Chapter C: C. Carstens (1)

VOCATIONS FOR GIRLS

By MARY A. LASELLE and KATHERINE WILEY. Introduction by Meyer
Bloomfield. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 139 pp. Price $.85; by mail of THE
SURVEY $.92.

This little volume is designed to be of service in assisting wage-earning girls to a wise and intelligent choice of a vocation and may be used as a reference or text book in the elementary grades, as well as furnish “advisory material” for those girls who continue in school after fourteen years of age.

The chief value of this book has been pointed out by Mr. Bloomfield; namely, that it is written by teachers who perhaps thus unconsciously express the prevailing discontent of the teacher alert to modern demands on education, and the reaching out of the hitherto secluded educator into the realities with which the child, unequipped, constantly struggles.

The material is attractively arranged, presented in a breezy, readable form, tinged with the spirit of sentiment, calculated to excite and hold the interest of the girl reader. It cannot fail to make the careless, irresponsible girl more thoughtful to untangle many perplexities for the troubled girl and to arouse ambition for personal efficiency in all girls who read it. The emphasis for gaining success is laid almost entirely upon personal efficiency. While the necessity cannot be made too clear to the girl—who is inclined to look upon her wage-earning life less as a profession than the boy—the book is disappointing in its almost total lack of recognition of the many failures in industry to meet the reasonable claims of efficiency. The absence of such information is prone to tempt the girl into industry sooner than there is financial need for her service, and does not protect her incentive or optimism, which protection is hoped for by the concealment of these facts. It is this feature which is too often damaging to the beneficial effect of many vocational bulletins published without an intimate and accurate knowledge of the trades discussed.

This setting forth of disadvantages as well as advantages has been most excellently done in another recent Boston publication, Survey of Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen Years, by Harriet Hazen Dodge. This pamphlet presents both sides of the question in a most helpful, concise and scientific form. The knowledge of the “disadvantages” is needful to the educator with whom will lie the decision as to the kind of trade or industry with which education can assist and co-operate in moulding the life of the child.

Vocations for Girls will be of assistance to the elementary teacher in providing an opportunity for intelligent contact with the girl worker, and suggestive material for further investigation as to the educative motive in trades and the benefit of the “occupative motive” in the girl pupil.

Little or no new information is given the sociological worker concerning specific lines of work for girls, or concerning her education for wage earning and home making.

The note of unquestioned recognition of the permanency of the girl’s wage-earning life which pervades every page of the book, is most welcome and all too urgently needed—both by girl and employer. But above all else, let me repeat that the book deserves a pioneer place in vocational literature, as one of the outward proofs of that which has long been felt,—that the destiny of the wage-earning child can be safely trusted to the keen interest, stimulating sympathy and sound judgment of his or her main dependence—the most potent of our social forces—the public school teacher.

MARY EDITH CAMPBELL.

GENETICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HEREDITY

By HERBERT EUGENE WALTER. 272 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY
$1.65.

Everyone interested in the modern problems of eugenics and the care of defectives will find much of value in this book. The author says: “An attempt has been made to summarize for the intelligent but uninitiated reader some of the more recent phases of the questions of heredity which are at present agitating the biological world.”

The book is an excellent statement of the present most generally accepted theory of heredity, with only as much reference to other theories as will enable the reader to see how modern theories have grown out of the old ones.

Much of the book is extremely interesting to anyone with the least beginning of a scientific mind. The incidents with regard to the various experiments by biologists are illuminating.

The author is fair and guarded in his statements on questions which are in dispute. Although there can be no doubt as to his own beliefs in such matters, for example, as the inheritance of acquired characters, yet he gives both sides of the question fairly. Some of the instances of experiments read like a romance. The story of Lamarck’s Evening Primrose as studied by De Vries is fascinating.

Of course, to the socially minded person, the most interesting part of the book is that which deals with its application to man, and the chapter on human conservation which takes up such topics as how mankind may be improved, control of immigration, discriminating marriage laws, educated sentiment, segregation of defectives, etc., is compelling and well worth study.

The text is illustrated by a large number of diagrams some of which, although simple to the student of biology, will require considerable study by the ordinary reader. On the whole, the book is a valuable contribution to our literature on heredity and will be of great service to those who, while unable to study eugenics exhaustively, still feel that they must know the general theories on the subject.

ALEXANDER JOHNSON.

MARRIAGE AND THE SEX PROBLEM

By DR. F. W. FOERSTER. Frederick A. Stokes Co. 225 pp. Price $1.35: by
mail of THE SURVEY $1.44.

This is a translation of a work entitled _Sexualethik und Sexualpadagogik_ by Dr. F. W. Foerster of Zürich, Switzerland. The translator supplies a brief statement of Foerster’s personal development and his final adoption of a positive ethical and religious philosophy akin to the new idealism of Prof. Rudolph Eucken. The book devotes considerable space to the theories of Ellen Key, Freud and Forel. On its positive side it advocates undeviating adherence to the traditional point of view in matters of sex and marriage. A somewhat pedantic touch results from the translator’s use of “ethic” in preference to the more familiar “ethics” as an equivalent for the German _Ethik_.

