boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves
+into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid than the
+rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house,
+to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the
+nearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they buy beer and
+drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley. From
+beginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that they may be
+seen and caught by the "coppers," and are at times quite breathless with
+suspense. It is not the least unlike, in motive and execution, the
+practice of country boys who go forth in squads to set traps for rabbits
+or to round up a coon.
+
+It is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious
+training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy
+undertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very
+beginning the most enticing and exciting experiences which they have
+seen have been connected with crime. The policeman embodies all the
+majesty of successful law and established government in his brass
+buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon.
+
+The boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale
+to tell of the interior recesses of the mysterious police station. The
+earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the
+rattling fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block,"
+and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest
+lady in our street was arrested."
+
+In the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took
+fifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their
+apathetic interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an
+omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find
+them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled by.
+Their eager little heads popped out of the windows full of questioning:
+"Was it a man or a woman?" "How many policemen inside?" and eager little
+tongues began to tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes had
+witnessed.
+
+The excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a
+fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who
+receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is
+willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest
+things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation
+schools than the conscientious charity visitor.
+
+This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of
+their own, which seems the simplest prerogative of childhood, often
+leads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged seven, nine, and ten
+were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of
+pilfering and destroying property. They had dug a cave under a railroad
+viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer
+vacation. They had "swiped" potatoes and other vegetables from
+hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand
+fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation with stolen
+junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations.
+The father of the ringleader was a janitor living in a building five
+miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did not
+want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor
+paid for the boy's board and lodging to a needy woman living near the
+viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his breakfast and supper, and left
+something in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to
+work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge
+his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in the summer," or to
+investigate what he did during the day. In the meantime the three boys
+lived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous
+stories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more
+as the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic
+passing over the street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous
+exertions on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform
+School, comforting himself with the conclusive remark, "Well, we had fun
+anyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in
+the country, where we can't hurt anything."
+
+In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the
+scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of
+the young people. "Going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and
+satisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all
+their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay
+for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday afternoon. It is their
+one satisfactory glimpse of life--the moment when they "issue forth from
+themselves" and are stirred and thoroughly interested. They quite simply
+adopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see
+there. In moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the
+gestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry
+expression often conflicts hideously with the fine and genuine emotion
+of which it is the inadequate and vulgar vehicle.
+
+As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of
+expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they
+know.
+
+If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the
+spectator to lose his sense of isolation, there is no doubt that the
+popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function
+of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries"
+and picture exhibits combined.
+
+The greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come
+sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding
+and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's own ethical
+standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had bought and sold
+school books stolen from the school fund,--books which are all plainly
+marked with a red stamp,--came to Hull House one morning in great
+distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident "to speak
+to the judge." She gave as a reason the fact that the House had known
+her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her little
+girl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her visitor knew
+the school books were stolen when buying them, and any attempt to talk
+upon that subject was evidently considered very rude. The visitor wished
+to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason why the House
+should not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she could not go
+to him. After a long conversation the visitor entirely failed to get
+another point of view and went away grieved and disappointed at a
+refusal, thinking the resident simply disobliging; wondering, no doubt,
+why such a mean woman had once been good to her; leaving the resident,
+on the other hand, utterly baffled and in the state of mind she would
+have been in, had she brutally insisted that a little child should lift
+weights too heavy for its undeveloped muscles.
+
+Such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher
+ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but
+it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in
+which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient
+is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:--
+
+A certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and
+pathos of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the well-being of
+perhaps a dozen old women to whom she sustains a sincerely affectionate
+and almost filial relation. Some of them learn to take her benefactions
+quite as if they came from their own relatives, grumbling at all she
+does, and scolding her with a family freedom. One of these poor old
+women was injured in a fire years ago. She has but the fragment of a
+hand left, and is grievously crippled in her feet. Through years of pain
+she had become addicted to opium, and when she first came under the
+visitor's care, was only held from the poorhouse by the awful thought
+that she would there perish without her drug. Five years of tender care
+have done wonders for her. She lives in two neat little rooms, where
+with her thumb and two fingers she makes innumerable quilts, which she
+sells and gives away with the greatest delight. Her opium is regulated
+to a set amount taken each day, and she has been drawn away from much
+drinking. She is a voracious reader, and has her head full of strange
+tales made up from books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed
+impossible to do anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two
+years in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and
+where she was nursed through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives
+a better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old
+woman. The neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is
+supported and comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she
+occasionally "rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar
+her in her tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that
+second standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the
+standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be
+helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the
+plums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this
+criticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't
+in the least deserve what she gets. In order to disarm them, and at the
+same time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so
+colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn in
+the suburb she discovered an awful family secret,--a horrible scandal
+connected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order
+to prevent the divulgence of this that she constantly receives her
+ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation
+as simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem. Doubtless many
+of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and
+patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. But the
+standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems
+unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people
+who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a
+certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. It is certainly
+dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.
+
+Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy
+among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is
+certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a
+comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be
+willing to make.
+
+Of what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any
+value? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity
+visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do.
+It drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they
+claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of
+a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods
+do, that the member first take the vows of obedience and poverty, so
+that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and
+thus she is not harassed by a constant attempt at adjustment.
+
+Both the tenement-house resident and the sister assume to have put
+themselves upon the industrial level of their neighbors, although they
+have left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent fear
+of starvation and a neglected old age.
+
+The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most
+precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the
+city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which
+our growing democracy forces upon her.
+
+We sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would
+doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not
+scientific enough. We dislike the entire arrangement of cards
+alphabetically classified according to streets and names of families,
+with the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. Our feeling
+of revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted the students of
+botany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were
+tabulated in alphabetical order, when geology was taught by colored
+charts and thin books. No doubt the students, wearied to death, many
+times said that it was all too scientific, and were much perplexed and
+worried when they found traces of structure and physiology which their
+so-called scientific principles were totally unable to account for. But
+all this happened before science had become evolutionary and scientific
+at all, before it had a principle of life from within. The very
+indications and discoveries which formerly perplexed, later illumined
+and made the study absorbing and vital.
+
+We are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human
+affairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education
+of children. We are at last learning to follow the development of the
+child; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt
+methods and matter to his growing mind. No "advanced educator" can allow
+himself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child ought to be
+as to exclude the discovery of what he is. But in our charitable efforts
+we think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of
+what he may become; and we ruthlessly force our conventions and
+standards upon him, with a sternness which we would consider stupid
+indeed did an educator use it in forcing his mature intellectual
+convictions upon an undeveloped mind.
+
+Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to
+bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays
+with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him.
+The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes
+that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has
+the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a
+belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after
+all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific
+parent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. He
+talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves
+him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and
+development which the child does not possess. There is no doubt that our
+development of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and
+stilted stage. We have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated
+kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere repression much as the
+stern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the
+child, who is hysterically crying upstairs and laying the foundation for
+future nervous disorders. The pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the
+undeveloped stage of our philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed
+in our tendency to lay constant stress on negative action. "Don't give;"
+"don't break down self-respect," we are constantly told. We distrust the
+human impulse as well as the teachings of our own experience, and in
+their stead substitute dogmatic rules for conduct. We forget that the
+accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally
+result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to
+life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull upon the
+sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the
+visitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an
+ultimate intellectual comprehension. Indeed, part of the perplexity in
+the administration of charity comes from the fact that the type of
+person drawn to it is the one who insists that her convictions shall not
+be unrelated to action. Her moral concepts constantly tend to float away
+from her, unless they have a basis in the concrete relation of life. She
+is confronted with the task of reducing her scruples to action, and of
+converging many wills, so as to unite the strength of all of them into
+one accomplishment, the value of which no one can foresee.
+
+On the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her
+social compunction through charitable effort finds that the wider
+social activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only
+increases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts
+her social ideals. She is chagrined to discover that in the actual task
+of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble beneficiaries are
+far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in
+self-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue of humility by
+a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits by the side of
+the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a contrite sinner,
+but she gets the dust upon her head because she has stumbled and fallen
+in the road through her efforts to push forward the mass, to march with
+her fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only through a social
+aim but by a social process.
+
+The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the
+great forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. "To love mercy" and at
+the same time "to do justly" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first
+requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving
+with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the second solely is to
+obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary
+lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is
+impossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be
+attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement--"to walk humbly
+with God," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the
+lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the
+company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with
+the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected
+whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FILIAL RELATIONS
+
+
+There are many people in every community who have not felt the "social
+compunction," who do not share the effort toward a higher social
+morality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it. Some of
+these have been shielded from the inevitable and salutary failures which
+the trial of new powers involve, because they are content to attain
+standards of virtue demanded by an easy public opinion, and others of
+them have exhausted their moral energy in attaining to the current
+standard of individual and family righteousness.
+
+Such people, who form the bulk of contented society, demand that the
+radical, the reformer, shall be without stain or question in his
+personal and family relations, and judge most harshly any deviation
+from the established standards. There is a certain justice in this: it
+expresses the inherent conservatism of the mass of men, that none of the
+established virtues which have been so slowly and hardly acquired shall
+be sacrificed for the sake of making problematic advance; that the
+individual, in his attempt to develop and use the new and exalted
+virtue, shall not fall into the easy temptation of letting the ordinary
+ones slip through his fingers.
+
+This instinct to conserve the old standards, combined with a distrust of
+the new standard, is a constant difficulty in the way of those
+experiments and advances depending upon the initiative of women, both
+because women are the more sensitive to the individual and family
+claims, and because their training has tended to make them content with
+the response to these claims alone.
+
+There is no doubt that, in the effort to sustain the moral energy
+necessary to work out a more satisfactory social relation, the
+individual often sacrifices the energy which should legitimately go
+into the fulfilment of personal and family claims, to what he considers
+the higher claim.
+
+In considering the changes which our increasing democracy is constantly
+making upon various relationships, it is impossible to ignore the filial
+relation. This chapter deals with the relation between parents and their
+grown-up daughters, as affording an explicit illustration of the
+perplexity and mal-adjustment brought about by the various attempts of
+young women to secure a more active share in the community life. We
+constantly see parents very much disconcerted and perplexed in regard to
+their daughters when these daughters undertake work lying quite outside
+of traditional and family interests. These parents insist that the girl
+is carried away by a foolish enthusiasm, that she is in search of a
+career, that she is restless and does not know what she wants. They will
+give any reason, almost, rather than the recognition of a genuine and
+dignified claim. Possibly all this is due to the fact that for so many
+hundreds of years women have had no larger interests, no participation
+in the affairs lying quite outside personal and family claims. Any
+attempt that the individual woman formerly made to subordinate or
+renounce the family claim was inevitably construed to mean that she was
+setting up her own will against that of her family's for selfish ends.
+It was concluded that she could have no motive larger than a desire to
+serve her family, and her attempt to break away must therefore be wilful
+and self-indulgent.
+
+The family logically consented to give her up at her marriage, when she
+was enlarging the family tie by founding another family. It was easy to
+understand that they permitted and even promoted her going to college,
+travelling in Europe, or any other means of self-improvement, because
+these merely meant the development and cultivation of one of its own
+members. When, however, she responded to her impulse to fulfil the
+social or democratic claim, she violated every tradition.
+
+The mind of each one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we
+emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family
+obligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet
+most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to
+disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. We have
+yielded at times to the temptation of ignoring them for selfish aims, of
+considering the individual and not the family convenience, and we
+remember with shame the self-pity which inevitably followed. But just as
+we have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an
+orderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps
+we are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family
+and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled.
+
+The attempt to bring about a healing compromise in which the two shall
+be adjusted in proper relation is not an easy one. It is difficult to
+distinguish between the outward act of him who in following one
+legitimate claim has been led into the temporary violation of another,
+and the outward act of him who deliberately renounces a just claim and
+throws aside all obligation for the sake of his own selfish and
+individual development. The man, for instance, who deserts his family
+that he may cultivate an artistic sensibility, or acquire what he
+considers more fulness of life for himself, must always arouse our
+contempt. Breaking the marriage tie as Ibsen's "Nora" did, to obtain a
+larger self-development, or holding to it as George Eliot's "Romola"
+did, because of the larger claim of the state and society, must always
+remain two distinct paths. The collision of interests, each of which has
+a real moral basis and a right to its own place in life, is bound to be
+more or less tragic. It is the struggle between two claims, the
+destruction of either of which would bring ruin to the ethical life.
+Curiously enough, it is almost exactly this contradiction which is the
+tragedy set forth by the Greek dramatist, who asserted that the gods who
+watch over the sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher
+claims of the gods of the state. The failure to recognize the social
+claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains
+that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not
+directed to the general good. This suspicion will never be dissipated
+until parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and
+recognize the social claim.
+
+Our democracy is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human
+institutions, and a claim is being advanced which in a certain sense is
+larger than the family claim. The claim of the state in time of war has
+long been recognized, so that in its name the family has given up sons
+and husbands and even the fathers of little children. If we can once see
+the claims of society in any such light, if its misery and need can be
+made clear and urged as an explicit claim, as the state urges its claims
+in the time of danger, then for the first time the daughter who desires
+to minister to that need will be recognized as acting conscientiously.
+This recognition may easily come first through the emotions, and may be
+admitted as a response to pity and mercy long before it is formulated
+and perceived by the intellect.
+
+The family as well as the state we are all called upon to maintain as
+the highest institutions which the race has evolved for its safeguard
+and protection. But merely to preserve these institutions is not enough.
+There come periods of reconstruction, during which the task is laid upon
+a passing generation, to enlarge the function and carry forward the
+ideal of a long-established institution. There is no doubt that many
+women, consciously and unconsciously, are struggling with this task. The
+family, like every other element of human life, is susceptible of
+progress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspirations are
+enlarged, although its duties can never be abrogated and its obligations
+can never be cancelled. It is impossible to bring about the higher
+development by any self-assertion or breaking away of the individual
+will. The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at
+the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type
+of progress. The family in its entirety must be carried out into the
+larger life. Its various members together must recognize and acknowledge
+the validity of the social obligation. When this does not occur we have
+a most flagrant example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an
+ethical code is applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to
+conditions which are no longer the same as when the code was instituted,
+and for which it was never designed. We have all seen parental control
+and the family claim assert their authority in fields of effort which
+belong to the adult judgment of the child and pertain to activity quite
+outside the family life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy of
+which we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this
+authority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and
+misunderstanding. We see parents and children acting from conscientious
+motives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery
+which can scarcely be hidden.
+
+Such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in Assisi,
+when the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet,
+dramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting
+the narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. All the
+conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father
+recognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and
+adjust his own claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful
+and hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have been the most tender
+and loving of men, responsive to all possible ties, even to those of
+inanimate nature. We know that by his affections he freed the frozen
+life of his time. The elements of tragedy lay in the narrowness of the
+father's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his lack of sympathy
+with the power which was moving his son, and which was but part of the
+religious revival which swept Europe from end to end in the early part
+of the thirteenth century; the same power which built the cathedrals of
+the North, and produced the saints and sages of the South. But the
+father's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart sore and
+angry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. He could not, indeed,
+have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of the same
+revival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of himself
+and his narrower claim. It is another proof that the notion of a larger
+obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged interest
+in life and in the social movements around us.
+
+The grown-up son has so long been considered a citizen with well-defined
+duties and a need of "making his way in the world," that the family
+claim is urged much less strenuously in his case, and as a matter of
+authority, it ceases gradually to be made at all. In the case of the
+grown-up daughter, however, who is under no necessity of earning a
+living, and who has no strong artistic bent, taking her to Paris to
+study painting or to Germany to study music, the years immediately
+following her graduation from college are too often filled with a
+restlessness and unhappiness which might be avoided by a little clear
+thinking, and by an adaptation of our code of family ethics to modern
+conditions.
+
+It is always difficult for the family to regard the daughter otherwise
+than as a family possession. From her babyhood she has been the charm
+and grace of the household, and it is hard to think of her as an
+integral part of the social order, hard to believe that she has duties
+outside of the family, to the state and to society in the larger sense.
+This assumption that the daughter is solely an inspiration and
+refinement to the family itself and its own immediate circle, that her
+delicacy and polish are but outward symbols of her father's protection
+and prosperity, worked very smoothly for the most part so long as her
+education was in line with it. When there was absolutely no recognition
+of the entity of woman's life beyond the family, when the outside claims
+upon her were still wholly unrecognized, the situation was simple, and
+the finishing school harmoniously and elegantly answered all
+requirements. She was fitted to grace the fireside and to add lustre to
+that social circle which her parents selected for her. But this family
+assumption has been notably broken into, and educational ideas no longer
+fit it. Modern education recognizes woman quite apart from family or
+society claims, and gives her the training which for many years has
+been deemed successful for highly developing a man's individuality and
+freeing his powers for independent action. Perplexities often occur when
+the daughter returns from college and finds that this recognition has
+been but partially accomplished. When she attempts to act upon the
+assumption of its accomplishment, she finds herself jarring upon ideals
+which are so entwined with filial piety, so rooted in the tenderest
+affections of which the human heart is capable, that both daughter and
+parents are shocked and startled when they discover what is happening,
+and they scarcely venture to analyze the situation. The ideal for the
+education of woman has changed under the pressure of a new claim. The
+family has responded to the extent of granting the education, but they
+are jealous of the new claim and assert the family claim as over against
+it.
+
+The modern woman finds herself educated to recognize a stress of social
+obligation which her family did not in the least anticipate when they
+sent her to college. She finds herself, in addition, under an impulse to
+act her part as a citizen of the world. She accepts her family
+inheritance with loyalty and affection, but she has entered into a wider
+inheritance as well, which, for lack of a better phrase, we call the
+social claim. This claim has been recognized for four years in her
+training, but after her return from college the family claim is again
+exclusively and strenuously asserted. The situation has all the
+discomfort of transition and compromise. The daughter finds a constant
+and totally unnecessary conflict between the social and the family
+claims. In most cases the former is repressed and gives way to the
+family claim, because the latter is concrete and definitely asserted,
+while the social demand is vague and unformulated. In such instances the
+girl quietly submits, but she feels wronged whenever she allows her mind
+to dwell upon the situation. She either hides her hurt, and splendid
+reserves of enthusiasm and capacity go to waste, or her zeal and
+emotions are turned inward, and the result is an unhappy woman, whose
+heart is consumed by vain regrets and desires.