KATHARINE ANTHONY.

BEDROCK

By ANNIE L. DIGGS. The Social Center Publishing Co., Detroit. 70 pp.
Price $.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $.30.

Although, like Hayne’s famous speech on Foote’s resolution, this book shoots a passing reference at almost every topic of public affairs, it is in essence an argument for establishing an employment bureau in connection with every educational institution in the United States. The reasoning of the treatise, like its rhetoric, is thoroughly ill-digested. While the author has imagination enough to see the perfect beauty of a social adjustment which would provide a suitable occupation for every educated person, and an educated person for every occupation, she apparently relies on the sentimentality and good-heartedness of mankind to bring this about.

Her program for starting an employment bureau is to get a handful of men and women into a parlor and start one. The task of launching raw youngsters on their life-work is to be done at first by volunteers “whose imaginations are quickened by a longing to serve humanity.” The author is evidently unacquainted with the history of vocational guidance in Boston, which has emphasized above all else the need of full and scientific information about industry and individual aptitudes before placement is sparingly attempted. She says not a word about the age at which children are to be steered into jobs, and is apparently unfamiliar with recent investigations in New York, Cincinnati and Philadelphia, which have made it alarmingly probable that there are no positions in cities into which it is wise or safe to place children. She seems to accept as good, without discrimination, any and all attempts at vocational training, at the same time not realizing that such training should precede organized placement.

In a word, the book embodies nearly all of the fallacies and half-truths which make so difficult the progress of wise educational readjustment in this country at the present time. Mrs. Diggs describes herself as the chairman of the Department of Employment Bureaus of the National Social Center Association. It is to be hoped that if that organization ever addresses itself to active propaganda, it will not adopt Mrs. Diggs’ views on finding work for children.

WINTHROP D. LANE.

CATCH-MY-PAL

By REV. R. J. PATTERSON, LL.B. Geo. H. Doran Co. 192 pp. Price $1.00;
by mail of THE SURVEY $1.07.

The author, a Presbyterian minister, in the north of Ireland, catches enthusiasm from a Catholic priest, and a temperance movement of great significance results, enrolling 130,000 men in a year’s time, chiefly by the work of ex-drinkers for their former “pals.” The book is a glowingly Irish account of what has been a unique illustration of the power of sheer brotherhood, applied after the method of the Gospels and in the unconventional spirit of the Good Samaritan. The material given here is to be classed for significance in interpreting religious experience with two recent publications—Varieties of Religious Experience and Twice-Born Men.

Perhaps the core of the book is the conclusion phrased in words previously and independently used by Professor Horne: “Sometimes conviction leads to action.... Sometimes action leads to conviction.” The experience of the mystic seems incalculable; the religion of the Gospels and of this book reveal a constant, lawful and infinite power, a source of true miracle, latent until men take its challenge and by a brotherly act of will allow it to work its wonders through them. “All our attempts to save a man,” says Mr. Patterson, “should be made at the point where he understands.... [Jesus] began at the blind man’s eyes, at the lame man’s feet, at the deaf man’s ears, at the dumb man’s tongue.” This movement has given also another proof of the pressing necessity of social centers for men, equally attractive and unconventional as the saloon, and the author has interesting things to say about “Temperance saloons,” public opinion, and legislation.

J. F. BUSHNELL.

THE LIFE OF ELLEN H. RICHARDS

By CAROLINE L. HUNT. Whitcomb & Barrows. Boston. 328 pp. Price $1.50;
by mail of THE SURVEY $1.66.

CAROLA WOERISHOFFER, HER LIFE AND WORK

Bryn Mawr College, Class of 1907. 137 pp.

“The large, outgiving life” is a graphic phrase used by the biographer of Ellen H. Richards in introducing the story of her sixty-eight well-spent years. Mrs. Richards was a woman in whose nature the quality of acquisitiveness seems almost to have been omitted. She gave boundlessly of herself to individuals and to the common welfare. Her thoughtfulness for friends and associates and her notable public services were intrinsic forms of self-expression. Apparently, she was incapable of a perfunctory act. Her letters to friends, the gift for the coming baby, the “treat” for the girl student away from home for the first time, the pot of flowers sent to a new neighbor, her letters to “correspondence” students, her analysis of the water supply of the state of Massachusetts, her leadership in the home economics movement—all these things, from the least to the most important, were but the sincere expressions of her outpouring spirit.

Her impulse for service was re-enforced by a remarkable talent for administration. It was this which made possible the extraordinary generosity of her life. It was scientifically managed from the start. At the height of her career, as Miss Hunt remarks, Mrs. Richards was doing the work of ten people. Even as a little girl, Ellen Swallow had shown her capacity to carry on a triple career by helping her mother at home and her father in the “general store,” besides doing the lessons proper for a little girl. Later she combined teaching with housekeeping and storekeeping and helped to earn the money with which she went to college. During the greater part of her two years at Vassar, she supported herself by tutoring. From this time on, as student in the Boston Institute of Technology and subsequently as instructor, Mrs. Richards was steadily increasing the range of her energies and activities. The history of her life is the history of the inauguration of many social and scientific movements.