+
+If the college woman is not thus quietly reabsorbed, she is even
+reproached for her discontent. She is told to be devoted to her family,
+inspiring and responsive to her social circle, and to give the rest of
+her time to further self-improvement and enjoyment. She expects to do
+this, and responds to these claims to the best of her ability, even
+heroically sometimes. But where is the larger life of which she has
+dreamed so long? That life which surrounds and completes the individual
+and family life? She has been taught that it is her duty to share this
+life, and her highest privilege to extend it. This divergence between
+her self-centred existence and her best convictions becomes constantly
+more apparent. But the situation is not even so simple as a conflict
+between her affections and her intellectual convictions, although even
+that is tumultuous enough, also the emotional nature is divided against
+itself. The social claim is a demand upon the emotions as well as upon
+the intellect, and in ignoring it she represses not only her convictions
+but lowers her springs of vitality. Her life is full of contradictions.
+She looks out into the world, longing that some demand be made upon her
+powers, for they are too untrained to furnish an initiative. When her
+health gives way under this strain, as it often does, her physician
+invariably advises a rest. But to be put to bed and fed on milk is not
+what she requires. What she needs is simple, health-giving activity,
+which, involving the use of all her faculties, shall be a response to
+all the claims which she so keenly feels.
+
+It is quite true that the family often resents her first attempts to be
+part of a life quite outside their own, because the college woman
+frequently makes these first attempts most awkwardly; her faculties have
+not been trained in the line of action. She lacks the ability to apply
+her knowledge and theories to life itself and to its complicated
+situations. This is largely the fault of her training and of the
+one-sidedness of educational methods. The colleges have long been full
+of the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must
+ultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only
+secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. But while
+the teaching has included an ever-broadening range of obligation and has
+insisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the
+training has been singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions
+for personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost
+exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless,
+woman's education is at fault, in that it has failed to recognize
+certain needs, and has failed to cultivate and guide the larger desires
+of which all generous young hearts are full.
+
+During the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no
+contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or
+the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only
+with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the
+purpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden
+to bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet
+were provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not
+differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional
+or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly
+brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently
+every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to
+begin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been
+preparing. But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have
+been trained solely for accumulation, and she has learned to utterly
+distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which would naturally have
+connected her with human interests outside of her family and her own
+immediate social circle. All through school and college the young soul
+dreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the helpless and of tenderness
+to the unfortunate. We persistently distrust these desires, and, unless
+they follow well-defined lines, we repress them with every device of
+convention and caution.
+
+One summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in East London,
+where she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds
+encountered there, directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes
+of travel filled with young English men and women who could walk many
+miles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats
+received honorable mention in Alpine journals,--a result which filled
+their families with joy and pride. These young people knew to a nicety
+the proper diet and clothing which would best contribute toward
+endurance. Everything was very fine about them save their motive power.
+The writer does not refer to the hard-worked men and women who were
+taking a vacation, but to the leisured young people, to whom this period
+was the most serious of the year, and filled with the most strenuous
+exertion. They did not, of course, thoroughly enjoy it, for we are too
+complicated to be content with mere exercise. Civilization has bound us
+too closely with our brethren for any one of us to be long happy in the
+cultivation of mere individual force or in the accumulation of mere
+muscular energy.
+
+With Whitechapel constantly in mind, it was difficult not to advise
+these young people to use some of this muscular energy of which they
+were so proud, in cleaning neglected alleys and paving soggy streets.
+Their stores of enthusiasm might stir to energy the listless men and
+women of East London and utilize latent social forces. The exercise
+would be quite as good, the need of endurance as great, the care for
+proper dress and food as important; but the motives for action would be
+turned from selfish ones into social ones. Such an appeal would
+doubtless be met with a certain response from the young people, but
+would never be countenanced by their families for an instant.
+
+Fortunately a beginning has been made in another direction, and a few
+parents have already begun to consider even their little children in
+relation to society as well as to the family. The young mothers who
+attend "Child Study" classes have a larger notion of parenthood and
+expect given characteristics from their children, at certain ages and
+under certain conditions. They quite calmly watch the various attempts
+of a child to assert his individuality, which so often takes the form of
+opposition to the wishes of the family and to the rule of the household.
+They recognize as acting under the same law of development the little
+child of three who persistently runs away and pretends not to hear his
+mother's voice, the boy of ten who violently, although temporarily,
+resents control of any sort, and the grown-up son who, by an
+individualized and trained personality, is drawn into pursuits and
+interests quite alien to those of his family.
+
+This attempt to take the parental relation somewhat away from mere
+personal experience, as well as the increasing tendency of parents to
+share their children's pursuits and interests, will doubtless finally
+result in a better understanding of the social obligation. The
+understanding, which results from identity of interests, would seem to
+confirm the conviction that in the complicated life of to-day there is
+no education so admirable as that education which comes from
+participation in the constant trend of events. There is no doubt that
+most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence,
+because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend
+each other. The old difficulties incident to the clash of two codes of
+morals must drop away, as the experiences of various members of the
+family become larger and more identical.
+
+At the present moment, however, many of those difficulties still exist
+and may be seen all about us. In order to illustrate the situation
+baldly, and at the same time to put it dramatically, it may be well to
+take an instance concerning which we have no personal feeling. The
+tragedy of King Lear has been selected, although we have been accustomed
+so long to give him our sympathy as the victim of the ingratitude of his
+two older daughters, and of the apparent coldness of Cordelia, that we
+have not sufficiently considered the weakness of his fatherhood,
+revealed by the fact that he should get himself into so entangled and
+unhappy a relation to all of his children. In our pity for Lear, we fail
+to analyze his character. The King on his throne exhibits utter lack of
+self-control. The King in the storm gives way to the same emotion, in
+repining over the wickedness of his children, which he formerly
+exhibited in his indulgent treatment of them.
+
+It might be illuminating to discover wherein he had failed, and why his
+old age found him roofless in spite of the fact that he strenuously
+urged the family claim with his whole conscience. At the opening of the
+drama he sat upon his throne, ready for the enjoyment which an indulgent
+parent expects when he has given gifts to his children. From the two
+elder, the responses for the division of his lands were graceful and
+fitting, but he longed to hear what Cordelia, his youngest and best
+beloved child, would say. He looked toward her expectantly, but instead
+of delight and gratitude there was the first dawn of character. Cordelia
+made the awkward attempt of an untrained soul to be honest and
+scrupulously to express her inmost feeling. The king was baffled and
+distressed by this attempt at self-expression. It was new to him that
+his daughter should be moved by a principle obtained outside himself,
+which even his imagination could not follow; that she had caught the
+notion of an existence in which her relation as a daughter played but a
+part. She was transformed by a dignity which recast her speech and made
+it self-contained. She found herself in the sweep of a feeling so large
+that the immediate loss of a kingdom seemed of little consequence to
+her. Even an act which might be construed as disrespect to her father
+was justified in her eyes, because she was vainly striving to fill out
+this larger conception of duty. The test which comes sooner or later to
+many parents had come to Lear, to maintain the tenderness of the
+relation between father and child, after that relation had become one
+between adults, to be content with the responses made by the adult child
+to the family claim, while at the same time she responded to the claims
+of the rest of life. The mind of Lear was not big enough for this test;
+he failed to see anything but the personal slight involved, and the
+ingratitude alone reached him. It was impossible for him to calmly watch
+his child developing beyond the stretch of his own mind and sympathy.
+
+That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to
+apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his
+anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him
+than his sense of paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the
+common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal
+inheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of himself so long as a noble
+and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might
+perceive himself in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he
+declared himself more sinned against than sinning. He could believe any
+amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no
+fidelity on the part of Cordelia unless she gave him the sign he
+demanded.
+
+At length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and
+broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first
+time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around
+him, and he came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in the
+place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and
+comfort. He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human
+contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which
+he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his
+throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.
+
+In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of
+our censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of
+tenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and
+be unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved? We see in the old
+king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet
+characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone."
+His eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are
+impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this,
+even in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense
+of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow conception that would break
+thus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part
+in the new life. We want to remind her "that pity, memory, and
+faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to be prized as is
+the development of her own soul. We do not admire the Cordelia who
+through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later admire the
+same woman who comes back from France that she may include her father in
+her happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly taken her
+salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her conscience had
+developed in her new life that she was driven back to her father, where
+she perished, drawn into the cruelty and wrath which had now become
+objective and tragic.
+
+Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was
+archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life
+since developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and
+indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without
+any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that
+they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary
+conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that
+we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate
+that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like
+misery.
+
+Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a
+modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual
+to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a
+code of ethics dealing with these larger relationships, instead of a
+code designed to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only
+between individuals.
+
+Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those
+which occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and
+believed in, are brought sharply together. The awkwardness and
+constraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners
+clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT
+
+
+If we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive,
+life would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the
+contention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as
+important as its aims. We can all recall acquaintances of whose
+integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion
+as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are
+often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of
+other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.
+
+This tendency to be so sure of integrity of purpose as to be
+unsympathetic and hardened to the means by which it is accomplished, is
+perhaps nowhere so obvious as in the household itself. It nowhere
+operates as so constant a force as in the minds of the women who in all
+the perplexity of industrial transition are striving to administer
+domestic affairs. The ethics held by them are for the most part the
+individual and family codes, untouched by the larger social conceptions.
+
+These women, rightly confident of their household and family integrity
+and holding to their own code of morals, fail to see the household in
+its social aspect. Possibly no relation has been so slow to respond to
+the social ethics which we are now considering, as that between the
+household employer and the household employee, or, as it is still
+sometimes called, that between mistress and servant.
+
+This persistence of the individual code in relation to the household may
+be partly accounted for by the fact that orderly life and, in a sense,
+civilization itself, grew from the concentration of interest in one
+place, and that moral feeling first became centred in a limited number
+of persons. From the familiar proposition that the home began because
+the mother was obliged to stay in one spot in order to cherish the
+child, we can see a foundation for the belief that if women are much
+away from home, the home itself will be destroyed and all ethical
+progress endangered.
+
+We have further been told that the earliest dances and social gatherings
+were most questionable in their purposes, and that it was, therefore,
+the good and virtuous women who first stayed at home, until gradually
+the two--the woman who stayed at home and the woman who guarded her
+virtue--became synonymous. A code of ethics was thus developed in regard
+to woman's conduct, and her duties were logically and carefully limited
+to her own family circle. When it became impossible to adequately
+minister to the needs of this circle without the help of many people who
+did not strictly belong to the family, although they were part of the
+household, they were added as aids merely for supplying these needs.
+When women were the brewers and bakers, the fullers, dyers, spinners,
+and weavers, the soap and candle makers, they administered large
+industries, but solely from the family point of view. Only a few hundred
+years ago, woman had complete control of the manufacturing of many
+commodities which now figure so largely in commerce, and it is evident
+that she let the manufacturing of these commodities go into the hands of
+men, as soon as organization and a larger conception of their production
+were required. She felt no responsibility for their management when they
+were taken from the home to the factory, for deeper than her instinct to
+manufacture food and clothing for her family was her instinct to stay
+with them, and by isolation and care to guard them from evil.
+
+She had become convinced that a woman's duty extended only to her own
+family, and that the world outside had no claim upon her. The British
+matron ordered her maidens aright, when they were spinning under her own
+roof, but she felt no compunction of conscience when the morals and
+health of young girls were endangered in the overcrowded and insanitary
+factories. The code of family ethics was established in her mind so
+firmly that it excluded any notion of social effort.
+
+It is quite possible to accept this explanation of the origin of morals,
+and to believe that the preservation of the home is at the foundation of
+all that is best in civilization, without at the same time insisting
+that the separate preparation and serving of food is an inherent part of
+the structure and sanctity of the home, or that those who minister to
+one household shall minister to that exclusively. But to make this
+distinction seems difficult, and almost invariably the sense of
+obligation to the family becomes confused with a certain sort of
+domestic management. The moral issue involved in one has become
+inextricably combined with the industrial difficulty involved in the
+other, and it is at this point that so many perplexed housekeepers,
+through the confusion of the two problems, take a difficult and
+untenable position.
+
+There are economic as well as ethical reasons for this survival of a
+simpler code. The wife of a workingman still has a distinct economic
+value to her husband. She cooks, cleans, washes, and mends--services for
+which, before his marriage, he paid ready money. The wife of the
+successful business or professional man does not do this. He continues
+to pay for his cooking, house service, and washing. The mending,
+however, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings
+are pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated
+importance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings
+were the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they
+were formerly mistresses. But one industry, the cooking and serving of
+foods to her own family, woman has never relinquished. It has,
+therefore, never been organized, either by men or women, and is in an
+undeveloped state. Each employer of household labor views it solely
+from the family standpoint. The ethics prevailing in regard to it are
+distinctly personal and unsocial, and result in the unique isolation of
+the household employee.
+
+As industrial conditions have changed, the household has simplified,
+from the mediaeval affair of journeymen, apprentices, and maidens who
+spun and brewed to the family proper; to those who love each other and
+live together in ties of affection and consanguinity. Were this process
+complete, we should have no problem of household employment. But, even
+in households comparatively humble, there is still one alien, one who is
+neither loved nor loving.
+
+The modern family has dropped the man who made its shoes, the woman who
+spun its clothes, and, to a large extent, the woman who washes them, but
+it stoutly refuses to drop the woman who cooks its food and ministers
+directly to its individual comfort; it strangely insists that to do
+that would be to destroy the family life itself. The cook is
+uncomfortable, the family is uncomfortable; but it will not drop her as
+all her fellow-workers have been dropped, although the cook herself
+insists upon it. So far has this insistence gone that every possible
+concession is made to retain her. The writer knows an employer in one of
+the suburbs who built a bay at the back of her house so that her cook
+might have a pleasant room in which to sleep, and another in which to
+receive her friends. This employer naturally felt aggrieved when the
+cook refused to stay in her bay. Viewed in an historic light, this
+employer might quite as well have added a bay to her house for her
+shoemaker, and then deemed him ungrateful because he declined to live in
+it.
+
+A listener, attentive to a conversation between two employers of
+household labor,--and we certainly all have opportunity to hear such
+conversations,--would often discover a tone implying that the employer
+was abused and put upon; that she was struggling with the problem
+solely because she was thus serving her family and performing her social
+duties; that otherwise it would be a great relief to her to abandon the
+entire situation, and "never have a servant in her house again." Did she
+follow this impulse, she would simply yield to the trend of her times
+and accept the present system of production. She would be in line with
+the industrial organization of her age. Were she in line ethically, she
+would have to believe that the sacredness and beauty of family life do
+not consist in the processes of the separate preparation of food, but in
+sharing the corporate life of the community, and in making the family
+the unit of that life.
+
+The selfishness of a modern mistress, who, in her narrow social ethics,
+insists that those who minister to the comforts of her family shall
+minister to it alone, that they shall not only be celibate, but shall be
+cut off, more or less, from their natural social ties, excludes the best
+working-people from her service.
+
+A man of dignity and ability is quite willing to come into a house to
+tune a piano. Another man of mechanical skill will come to put up window
+shades. Another of less skill, but of perfect independence, will come to
+clean and relay a carpet. These men would all resent the situation and
+consider it quite impossible if it implied the giving up of their family
+and social ties, and living under the roof of the household requiring
+their services.
+
+The isolation of the household employee is perhaps inevitable so long as
+the employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even
+more difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this
+industry. In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently
+displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions.
+The workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with their
+time, quickly reorganize.
+
+The general statement may be made that the enterprising girls of the
+community go into factories, and the less enterprising go into
+households, although there are many exceptions. It is not a question of
+skill, of energy, of conscientious work, which will make a girl rise
+industrially while she is in the household; she is not in the rising
+movement. She is belated in a class composed of the unprogressive
+elements of the community, which is recruited constantly by those from
+the ranks of the incompetent, by girls who are learning the language,
+girls who are timid and slow, or girls who look at life solely from the
+savings-bank point of view. The distracted housekeeper struggles with
+these unprogressive girls, holding to them not even the well-defined and
+independent relation of employer and employed, but the hazy and
+constantly changing one of mistress to servant.
+
+The latter relation is changing under pressure from various directions.
+In our increasing democracy the notion of personal service is constantly
+becoming more distasteful, conflicting, as it does, with the more
+modern notion of personal dignity. Personal ministration to the needs
+of childhood, illness, and old age seem to us reasonable, and the
+democratic adjustment in regard to them is being made. The first two are
+constantly raised nearer to the level of a profession, and there is
+little doubt that the third will soon follow. But personal ministrations
+to a normal, healthy adult, consuming the time and energy of another
+adult, we find more difficult to reconcile to our theories of democracy.
+
+A factory employer parts with his men at the factory gates at the end of
+a day's work; they go to their homes as he goes to his, in the
+assumption that they both do what they want and spend their money as
+they please; but this solace of equality outside of working hours is
+denied the bewildered employer of household labor.
+
+She is obliged to live constantly in the same house with her employee,
+and because of certain equalities in food and shelter she is brought
+more sharply face to face with the mental and social inequalities.
+
+The difficulty becomes more apparent as the character of the work
+performed by the so-called servant is less absolutely useful and may be
+merely time consuming. A kind-hearted woman who will complacently take
+an afternoon drive, leaving her cook to prepare the five courses of a
+"little dinner for only ten guests," will not be nearly so comfortable
+the next evening when she speeds her daughter to a dance, conscious that
+her waitress must spend the evening in dull solitude on the chance that
+a caller or two may ring the door-bell.
+
+A conscientious employer once remarked to the writer: "In England it
+must be much easier; the maid does not look and dress so like your
+daughter, and you can at least pretend that she doesn't like the same
+things. But really, my new waitress is quite as pretty and stylish as my
+daughter is, and her wistful look sometimes when Mary goes off to a
+frolic quite breaks my heart."
+
+Too many employers of domestic service have always been exempt from
+manual labor, and therefore constantly impose exacting duties upon
+employees, the nature of which they do not understand by experience;
+there is thus no curb of rationality imposed upon the employer's
+requirements and demands. She is totally unlike the foreman in a shop,
+who has only risen to his position by way of having actually performed
+with his own hands all the work of the men he directs. There is also
+another class of employers of domestic labor, who grow capricious and
+over-exacting through sheer lack of larger interests to occupy their
+minds; it is equally bad for them and the employee that the duties of
+the latter are not clearly defined. Tolstoy contends that an exaggerated
+notion of cleanliness has developed among such employers, which could
+never have been evolved among usefully employed people. He points to the
+fact that a serving man, in order that his hands may be immaculately
+clean, is kept from performing the heavier work of the household, and
+then is supplied with a tray, upon which to place a card, in order that
+even his clean hands may not touch it; later, even his clean hands are
+covered with a pair of clean white gloves, which hold the tray upon
+which the card is placed.