As a leader, she united to a marked degree the qualities of pioneer and conservator. To have been the first woman to enter the Institute of Technology and to have opened the way for other women was for her a life-long satisfaction. She was never weary in fighting the battle for the higher education of women. But she had also a strong instinct for sustaining the victory so hardly won. This is illustrated by a reproachful letter which she wrote to a woman friend, a college professor, who had fainted. “Take beef three times a day for a fortnight to tone yourself up,” she wrote, “and don’t do it again. It is fully as important to keep in physical condition as to have a mental grasp. Nowadays the last card they can trump up against us is that we are not physically equal to what we try to do. The more prominent we are the more closely they watch us. Just now, too, when so much is in the air against woman’s education.”

The volume is issued as a memorial and was prepared with the co-operation of Professor Richards and a committee of Mrs. Richards’ friends representing her various interests.

* * * * *

At the age of twenty-five, Ellen Swallow was just pulling herself free from the narrow life of a New England village and starting off to Vassar College. At the same age, Carola Woerishoffer, thanks to a more favorable environment and a more enlightened generation, had finished her college course and entered upon a well-established career of social service. When her gallant and useful life came to a tragical end in an automobile accident at this same age, she had already accomplished much that was worth recording.

A picture of her life and personality is given in a small memorial volume, which consists chiefly of a series of addresses made by personal friends at a meeting held in Greenwich House shortly after her death. In the descriptions of her friends, the girl’s devotion to athletics, her spirit of comradeship, her strong-willed nature, her democratic instincts, her German fondness for thoroughness and hatred of dilettantism, and her sense of social responsibility as the possessor of wealth are the qualities which are made to stand out as most representative of her.

The spirit in which her social work was done was thus described by one of the speakers: “She and another young woman, Elizabeth Butler, who also did immeasurably hard things and who also left us forever this summer—they undertook so simply the things that to us of my generation seemed a moral adventure, a wonderful undertaking,—these young women took them in such a matter-of-fact way. It did not seem to Carola an adventure to go into laundries any more than it did to Elizabeth Butler to go into the depths of blackest Pittsburgh. The things were there, and we had to know about them, and it was all matter-of-fact, just as it would have been for an able-bodied man to go and look at things and come back and tell the world what it bitterly needs to know about them. It was all matter-of-fact for them, and I believe they are forerunners of new generations of women who will insist in their youth on knowing life as it is, on facing the world clear-eyed and changing these things which we of my generation, in our youth, shirked and preferred not to know.”

KATHARINE ANTHONY.

BOOKS RECEIVED IN APRIL

A BUNCH OF LITTLE THIEVES. By David S. Greenberg. The Shakespeare
Press. 336 pp. Price $1.35; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.46.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM. By Allan L. Benson. B. W. Huebsch. 188 pp.
Price $1.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.10.

SYNDICALISM, INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM AND SOCIALISM. By John Spargo. B. W.
Huebsch. 243 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.35.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. By H. G. Wells. B. W. Huebsch. 61 pp.
Price $.60; by mail of THE SURVEY $.65.

THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE. By Karl Marx. Chas. H.
Kerr & Co. 160 pp. Price by mail of THE SURVEY $.50 (cloth), $.25
(paper).

SABOTAGE. By Emile Pouget. Chas. H. Kerr & Co. 108 pp. Price by mail
of THE SURVEY $.50 (cloth), $.25 (paper).

WAY STATIONS. By Elizabeth Robins. Dodd, Mead, & Co. 371 pp. Price
$1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.64.

THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS—WHO IS SHE? Dodd, Mead & Co. 76 pp. Price
$.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $.56.

DIVORCING LADY NICOTINE. By Henry Beach Needham. Forbes & Co. 70 pp.
Price $.35; by mail of THE SURVEY $.39.

THE MAN AND THE WOMAN. By Arthur L. Salmon. Forbes & Co. 145 pp. Price
$.75; by mail of THE SURVEY $.81.

WOMEN AS WORLD BUILDERS. By Floyd Dell. Forbes & Co. 104 pp. Price
$.75; by mail of THE SURVEY $.80.

THE HAPPY FAMILY. By Frank Swinnerton. Geo. H. Doran Co. 308 pp. Price
$1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.36.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. By Oliver Onions. Geo. H. Doran Co.
284 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.35.

GOLD, PRICES AND WAGES. By John A. Hobson. Geo. H. Doran Co. 178 pp.
Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.32.

FURTHER REMINISCENCES. By Henry Mayers Hyndman. The Macmillan Co. 545
pp. Price $5.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $5.20.

THE BRITANNICA YEAR BOOK, 1913. Edited by Hugh Chisholm, M. A., Oxon.
Encyclopedia Britannica Co. 1226 pp. Price $2.25; by mail of THE
SURVEY $2.40.

THE PHILIPPINE PROBLEM. By Frederick Chamberlain. Little, Brown & Co.
240 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.60.

WHEN TO SEND FOR THE DOCTOR. By F. E. Lippert, M.D., and A. Holmes,
Ph.D. J. B. Lippincott Co. 265 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE
SURVEY $1.34.

PRIMER OF PHYSIOLOGY. By John W. Ritchie. World Book Co. 250 pp. Price
$.80; by mail of THE SURVEY $.88.

FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. By P. A. Kropotkin. G. P. Putnam’s
Sons. 477 pp. Price $.75; by mail of THE SURVEY $.82.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT. By Oscar S. Strauss. The Century Co. 379 pp.
Price $2.00; by mail of THE SURVEY $2.15.

THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION IN FLORIDA. By William Watson Davis,
Ph.D. Longmans, Green & Co. 769 pp. Price $4.00; by mail of THE
SURVEY $4.23.

THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM. By William English Walling. The
Macmillan Co. 406 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.63.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL VALUE OF CHRISTIANITY. By George Chatterton-Hill,
Ph.D. The Macmillan Co. 285 pp. Price $2.75; by mail of THE SURVEY
$2.88.

CHRISTIAN UNITY AT WORK. Edited by Charles S. MacFarland. Federal
Council of Churches in America. 291 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of THE
SURVEY $1.15. A copy of the Business Proceedings of the Council is
sent, free of charge, with the book.

THE MODERN TREATMENT OF MENTAL DISEASES. Volume I. Edited by William
A. White, M.D. Lea and Febiger. 867 pp. Price $6.00; prepaid of THE
SURVEY $6.35.

TREND

LEADERS IN THE MONTH’S MAGAZINES

THE CASE OF LAURA SYLVIA. By Mary Vida Clark. _Outlook._ This is the
almost unbelievable story of the finding and rehabilitation of a
little savage child found living with savage people in the midst of
a prosperous farming community in the Hudson River Valley. Miss
Clark tells the story from her long experience in placing out work
of the State Charities Aid Association of New York. It is not an
unusual one, and her comment suggests the possibilities of neglected
and degenerate families in the cabin homes of the New England and
the southern mountains.

TIGER. By Witter Bynner, and STATE REGULATION OF VICE AND ITS MEANING.
By Anna Garlin Spencer. Both in the _Forum_. The first is a one act
play dealing with prostitution. A father, a patron, finds his
daughter a prisoner in a house of ill fame. “Painful and terrible”
says the editorial introduction, “as this may seem to some readers
it merely focuses, in dramatic form, the abominable realities to
which ‘civilized’ people have so long shut their eye publicly and
pharisaically; but to which, in tens of thousands of cases, they
have given vicious private and personal encouragement.”

Mrs. Spencer’s article is a careful historical study of state efforts
to deal with vice by regulation instead of abolition and to protect
monogamy by putting vice on a legal footing.

WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO DO. _World’s Work._ Thirty-five teachers in the
Washington Irving High School tell how they are trying in this model
New York school to “improve the human machine,” to “form character”
and to “perfect womanhood.”

THE COMING CITY. By John S. Gregory, and MY WORK FOR CRIPPLED
CHILDREN. By Blanche VanLeuvan Browne. Both in the _World’s Work_.
In the latter article a cripple woman tells with magnetic
simplicity, how, beginning only seven years ago with $6 in her
pocket, she has succeeded in building up a hospital-school for
cripples in Detroit.

The Coming City tells of the remarkable work of another single
individual, John Nolen, who has made more than twenty American
municipalities more convenient and more beautiful. It is the record
of “a rapidly growing national movement to correct the evils of
careless growth and to insure that the cities of the future shall be
definitely planned to serve and please their citizens.”

“CONSERVATION AS PRACTISED.” By Gifford Pinchot. _Pearson’s._ The
origin and purport of this important article is thus told by the
editor: It is written in answer to the article on conservation by
Edward H. Thomas, which was published in the January issue of this
magazine. Mr. Thomas’s article submitted that conservation in
principle was all right but that conservation in practice was
nowhere near the principle; that conservation as practised aids
monopoly instead of hindering it: and that the West, where
conservation is being practised, is getting sick of it.

Mr. Pinchot holds that conservation as practised is for the greatest
good of the greatest number. He asked for space in which to correct
what he held was a wrong impression on the minds of the magazine’s
readers. He answers Mr. Thomas, point by point.

THE COST OF MODERN SENTIMENT. By Agnes Repplier. _Atlantic._ This
writer on matters of culture and art for leisurely readers, a
vigorous defender of child labor on the stage on the ground of its
artistic value, has had it borne in upon her that human interests
are today arousing more and more public interest and emotion. Three
of these absorbing human issues are the progress of women, the
condition of labor and the social evil. Miss Repplier counsels
against the misdirecting of sentiment through incomplete knowledge.