+
+If it were not for the undemocratic ethics used by the employers of
+domestics, much work now performed in the household would be done
+outside, as is true of many products formerly manufactured in the feudal
+household. The worker in all other trades has complete control of his
+own time after the performance of definitely limited services, his wages
+are paid altogether in money which he may spend in the maintenance of a
+separate home life, and he has full opportunity to organize with the
+other workers in his trade.
+
+The domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her
+"mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity
+of family life.
+
+The household employee has no regular opportunity for meeting other
+workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of a
+corporate body. The industrial isolation of the household employee
+results, as isolation in a trade must always result, in a lack of
+progress in the methods and products of that trade, and a lack of
+aspiration and education in the workman. Whether we recognize this
+isolation as a cause or not, we are all ready to acknowledge that
+household labor has been in some way belated; that the improvements
+there have not kept up with the improvement in other occupations. It is
+said that the last revolution in the processes of cooking was brought
+about by Count Rumford, who died a hundred years ago. This is largely
+due to the lack of _esprit de corps_ among the employees, which keeps
+them collectively from fresh achievements, as the absence of education
+in the individual keeps her from improving her implements.
+
+Under this isolation, not only must one set of utensils serve divers
+purposes, and, as a consequence, tend to a lessened volume and lower
+quality of work, but, inasmuch as the appliances are not made to
+perform the fullest work, there is an amount of capital invested
+disproportionate to the product when measured by the achievement in
+other branches of industry. More important than this is the result of
+the isolation upon the worker herself. There is nothing more devastating
+to the inventive faculty, nor fatal to a flow of mind and spirit, than
+the constant feeling of loneliness and the absence of that fellowship
+which makes our public opinion. If an angry foreman reprimands a girl
+for breaking a machine, twenty other girls hear him, and the culprit
+knows perfectly well their opinion as to the justice or injustice of her
+situation. In either case she bears it better for knowing that, and not
+thinking it over in solitude. If a household employee breaks a utensil
+or a piece of porcelain and is reprimanded by her employer, too often
+the invisible jury is the family of the latter, who naturally uphold her
+censorious position and intensify the feeling of loneliness in the
+employee.
+
+The household employee, in addition to her industrial isolation, is also
+isolated socially. It is well to remember that the household employees
+for the better quarters of the city and suburbs are largely drawn from
+the poorer quarters, which are nothing if not gregarious. The girl is
+born and reared in a tenement house full of children. She goes to school
+with them, and there she learns to march, to read, and write in
+companionship with forty others. When she is old enough to go to
+parties, those she attends are usually held in a public hall and are
+crowded with dancers. If she works in a factory, she walks home with
+many other girls, in much the same spirit as she formerly walked to
+school with them. She mingles with the young men she knows, in frank,
+economic, and social equality. Until she marries she remains at home
+with no special break or change in her family and social life. If she is
+employed in a household, this is not true. Suddenly all the conditions
+of her life are altered. This change may be wholesome for her, but it
+is not easy, and thought of the savings-bank does not cheer one much,
+when one is twenty. She is isolated from the people with whom she has
+been reared, with whom she has gone to school, and among whom she
+expects to live when she marries. She is naturally lonely and
+constrained away from them, and the "new maid" often seems "queer" to
+her employer's family. She does not care to mingle socially with the
+people in whose house she is employed, as the girl from the country
+often does, but she surfers horribly from loneliness.
+
+This wholesome, instinctive dread of social isolation is so strong that,
+as every city intelligence-office can testify, the filling of situations
+is easier, or more difficult, in proportion as the place offers more or
+less companionship. Thus, the easy situation to fill is always the city
+house, with five or six employees, shading off into the more difficult
+suburban home, with two, and the utterly impossible lonely country
+house.
+
+There are suburban employers of household labor who make heroic efforts
+to supply domestic and social life to their employees; who take the
+domestic employee to drive, arrange to have her invited out
+occasionally; who supply her with books and papers and companionship.
+Nothing could be more praiseworthy in motive, but it is seldom
+successful in actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of
+companionship. The employee may have a genuine friendship for her
+employer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and
+the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she
+has, merely because of the propinquity.
+
+The unnaturalness of the situation is intensified by the fact that the
+employee is practically debarred by distance and lack of leisure from
+her natural associates, and that her employer sympathetically insists
+upon filling the vacancy in interests and affections by her own tastes
+and friendship. She may or may not succeed, but the employee should not
+be thus dependent upon the good will of her employer. That in itself is
+undemocratic.
+
+The difficulty is increasing by a sense of social discrimination which
+the household employee keenly feels is against her and in favor of the
+factory girls, in the minds of the young men of her acquaintance. Women
+seeking employment, understand perfectly well this feeling among
+mechanics, doubtless quite unjustifiable, but it acts as a strong
+inducement toward factory labor. The writer has long ceased to apologize
+for the views and opinions of working people, being quite sure that on
+the whole they are quite as wise and quite as foolish as the views and
+opinions of other people, but that this particularly foolish opinion of
+young mechanics is widely shared by the employing class can be easily
+demonstrated. The contrast is further accentuated by the better social
+position of the factory girl, and the advantages provided for her in
+the way of lunch clubs, social clubs, and vacation homes, from which
+girls performing household labor are practically excluded by their hours
+of work, their geographical situation, and a curious feeling that they
+are not as interesting as factory girls.
+
+This separation from her natural social ties affects, of course, her
+opportunity for family life. It is well to remember that women, as a
+rule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their
+parents, their brothers and sisters, and kinsfolk, and will sacrifice
+much to accomplish this. This devotion is so universal that it is
+impossible to ignore it when we consider women as employees. Young
+unmarried women are not detached from family claims and requirements as
+young men are, and are more ready and steady in their response to the
+needs of aged parents and the helpless members of the family. But women
+performing labor in households have peculiar difficulties in responding
+to their family claims, and are practically dependent upon their
+employers for opportunities of even seeing their relatives and friends.
+
+Curiously enough the same devotion to family life and quick response to
+its claims, on the part of the employer, operates against the girl
+employed in household labor, and still further contributes to her
+isolation.
+
+The employer of household labor, in her zeal to preserve her own family
+life intact and free from intrusion, acts inconsistently and grants to
+her cook, for instance, but once or twice a week, such opportunity for
+untrammelled association with her relatives as the employer's family
+claims constantly. This in itself is undemocratic, in that it makes a
+distinction between the value of family life for one set of people as
+over against another; or, rather, claims that one set of people are of
+so much less importance than another, that a valuable side of life
+pertaining to them should be sacrificed for the other.
+
+This cannot be defended theoretically, and no doubt much of the talk
+among the employers of household labor, that their employees are
+carefully shielded and cared for, and that it is so much better for a
+girl's health and morals to work in a household than to work in a
+factory, comes from a certain uneasiness of conscience, and from a
+desire to make up by individual scruple what would be done much more
+freely and naturally by public opinion if it had an untrammelled chance
+to assert itself. One person, or a number of isolated persons, however
+conscientious, cannot perform this office of public opinion. Certain
+hospitals in London have contributed statistics showing that
+seventy-eight per cent of illegitimate children born there are the
+children of girls working in households. These girls are certainly not
+less virtuous than factory girls, for they come from the same families
+and have had the same training, but the girls who remain at home and
+work in factories meet their lovers naturally and easily, their fathers
+and brothers know the men, and unconsciously exercise a certain
+supervision and a certain direction in their choice of companionship.
+The household employees living in another part of the city, away from
+their natural family and social ties, depend upon chance for the lovers
+whom they meet. The lover may be the young man who delivers for the
+butcher or grocer, or the solitary friend, who follows the girl from her
+own part of town and pursues unfairly the advantage which her social
+loneliness and isolation afford him. There is no available public
+opinion nor any standard of convention which the girl can apply to her
+own situation.
+
+It would be easy to point out many inconveniences arising from the fact
+that the old economic forms are retained when moral conditions which
+befitted them have entirely disappeared, but until employers of domestic
+labor become conscious of their narrow code of ethics, and make a
+distinct effort to break through the status of mistress and servant,
+because it shocks their moral sense, there is no chance of even
+beginning a reform.
+
+A fuller social and domestic life among household employees would be
+steps toward securing their entrance into the larger industrial
+organizations by which the needs of a community are most successfully
+administered. Many a girl who complains of loneliness, and who
+relinquishes her situation with that as her sole excuse, feebly tries to
+formulate her sense of restraint and social mal-adjustment. She
+sometimes says that she "feels so unnatural all the time." The writer
+has known the voice of a girl to change so much during three weeks of
+"service" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her
+home. It alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child
+"speaks a piece" and the husky gulp with which the _globus hystericus_
+is swallowed. The alertness and _bonhomie_ of the voice of the
+tenement-house child had totally disappeared. When such a girl leaves
+her employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally
+incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally concludes that she
+wishes to get away from the work and back to her dances and giddy life,
+content, if she has these, to stand many hours in an insanitary factory.
+The charge of the employer is only half a truth. These dances may be the
+only organized form of social life which the disheartened employee is
+able to mention, but the girl herself, in her discontent and her moving
+from place to place, is blindly striving to respond to a larger social
+life. Her employer thinks that she should be able to consider only the
+interests and conveniences of her employer's family, because the
+employer herself is holding to a family outlook, and refuses to allow
+her mind to take in the larger aspects of the situation.
+
+Although this household industry survives in the midst of the factory
+system, it must, of course, constantly compete with it. Women with
+little children, or those with invalids depending upon them, cannot
+enter either occupation, and they are practically confined to the sewing
+trades; but to all other untrained women seeking employment a choice is
+open between these two forms of labor.
+
+There are few women so dull that they cannot paste labels on a box, or
+do some form of factory work; few so dull that some perplexed
+housekeeper will not receive them, at least for a trial, in her
+household. Household labor, then, has to compete with factory labor, and
+women seeking employment, more or less consciously compare these two
+forms of labor in point of hours, in point of permanency of employment,
+in point of wages, and in point of the advantage they afford for family
+and social life. Three points are easily disposed of. First, in regard
+to hours, there is no doubt that the factory has the advantage. The
+average factory hours are from seven in the morning to six in the
+evening, with the chance of working overtime in busy seasons. This
+leaves most of the evenings and Sundays entirely free. The average hours
+of household labor are from six in the morning until eight at night,
+with little difference in seasons. There is one afternoon a week, with
+an occasional evening, but Sunday is seldom wholly free. Even these
+evenings and afternoons take the form of a concession from the employer.
+They are called "evenings out," as if the time really belonged to her,
+but that she was graciously permitting her employee to use it. This
+attitude, of course, is in marked contrast to that maintained by the
+factory operative, who, when she works evenings is paid for "over-time."
+
+Second, in regard to permanency of position, the advantage is found
+clearly on the side of the household employee, if she proves in any
+measure satisfactory to her employer, for she encounters much less
+competition.
+
+Third, in point of wages, the household is again fairly ahead, if we
+consider not the money received, but the opportunity offered for saving
+money. This is greater among household employees, because they do not
+pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend
+money in recreation is less frequent. The minimum wages paid an adult
+in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week;
+the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare
+opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the
+housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month.
+
+The factory wages, viewed from the savings-bank point of view, may be
+smaller in the average, but this is doubtless counterbalanced in the
+minds of the employees by the greater chance which the factory offers
+for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for
+less than four dollars a week, and always cherishes the hope of at last
+being a forewoman with a permanent salary of from fifteen to twenty-five
+dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance
+of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it
+easier to be content with three dollars a week, when she pays for board,
+in a scale of wages rising toward ten dollars, than to be content with
+four dollars a week and pay no board, in a scale of wages rising toward
+six dollars; and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen
+at sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar
+housekeeper. In many cases this position is well taken economically,
+for, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employees
+in the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she
+works in a factory and lives with them. The rent is no more when she is
+at home. The two dollars and a half a week which she pays into the
+family fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night
+she can often contribute toward the family labor by helping her mother
+wash and sew.
+
+The fourth point has already been considered, and if the premise in
+regard to the isolation of the household employee is well taken, and if
+the position can be sustained that this isolation proves the determining
+factor in the situation, then certainly an effort should be made to
+remedy this, at least in its domestic and social aspects. To allow
+household employees to live with their own families and among their own
+friends, as factory employees now do, would be to relegate more
+production to industrial centres administered on the factory system, and
+to secure shorter hours for that which remains to be done in the
+household.
+
+In those cases in which the household employees have no family ties,
+doubtless a remedy against social isolation would be the formation of
+residence clubs, at least in the suburbs, where the isolation is most
+keenly felt. Indeed, the beginnings of these clubs are already seen in
+the servants' quarters at the summer hotels. In these residence clubs,
+the household employee could have the independent life which only one's
+own abiding place can afford. This, of course, presupposes a higher
+grade of ability than household employees at present possess; on the
+other hand, it is only by offering such possibilities that the higher
+grades of intelligence can be secured for household employment. As the
+plan of separate clubs for household employees will probably come first
+in the suburbs, where the difficulty of securing and holding "servants"
+under the present system is most keenly felt, so the plan of buying
+cooked food from an outside kitchen, and of having more and more of the
+household product relegated to the factory, will probably come from the
+comparatively poor people in the city, who feel most keenly the pressure
+of the present system. They already consume a much larger proportion of
+canned goods and bakers' wares and "prepared meats" than the more
+prosperous people do, because they cannot command the skill nor the time
+for the more tedious preparation of the raw material. The writer has
+seen a tenement-house mother pass by a basket of green peas at the door
+of a local grocery store, to purchase a tin of canned peas, because they
+could be easily prepared for supper and "the children liked the tinny
+taste."
+
+It is comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household
+industry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. The difficulties really
+begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be
+employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the
+difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall
+altogether upon the mother of the family, who is living in a flat, or,
+worse still, in a tenement house, where one stove and one set of
+utensils must be put to all sorts of uses, fit or unfit, making the
+living room of the family a horror in summer, and perfectly
+insupportable on rainy washing-days in winter. Such a woman, rather than
+the prosperous housekeeper, uses factory products, and thus no high
+standard of quality is established.
+
+The problem of domestic service, which has long been discussed in the
+United States and England, is now coming to prominence in France. As a
+well-known economist has recently pointed out, the large defection in
+the ranks of domestics is there regarded as a sign of revolt against an
+"unconscious slavery," while English and American writers appeal to the
+statistics which point to the absorption of an enormous number of the
+class from which servants were formerly recruited into factory
+employments, and urge, as the natural solution, that more of the
+products used in households be manufactured in factories, and that
+personal service, at least for healthy adults, be eliminated altogether.
+Both of these lines of discussion certainly indicate that domestic
+service is yielding to the influence of a democratic movement, and is
+emerging from the narrower code of family ethics into the larger code
+governing social relations. It still remains to express the ethical
+advance through changed economic conditions by which the actual needs of
+the family may be supplied not only more effectively but more in line
+with associated effort. To fail to apprehend the tendency of one's age,
+and to fail to adapt the conditions of an industry to it, is to leave
+that industry ill-adjusted and belated on the economic side, and out of
+line ethically.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION
+
+
+There is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to
+action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we
+have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to
+fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all
+been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly
+individualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless
+attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering
+motion of a baby's arm before he has learned to cooerdinate his muscles.
+
+If, as is many times stated, we are passing from an age of individualism
+to one of association, there is no doubt that for decisive and
+effective action the individual still has the best of it. He will secure
+efficient results while committees are still deliberating upon the best
+method of making a beginning. And yet, if the need of the times demand
+associated effort, it may easily be true that the action which appears
+ineffective, and yet is carried out upon the more highly developed line
+of associated effort, may represent a finer social quality and have a
+greater social value than the more effective individual action. It is
+possible that an individual may be successful, largely because he
+conserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any
+of his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act
+with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his
+success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code.
+Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial relations,
+as existing between the owner of a large factory and his employees.
+
+A growing conflict may be detected between the democratic ideal, which
+urges the workmen to demand representation in the administration of
+industry, and the accepted position, that the man who owns the capital
+and takes the risks has the exclusive right of management. It is in
+reality a clash between individual or aristocratic management, and
+corporate or democratic management. A large and highly developed factory
+presents a sharp contrast between its socialized form and
+individualistic ends.
+
+It is possible to illustrate this difference by a series of events which
+occurred in Chicago during the summer of 1894. These events epitomized
+and exaggerated, but at the same time challenged, the code of ethics
+which regulates much of our daily conduct, and clearly showed that
+so-called social relations are often resting upon the will of an
+individual, and are in reality regulated by a code of individual
+ethics.
+
+As this situation illustrates a point of great difficulty to which we
+have arrived in our development of social ethics, it may be justifiable
+to discuss it at some length. Let us recall the facts, not as they have
+been investigated and printed, but as they remain in our memories.
+
+A large manufacturing company had provided commodious workshops, and, at
+the instigation of its president, had built a model town for the use of
+its employees. After a series of years it was deemed necessary, during a
+financial depression, to reduce the wages of these employees by giving
+each workman less than full-time work "in order to keep the shops open."
+This reduction was not accepted by the men, who had become discontented
+with the factory management and the town regulations, and a strike
+ensued, followed by a complete shut-down of the works. Although these
+shops were non-union shops, the strikers were hastily organized and
+appealed for help to the American Railway Union, which at that moment
+was holding its biennial meeting in Chicago. After some days' discussion
+and some futile attempts at arbitration, a sympathetic strike was
+declared, which gradually involved railway men in all parts of the
+country, and orderly transportation was brought to a complete
+standstill. In the excitement which followed, cars were burned and
+tracks torn up. The police of Chicago did not cope with the disorder,
+and the railway companies, apparently distrusting the Governor of the
+State, and in order to protect the United States mails, called upon the
+President of the United States for the federal troops, the federal
+courts further enjoined all persons against any form of interference
+with the property or operation of the railroads, and the situation
+gradually assumed the proportions of internecine warfare. During all of
+these events the president of the manufacturing company first involved,
+steadfastly refused to have the situation submitted to arbitration, and
+this attitude naturally provoked much discussion. The discussion was
+broadly divided between those who held that the long kindness of the
+president of the company had been most ungratefully received, and those
+who maintained that the situation was the inevitable outcome of the
+social consciousness developing among working people. The first defended
+the president of the company in his persistent refusal to arbitrate,
+maintaining that arbitration was impossible after the matter had been
+taken up by other than his own employees, and they declared that a man
+must be allowed to run his own business. They considered the firm stand
+of the president a service to the manufacturing interests of the entire
+country. The others claimed that a large manufacturing concern has
+ceased to be a private matter; that not only a number of workmen and
+stockholders are concerned in its management, but that the interests of
+the public are so involved that the officers of the company are in a
+real sense administering a public trust.
+
+This prolonged strike clearly puts in a concrete form the ethics of an
+individual, in this case a benevolent employer, and the ethics of a mass
+of men, his employees, claiming what they believed to be their moral
+rights.