* * * * *

The recall last month of a San Francisco municipal court judge, for setting so low a bail on a man charged with rape as to make it possible for him to escape trial by skipping bail, gives special interest to a recent article in _The Sunset Magazine_ by Miriam Michelson. This is an analysis of the dawning sense of responsibility of the women of a suffrage state toward the social evil:

Now this threatened recall of a police judge is undertaken, I should
say, not because the women believe this particular judge to be unique
in flagrant adherence to a police court system of leniency in
sex-crimes; not because they think him the worst of his type that San
Francisco has known; but because they consider him a type and because
they consider the police court system one that must be changed. This
recall presents something definite, something to do, which feminine
hands have been aching for.

Miss Michelson continues:

You may talk to women of the futility of figuring social sex sins, but
they seem to be congenitally incapable of believing you. I heard a man
talk to an audience in behalf of this measure, and when he touched
upon that old, old text—_it always has been; it always will be_—there
came a curious resemblance in every woman’s face within my vision; for
every face had hardened, stiffened, was marked with the family
likeness of rebellion. The lecturer was addressing himself to deaf
ears, to eyes determined not to see.

And this is at once the weakness and the strength of the new element
in elections. Those who have watched the ardor of the most eager and
high-minded reformers burn out in commissions, in barren resolutions
and recommendations, see in the average woman’s limitations that
power, that one-idead incapacity to look philosophically on both sides
of a question which marks Those Who Can Change Things. You may object
that such qualities produce a Carrie Nation. They do, but they also
make a Joan of Arc, a Harriet Beecher Stowe....

Her recently awakened realization of equality, the new broom that her
conscience is, revolts at a policy that establishes a municipal clinic
for women prostitutes, yet by a curious, cowardly subterfuge,
overlooks the male’s share in infection; as though the plague created
and disseminated in common could have but one source! And in addition
to all this, she is learning that when she is ready at last to attack
the vested, organized, recognized institution of prostitution, the
first result of her activities will mean greater misery and perhaps
speedier death for the woman who is already at the lowest point of the
social scale....

But over against this set this fact: There are seven hundred women in
San Francisco whose one aim in civic life is to found a State Training
School for girls gone wrong who would go right. This association has a
representative in Sacramento whose sole business it is to further a
bill for the establishment of a helping station for girls on the way
to usefulness and moral health, modeled upon similar establishments in
other states. Here is work, backed by thirty thousand club women of
the state, proceeding definitely, practically to a solution of one of
the most appalling obstacles to the crusade against vice.

This work of restoring the prostitute to decency and happiness is the side of woman’s work in the field of vice least developed; it is, however, a side which is most essential. Says Miss Michelson:

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

* * * * *

The following passages are from Cardinal O’Connell’s pastoral letter on the labor problem:

THE PROBLEM

The social problem of the relations between employers and employed
seems to be the one most fraught with danger to our peaceful living.

THE WORKMAN’S RIGHTS

The right of a man to provide for his family is a natural one. The
living wage which he has a right to demand is the one which will
maintain his family in decent and frugal comfort.

He may combine with others to enforce this right and form a union with
his fellow-workers to exert the adequate moral power to maintain it or
better his condition within the limit of justice.

The worker in the last resort has the right to refuse to work, that
is, to strike, and to induce by peaceful and lawful measures others to
strike with him.

PRINCIPLES GOVERNING EMPLOYERS

Capital has a right to a just share of the profits, but only to a just
share. Employers should treat those who work under them with humanity
and justice; they should be solicitous for the healthful conditions of
the place where workmen daily toil; they should use all reasonable
means to promote the material and moral well-being of their employes.

WARNING FOR RICH

Men with money should be careful to regard it as a means to do good
rather than an end. There is no double moral standard, no loophole of
escape from the sanctions which the moral law of Christ imposes. Men
of wealth should not buy that which is not sellable according to
Christian ethics.

WARNING FOR WORKMEN

Workers are just as much bound by the Christian law as their
employers. There is a disposition to regard work as an intolerable
burden to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible and with as little
effort as possible. This is contrary to Christian teaching.

This natural discontent is fomented and intensified by the noisy
agitators of Socialism, the enemies of God and man, who would overturn
the foundations upon which human society is built, and exile God from
His universe.

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

Another source of unrest among working people, and one against which
they should be warned, is the desire to give themselves over too much
to the pleasures of life.

* * * * *

Some of the tricks of the trade are described in the personal experiences of a saleswoman who writes in a recent number of the _Outlook_ on the wastes of retailing. A serious element of waste arises she maintains from downright dishonesty practised in unnamed establishments:

The management cheats the public through the employes, and logically
the employes turn about and cheat the management, and in either event
the public pays the bills.... A cheese is cut into pieces weighing
about a pound each, and all are sold within an hour under four
different names and at four different prices. Canned peas which cost
ninety cents a dozen are sold at nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
and fifteen cents a can—all the same grade. The jobber was willing to
put different labels on the same goods because he had an order for two
carloads.

“Don’t want that pie; want your money back?” said Willie. “How much
was it? Seven cents? I thought so. What do you expect? The
higher-priced ones were beside it. If you want good stuff, why don’t
you pay for it?”

Later I asked Willie what the difference was between the seven and the
twelve-cent prune pie, and he told me that the stones were taken out
of the twelve and put into the seven-cent lot. I counted the stones or
pits in the pie that the angry woman returned. There were forty-three.

COMMUNICATIONS

THE WEST VIRGINIA COAL STRIKE

TO THE EDITOR:

I read with much interest the article by Mr. West in the April 5 number of THE SURVEY and I must raise my voice in protest against taking Mr. West too seriously. I have lived with the miners of West Virginia for the past four years and have made a pretty thorough study of the entire situation.

It is perhaps hardly to be expected that a newspaper reporter visiting the field during the struggle would get an unbiased view of the situation.

No one who is conversant with the situation would deny that there are two sides to the fight and that both have made their mistakes. The question of union or non-union has little to do with it. The worst living and working conditions are to be found in some of the union settlements along the Kanawha river; perhaps there are some equally bad ones in non-union fields. The best working and living conditions of West Virginia are found in non-union fields. Yet, I do not wish to be understood as arguing against unions, as I do not believe that the union question has much bearing on the real conditions.

It is simply the character of the operators and the men themselves that determines the conditions of any mining settlement. There is much mis-understanding and mis-information among the men themselves.

Mr. West mentions the company stores as being a source of contention. Now, it is true that in some of the stores some articles are priced too high, but, on the other hand, men are often mis-informed as to prices in other places. To illustrate, in the early days of the strike a miner on Cabin Creek told me he was paying $1.20 per bushel for potatoes at the company store that could be bought in Charleston for $.60. The next day I was in Charleston and meeting a farmer on the street, selling his own product, I learned that the price was $.30 per peck. My miner friend therefore had jumped at a conclusion that the facts would not justify, and yet that same man could, by this mis-information, stir up much dissatisfaction.

When I lived in Charleston, I used frequently to buy meat at the company store and take it home, a distance of thirty miles, because I could buy it from three to five cents per pound cheaper than in Charleston. On the other hand, I saw in two different stores in another district, bedsteads marked $7, the exact counterpart of which I have bought myself in Charleston for $4.50. Such a profit as this certainly is not justifiable. Taken all in all, the prices on necessities do not vary to any great extent between the company and the independent stores when one considers the additional cost of transportation.

Nothing is more dangerous than truth and error mixed. Mr. West says the operators have a larger number of men than they can make use of at each operation and that the reason of this is that they may have their houses filled. The real fact is that nearly every operation must have from 20 to 30 per cent more men than are needed in order to run the mine to the full capacity, as about that proportion will lay off work each day. I have tried to find the reason for this and have been told repeatedly by the miners themselves that since they could earn enough money in four or five days to support themselves for a week they could see no reason why they should work every day.

The “guard system” is certainly not an ideal one. Neither are all of the men serving as guards ideal citizens. They certainly have been guilty of many of the abuses which might be expected from so much authority with so little responsibility to the state. But there must be some method of policing the mining districts. Thus far the state and county have failed to provide police facilities, and an “absentee” police system would make crime easy to commit in such a country. Thus far, there has been no improvement suggested by those who are leading this insurrection.

In regard to the housing, if Mr. West or any one else could build one of the four room cottages at a labor expense of $40., or even twice that, he would be in great demand as a contractor for house building. Moreover, any operator would be glad to get his houses built at a net expense of twice the figures given by Mr. West. One needs only to visit the houses vacated by miners to convince himself that the 10 per cent income on the actual investment will hardly pay for repairs. The average miner is not at all careful as to where he collects his kindling wood. I have seen many houses with from one to four doors and perhaps a quarter of the ceiling missing, having been used for this domestic purpose.

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

My sympathy is with the miner whose work is dangerous and who should have every consideration consistent with good order and business conditions. There is no calling which requires so little investment on the part of the worker that brings such returns in money. Any miner in the Cabin Creek or Paint Creek field who is willing to work steadily can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 per day and many earn more than this clear. The real difficulty with these men is that they need education and training as to how to care for their money after it has been earned. It is true that there are many days when the mines cannot run owing to breakdowns or lack of sufficient cars in which to load the coal. This latter reason is especially frequent in some sections.

I have hardly touched the subject but I do hope this matter will be thoroughly investigated and I personally believe no person is more anxious for a federal investigation than the operator himself, although Mr. West says the operators oppose such an investigation.

IRA D. SHAW.

[Industrial Department, the International Committee of the Young Men’s
Christian Association.]

Pittsburgh.

* * * * *

TO THE EDITOR:

I went to the strike district unprejudiced. My instructions were to tell the truth about the situation. I did so to the best of my ability. I believe I was fair. In my article in THE SURVEY I simply told what I saw in the mines. I believe such conditions as exist there are brutalizing in the extreme. I believe they are responsible for much of the lawlessness that exists throughout West Virginia.

In regard to the cost of the houses, I was told in the mines by a well informed man that the labor cost on a certain set of the cottages erected some years before had been $40 each. That is not at all unreasonable. Two carpenters at $2.50 a day each could build one of them in eight days. As I happen to be somewhat familiar with building operations I am confident that my figures are not out of the way, especially when you consider that the land on which the buildings stand cost little or nothing. The expense for lumber was only the cost of sawing the timber already at hand, plus the cost of window frames and doors, bricks for the chimneys, composition roofing and the little hardware required.