+
+These events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has
+become organized into a vast social operation, not with the cooeperation
+of the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the
+individual owning the capital. There is a sharp divergence between the
+social form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the
+employees are more highly socialized and dependent. The president of the
+company under discussion went further than the usual employer does. He
+socialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were
+living. He built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town,
+without calling upon the workmen either for self-expression or
+self-government. He honestly believed that he knew better than they what
+was for their good, as he certainly knew better than they how to conduct
+his business. As his factory developed and increased, making money each
+year under his direction, he naturally expected the town to prosper in
+the same way.
+
+He did not realize that the men submitted to the undemocratic conditions
+of the factory organization because the economic pressure in our
+industrial affairs is so great that they could not do otherwise. Under
+this pressure they could be successfully discouraged from organization,
+and systematically treated on the individual basis.
+
+Social life, however, in spite of class distinctions, is much freer than
+industrial life, and the men resented the extension of industrial
+control to domestic and social arrangements. They felt the lack of
+democracy in the assumption that they should be taken care of in these
+matters, in which even the humblest workman has won his independence.
+The basic difficulty lay in the fact that an individual was directing
+the social affairs of many men without any consistent effort to find out
+their desires, and without any organization through which to give them
+social expression. The president of the company was, moreover, so
+confident of the righteousness of his aim that he had come to test the
+righteousness of the process by his own feelings and not by those of the
+men. He doubtless built the town from a sincere desire to give his
+employees the best surroundings. As it developed, he gradually took
+toward it the artist attitude toward his own creation, which has no
+thought for the creation itself but is absorbed in the idea it stands
+for, and he ceased to measure the usefulness of the town by the standard
+of the men's needs. This process slowly darkened his glints of memory,
+which might have connected his experience with that of his men. It is
+possible to cultivate the impulses of the benefactor until the power of
+attaining a simple human relationship with the beneficiaries, that of
+frank equality with them, is gone, and there is left no mutual interest
+in a common cause. To perform too many good deeds may be to lose the
+power of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out
+a personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral
+lesson which our times offer.
+
+The president of this company fostered his employees for many years; he
+gave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks; but in their extreme
+need, when they were struggling with the most difficult situation which
+the times could present to them, he lost his touch and had nothing
+wherewith to help them. The employer's conception of goodness for his
+men had been cleanliness, decency of living, and, above all, thrift and
+temperance. Means had been provided for all this, and opportunities had
+also been given for recreation and improvement. But this employer
+suddenly found his town in the sweep of a world-wide moral impulse. A
+movement had been going on about him and among his working men, of which
+he had been unconscious, or concerning which he had heard only by rumor.
+
+Outside the ken of philanthropists the proletariat had learned to say in
+many languages, that "the injury of one is the concern of all." Their
+watchwords were brotherhood, sacrifice, the subordination of individual
+and trade interests, to the good of the working classes, and they were
+moved by a determination to free that class from the untoward conditions
+under which they were laboring.
+
+Compared to these watchwords, the old ones which this philanthropic
+employer had given his town were negative and inadequate. He had
+believed strongly in temperance and steadiness of individual effort, but
+had failed to apprehend the greater movement of combined abstinence and
+concerted action. With all his fostering, the president had not attained
+to a conception of social morality for his men and had imagined that
+virtue for them largely meant absence of vice.
+
+When the labor movement finally stirred his town, or, to speak more
+fairly, when, in their distress and perplexity, his own employees
+appealed to an organized manifestation of this movement, they were quite
+sure that simply because they were workmen in distress they would not be
+deserted by it. This loyalty on the part of a widely ramified and
+well-organized union toward the workmen in a "non-union shop," who had
+contributed nothing to its cause, was certainly a manifestation of moral
+power.
+
+In none of his utterances or correspondence did the president for an
+instant recognize this touch of nobility, although one would imagine
+that he would gladly point out this bit of virtue, in what he must have
+considered the moral ruin about him. He stood throughout for the
+individual virtues, those which had distinguished the model workmen of
+his youth; those which had enabled him and so many of his
+contemporaries to rise in life, when "rising in life" was urged upon
+every promising boy as the goal of his efforts.
+
+Of the code of social ethics he had caught absolutely nothing. The
+morals he had advocated in selecting and training his men did not fail
+them in the hour of confusion. They were self-controlled, and they
+themselves destroyed no property. They were sober and exhibited no
+drunkenness, even although obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon
+hall of a neighboring town. They repaid their employer in kind, but he
+had given them no rule for the life of association into which they were
+plunged.
+
+The president of the company desired that his employees should possess
+the individual and family virtues, but did nothing to cherish in them
+the social virtues which express themselves in associated effort.
+
+Day after day, during that horrible time of suspense, when the wires
+constantly reported the same message, "the President of the Company
+holds that there is nothing to arbitrate," one was forced to feel that
+the ideal of one-man rule was being sustained in its baldest form. A
+demand from many parts of the country and from many people was being
+made for social adjustment, against which the commercial training and
+the individualistic point of view held its own successfully.
+
+The majority of the stockholders, not only of this company but of
+similar companies, and many other citizens, who had had the same
+commercial experience, shared and sustained this position. It was quite
+impossible for them to catch the other point of view. They not only felt
+themselves right from the commercial standpoint, but had gradually
+accustomed themselves also to the philanthropic standpoint, until they
+had come to consider their motives beyond reproach. Habit held them
+persistent in this view of the case through all changing conditions.
+
+A wise man has said that "the consent of men and your own conscience
+are two wings given you whereby you may rise to God." It is so easy for
+the good and powerful to think that they can rise by following the
+dictates of conscience, by pursuing their own ideals, that they are
+prone to leave those ideals unconnected with the consent of their
+fellow-men. The president of the company thought out within his own mind
+a beautiful town. He had power with which to build this town, but he did
+not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it.
+The most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent,
+makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious
+of social plans and experiments, ignoring this, is prone to failure.
+
+The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to
+consult the "feasible right" as well as the absolute right. He is often
+obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's "best possible," and then has the
+sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move
+along with those whom he leads toward a goal that neither he nor they
+see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people
+really want, and then "provide the channels in which the growing moral
+force of their lives shall flow." What he does attain, however, is not
+the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-climber
+beyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by
+the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower
+perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not
+taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the
+villagers to move up a few feet higher; added to this, he has made
+secure his progress. A few months after the death of the promoter of
+this model town, a court decision made it obligatory upon the company to
+divest itself of the management of the town as involving a function
+beyond its corporate powers. The parks, flowers, and fountains of this
+far-famed industrial centre were dismantled, with scarcely a protest
+from the inhabitants themselves.
+
+The man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the
+cooeperation of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure.
+He does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his
+own permanent success which associated efforts afford. Genuine
+experiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic
+faith and practice than those which underlie private venture. Public
+parks and improvements, intended for the common use, are after all only
+safe in the hands of the public itself; and associated effort toward
+social progress, although much more awkward and stumbling than that same
+effort managed by a capable individual, does yet enlist deeper forces
+and evoke higher social capacities.
+
+The successful business man who is also the philanthropist is in more
+than the usual danger of getting widely separated from his employees.
+The men already have the American veneration for wealth and successful
+business capacity, and, added to this, they are dazzled by his good
+works. The workmen have the same kindly impulses as he, but while they
+organize their charity into mutual benefit associations and distribute
+their money in small amounts in relief for the widows and insurance for
+the injured, the employer may build model towns, erect college
+buildings, which are tangible and enduring, and thereby display his
+goodness in concentrated form.
+
+By the very exigencies of business demands, the employer is too often
+cut off from the social ethics developing in regard to our larger social
+relationships, and from the great moral life springing from our common
+experiences. This is sure to happen when he is good "to" people rather
+than "with" them, when he allows himself to decide what is best for them
+instead of consulting them. He thus misses the rectifying influence of
+that fellowship which is so big that it leaves no room for
+sensitiveness or gratitude. Without this fellowship we may never know
+how great the divergence between ourselves and others may become, nor
+how cruel the misunderstandings.
+
+During a recent strike of the employees of a large factory in Ohio, the
+president of the company expressed himself as bitterly disappointed by
+the results of his many kindnesses, and evidently considered the
+employees utterly unappreciative. His state of mind was the result of
+the fallacy of ministering to social needs from an individual impulse
+and expecting a socialized return of gratitude and loyalty. If the
+lunch-room was necessary, it was a necessity in order that the employees
+might have better food, and, when they had received the better food, the
+legitimate aim of the lunch-room was met. If baths were desirable, and
+the fifteen minutes of calisthenic exercise given the women in the
+middle of each half day brought a needed rest and change to their
+muscles, then the increased cleanliness and the increased bodily
+comfort of so many people should of themselves have justified the
+experiment.
+
+To demand, as a further result, that there should be no strikes in the
+factory, no revolt against the will of the employer because the
+employees were filled with loyalty as the result of the kindness, was of
+course to take the experiment from an individual basis to a social one.
+
+Large mining companies and manufacturing concerns are constantly
+appealing to their stockholders for funds, or for permission to take a
+percentage of the profits, in order that the money may be used for
+educational and social schemes designed for the benefit of the
+employees. The promoters of these schemes use as an argument and as an
+appeal, that better relations will be thus established, that strikes
+will be prevented, and that in the end the money returned to the
+stockholders will be increased. However praiseworthy this appeal may be
+in motive, it involves a distinct confusion of issues, and in theory
+deserves the failure it so often meets with in practice. In the clash
+which follows a strike, the employees are accused of an ingratitude,
+when there was no legitimate reason to expect gratitude; and useless
+bitterness, which has really a factitious basis, may be developed on
+both sides.
+
+Indeed, unless the relation becomes a democratic one, the chances of
+misunderstanding are increased, when to the relation of employer and
+employees is added the relation of benefactor to beneficiaries, in so
+far as there is still another opportunity for acting upon the individual
+code of ethics.
+
+There is no doubt that these efforts are to be commended, not only from
+the standpoint of their social value but because they have a marked
+industrial significance. Failing, as they do, however, to touch the
+question of wages and hours, which are almost invariably the points of
+trades-union effort, the employers confuse the mind of the public when
+they urge the amelioration of conditions and the kindly relation
+existing between them and their men as a reason for the discontinuance
+of strikes and other trades-union tactics. The men have individually
+accepted the kindness of the employers as it was individually offered,
+but quite as the latter urges his inability to increase wages unless he
+has the cooeperation of his competitors, so the men state that they are
+bound to the trades-union struggle for an increase in wages because it
+can only be undertaken by combinations of labor.
+
+Even the much more democratic effort to divide a proportion of the
+profits at the end of the year among the employees, upon the basis of
+their wages and efficiency, is also exposed to a weakness, from the fact
+that the employing side has the power of determining to whom the benefit
+shall accrue.
+
+Both individual acts of self-defence on the part of the wage earner and
+individual acts of benevolence on the part of the employer are most
+useful as they establish standards to which the average worker and
+employer may in time be legally compelled to conform. Progress must
+always come through the individual who varies from the type and has
+sufficient energy to express this variation. He first holds a higher
+conception than that held by the mass of his fellows of what is
+righteous under given conditions, and expresses this conviction in
+conduct, in many instances formulating a certain scruple which the
+others share, but have not yet defined even to themselves. Progress,
+however, is not secure until the mass has conformed to this new
+righteousness. This is equally true in regard to any advance made in the
+standard of living on the part of the trades-unionists or in the
+improved conditions of industry on the part of reforming employers. The
+mistake lies, not in overpraising the advance thus inaugurated by
+individual initiative, but in regarding the achievement as complete in a
+social sense when it is still in the realm of individual action. No sane
+manufacturer regards his factory as the centre of the industrial system.
+He knows very well that the cost of material, wages, and selling prices
+are determined by industrial conditions completely beyond his control.
+Yet the same man may quite calmly regard himself and his own private
+principles as merely self-regarding, and expect results from casual
+philanthropy which can only be accomplished through those common rules
+of life and labor established by the community for the common good.
+
+Outside of and surrounding these smaller and most significant efforts
+are the larger and irresistible movements operating toward combination.
+This movement must tend to decide upon social matters from the social
+standpoint. Until then it is difficult to keep our minds free from a
+confusion of issues. Such a confusion occurs when the gift of a large
+sum to the community for a public and philanthropic purpose, throws a
+certain glamour over all the earlier acts of a man, and makes it
+difficult for the community to see possible wrongs committed against it,
+in the accumulation of wealth so beneficently used. It is possible also
+that the resolve to be thus generous unconsciously influences the man
+himself in his methods of accumulation. He keeps to a certain individual
+rectitude, meaning to make an individual restitution by the old paths of
+generosity and kindness, whereas if he had in view social restitution on
+the newer lines of justice and opportunity, he would throughout his
+course doubtless be watchful of his industrial relationships and his
+social virtues.
+
+The danger of professionally attaining to the power of the righteous
+man, of yielding to the ambition "for doing good" on a large scale,
+compared to which the ambition for politics, learning, or wealth, are
+vulgar and commonplace, ramifies through our modern life; and those most
+easily beset by this temptation are precisely the men best situated to
+experiment on the larger social lines, because they so easily dramatize
+their acts and lead public opinion. Very often, too, they have in their
+hands the preservation and advancement of large vested interests, and
+often see clearly and truly that they are better able to administer the
+affairs of the community than the community itself: sometimes they see
+that if they do not administer them sharply and quickly, as only an
+individual can, certain interests of theirs dependent upon the community
+will go to ruin.
+
+The model employer first considered, provided a large sum in his will
+with which to build and equip a polytechnic school, which will doubtless
+be of great public value. This again shows the advantage of individual
+management, in the spending as well as in the accumulating of wealth,
+but this school will attain its highest good, in so far as it incites
+the ambition to provide other schools from public funds. The town of
+Zurich possesses a magnificent polytechnic institute, secured by the
+vote of the entire people and supported from public taxes. Every man who
+voted for it is interested that his child should enjoy its benefits,
+and, of course, the voluntary attendance must be larger than in a
+school accepted as a gift to the community.
+
+In the educational efforts of model employers, as in other attempts
+toward social amelioration, one man with the best of intentions is
+trying to do what the entire body of employees should have undertaken to
+do for themselves. The result of his efforts will only attain its
+highest value as it serves as an incentive to procure other results by
+the community as well as for the community.
+
+There are doubtless many things which the public would never demand
+unless they were first supplied by individual initiative, both because
+the public lacks the imagination, and also the power of formulating
+their wants. Thus philanthropic effort supplies kindergartens, until
+they become so established in the popular affections that they are
+incorporated in the public school system. Churches and missions
+establish reading rooms, until at last the public library system dots
+the city with branch reading rooms and libraries. For this willingness
+to take risks for the sake of an ideal, for those experiments which must
+be undertaken with vigor and boldness in order to secure didactic value
+in failure as well as in success, society must depend upon the
+individual possessed with money, and also distinguished by earnest and
+unselfish purpose. Such experiments enable the nation to use the
+Referendum method in its public affairs. Each social experiment is thus
+tested by a few people, given wide publicity, that it may be observed
+and discussed by the bulk of the citizens before the public prudently
+makes up its mind whether or not it is wise to incorporate it into the
+functions of government. If the decision is in its favor and it is so
+incorporated, it can then be carried on with confidence and enthusiasm.
+
+But experience has shown that we can only depend upon successful men for
+a certain type of experiment in the line of industrial amelioration and
+social advancement. The list of those who found churches, educational
+institutions, libraries, and art galleries, is very long, as is again
+the list of those contributing to model dwellings, recreation halls, and
+athletic fields. At the present moment factory employers are doing much
+to promote "industrial betterment" in the way of sanitary surroundings,
+opportunities for bathing, lunch rooms provided with cheap and wholesome
+food, club rooms, and guild halls. But there is a line of social
+experiment involving social righteousness in its most advanced form, in
+which the number of employers and the "favored class" are so few that it
+is plain society cannot count upon them for continuous and valuable
+help. This lack is in the line of factory legislation and that sort of
+social advance implied in shorter hours and the regulation of wages; in
+short, all that organization and activity that is involved in such a
+maintenance and increase of wages as would prevent the lowering of the
+standard of life.
+
+A large body of people feel keenly that the present industrial system
+is in a state of profound disorder, and that there is no guarantee that
+the pursuit of individual ethics will ever right it. They claim that
+relief can only come through deliberate corporate effort inspired by
+social ideas and guided by the study of economic laws, and that the
+present industrial system thwarts our ethical demands, not only for
+social righteousness but for social order. Because they believe that
+each advance in ethics must be made fast by a corresponding advance in
+politics and legal enactment, they insist upon the right of state
+regulation and control. While many people representing all classes in a
+community would assent to this as to a general proposition, and would
+even admit it as a certain moral obligation, legislative enactments
+designed to control industrial conditions have largely been secured
+through the efforts of a few citizens, mostly those who constantly see
+the harsh conditions of labor and who are incited to activity by their
+sympathies as well as their convictions.
+
+This may be illustrated by the series of legal enactments regulating the
+occupations in which children may be allowed to work, also the laws in
+regard to the hours of labor permitted in those occupations, and the
+minimum age below which children may not be employed. The first child
+labor laws were enacted in England through the efforts of those members
+of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the condition of the little
+parish apprentices bound out to the early textile manufacturers of the
+north; and through the long years required to build up the code of child
+labor legislation which England now possesses, knowledge of the
+conditions has always preceded effective legislation. The efforts of
+that small number in every community who believe in legislative control
+have always been reenforced by the efforts of trades-unionists rather
+than by the efforts of employers. Partly because the employment of
+workingmen in the factories brings them in contact with the children who
+tend to lower wages and demoralize their trades, and partly because
+workingmen have no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy,
+and must perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only
+channel of redress which is open to them.
+
+We may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving
+street-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of
+the last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper. A
+comfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral
+shock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the
+little fellow, who is making his way in the world. The philanthropic
+lady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such
+a bright boy is not in school. She may make up her mind in a moment of
+compunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys' schools and
+homes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a
+chance at manual training. She probably is convinced that he alone, by
+his unaided efforts, is supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is
+moved to do all she can for him. Next to her sits a workingman trained
+in trades-union methods. He knows that the boy's natural development is
+arrested, and that the abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up
+the force which should go into growth; moreover, that this premature use
+of his powers has but a momentary and specious value. He is forced to
+these conclusions because he has seen many a man, entering the factory
+at eighteen and twenty, so worn out by premature work that he was "laid
+on the shelf" within ten or fifteen years. He knows very well that he
+can do nothing in the way of ameliorating the lot of this particular
+boy; that his only possible chance is to agitate for proper child-labor
+laws; to regulate, and if possible prohibit, street-vending by children,
+in order that the child of the poorest may have his school time secured
+to him, and may have at least his short chance for growth.