It is true that some of the things sold in the company stores are sold at prices no higher than those which prevail in Charleston. Some of the prices may even be lower. That is really not the point. It is the fact that men are compelled, by one means or another, to deal at the company stores. That has always been a grievance among miners. I reported the Frostburg strike in the George’s Creek region of Maryland twenty years ago for the _Baltimore Sun_. While the conditions there were ideal as compared with those now existing in the Kanawha valley, the company store was one of the greatest grievances of the men.

I stand by what I have said about the crowding of the mines and the mine guard system. I know the miners are not all they should be, but they are not to be measured by the standards among men whose opportunities have been greater. Theirs is a skilled occupation and a dangerous one. Yet they have few if any of the advantages of the men of other skilled occupations and live under conditions that are oppressive and brutalizing. The stock argument that they can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 a day if they work steadily is idle. No set of men who could earn from $18 to $36 a week would live under such conditions as prevail in the mines. Mr. Shaw says there is no calling which requires so little investment on the part of the worker that has such returns in money. That is a very broad statement. Investment in what, in tools or in time spent in learning the trade? How about the bricklayer, the Belgian block paver, the stone-mason, the plasterer or any one of a dozen trades that might be mentioned?

As for the desire of the operators for an investigation. I stated that the operators opposed such an investigation. Mr. Shaw has his _belief_ that the operators would welcome one. I have the statement of the representative of the operators that they would oppose any investigation, state or federal, because of “its unsettling effect on the men.” And the letter of the operators opposing an investigation on the part of the state, proposed by the then Governor Classcock, and refusing to become a party to it, is on file among the records in the capitol of West Virginia.

My statements were conservative and most of them even at this late date are susceptible of proof by any commission of investigation. Finally it is up to the SURVEY readers whether they take the article seriously or not. If the criticisms of Mr. Shaw are the most serious that can be brought against my article, I do not fear that my reputation for accuracy will be greatly damaged.

HAROLD E. WEST.

[Staff of the _Baltimore Sun_.]

Baltimore.

THE SHOPPERS’ PUZZLE

TO THE EDITOR:

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

The one thing which is not heard from such employers in discussing the question is that Saturday is the day when clerks most need a respite, especially in cities where it is not only the weariest day, but the longest.

Has it occurred to the St. Louis League that the day of heaviest trade bears some relation to advertising? Their reactionary firm probably makes an advertising feature of Saturday bargain sales. This firm ought to realize that in cities where the Saturday half-holiday is most general and successful the Saturday trade has not been lost but has been readjusted by a shift of bargain sales to other days.

The argument based on the working-men’s need has a semblance of truth and might have more if the early closing were for more than the eight or nine Saturdays of July and August. Most working-men can arrange to do necessary shopping at some other time for those few weeks. Many of them in trades which have the eight hour day have the hour from five to six, in addition to the noon-hour daily—and in the case of family-buying there is the wife who is the natural shopper. When the matter came up in Syracuse labor leaders assured the Consumers’ League that the argument had no real basis.

Let us hope that the Consumers’ League of St. Louis may be able to convince its reactionary firm that the approval and consequent patronage of the public the year round is worth as much as its trade in men’s furnishings on Saturday afternoons of July and August.

EMILY LOVETT EATON.

[President Consumers’ League of Syracuse.]

Syracuse, N. Y.

* * * * *

TO THE EDITOR:

It has always been a puzzle to me why the weekly half holiday, so strongly advocated for store and factory workers, should be Saturday rather than a mid-week afternoon and why all the stores in any city should close on the same afternoon.

Half the number closed on Wednesday, the others closed on Thursday afternoons would necessitate a change in pay day, possibly in positions where members of the same family work in different stores. Open stores on Saturday afternoon ought to be a help to the class of people who never have anything ahead, to keep the Sunday ordinances.

S. P. QUIGLEY.

Ovid Center, N. Y.

* * * * *

TO THE EDITOR:

THE SURVEY of March 29 printed a letter from me telling of a problem with regard to Saturday afternoon summer closing. A St. Louis department store (one of a chain of stores established in various cities under one firm) kept open all last summer on Saturday afternoons. The president of the corporation told representatives of the Consumers’ League that the stock-holders would never consent to Saturday closing because a great bulk of business was done in the men’s furnishing department at this time, the only time men have for shopping.

A few weeks ago the Consumers’ League laid their problem before the Central Council of Social Agencies. The trades unions sent the firm word of their objection to the custom of remaining open Saturday afternoons during the summer months. The Retailers’ Association added their protest.

A committee from the Central Council called on the corporation president. He gave this committee the same negative answer that the Consumers’ League Committee had received. But the dismissal was not final. Soon he sent for the Central Council Committee to return. He gave them the news that the store would close Saturday afternoons during the summer months, as is the custom of all other large St. Louis department stores. He said that the firm had always done all in its power for its employes and, as it was agreed that keeping open Saturday afternoons was not consistent with the best welfare of the employes, the store would close at that time. Of course the contention that closing Saturday afternoons would deprive men of their shopping time and would only increase night shopping remains unanswered.

At any rate, the fear that other department stores might follow the example set by this particular one is banished.

ALTHEA SOMERVILLE GROSSMAN.

St. Louis.

* * * * *

SEX HYGIENE LECTURES

TO THE EDITOR:

In the health section of your issue for April 19, the writer saw your article on Courses on Sex Hygiene. Considering the fact that these lectures were given expressly for social workers, it was surprising to learn that only the first few were well attended. If there is any subject demanding the attention of social workers, it surely is this most important one.

About eighteen months ago a young woman, a member of the Factory Committee of the Wolf Company’s plant, incidentally mentioned the interest taken in a series of lectures on this subject given to members of a girls’ club in one of the main social houses on the East Side. The question of giving these lectures was immediately taken up with the management, with the result that four series of four lectures each were given to about 175 employes. This was the first time that many of these workers had the opportunity of learning, in a dignified and instructive manner, the interesting story of reproduction.

The lectures were given by Nellie M. Smith whose book containing these talks, The Three Gifts of Life[1] has recently been published, and many of those who attended the lectures purchased copies of this volume with the intention of giving them to their mothers or younger sisters to read.

Footnote 1:

The Three Gifts of Life. By Nellie M. Smith. Dodd, Mead & Co. 138 pp.
Price $.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $.56.

These same lecturers are now being given by a large industrial corporation in this city which is always ready to investigate thoroughly, any work that makes for the betterment of the life of its workers. Furthermore, the question of giving these lectures to six other manufacturing establishments is now being seriously considered.

It might be well to mention that these lectures were merely announced to the workers and in no case was attendance compulsory. They were given without charge during regular working hours.

Our workers have surely benefited by the knowledge gained through this course and the writer trusts that many other manufacturing concerns will give this matter serious thought. It is an established fact that the worker cannot get full production from any power machine unless the human machinery is properly cared for, and but few persons thoroughly understand how to best care for themselves.

W. IRVING WOLF.

New York City.

SEGREGATING VICE

TO THE EDITOR:

It is not a little curious that in all the agitation on the vice question no one has suggested what has always seemed to me the evident solution of the whole matter. Without a second thought, if there were no men there would be no prostitutes; the men are the sole and only source of the whole evil. I am aware that segregation has its drawbacks. It does stimulate clandestine prostitution. It has the fault of legalizing a shameful business. Also under our present conditions it supplies an opportunity for graft. But overruling all these disadvantages is the fact that it facilitates the catching of the men. This is impossible in hotels and apartment houses, but if men found frequenting the segregated district were seized and submitted to compulsory examination, it would only be the blatant sinners who would ever run the risk, and the number of such customers would be greatly reduced.

This suggestion may appear Utopian, for do not the originators of prostitution themselves make the laws? However, there now seems some chance of the public conscience, male and female, being widely aroused and it is possible that the originators of the whole evil may not escape the dragnet.

H. MARTYN HART.

Denver.

* * * * *

SEX HYGIENE AND YOUNG PEOPLE

TO THE EDITOR:

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

The average boy of eighteen cannot think of marriage for economic reasons, but his nature craves action, and under these ever-present influences he comes to believe that the perfect “good time” is sex indulgence—and he will exercise all his ingenuity, when with a girl, to attain his goal. No one, who is not in the confidences of young people, has the least idea of the pressure thus brought to bear on girls. The girl finds it necessary in order to hold a boy’s attention, with the amusements and companionship that goes with it, to do as he wants; many girls fall through their perfectly natural desire for healthful recreation which they can get more plentifully by giving in—or through a sentimental desire to retain the favor of boys who are satisfied with nothing short of intercourse.

The ultimate remedy must be to put against this “prevailing spirit of the times” a powerful combatting influence, which will establish in our boys a high ideal of womanhood and marriage.

E. C. S.

Swissvale, Pa.

FREE ACRES COLONY

TO THE EDITOR:

Many persons interested in social betterment work, have written to me enquiring about the Free Acres Colony at Berkeley Heights, N. J.

If you can get along without gas and a janitor and plumbing and a land lord and other modern improvements, you can build your own one room tent-shaped bungalow for $40 there, and make your own clothes and be as respected as you are respectable. Later, you may make it your residence. Any handy man or woman might make a living chopping wood, or gardening, and so forth, and no one there will either give you anything or try to take anything away from you; for in this co-operative land-ownership there is no speculative element.

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

BOLTON HALL.

New York City.

* * * * *

THE BALKAN WAR AND ARMENIA

TO THE EDITOR:

In 1908 when, after a revolution, Turkey proclaimed a constitutional government someone had to pay the penalty for the disturbance. As usual the Armenians paid it with the massacre of 25,000 Christians at Adana. Now that the Turk is being driven out of Europe upon whom is his wrath going to fall?