+
+These three people, sitting in the street car, are all honest and
+upright, and recognize a certain duty toward the forlorn children of the
+community. The self-made man is encouraging one boy's own efforts; the
+philanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the workingman alone is
+obliged to include all the boys of his class. Workingmen, because of
+their feebleness in all but numbers, have been forced to appeal to the
+state, in order to secure protection for themselves and for their
+children. They cannot all rise out of their class, as the occasionally
+successful man has done; some of them must be left to do the work in the
+factories and mines, and they have no money to spend in philanthropy.
+
+Both public agitation and a social appeal to the conscience of the
+community is necessary in order to secure help from the state, and,
+curiously enough, child-labor laws once enacted and enforced are a
+matter of great pride, and even come to be regarded as a register of the
+community's humanity and enlightenment. If the method of public
+agitation could find quiet and orderly expression in legislative
+enactment, and if labor measures could be submitted to the examination
+and judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of warfare, we
+should have the ideal development of the democratic state.
+
+But we judge labor organizations as we do other living institutions, not
+by their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their
+blundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and
+by the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual
+finds himself too weak to become the organ of corporate action.
+
+The very blunders and lack of organization too often characterizing a
+union, in marked contrast to the orderly management of a factory, often
+confuse us as to the real issues involved, and we find it hard to trust
+uncouth and unruly manifestations of social effort. The situation is
+made even more complicated by the fact that those who are formulating a
+code of associated action so often break through the established code of
+law and order. As society has a right to demand of the reforming
+individual that he be sternly held to his personal and domestic claims,
+so it has a right to insist that labor organizations shall keep to the
+hardly won standards of public law and order; and the community performs
+but its plain duty when it registers its protest every time law and
+order are subverted, even in the interest of the so-called social
+effort. Yet in moments of industrial stress and strain the community is
+confronted by a moral perplexity which may arise from the mere fact that
+the good of yesterday is opposed to the good of today, and that which
+may appear as a choice between virtue and vice is really but a choice
+between virtue and virtue. In the disorder and confusion sometimes
+incident to growth and progress, the community may be unable to see
+anything but the unlovely struggle itself.
+
+The writer recalls a conversation between two workingmen who were
+leaving a lecture on "Organic Evolution." The first was much puzzled,
+and anxiously inquired of the second "if evolution could mean that one
+animal turned into another." The challenged workman stopped in the rear
+of the hall, put his foot upon a chair, and expounded what he thought
+evolution did mean; and this, so nearly as the conversation can be
+recalled, is what he said: "You see a lot of fishes are living in a
+stream, which overflows in the spring and strands some of them upon the
+bank. The weak ones die up there, but others make a big effort to get
+back into the water. They dig their fins into the sand, breathe as much
+air as they can with their gills, and have a terrible time. But after a
+while their fins turn into legs and their gills into lungs, and they
+have become frogs. Of course they are further along than the sleek,
+comfortable fishes who sail up and down the stream waving their tails
+and despising the poor damaged things thrashing around on the bank.
+He--the lecturer--did not say anything about men, but it is easy enough
+to think of us poor devils on the dry bank, struggling without enough to
+live on, while the comfortable fellows sail along in the water with all
+they want and despise us because we thrash about." His listener did not
+reply, and was evidently dissatisfied both with the explanation and the
+application. Doubtless the illustration was bungling in more than its
+setting forth, but the story is suggestive.
+
+At times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so
+anxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably
+on the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for
+him to see the situation fairly. He becomes insensible to the unselfish
+impulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers
+in a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on
+the disorder which has become associated with the strike. He is
+completely side-tracked by the ugly phases of a great moral movement. It
+is always a temptation to assume that the side which has respectability,
+authority, and superior intelligence, has therefore righteousness as
+well, especially when the same side presents concrete results of
+individual effort as over against the less tangible results of
+associated effort.
+
+It is as yet most difficult for us to free ourselves from the
+individualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their
+social relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to
+produce a social result through all the difficulties of associated
+action. The philanthropist still finds his path much easier than do
+those who are attempting a social morality. In the first place, the
+public, anxious to praise what it recognizes as an undoubted moral
+effort often attended with real personal sacrifice, joyfully seizes upon
+this manifestation and overpraises it, recognizing the philanthropist
+as an old friend in the paths of righteousness, whereas the others are
+strangers and possibly to be distrusted as aliens. It is easy to confuse
+the response to an abnormal number of individual claims with the
+response to the social claim. An exaggerated personal morality is often
+mistaken for a social morality, and until it attempts to minister to a
+social situation its total inadequacy is not discovered. To attempt to
+attain a social morality without a basis of democratic experience
+results in the loss of the only possible corrective and guide, and ends
+in an exaggerated individual morality but not in social morality at all.
+We see this from time to time in the care-worn and overworked
+philanthropist, who has taxed his individual will beyond the normal
+limits and has lost his clew to the situation among a bewildering number
+of cases. A man who takes the betterment of humanity for his aim and end
+must also take the daily experiences of humanity for the constant
+correction of his process. He must not only test and guide his
+achievement by human experience, but he must succeed or fail in
+proportion as he has incorporated that experience with his own.
+Otherwise his own achievements become his stumbling-block, and he comes
+to believe in his own goodness as something outside of himself. He makes
+an exception of himself, and thinks that he is different from the rank
+and file of his fellows. He forgets that it is necessary to know of the
+lives of our contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their
+integrity, which is after all but the first beginnings of social
+morality, but in order to attain to any mental or moral integrity for
+ourselves or any such hope for society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+EDUCATIONAL METHODS
+
+
+As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the
+value and function of each member of the community, however humble he
+may be. We have come to believe that the most "brutish man" has a value
+in our common life, a function to perform which can be fulfilled by no
+one else. We are gradually requiring of the educator that he shall free
+the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of life. We ask
+this not merely because it is the man's right to be thus connected, but
+because we have become convinced that the social order cannot afford to
+get along without his special contribution. Just as we have come to
+resent all hindrances which keep us from untrammelled comradeship with
+our fellows, and as we throw down unnatural divisions, not in the
+spirit of the eighteenth-century reformers, but in the spirit of those
+to whom social equality has become a necessity for further social
+development, so we are impatient to use the dynamic power residing in
+the mass of men, and demand that the educator free that power. We
+believe that man's moral idealism is the constructive force of progress,
+as it has always been; but because every human being is a creative agent
+and a possible generator of fine enthusiasm, we are sceptical of the
+moral idealism of the few and demand the education of the many, that
+there may be greater freedom, strength, and subtilty of intercourse and
+hence an increase of dynamic power. We are not content to include all
+men in our hopes, but have become conscious that all men are hoping and
+are part of the same movement of which we are a part.
+
+Many people impelled by these ideas have become impatient with the slow
+recognition on the part of the educators of their manifest obligation
+to prepare and nourish the child and the citizen for social relations.
+The educators should certainly conserve the learning and training
+necessary for the successful individual and family life, but should add
+to that a preparation for the enlarged social efforts which our
+increasing democracy requires. The democratic ideal demands of the
+school that it shall give the child's own experience a social value;
+that it shall teach him to direct his own activities and adjust them to
+those of other people. We are not willing that thousands of industrial
+workers shall put all of their activity and toil into services from
+which the community as a whole reaps the benefit, while their mental
+conceptions and code of morals are narrow and untouched by any uplift
+which the consciousness of social value might give them.
+
+We are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and
+writing, suspecting them to rest upon the assumption that the ordinary
+experience of life is worth little, and that all knowledge and interest
+must be brought to the children through the medium of books. Such an
+assumption fails to give the child any clew to the life about him, or
+any power to usefully or intelligently connect himself with it. This may
+be illustrated by observations made in a large Italian colony situated
+in Chicago, the children from which are, for the most part, sent to the
+public schools.
+
+The members of the Italian colony are largely from South
+Italy,--Calabrian and Sicilian peasants, or Neapolitans from the
+workingmen's quarters of that city. They have come to America with the
+distinct aim of earning money, and finding more room for the energies of
+themselves and their children. In almost all cases they mean to go back
+again, simply because their imaginations cannot picture a continuous
+life away from the old surroundings. Their experiences in Italy have
+been those of simple outdoor activity, and their ideas have come
+directly to them from their struggle with Nature,--such a hand-to-hand
+struggle as takes place when each man gets his living largely through
+his own cultivation of the soil, or with tools simply fashioned by his
+own hands. The women, as in all primitive life, have had more
+diversified activities than the men. They have cooked, spun, and
+knitted, in addition to their almost equal work in the fields. Very few
+of the peasant men or women can either read or write. They are devoted
+to their children, strong in their family feeling, even to remote
+relationships, and clannish in their community life.
+
+The entire family has been upheaved, and is striving to adjust itself to
+its new surroundings. The men, for the most part, work on railroad
+extensions through the summer, under the direction of a _padrone_, who
+finds the work for them, regulates the amount of their wages, and
+supplies them with food. The first effect of immigration upon the women
+is that of idleness. They no longer work in the fields, nor milk the
+goats, nor pick up faggots. The mother of the family buys all the
+clothing, not only already spun and woven but made up into garments, of
+a cut and fashion beyond her powers. It is, indeed, the most economical
+thing for her to do. Her house-cleaning and cooking are of the simplest;
+the bread is usually baked outside of the house, and the macaroni bought
+prepared for boiling. All of those outdoor and domestic activities,
+which she would naturally have handed on to her daughters, have slipped
+away from her. The domestic arts are gone, with their absorbing
+interests for the children, their educational value, and incentive to
+activity. A household in a tenement receives almost no raw material. For
+the hundreds of children who have never seen wheat grow, there are
+dozens who have never seen bread baked. The occasional washings and
+scrubbings are associated only with discomfort. The child of such a
+family receives constant stimulus of most exciting sort from his city
+street life, but he has little or no opportunity to use his energies in
+domestic manufacture, or, indeed, constructively in any direction. No
+activity is supplied to take the place of that which, in Italy, he would
+naturally have found in his own surroundings, and no new union with
+wholesome life is made for him.
+
+Italian parents count upon the fact that their children learn the
+English language and American customs before they do themselves, and the
+children act not only as interpreters of the language, but as buffers
+between them and Chicago, resulting in a certain almost pathetic
+dependence of the family upon the child. When a child of the family,
+therefore, first goes to school, the event is fraught with much
+significance to all the others. The family has no social life in any
+structural form and can supply none to the child. He ought to get it in
+the school and give it to his family, the school thus becoming the
+connector with the organized society about them. It is the children
+aged six, eight, and ten, who go to school, entering, of course, the
+primary grades. If a boy is twelve or thirteen on his arrival in
+America, his parents see in him a wage-earning factor, and the girl of
+the same age is already looking toward her marriage.
+
+Let us take one of these boys, who has learned in his six or eight years
+to speak his native language, and to feel himself strongly identified
+with the fortunes of his family. Whatever interest has come to the minds
+of his ancestors has come through the use of their hands in the open
+air; and open air and activity of body have been the inevitable
+accompaniments of all their experiences. Yet the first thing that the
+boy must do when he reaches school is to sit still, at least part of the
+time, and he must learn to listen to what is said to him, with all the
+perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. He does not find this very
+stimulating, and is slow to respond to the more subtle incentives of the
+schoolroom. The peasant child is perfectly indifferent to showing off
+and making a good recitation. He leaves all that to his schoolfellows,
+who are more sophisticated and equipped with better English. His parents
+are not deeply interested in keeping him in school, and will not hold
+him there against his inclination. Their experience does not point to
+the good American tradition that it is the educated man who finally
+succeeds. The richest man in the Italian colony can neither read nor
+write--even Italian. His cunning and acquisitiveness, combined with the
+credulity and ignorance of his countrymen, have slowly brought about his
+large fortune. The child himself may feel the stirring of a vague
+ambition to go on until he is as the other children are; but he is not
+popular with his schoolfellows, and he sadly feels the lack of dramatic
+interest. Even the pictures and objects presented to him, as well as the
+language, are strange.
+
+If we admit that in education it is necessary to begin with the
+experiences which the child already has and to use his spontaneous and
+social activity, then the city streets begin this education for him in a
+more natural way than does the school. The South Italian peasant comes
+from a life of picking olives and oranges, and he easily sends his
+children out to pick up coal from railroad tracks, or wood from
+buildings which have been burned down. Unfortunately, this process leads
+by easy transition to petty thieving. It is easy to go from the coal on
+the railroad track to the coal and wood which stand before a dealer's
+shop; from the potatoes which have rolled from a rumbling wagon to the
+vegetables displayed by the grocer. This is apt to be the record of the
+boy who responds constantly to the stimulus and temptations of the
+street, although in the beginning his search for bits of food and fuel
+was prompted by the best of motives.
+
+The school has to compete with a great deal from the outside in addition
+to the distractions of the neighborhood. Nothing is more fascinating
+than that mysterious "down town," whither the boy longs to go to sell
+papers and black boots, to attend theatres, and, if possible, to stay
+all night on the pretence of waiting for the early edition of the great
+dailies. If a boy is once thoroughly caught in these excitements,
+nothing can save him from over-stimulation and consequent debility and
+worthlessness; he arrives at maturity with no habits of regular work and
+with a distaste for its dulness.
+
+On the other hand, there are hundreds of boys of various nationalities
+who conscientiously remain in school and fulfil all the requirements of
+the early grades, and at the age of fourteen are found in factories,
+painstakingly performing their work year after year. These later are the
+men who form the mass of the population in every industrial neighborhood
+of every large city; but they carry on the industrial processes year
+after year without in the least knowing what it is all about. The one
+fixed habit which the boy carries away with him from the school to the
+factory is the feeling that his work is merely provisional. In school
+the next grade was continually held before him as an object of
+attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole object of
+present effort is to get ready for something else. This tentative
+attitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his factory work;
+he pursues it merely as a necessity, and his very mental attitude
+destroys his chance for a realization of its social value. As the boy in
+school contracted the habit of doing his work in certain hours and
+taking his pleasure in certain other hours, so in the factory he earns
+his money by ten hours of dull work and spends it in three hours of
+lurid and unprofitable pleasure in the evening. Both in the school and
+in the factory, in proportion as his work grows dull and monotonous, his
+recreation must become more exciting and stimulating. The hopelessness
+of adding evening classes and social entertainments as a mere frill to a
+day filled with monotonous and deadening drudgery constantly becomes
+more apparent to those who are endeavoring to bring a fuller life to the
+industrial members of the community, and who are looking forward to a
+time when work shall cease to be senseless drudgery with no
+self-expression on the part of the worker. It sometimes seems that the
+public schools should contribute much more than they do to the
+consummation of this time. If the army of school children who enter the
+factories every year possessed thoroughly vitalized faculties, they
+might do much to lighten this incubus of dull factory work which presses
+so heavily upon so large a number of our fellow-citizens. Has our
+commercialism been so strong that our schools have become insensibly
+commercialized, whereas we supposed that our industrial life was
+receiving the broadening and illuminating effects of the schools? The
+training of these children, so far as it has been vocational at all, has
+been in the direction of clerical work. It is possible that the
+business men, whom we in America so tremendously admire, have really
+been dictating the curriculum of our public schools, in spite of the
+conventions of educators and the suggestions of university professors.
+The business man, of course, has not said, "I will have the public
+schools train office boys and clerks so that I may have them easily and
+cheaply," but he has sometimes said, "Teach the children to write
+legibly and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of
+punctuality and order; to be prompt to obey; and you will fit them to
+make their way in the world as I have made mine." Has the workingman
+been silent as to what he desires for his children, and allowed the
+business man to decide for him there, as he has allowed the politician
+to manage his municipal affairs, or has the workingman so far shared our
+universal optimism that he has really believed that his children would
+never need to go into industrial life at all, but that all of his sons
+would become bankers and merchants?
+
+Certain it is that no sufficient study has been made of the child who
+enters into industrial life early and stays there permanently, to give
+him some offset to its monotony and dulness, some historic significance
+of the part he is taking in the life of the community.
+
+It is at last on behalf of the average workingmen that our increasing
+democracy impels us to make a new demand upon the educator. As the
+political expression of democracy has claimed for the workingman the
+free right of citizenship, so a code of social ethics is now insisting
+that he shall be a conscious member of society, having some notion of
+his social and industrial value.
+
+The early ideal of a city that it was a market-place in which to
+exchange produce, and a mere trading-post for merchants, apparently
+still survives in our minds and is constantly reflected in our schools.
+We have either failed to realize that cities have become great centres
+of production and manufacture in which a huge population is engaged, or
+we have lacked sufficient presence of mind to adjust ourselves to the
+change. We admire much more the men who accumulate riches, and who
+gather to themselves the results of industry, than the men who actually
+carry forward industrial processes; and, as has been pointed out, our
+schools still prepare children almost exclusively for commercial and
+professional life.
+
+Quite as the country boy dreams of leaving the farm for life in town and
+begins early to imitate the travelling salesman in dress and manner, so
+the school boy within the town hopes to be an office boy, and later a
+clerk or salesman, and looks upon work in the factory as the occupation
+of ignorant and unsuccessful men. The schools do so little really to
+interest the child in the life of production, or to excite his ambition
+in the line of industrial occupation, that the ideal of life, almost
+from the very beginning, becomes not an absorbing interest in one's work
+and a consciousness of its value and social relation, but a desire for
+money with which unmeaning purchases may be made and an unmeaning
+social standing obtained.
+
+The son of a workingman who is successful in commercial life, impresses
+his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he
+comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people
+learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial
+arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption
+that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,--that every
+promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined
+for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under
+other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a
+folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister,
+who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the
+cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him
+educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress
+meanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and
+monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his
+interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom,
+who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is
+necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to our
+theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is
+covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or
+trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious
+effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial
+life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration
+regarding it.
+
+Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust
+which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To
+get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is
+still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line.
+A workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the
+brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal
+school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general
+social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are
+superior to factory or even office work. "Teacher" in the vocabulary of
+many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is
+indiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner. The same
+desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano,
+or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. The
+overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much
+the same source, and from the conviction that "an education" is wasted
+if a boy goes into a factory or shop.
+
+A Chicago manufacturer tells a story of twin boys, whom he befriended
+and meant to give a start in life. He sent them both to the Athenaeum for
+several winters as a preparatory business training, and then took them
+into his office, where they speedily became known as the bright one and
+the stupid one. The stupid one was finally dismissed after repeated
+trials, when to the surprise of the entire establishment, he quickly
+betook himself into the shops, where he became a wide-awake and valuable
+workman. His chagrined benefactor, in telling the story, admits that he
+himself had fallen a victim to his own business training and his early
+notion of rising in life. In reality he had merely followed the lead of
+most benevolent people who help poor boys. They test the success of
+their efforts by the number whom they have taken out of factory work
+into some other and "higher occupation."
+
+Quite in line with this commercial ideal are the night schools and
+institutions of learning most accessible to working people. First among
+them is the business college which teaches largely the mechanism of
+type-writing and book-keeping, and lays all stress upon commerce and
+methods of distribution. Commodities are treated as exports and
+imports, or solely in regard to their commercial value, and not, of
+course, in relation to their historic development or the manufacturing
+processes to which they have been subjected. These schools do not in the
+least minister to the needs of the actual factory employee, who is in
+the shop and not in the office. We assume that all men are searching for
+"puddings and power," to use Carlyle's phrase, and furnish only the
+schools which help them to those ends.
+
+The business college man, or even the man who goes through an academic
+course in order to prepare for a profession, comes to look on learning
+too much as an investment from which he will later reap the benefits in
+earning money. He does not connect learning with industrial pursuits,
+nor does he in the least lighten or illuminate those pursuits for those
+of his friends who have not risen in life. "It is as though nets were
+laid at the entrance to education, in which those who by some means or
+other escape from the masses bowed down by labor, are inevitably caught
+and held from substantial service to their fellows." The academic
+teaching which is accessible to workingmen through University Extension
+lectures and classes at settlements, is usually bookish and remote, and
+concerning subjects completely divorced from their actual experiences.
+The men come to think of learning as something to be added to the end of
+a hard day's work, and to be gained at the cost of toilsome mental
+exertion. There are, of course, exceptions, but many men who persist in
+attending classes and lectures year after year find themselves possessed
+of a mass of inert knowledge which nothing in their experience fuses
+into availability or realization.
+
+Among the many disappointments which the settlement experiment has
+brought to its promoters, perhaps none is keener than the fact that they
+have as yet failed to work out methods of education, specialized and
+adapted to the needs of adult working people in contra-distinction to
+those employed in schools and colleges, or those used in teaching
+children. There are many excellent reasons and explanations for this
+failure. In the first place, the residents themselves are for the most
+part imbued with academic methods and ideals, which it is most difficult
+to modify. To quote from a late settlement report, "The most vaunted
+educational work in settlements amounts often to the stimulation
+mentally of a select few who are, in a sense, of the academic type of
+mind, and who easily and quickly respond to the academic methods
+employed." These classes may be valuable, but they leave quite untouched
+the great mass of the factory population, the ordinary workingman of the
+ordinary workingman's street, whose attitude is best described as that
+of "acquiescence," who lives through the aimless passage of the years
+without incentive "to imagine, to design, or to aspire." These men are
+totally untouched by all the educational and philanthropic machinery
+which is designed for the young and the helpless who live on the same
+streets with them. They do not often drink to excess, they regularly
+give all their wages to their wives, they have a vague pride in their
+superior children; but they grow prematurely old and stiff in all their
+muscles, and become more and more taciturn, their entire energies
+consumed in "holding a job."
+
+Various attempts have been made to break through the inadequate
+educational facilities supplied by commercialism and scholarship, both
+of which have followed their own ideals and have failed to look at the
+situation as it actually presents itself. The most noteworthy attempt
+has been the movement toward industrial education, the agitation for
+which has been ably seconded by manufacturers of a practical type, who
+have from time to time founded and endowed technical schools, designed
+for workingmen's sons. The early schools of this type inevitably
+reflected the ideal of the self-made man. They succeeded in transferring
+a few skilled workers into the upper class of trained engineers, and a
+few less skilled workers into the class of trained mechanics, but did
+not aim to educate the many who are doomed to the unskilled work which
+the permanent specialization of the division of labor demands.
+
+The Peter Coopers and other good men honestly believed that if
+intelligence could be added to industry, each workingman who faithfully
+attended these schools could walk into increased skill and wages, and in
+time even become an employer himself. Such schools are useful beyond
+doubt; but so far as educating workingmen is concerned or in any measure
+satisfying the democratic ideal, they plainly beg the question.
+
+Almost every large city has two or three polytechnic institutions
+founded by rich men, anxious to help "poor boys." These have been
+captured by conventional educators for the purpose of fitting young men
+for the colleges and universities. They have compromised by merely
+adding to the usual academic course manual work, applied mathematics,
+mechanical drawing and engineering. Two schools in Chicago, plainly
+founded for the sons of workingmen, afford an illustration of this
+tendency and result. On the other hand, so far as schools of this type
+have been captured by commercialism, they turn out trained engineers,
+professional chemists, and electricians. They are polytechnics of a high
+order, but do not even pretend to admit the workingman with his meagre
+intellectual equipment. They graduate machine builders, but not educated
+machine tenders. Even the textile schools are largely seized by young
+men who expect to be superintendents of factories, designers, or
+manufacturers themselves, and the textile worker who actually "holds the
+thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed, in one of the largest schools
+women are not allowed, in spite of the fact that spinning and weaving
+have traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are
+at present employed in the textile mills.
+
+It is much easier to go over the old paths of education with "manual
+training" thrown in, as it were; it is much simpler to appeal to the old
+ambitions of "getting on in life," or of "preparing for a profession,"
+or "for a commercial career," than to work out new methods on democratic
+lines. These schools gradually drop back into the conventional courses,
+modified in some slight degree, while the adaptation to workingmen's
+needs is never made, nor, indeed, vigorously attempted. In the meantime,
+the manufacturers continually protest that engineers, especially trained
+for devising machines, are not satisfactory. Three generations of
+workers have invented, but we are told that invention no longer goes on
+in the workshop, even when it is artificially stimulated by the offer of
+prizes, and that the inventions of the last quarter of the nineteenth
+century have by no means fulfilled the promise of the earlier
+three-quarters.
+
+Every foreman in a large factory has had experience with two classes of
+men: first with those who become rigid and tolerate no change in their
+work, partly because they make more money "working by the piece," when
+they stick to that work which they have learned to do rapidly, and
+partly because the entire muscular and nervous system has become by
+daily use adapted to particular motions and resents change. Secondly,
+there are the men who float in and out of the factory, in a constantly
+changing stream. They "quit work" for the slightest reason or none at
+all, and never become skilled at anything. Some of them are men of low
+intelligence, but many of them are merely too nervous and restless, too
+impatient, too easily "driven to drink," to be of any use in a modern
+factory. They are the men for whom the demanded adaptation is
+impossible.
+
+The individual from whom the industrial order demands ever larger
+drafts of time and energy, should be nourished and enriched from social
+sources, in proportion as he is drained. He, more than other men, needs
+the conception of historic continuity in order to reveal to him the
+purpose and utility of his work, and he can only be stimulated and
+dignified as he obtains a conception of his proper relation to society.
+Scholarship is evidently unable to do this for him; for, unfortunately,
+the same tendency to division of labor has also produced
+over-specialization in scholarship, with the sad result that when the
+scholar attempts to minister to a worker, he gives him the result of
+more specialization rather than an offset from it. He cannot bring
+healing and solace because he himself is suffering from the same
+disease. There is indeed a deplorable lack of perception and adaptation
+on the part of educators all along the line.
+
+It will certainly be embarrassing to have our age written down
+triumphant in the matter of inventions, in that our factories were
+filled with intricate machines, the result of advancing mathematical and
+mechanical knowledge in relation to manufacturing processes, but
+defeated in that it lost its head over the achievement and forgot the
+men. The accusation would stand, that the age failed to perform a like
+service in the extension of history and art to the factory employees who
+ran the machines; that the machine tenders, heavy and almost dehumanized
+by monotonous toil, walked about in the same streets with us, and sat in
+the same cars; but that we were absolutely indifferent and made no
+genuine effort to supply to them the artist's perception or student's
+insight, which alone could fuse them into social consciousness. It would
+further stand that the scholars among us continued with yet more
+research, that the educators were concerned only with the young and the
+promising, and the philanthropists with the criminals and helpless.
+
+There is a pitiful failure to recognize the situation in which the
+majority of working people are placed, a tendency to ignore their real
+experiences and needs, and, most stupid of all, we leave quite untouched
+affections and memories which would afford a tremendous dynamic if they
+were utilized.
+
+We constantly hear it said in educational circles, that a child learns
+only by "doing," and that education must proceed "through the eyes and
+hands to the brain"; and yet for the vast number of people all around us
+who do not need to have activities artificially provided, and who use
+their hands and eyes all the time, we do not seem able to reverse the
+process. We quote the dictum, "What is learned in the schoolroom must be
+applied in the workshop," and yet the skill and handicraft constantly
+used in the workshop have no relevance or meaning given to them by the
+school; and when we do try to help the workingman in an educational way,
+we completely ignore his everyday occupation. Yet the task is merely one
+of adaptation. It is to take actual conditions and to make them the
+basis for a large and generous method of education, to perform a
+difficult idealization doubtless, but not an impossible one.
+
+We apparently believe that the workingman has no chance to realize life
+through his vocation. We easily recognize the historic association in
+regard to ancient buildings. We say that "generation after generation
+have stamped their mark upon them, have recorded their thoughts in them,
+until they have become the property of all." And yet this is even more
+true of the instruments of labor, which have constantly been held in
+human hands. A machine really represents the "seasoned life of man"
+preserved and treasured up within itself, quite as much as an ancient
+building does. At present, workmen are brought in contact with the
+machinery with which they work as abruptly as if the present set of
+industrial implements had been newly created. They handle the machinery
+day by day, without any notion of its gradual evolution and growth. Few
+of the men who perform the mechanical work in the great factories have
+any comprehension of the fact that the inventions upon which the factory
+depends, the instruments which they use, have been slowly worked out,
+each generation using the gifts of the last and transmitting the
+inheritance until it has become a social possession. This can only be
+understood by a man who has obtained some idea of social progress. We
+are still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of
+labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby,
+and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product
+long enough to really focus it upon the producer. Theoretically, "the
+division of labor" makes men more interdependent and human by drawing
+them together into a unity of purpose. "If a number of people decide to
+build a road, and one digs, and one brings stones, and another breaks
+them, they are quite inevitably united by their interest in the road.
+But this naturally presupposes that they know where the road is going
+to, that they have some curiosity and interest about it, and perhaps a
+chance to travel upon it." If the division of labor robs them of
+interest in any part of it, the mere mechanical fact of interdependence
+amounts to nothing.
+
+The man in the factory, as well as the man with the hoe, has a grievance
+beyond being overworked and disinherited, in that he does not know what
+it is all about. We may well regret the passing of the time when the
+variety of work performed in the unspecialized workshop naturally
+stimulated the intelligence of the workingmen and brought them into
+contact both with the raw material and the finished product. But the
+problem of education, as any advanced educator will tell us, is to
+supply the essentials of experience by a short cut, as it were. If the
+shop constantly tends to make the workman a specialist, then the problem
+of the educator in regard to him is quite clear: it is to give him what
+may be an offset from the over-specialization of his daily work, to
+supply him with general information and to insist that he shall be a
+cultivated member of society with a consciousness of his industrial and
+social value.
+
+As sad a sight as an old hand-loom worker in a factory attempting to
+make his clumsy machine compete with the flying shuttles about him, is a
+workingman equipped with knowledge so meagre that he can get no meaning
+into his life nor sequence between his acts and the far-off results.
+
+Manufacturers, as a whole, however, when they attempt educational
+institutions in connection with their factories, are prone to follow
+conventional lines, and to exhibit the weakness of imitation. We find,
+indeed, that the middle-class educator constantly makes the mistakes of
+the middle-class moralist when he attempts to aid working people. The
+latter has constantly and traditionally urged upon the workingman the
+specialized virtues of thrift, industry, and sobriety--all virtues
+pertaining to the individual. When each man had his own shop, it was
+perhaps wise to lay almost exclusive stress upon the industrial virtues
+of diligence and thrift; but as industry has become more highly
+organized, life becomes incredibly complex and interdependent. If a
+workingman is to have a conception of his value at all, he must see
+industry in its unity and entirety; he must have a conception that will
+include not only himself and his immediate family and community, but the
+industrial organization as a whole. It is doubtless true that dexterity
+of hand becomes less and less imperative as the invention of machinery
+and subdivision of labor proceeds; but it becomes all the more
+necessary, if the workman is to save his life at all, that he should get
+a sense of his individual relation to the system. Feeding a machine with
+a material of which he has no knowledge, producing a product, totally
+unrelated to the rest of his life, without in the least knowing what
+becomes of it, or its connection with the community, is, of course,
+unquestionably deadening to his intellectual and moral life. To make
+the moral connection it would be necessary to give him a social
+consciousness of the value of his work, and at least a sense of
+participation and a certain joy in its ultimate use; to make the
+intellectual connection it would be essential to create in him some
+historic conception of the development of industry and the relation of
+his individual work to it.
+
+Workingmen themselves have made attempts in both directions, which it
+would be well for moralists and educators to study. It is a striking
+fact that when workingmen formulate their own moral code, and try to
+inspire and encourage each other, it is always a large and general
+doctrine which they preach. They were the first class of men to organize
+an international association, and the constant talk at a modern labor
+meeting is of solidarity and of the identity of the interests of
+workingmen the world over. It is difficult to secure a successful
+organization of men into the simplest trades organization without an
+appeal to the most abstract principles of justice and brotherhood. As
+they have formulated their own morals by laying the greatest stress upon
+the largest morality, so if they could found their own schools, it is
+doubtful whether they would be of the mechanic institute type. Courses
+of study arranged by a group of workingmen are most naive in their
+breadth and generality. They will select the history of the world in
+preference to that of any period or nation. The "wonders of science" or
+"the story of evolution" will attract workingmen to a lecture when
+zooelogy or chemistry will drive them away. The "outlines of literature"
+or "the best in literature" will draw an audience when a lecturer in
+English poetry will be solitary. This results partly from a wholesome
+desire to have general knowledge before special knowledge, and is partly
+a rebound from the specialization of labor to which the workingman is
+subjected. When he is free from work and can direct his own mind, he
+tends to roam, to dwell upon large themes. Much the same tendency is
+found in programmes of study arranged by Woman's Clubs in country
+places. The untrained mind, wearied with meaningless detail, when it
+gets an opportunity to make its demand heard, asks for general
+philosophy and background.
+
+In a certain sense commercialism itself, at least in its larger aspect,
+tends to educate the workingman better than organized education does.
+Its interests are certainly world-wide and democratic, while it is
+absolutely undiscriminating as to country and creed, coming into contact
+with all climes and races. If this aspect of commercialism were
+utilized, it would in a measure counterbalance the tendency which
+results from the subdivision of labor.
+
+The most noteworthy attempt to utilize this democracy of commerce in
+relation to manufacturing is found at Dayton, Ohio, in the yearly
+gatherings held in a large factory there. Once a year the entire force
+is gathered together to hear the returns of the business, not so much
+in respect to the profits, as in regard to its extension. At these
+meetings, the travelling salesmen from various parts of the world--from
+Constantinople, from Berlin, from Rome, from Hong Kong--report upon the
+sales they have made, and the methods of advertisement and promotion
+adapted to the various countries.
+
+Stereopticon lectures are given upon each new country as soon as it has
+been successfully invaded by the product of the factory. The foremen in
+the various departments of the factory give accounts of the increased
+efficiency and the larger output over former years. Any man who has made
+an invention in connection with the machinery of the factory, at this
+time publicly receives a prize, and suggestions are approved that tend
+to increase the comfort and social facilities of the employees. At least
+for the moment there is a complete esprit de corps, and the youngest and
+least skilled employee sees himself in connection with the interests of
+the firm, and the spread of an invention. It is a crude example of what
+might be done in the way of giving a large framework of meaning to
+factory labor, and of putting it into a sentient background, at least on
+the commercial side.
+
+It is easy to indict the educator, to say that he has gotten entangled
+in his own material, and has fallen a victim to his own methods; but
+granting this, what has the artist done about it--he who is supposed to
+have a more intimate insight into the needs of his contemporaries, and
+to minister to them as none other can?
+
+It is quite true that a few writers are insisting that the growing
+desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its
+counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part
+of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of
+conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual
+because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult
+to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we
+have the separation of the people who think from those who work. And
+yet, since Ruskin ceased, no one has really formulated this in a
+convincing form. And even Ruskin's famous dictum, that labor without art
+brutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art could only be a sense
+of beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a sense of companionship
+with all other workers. The situation demands the consciousness of
+participation and well-being which comes to the individual when he is
+able to see himself "in connection and cooperation with the whole"; it
+needs the solace of collective art inherent in collective labor.
+
+As the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling,
+so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human
+significance--some one who shall teach him to find that which will give
+a potency to his life. His education, however simple, should tend to
+make him widely at home in the world, and to give him a sense of
+simplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality and noise to which
+he is constantly subjected. He, like other men, can learn to be content
+to see but a part, although it must be a part of something.
+
+It is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate
+him in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which
+is his by simple right. We have learned to say that the good must be
+extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one
+person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that
+statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we
+cannot even be sure that it is worth having. In spite of many attempts
+we do not really act upon either statement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+POLITICAL REFORM
+
+
+Throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical
+maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting
+upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to
+the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In
+addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is
+often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.
+
+Nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests
+itself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to
+hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social
+expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains
+to keep on common ground in our human experiences. Otherwise there is
+in various parts of the community an inevitable difference of ethical
+standards which becomes responsible for much misunderstanding.
+
+It is difficult both to interpret sympathetically the motives and ideals
+of those who have acquired rules of conduct in experience widely
+different from our own, and also to take enough care in guarding the
+gains already made, and in valuing highly enough the imperfect good so
+painfully acquired and, at the best, so mixed with evil. This wide
+difference in daily experience exhibits itself in two distinct attitudes
+toward politics. The well-to-do men of the community think of politics
+as something off by itself; they may conscientiously recognize political
+duty as part of good citizenship, but political effort is not the
+expression of their moral or social life. As a result of this
+detachment, "reform movements," started by business men and the better
+element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political
+machinery and with a concern for the better method of administration,
+rather than with the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the
+people. They fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they
+fail to consider the final aims of city government. This accounts for
+the growing tendency to put more and more responsibility upon executive
+officers and appointed commissions at the expense of curtailing the
+power of the direct representatives of the voters. Reform movements tend
+to become negative and to lose their educational value for the mass of
+the people. The reformers take the role of the opposition. They give
+themselves largely to criticisms of the present state of affairs, to
+writing and talking of what the future must be and of certain results
+which should be obtained. In trying to better matters, however, they
+have in mind only political achievements which they detach in a curious
+way from the rest of life, and they speak and write of the purification
+of politics as of a thing set apart from daily life.
+
+On the other hand, the real leaders of the people are part of the entire
+life of the community which they control, and so far as they are
+representative at all, are giving a social expression to democracy. They
+are often politically corrupt, but in spite of this they are proceeding
+upon a sounder theory. Although they would be totally unable to give it
+abstract expression, they are really acting upon a formulation made by a
+shrewd English observer; namely, that, "after the enfranchisement of the
+masses, social ideals enter into political programmes, and they enter
+not as something which at best can be indirectly promoted by government,
+but as something which it is the chief business of government to advance
+directly."
+
+Men living near to the masses of voters, and knowing them intimately,
+recognize this and act upon it; they minister directly to life and to
+social needs. They realize that the people as a whole are clamoring for
+social results, and they hold their power because they respond to that
+demand. They are corrupt and often do their work badly; but they at
+least avoid the mistake of a certain type of business men who are
+frightened by democracy, and have lost their faith in the people. The
+two standards are similar to those seen at a popular exhibition of
+pictures where the cultivated people care most for the technique of a
+given painting, the moving mass for a subject that shall be domestic and
+human.
+
+This difference may be illustrated by the writer's experience in a
+certain ward of Chicago, during three campaigns, when efforts were made
+to dislodge an alderman who had represented the ward for many years. In
+this ward there are gathered together fifty thousand people,
+representing a score of nationalities; the newly emigrated Latin,
+Teuton, Celt, Greek, and Slav who live there have little in common save
+the basic experiences which come to men in all countries and under all
+conditions. In order to make fifty thousand people, so heterogeneous in
+nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any demand, it must be
+founded upon universal experiences which are perforce individual and not
+social.
+
+An instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it
+possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political
+success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for
+the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of
+which he is constantly guilty.
+
+This leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his
+constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the
+same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be
+committing. They thus free the alderman from blame because his
+corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and
+hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.
+
+In certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action
+unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his
+acquaintances, and it is a long step in moral progress to set the good
+of the many before the interest of the few, and to be concerned for the
+welfare of a community without hope of an individual return. How far the
+selfish politician befools his constituents into believing that their
+interests are identical with his own; how far he presumes upon their
+inability to distinguish between the individual and social virtues, an
+inability which he himself shares with them; and how far he dazzles them
+by the sense of his greatness, and a conviction that they participate
+therein, it is difficult to determine.
+
+Morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than
+in the form of moral ideas, and it is obvious that ideas only operate
+upon the popular mind through will and character, and must be dramatized
+before they reach the mass of men, even as the biography of the saints
+have been after all "the main guide to the stumbling feet of thousands
+of Christians to whom the Credo has been but mysterious words."
+
+Ethics as well as political opinions may be discussed and disseminated
+among the sophisticated by lectures and printed pages, but to the common
+people they can only come through example--through a personality which
+seizes the popular imagination. The advantage of an unsophisticated
+neighborhood is, that the inhabitants do not keep their ideas as
+treasures--they are untouched by the notion of accumulating them, as
+they might knowledge or money, and they frankly act upon those they
+have. The personal example promptly rouses to emulation. In a
+neighborhood where political standards are plastic and undeveloped, and
+where there has been little previous experience in self-government, the
+office-holder himself sets the standard, and the ideas that cluster
+around him exercise a specific and permanent influence upon the
+political morality of his constituents.
+
+Nothing is more certain than that the quality which a heterogeneous
+population, living in one of the less sophisticated wards, most admires
+is the quality of simple goodness; that the man who attracts them is the
+one whom they believe to be a good man. We all know that children long
+"to be good" with an intensity which they give to no other ambition. We
+can all remember that the earliest strivings of our childhood were in
+this direction, and that we venerated grown people because they had
+attained perfection.
+
+Primitive people, such as the South Italian peasants, are still in this
+stage. They want to be good, and deep down in their hearts they admire
+nothing so much as the good man. Abstract virtues are too difficult for
+their untrained minds to apprehend, and many of them are still simple
+enough to believe that power and wealth come only to good people.
+
+The successful candidate, then, must be a good man according to the
+morality of his constituents. He must not attempt to hold up too high a
+standard, nor must he attempt to reform or change their standards. His
+safety lies in doing on a large scale the good deeds which his
+constituents are able to do only on a small scale. If he believes what
+they believe and does what they are all cherishing a secret ambition to
+do, he will dazzle them by his success and win their confidence. There
+is a certain wisdom in this course. There is a common sense in the mass
+of men which cannot be neglected with impunity, just as there is sure to
+be an eccentricity in the differing and reforming individual which it is
+perhaps well to challenge.
+
+The constant kindness of the poor to each other was pointed out in a
+previous chapter, and that they unfailingly respond to the need and
+distresses of their poorer neighbors even when in danger of bankruptcy
+themselves. The kindness which a poor man shows his distressed neighbor
+is doubtless heightened by the consciousness that he himself may be in
+distress next week; he therefore stands by his friend when he gets too
+drunk to take care of himself, when he loses his wife or child, when he
+is evicted for non-payment of rent, when he is arrested for a petty
+crime. It seems to such a man entirely fitting that his alderman should
+do the same thing on a larger scale--that he should help a constituent
+out of trouble, merely because he is in trouble, irrespective of the
+justice involved.
+
+The alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are
+arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear
+before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are
+likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to
+"fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a
+serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised
+by his constituents. All this conveys the impression to the
+simple-minded that law is not enforced, if the lawbreaker have a
+powerful friend. One may instance the alderman's action in standing by
+an Italian padrone of the ward when he was indicted for violating the
+civil service regulations. The commissioners had sent out notices to
+certain Italian day-laborers who were upon the eligible list that they
+were to report for work at a given day and hour. One of the padrones
+intercepted these notifications and sold them to the men for five
+dollars apiece, making also the usual bargain for a share of their
+wages. The padrone's entire arrangement followed the custom which had
+prevailed for years before the establishment of civil service laws. Ten
+of the laborers swore out warrants against the padrone, who was
+convicted and fined seventy-five dollars. This sum was promptly paid by
+the alderman, and the padrone, assured that he would be protected from
+any further trouble, returned uninjured to the colony. The simple
+Italians were much bewildered by this show of a power stronger than that
+of the civil service, which they had trusted as they did the one in
+Italy. The first violation of its authority was made, and various
+sinister acts have followed, until no Italian who is digging a sewer or
+sweeping a street for the city feels quite secure in holding his job
+unless he is backed by the friendship of the alderman. According to the
+civil service law, a laborer has no right to a trial; many are
+discharged by the foreman, and find that they can be reinstated only
+upon the aldermanic recommendation. He thus practically holds his old
+power over the laborers working for the city. The popular mind is
+convinced that an honest administration of civil service is impossible,
+and that it is but one more instrument in the hands of the powerful.
+
+It will be difficult to establish genuine civil service among these men,
+who learn only by experience, since their experiences have been of such
+a nature that their unanimous vote would certainly be that "civil
+service" is "no good."
+
+As many of his constituents in this case are impressed with the fact
+that the aldermanic power is superior to that of government, so
+instances of actual lawbreaking might easily be cited. A young man may
+enter a saloon long after midnight, the legal closing hour, and seat
+himself at a gambling table, perfectly secure from interruption or
+arrest, because the place belongs to an alderman; but in order to secure
+this immunity the policeman on the beat must pretend not to see into the
+windows each time that he passes, and he knows, and the young man knows
+that he knows, that nothing would embarrass "Headquarters" more than to
+have an arrest made on those premises. A certain contempt for the whole
+machinery of law and order is thus easily fostered.
+
+Because of simple friendliness the alderman is expected to pay rent for
+the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when
+work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all
+the places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the
+ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he
+had twenty-six hundred people in his ward upon the public pay-roll.
+This, of course, included day laborers, but each one felt under
+distinct obligations to him for getting a position. When we reflect that
+this is one-third of the entire vote of the ward, we realize that it is
+very important to vote for the right man, since there is, at the least,
+one chance out of three for securing work.
+
+If we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay
+respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question
+of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a
+political one. An Italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else,
+and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so
+different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two
+strengthen each other.
+
+The alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for
+an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate
+suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his
+constituents under obligations to him; but the action of such an
+individual becomes a demoralizing element in the community when kindly
+impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of personal ambition, and
+when the plastic morals of his constituents gradually conform to his own
+undeveloped standards.
+
+The alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes
+these days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to
+reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side
+it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures
+passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or
+attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for
+benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar
+distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest
+lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the
+alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When
+others are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. When anxious
+relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful
+children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both
+sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying
+off the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five
+dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the
+sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly.
+He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it
+is all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too
+many questions." The oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds
+of his constituents, the better he is pleased. Nothing so rapidly
+prepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. We
+see again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered
+so praiseworthy.
+
+There is something archaic in a community of simple people in their
+attitude toward death and burial. There is nothing so easy to collect
+money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early
+religious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. At times one
+encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard to burial. If the alderman
+seizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much
+more does he seize upon periods of sorrow. At a funeral he has the
+double advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and
+solace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to
+express that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment
+of quick sorrow, that desire to "make up" for past delinquencies, to
+show the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is
+as natural as it is universal.
+
+In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social
+occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of
+which almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. The
+alderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful
+horror of burial by the county; he provides carriages for the poor, who
+otherwise could not have them. It may be too much to say that all the
+relatives and friends who ride in the carriages provided by the
+alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly influenced by his
+kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long hours of the ride back
+and forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who would ask at such a time
+where all the money thus spent comes from would be considered sinister.
+The tendency to speak lightly of the faults of the dead and to judge
+them gently is transferred to the living, and many a man at such a time
+has formulated a lenient judgment of political corruption, and has heard
+kindly speeches which he has remembered on election day. "Ah, well, he
+has a big Irish heart. He is good to the widow and the fatherless." "He
+knows the poor better than the big guns who are always talking about
+civil service and reform."
+
+Indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of
+administration make against this big manifestation of human
+friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of
+the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman
+will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every
+week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes
+provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into
+"hundreds a year." He understands what the people want, and ministers
+just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An
+attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at
+one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House
+nursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days
+previously in the Cook County hospital, but no trace could be found of
+the unfortunate mother. The little child lived for several weeks, and
+then, in spite of every care, died. It was decided to have it buried by
+the county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o'clock;
+about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached
+the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of
+mind, to protest. They took up a collection out of their poverty with
+which to defray a funeral. The residents of Hull-House were then
+comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were
+really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. In their
+crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended
+upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every
+attention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even
+intimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in
+this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be
+buried as it had been born, at the county's expense. It is doubtful if
+Hull-House has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the
+minds of some of its neighbors. It was only forgiven by the most
+indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not
+know a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could
+possibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the
+ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely.
+
+We are constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple
+people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a
+reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and
+regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is
+forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and
+faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and
+forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is
+the magnanimous man, the kindly reckless villain who is always
+applauded. So shrewd an observer as Samuel Johnson once remarked that it
+was surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society
+contained.
+
+On the same basis the alderman manages several saloons, one down town
+within easy access of the city hall, where he can catch the more
+important of his friends. Here again he has seized upon an old tradition
+and primitive custom, the good fellowship which has long been best
+expressed when men drink together. The saloons offer a common meeting
+ground, with stimulus enough to free the wits and tongues of the men who
+meet there.
+
+He distributes each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters,
+but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious
+management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of
+that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable
+societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for
+Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey
+again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from any hardly
+acquired philanthropic motive, there is no disposition to apply the
+carefully evolved rules of the charitable societies to his
+beneficiaries. Of course, there are those who suspect that the
+benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite
+freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the
+fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example of this is the
+young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, giving a sly
+wink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of obligation is
+often the first step downward to the position where he is willing to
+sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket as he
+pleases. The writer recalls a conversation with a man in which he
+complained quite openly, and with no sense of shame, that his vote had
+"sold for only two dollars this year," and that he was "awfully
+disappointed." The writer happened to know that his income during the
+nine months previous had been but twenty-eight dollars, and that he was
+in debt thirty-two dollars, and she could well imagine the eagerness
+with which he had counted upon this source of revenue. After some years
+the selling of votes becomes a commonplace, and but little attempt is
+made upon the part of the buyer or seller to conceal the fact, if the
+transaction runs smoothly.
+
+A certain lodging-house keeper at one time sold the votes of his entire
+house to a political party and was "well paid for it too"; but being of
+a grasping turn, he also sold the house for the same election to the
+rival party. Such an outrage could not be borne. The man was treated to
+a modern version of tar and feathers, and as a result of being held
+under a street hydrant in November, contracted pneumonia which resulted
+in his death. No official investigation took place, since the doctor's
+certificate of pneumonia was sufficient for legal burial, and public
+sentiment sustained the action. In various conversations which the
+writer had concerning the entire transaction, she discovered great
+indignation concerning his duplicity and treachery, but none whatever
+for his original offence of selling out the votes of his house.
+
+A club will be started for the express purpose of gaining a reputation
+for political power which may later be sold out. The president and
+executive committee of such a club, who will naturally receive the
+funds, promise to divide with "the boys" who swell the size of the
+membership. A reform movement is at first filled with recruits who are
+active and loud in their assertions of the number of votes they can
+"deliver." The reformers are delighted with this display of zeal, and
+only gradually find out that many of the recruits are there for the
+express purpose of being bought by the other side; that they are most
+active in order to seem valuable, and thus raise the price of their
+allegiance when they are ready to sell. Reformers seeing them drop away
+one by one, talk of desertion from the ranks of reform, and of the power
+of money over well-meaning men, who are too weak to withstand
+temptation; but in reality the men are not deserters because they have
+never actually been enrolled in the ranks. The money they take is
+neither a bribe nor the price of their loyalty, it is simply the
+consummation of a long-cherished plan and a well-earned reward. They
+came into the new movement for the purpose of being bought out of it,
+and have successfully accomplished that purpose.
+
+Hull-House assisted in carrying on two unsuccessful campaigns against
+the same alderman. In the two years following the end of the first one,
+nearly every man who had been prominent in it had received an office
+from the reelected alderman. A printer had been appointed to a clerkship
+in the city hall; a driver received a large salary for services in the
+police barns; the candidate himself, a bricklayer, held a position in
+the city construction department. At the beginning of the next
+campaign, the greatest difficulty was experienced in finding a
+candidate, and each one proposed, demanded time to consider the
+proposition. During this period he invariably became the recipient of
+the alderman's bounty. The first one, who was foreman of a large
+factory, was reported to have been bought off by the promise that the
+city institutions would use the product of his firm. The second one, a
+keeper of a grocery and family saloon, with large popularity, was
+promised the aldermanic nomination on the regular ticket at the
+expiration of the term of office held by the alderman's colleague, and
+it may be well to state in passing that he was thus nominated and
+successfully elected. The third proposed candidate received a place for
+his son in the office of the city attorney.
+
+Not only are offices in his gift, but all smaller favors as well. Any
+requests to the council, or special licenses, must be presented by the
+alderman of the ward in which the person desiring the favor resides.
+There is thus constant opportunity for the alderman to put his
+constituents under obligations to him, to make it difficult for a
+constituent to withstand him, or for one with large interests to enter
+into political action at all. From the Italian pedler who wants a
+license to peddle fruit in the street, to the large manufacturing
+company who desires to tunnel an alley for the sake of conveying pipes
+from one building to another, everybody is under obligations to his
+alderman, and is constantly made to feel it. In short, these very
+regulations for presenting requests to the council have been made, by
+the aldermen themselves, for the express purpose of increasing the
+dependence of their constituents, and thereby augmenting aldermanic
+power and prestige.
+
+The alderman has also a very singular hold upon the property owners of
+his ward. The paving, both of the streets and sidewalks throughout his
+district, is disgraceful; and in the election speeches the reform side
+holds him responsible for this condition, and promises better paving
+under another regime. But the paving could not be made better without a
+special assessment upon the property owners of the vicinity, and paying
+more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not want to do. In
+reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing the time of the
+improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he performs. A movement
+to have the paving done from a general fund would doubtless be opposed
+by the property owners in other parts of the city who have already paid
+for the asphalt bordering their own possessions, but they have no
+conception of the struggle and possible bankruptcy which repaving may
+mean to the small property owner, nor how his chief concern may be to
+elect an alderman who cares more for the feelings and pocket-books of
+his constituents than he does for the repute and cleanliness of his
+city.
+
+The alderman exhibited great wisdom in procuring from certain of his
+down-town friends the sum of three thousand dollars with which to
+uniform and equip a boys' temperance brigade which had been formed in
+one of the ward churches a few months before his campaign. Is it strange
+that the good leader, whose heart was filled with innocent pride as he
+looked upon these promising young scions of virtue, should decline to
+enter into a reform campaign? Of what use to suggest that uniforms and
+bayonets for the purpose of promoting temperance, bought with money
+contributed by a man who was proprietor of a saloon and a gambling
+house, might perhaps confuse the ethics of the young soldiers? Why take
+the pains to urge that it was vain to lecture and march abstract virtues
+into them, so long as the "champion boodler" of the town was the man
+whom the boys recognized as a loyal and kindhearted friend, the
+public-spirited citizen, whom their fathers enthusiastically voted for,
+and their mothers called "the friend of the poor." As long as the actual
+and tangible success is thus embodied, marching whether in kindergartens
+or brigades, talking whether in clubs or classes, does little to change
+the code of ethics.
+
+The question of where does the money come from which is spent so
+successfully, does of course occur to many minds. The more primitive
+people accept the truthful statement of its sources without any shock to
+their moral sense. To their simple minds he gets it "from the rich" and,
+so long as he again gives it out to the poor as a true Robin Hood, with
+open hand, they have no objections to offer. Their ethics are quite
+honestly those of the merry-making foresters. The next less primitive
+people of the vicinage are quite willing to admit that he leads the
+"gang" in the city council, and sells out the city franchises; that he
+makes deals with the franchise-seeking companies; that he guarantees to
+steer dubious measures through the council, for which he demands liberal
+pay; that he is, in short, a successful "boodler." When, however, there
+is intellect enough to get this point of view, there is also enough to
+make the contention that this is universally done, that all the
+aldermen do it more or less successfully, but that the alderman of this
+particular ward is unique in being so generous; that such a state of
+affairs is to be deplored, of course; but that that is the way business
+is run, and we are fortunate when a kind-hearted man who is close to the
+people gets a large share of the spoils; that he serves franchised
+companies who employ men in the building and construction of their
+enterprises, and that they are bound in return to give work to his
+constituents. It is again the justification of stealing from the rich to
+give to the poor. Even when they are intelligent enough to complete the
+circle, and to see that the money comes, not from the pockets of the
+companies' agents, but from the street-car fares of people like
+themselves, it almost seems as if they would rather pay two cents more
+each time they ride than to give up the consciousness that they have a
+big, warm-hearted friend at court who will stand by them in an
+emergency. The sense of just dealing comes apparently much later than
+the desire for protection and indulgence. On the whole, the gifts and
+favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of genuine loving-kindness.
+The alderman is really elected because he is a good friend and neighbor.
+He is corrupt, of course, but he is not elected because he is corrupt,
+but rather in spite of it. His standard suits his constituents. He
+exemplifies and exaggerates the popular type of a good man. He has
+attained what his constituents secretly long for.
+
+At one end of the ward there is a street of good houses, familiarly
+called "Con Row." The term is perhaps quite unjustly used, but it is
+nevertheless universally applied, because many of these houses are
+occupied by professional office holders. This row is supposed to form a
+happy hunting-ground of the successful politician, where he can live in
+prosperity, and still maintain his vote and influence in the ward. It
+would be difficult to justly estimate the influence which this group of
+successful, prominent men, including the alderman who lives there, have
+had upon the ideals of the youth in the vicinity. The path which leads
+to riches and success, to civic prominence and honor, is the path of
+political corruption. We might compare this to the path laid out by
+Benjamin Franklin, who also secured all of these things, but told young
+men that they could be obtained only by strenuous effort and frugal
+living, by the cultivation of the mind, and the holding fast to
+righteousness; or, again, we might compare it to the ideals which were
+held up to the American youth fifty years ago, lower, to be sure, than
+the revolutionary ideal, but still fine and aspiring toward honorable
+dealing and careful living. They were told that the career of the
+self-made man was open to every American boy, if he worked hard and
+saved his money, improved his mind, and followed a steady ambition. The
+writer remembers that when she was ten years old, the village
+schoolmaster told his little flock, without any mitigating clauses,
+that Jay Gould had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by always
+saving bits of string, and that, as a result, every child in the village
+assiduously collected party-colored balls of twine. A bright Chicago boy
+might well draw the inference that the path of the corrupt politician
+not only leads to civic honors, but to the glories of benevolence and
+philanthropy. This lowering of standards, this setting of an ideal, is
+perhaps the worst of the situation, for, as we said in the first
+chapter, we determine ideals by our daily actions and decisions not only
+for ourselves, but largely for each other.
+
+We are all involved in this political corruption, and as members of the
+community stand indicted. This is the penalty of a democracy,--that we
+are bound to move forward or retrograde together. None of us can stand
+aside; our feet are mired in the same soil, and our lungs breathe the
+same air.
+
+That the alderman has much to do with setting the standard of life and
+desirable prosperity may be illustrated by the following incident:
+During one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew a poster
+representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne
+at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other
+revellers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, who sat
+upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a workingman's
+dinner-pail, and the passer-by was asked which type of representative he
+preferred, the presumption being that at least in a workingman's
+district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the chagrin of the
+reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular
+mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so
+desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a
+diamond in his shirt front. The district wished its representative "to
+stand up with the best of them," and certainly some of the constituents
+would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer. It is
+part of that general desire to appear well, the optimistic and
+thoroughly American belief, that even if a man is working with his hands
+to-day, he and his children will quite likely be in a better position in
+the swift coming to-morrow, and there is no need of being too closely
+associated with common working people. There is an honest absence of
+class consciousness, and a naive belief that the kind of occupation
+quite largely determines social position. This is doubtless exaggerated
+in a neighborhood of foreign people by the fact that as each nationality
+becomes more adapted to American conditions, the scale of its occupation
+rises. Fifty years ago in America "a Dutchman" was used as a term of
+reproach, meaning a man whose language was not understood, and who
+performed menial tasks, digging sewers and building railroad
+embankments. Later the Irish did the same work in the community, but as
+quickly as possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name
+"dago" is said to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman
+resigned to him. The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact.
+In a political speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly
+reproached the alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of
+sitting in an office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs"
+of sweeping the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise
+in life, to be at least politically represented by one of the best, as
+to occupation and social status, has also its negative side. We must
+remember that the imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and
+that the loss of social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps
+most dreaded by the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct,
+the power to give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but
+feebly developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, is
+afforded by the simple desire to do what others do, in order to share
+with them the approval of the community. Of course, the larger the
+number of people among whom an habitual mode of conduct obtains, the
+greater the constraint it puts upon the individual will. Thus it is that
+the political corruption of the city presses most heavily where it can
+be least resisted, and is most likely to be imitated.
+
+According to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are
+bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the
+water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant
+springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes
+from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not
+enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the
+discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The
+prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat
+with the "boss" politician or preserve his independence on a smaller
+income; but to an Italian day laborer it is a choice between obeying the
+commands of a political "boss" or practical starvation. Again, a more
+intelligent man may philosophize a little upon the present state of
+corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of our commercialism,
+from which we are bound to emerge; at any rate, he may give himself the
+solace of literature and ideals in other directions, but the more
+ignorant man who lives only in the narrow present has no such resource;
+slowly the conviction enters his mind that politics is a matter of
+favors and positions, that self-government means pleasing the "boss" and
+standing in with the "gang." This slowly acquired knowledge he hands on
+to his family. During the month of February his boy may come home from
+school with rather incoherent tales about Washington and Lincoln, and
+the father may for the moment be fired to tell of Garibaldi, but such
+talk is only periodic, and the long year round the fortunes of the
+entire family, down to the opportunity to earn food and shelter, depend
+upon the "boss."
+
+In a certain measure also, the opportunities for pleasure and recreation
+depend upon him. To use a former illustration, if a man happens to have
+a taste for gambling, if the slot machine affords him diversion, he goes
+to those houses which are protected by political influence. If he and
+his friends like to drop into a saloon after midnight, or even want to
+hear a little music while they drink together early in the evening, he
+is breaking the law when he indulges in either of them, and can only be
+exempt from arrest or fine because the great political machine is
+friendly to him and expects his allegiance in return.
+
+During the campaign, when it was found hard to secure enough local
+speakers of the moral tone which was desired, orators were imported from
+other parts of the town, from the so-called "better element." Suddenly
+it was rumored on all sides that, while the money and speakers for the
+reform candidate were coming from the swells, the money which was
+backing the corrupt alderman also came from a swell source; that the
+president of a street-car combination, for whom he performed constant
+offices in the city council, was ready to back him to the extent of
+fifty thousand dollars; that this president, too, was a good man, and
+sat in high places; that he had recently given a large sum of money to
+an educational institution and was therefore as philanthropic, not to
+say good and upright, as any man in town; that the corrupt alderman had
+the sanction of the highest authorities, and that the lecturers who were
+talking against corruption, and the selling and buying of franchises,
+were only the cranks, and not the solid business men who had developed
+and built up Chicago.
+
+All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development. If
+the so-called more enlightened members accept corporate gifts from the
+man who buys up the council, and the so-called less enlightened members
+accept individual gifts from the man who sells out the council, we
+surely must take our punishment together. There is the difference, of
+course, that in the first case we act collectively, and in the second
+case individually; but is the punishment which follows the first any
+lighter or less far-reaching in its consequences than the more obvious
+one which follows the second?
+
+Have our morals been so captured by commercialism, to use Mr. Chapman's
+generalization, that we do not see a moral dereliction when business or
+educational interests are served thereby, although we are still shocked
+when the saloon interest is thus served?
+
+The street-car company which declares that it is impossible to do
+business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral
+level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a
+saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal class, and
+questionable money with which to debauch his constituents. Both sets of
+men assume that the only appeal possible is along the line of
+self-interest. They frankly acknowledge money getting as their own
+motive power, and they believe in the cupidity of all the men whom they
+encounter. No attempt in either case is made to put forward the claims
+of the public, or to find a moral basis for action. As the corrupt
+politician assumes that public morality is impossible, so many business
+men become convinced that to pay tribute to the corrupt aldermen is on
+the whole cheaper than to have taxes too high; that it is better to pay
+exorbitant rates for franchises, than to be made unwilling partners in
+transportation experiments. Such men come to regard political reformers
+as a sort of monomaniac, who are not reasonable enough to see the
+necessity of the present arrangement which has slowly been evolved and
+developed, and upon which business is safely conducted. A reformer who
+really knew the people and their great human needs, who believed that
+it was the business of government to serve them, and who further
+recognized the educative power of a sense of responsibility, would
+possess a clew by which he might analyze the situation. He would find
+out what needs, which the alderman supplies, are legitimate ones which
+the city itself could undertake, in counter-distinction to those which
+pander to the lower instincts of the constituency. A mother who eats her
+Christmas turkey in a reverent spirit of thankfulness to the alderman
+who gave it to her, might be gradually brought to a genuine sense of
+appreciation and gratitude to the city which supplies her little
+children with a Kindergarten, or, to the Board of Health which properly
+placarded a case of scarlet-fever next door and spared her sleepless
+nights and wearing anxiety, as well as the money paid with such
+difficulty to the doctor and the druggist. The man who in his emotional
+gratitude almost kneels before his political friend who gets his boy out
+of jail, might be made to see the kindness and good sense of the city
+authorities who provided the boy with a playground and reading room,
+where he might spend his hours of idleness and restlessness, and through
+which his temptations to petty crime might be averted. A man who is
+grateful to the alderman who sees that his gambling and racing are not
+interfered with, might learn to feel loyal and responsible to the city
+which supplied him with a gymnasium and swimming tank where manly and
+well-conducted sports are possible. The voter who is eager to serve the
+alderman at all times, because the tenure of his job is dependent upon
+aldermanic favor, might find great relief and pleasure in working for
+the city in which his place was secured by a well-administered civil
+service law.
+
+After all, what the corrupt alderman demands from his followers and
+largely depends upon is a sense of loyalty, a standing-by the man who is
+good to you, who understands you, and who gets you out of trouble. All
+the social life of the voter from the time he was a little boy and
+played "craps" with his "own push," and not with some other "push," has
+been founded on this sense of loyalty and of standing in with his
+friends. Now that he is a man, he likes the sense of being inside a
+political organization, of being trusted with political gossip, of
+belonging to a set of fellows who understand things, and whose interests
+are being cared for by a strong friend in the city council itself. All
+this is perfectly legitimate, and all in the line of the development of
+a strong civic loyalty, if it were merely socialized and enlarged. Such
+a voter has already proceeded in the forward direction in so far as he
+has lost the sense of isolation, and has abandoned the conviction that
+city government does not touch his individual affairs. Even Mill claims
+that the social feelings of man, his desire to be at unity with his
+fellow-creatures, are the natural basis for morality, and he defines a
+man of high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an
+isolated individual, but as a part in a social organism.
+
+Upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure
+of civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that
+his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that
+they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied
+for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen
+into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual
+for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of
+life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the
+community, and rises into a sense of the common weal.
+
+In order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual
+needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important
+as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of
+self-interest. The demand should be universalized; in this process it
+would also become clarified, and the basis of our political organization
+become perforce social and ethical.
+
+Would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself,
+because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social
+development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made
+over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? The former at least
+are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express
+itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a
+whole.
+
+The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good
+citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to
+make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that
+curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous
+do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient,
+and that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to
+the self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly
+regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for
+the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences"
+singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand
+quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the
+surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are akin to that
+state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the
+eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have
+ever and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in
+revolt against the conventionalized good.
+
+The success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of
+administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly
+elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and
+selfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister
+to genuine social needs, through the political machinery, and at the
+same time to remodel that machinery so that it shall be adequate to its
+new task, is to encounter the inevitable discomfort of a transition into
+a new type of democratic relation. The perplexing experiences of the
+actual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own. The
+economist who treats the individual cases as mere data, and the social
+reformer who labors to make such cases impossible, solely because of the
+appeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they
+feel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth, working
+outward from within; before they can gain the exhilaration and uplift
+which comes when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into
+the forward intuitive movement of the mass. This general movement is not
+without its intellectual aspects, but it has to be transferred from the
+region of perception to that of emotion before it is really
+apprehended. The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional
+incentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of the
+perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great source of
+vitality.
+
+Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are
+attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises
+from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their
+efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are
+reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social
+conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression
+for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the
+sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but
+observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that
+a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with
+the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged
+to act upon our theory. A stirring appeal has lately been made by a
+recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that "It is insanity to
+expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. We arrive at moral
+knowledge only by tentative and observant practice. We learn how to
+apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the old and having
+found it to fail."
+
+This necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the
+undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those
+who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with
+the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that
+not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social
+morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often
+at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.
+
+The power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious
+mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible
+intelligence. In the range of individual morals, we have learned to
+distrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the
+world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. The result, as well as
+the process of virtues attained by repression, has become distasteful to
+us. When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the
+cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result
+may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over
+with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. In this effort
+toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that
+the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal
+achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in
+connection with the activity of the many.
+
+The cry of "Back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when
+we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of
+"Back to Christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows and
+believe in our common experiences as a preparation for a new moral
+struggle.
+
+As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it
+has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the
+curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the
+whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us
+whatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in
+"Master and Man." The former saves his servant from freezing, by
+protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled
+with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of
+which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living
+that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great
+multitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead
+understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and
+therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the
+misunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and
+all life's fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and
+Great Experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and
+forgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and its manifold
+experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX[1]
+
+
+Alderman, basis of his political success, 226, 228, 240, 243, 248, 267;
+  his influence on morals of the American boy, 251, 255, 256;
+  on standard of life, 257;
+  his power, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260;
+  his social duties, 234, 236, 243, 250.
+
+Art and the workingman, 219, 225.
+
+
+"Boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, 260, 266.
+
+Business college, the, 197.
+
+
+Charity, administration of, 14, 22;
+  neighborly relations in, 29, 230;
+  organized, 25;
+  standards in, 15, 27, 32, 38, 49, 58;
+  scientific _vs._ human relations in, 64.
+
+Child labor, premature work, 41, 188;
+  first laws concerning, 167, 170.
+
+City, responsibilities of, 266.
+
+Civil service law, its enforcement, 231, 233.
+
+Commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, 193.
+
+Commercialism and education, 190-199, 216;
+  morals captured by, 264;
+  polytechnic schools taken by, 202.
+
+Cooeperation, 153, 158.
+
+Cooper, Peter, 202.
+
+
+Dayton, Ohio, factory at, 216.
+
+Death and burials among simple people, 238.
+
+Domestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, 135;
+  industrial difficulty of, 106;
+  moral issues of, 106.
+
+
+Education, attempts at industrial, 201;
+  commercialism in, 196, 201;
+  in commercialism, 216;
+  in technical schools, 201;
+  lack of adaptation in, 199, 208, 212;
+  of industrial workers, 180, 193, 199, 219;
+  offset to overspecialization, 211;
+  public school and, 190, 192;
+  relation of, to the child, 180, 185, 193;
+  relation of, to the immigrant, 181-186;
+  university extension lectures and settlements, 199;
+  workingmen's lecture courses, 214.
+
+Educators, mistakes of, 212;
+  new demands on, 178, 192, 201, 211.
+
+
+Family claim, the, 4, 74, 78;
+  daughter's college education, 82;
+  employer's _vs._ domestic's, 123, 124;
+  on the daughter, 82;
+  on the son, _ibid._
+
+Family life, misconception of, 116.
+
+Filial relations, clash of moral codes, 94.
+
+Funerals, attitude of simple people toward, 238.
+
+
+Household employee, the, 108, 109;
+  character of, 112;
+  domestic _vs._ factory, 116, 118, 119, 122;
+  isolation of, 109, 111, 117, 120, 132;
+  morals of, 125;
+  unnatural relation of, 113, 120, 121, 126, 127;
+  unreasonable demands on, 113, 115;
+  residence clubs for, 133;
+  social position of, 114, 119, 122.
+
+Household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, 116;
+  reform of, in relation to employee, 126.
+
+Household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, 129;
+  competition of factory work with, 128;
+  difficulties of the small, 135;
+  industrial isolation of, 117;
+  industry of, transferred to factory, 104, 105;
+  lack of progress in, 117;
+  origin of, 104;
+  social _vs._ individual aspects of, 103;
+  suburban difficulties of, 134;
+  wages in, 131.
+
+Hull-house experiences, 43, 53, 58, 59, 240, 247.
+
+Human life, value of, 7, 178.
+
+
+Individual action _vs._ associated, 137, 153, 158;
+  advantages of, 158, 162;
+  limitations of, 165;
+  moral evolution involved in, 226.
+
+Individual _vs._ social needs, 155, 269.
+
+Individual _vs._ social virtues, 224, 227, 265.
+
+Italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, 229;
+  dependence of, on their children, 184;
+  education of, 185;
+  new conditions of life of, 181.
+
+
+Juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, 53-56, 187.
+
+
+Labor, division of, 210, 213;
+  reaction from, 215.
+
+Law and order, 172, 174, 234.
+
+
+Moral fact and moral idea, 227, 229, 273.
+
+Morality, natural basis of, 268;
+  personal and social, 6, 176, 103.
+
+
+Philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, 150, 155-157.
+
+Philanthropist, the, 154, 175-176.
+
+Political corruption, ethical development in, 270;
+  formation of reform clubs, 246;
+  greatest pressure of, 260;
+  individual and social aspect of, 264;
+  leniency in regard to, 239;
+  responsibility for, 256, 263;
+  selling of votes, 244-246;
+  street railway and saloon interest, 262.
+
+Political leaders, causes of success of, 224.
+
+Political standards, 228, 229, 251-253, 261;
+  compared with Benjamin Franklin's, 255.
+
+
+Referendum method, the, 164.
+
+Reformer, the, ethics of, 270.
+
+Reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, 222, 240, 262, 272, 274;
+  business men's attitude toward, 265.
+
+Rumford, Count, 117.
+
+Ruskin, 219.
+
+
+Saloon, the, 243, 264.
+
+Social claim, the, 4, 77;
+  child study and, 92, 180;
+  misplaced energy and, 90.
+
+Social virtues, code of employer, 143, 148;
+  code of laboring man, _ibid._
+
+
+Technical schools, 201;
+  adaptation of, to workingmen, 204;
+  compromises in, 203;
+  polytechnic institutions, 202;
+  textile schools, 203;
+  women in, _ibid._
+
+Thrift, individualism of, 31, 40, 212.
+
+Trades unions, 148, 158, 167, 169, 171;
+  sympathetic strikes, 174.
+
+
+Workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, 191, 258;
+  art in relation to, 218;
+  charity of, 154;
+  evening classes and social entertainment for, 189;
+  grievance of, 211;
+  historical perspective in the work of, _ibid._;
+  organizations of, 214;
+  standards for political candidate, 257.
+
+[Footnote 1: This index is not intended to be exhaustive.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams
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