t il!l!!: 4h mi& GOVERNOR CHARLES H. BROUGH RETIRING PRESIDENT DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS 1916-1918 EDITED BY JAMES E. McCULLOCH SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS WASHINGTON. D. C. 1918 THIS BOOK )S NOT COPYRIGHTED It is published For the benefit of the public. Speakers and writers are requested to aid in its propaganda by using such matter as suits their purpose, giving proper credit to THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS Press of Benson Printini; Company Nashville, Tenn. 1 /9/r BISHOP THEODORE D. BRATTON PRESIDENT INTRODUCTORY NOTE Owing to the unusual conditions prevailing during the period of the war, the Southern Sociological Congress did not issue a report in 1916 and 1917. From the many papers k2 - read at the last three conventions, the editor has tried to «^ select, impartially, those which, combined in one volume of K this size, would express most satisfactorily the ideals and g work that the Congress desires at present to emphasize. 3 The exclusion of any paper should not be taken to signify that it is lacking in general merit. 5? In order to make this volume as popular as possible and c3 to keep the price within the membership fee of three dollars, o the Governing Board ordered that the ever-increasing list of members be omitted from this report. Inasmuch as no report was issued during the two years 3 that Governor Brough was President, his photograph g appears in the frontispiece of this book, together with that o of the present President, Bishop Bratton. uj The Constitution as revised at Blue Ridge in 1917 is ^ printed for the first time herein. < The Editor. Washington, D. C, December 8 1918. 443B58 CONTENTS PAGE Portrait of Governor Charles H. Brough, Retiring President of the Congress. Portrait of Bishop Theodore D. Bratton, President of the Congress. Introductory Note 3 I. Preliminary 9-40 The Great Commandment 10 Greetings from President Wilson 11 The Program of the Southera Sociological Congress. . . 12 Oscar Bowling, M.D. The Objective of the Congress 13 Governor C. H. Brough, Ph.D. The Task of Good Citizenship 15 Samuel P. Brooks, LL.D. The Present Task of the Southern Sociological Congress 23 Chairman Albert Sidney Johnstone A Challenge to the New Chivalry 26 Secretary J. E. McCulloch. II. America's Fight for Democracy 41-86 The Challenge of the Congress 42 The Necessity of America's Part in the War 43 Professor J. A. B. Shearer The Call from the Firing Line 48 Hon. Albert Sidney Johnson, M.C. America's Answer to the German Challenge 54 Stockton Axson, Litt.D. The Moral Causes of the War 62 Rev. Charles S. Macfarland, D.D., Ph.D. The Moral Aims of the War 73 Rev. Frederick Lynch, D.D. America — Peacemaker or Pacemaker? 76 Charles Zueblin, Ph.D. The Problem of War and the Program of the Leag^ue to Enforce Peace 79 Frank J. Klingberg, Ph.D. III. Health for All 87-178 Healthgrams ; 88 The State as the Guardian of Public Health 89 Seale Harris, M.D. Some Objections to the Fee System in the Practice of Medicine 95 Robert S. Hyer, A.M., LL.D. Some Evils of Self-Medication 102 Isadore Dyer, M.D. DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST PAGE The Marriage Health Certificate 107 Oscar Dowling, M.D. Maintaining a Proper Bacteriological and Chemical Standard for Drinking Water 113 W. H. Seemann, M.D. The Evolution of the Trained Nurse 117 Miss Mary M. Riddle, R.N. Housing in Preventing Disease 125 R. S. Creel, M.D. Protection Against Bad Air 132 Hon. Charles Saville The Prevention of Blindness 139 Hon, John E. Ray Treatment of the Insane Outside of Hospitals 145 J. H. Fox, M.D. Prevalence and Prevention of Malaria 151 R. H. Von Ezdorf, M.D. The Fight Against Tuberculosis 155 C. J. Hatfield, M.D. The Mortality from Cancer in the Southern States... 158 Frederick L. Hoffman, M.D. The Peril of Venereal Diseases. . .'. 168 William F. Snow, M. D. Keening the Soldier Fit to Fight 174 Major Bascom Johnson IV. Justice for All 179-206 The Program of the Master Workman 180 Vitalizing the Law 181 Judge W. B. Turner Mob Violence— An Enemy of Both Races 185 W. O. Scroggs, Ph.D. The Causes, Consequences, and Cure of Mob Violence. . 191 Charles M. Bishop, D.D. Race Distinctions Versus Race Discriminations 201 Judge Gilbei't T. Stephenson V. Work for All 207-242 A Creed and a Crusade 208 Letter from Hon. W. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor. . . 209 Labor Values Destroyed by Disease 211 Josiah Morse, Ph.D. The Duty of Southern Labor During the War 219 President Robert R. Moton Labor's Challenge to Democracy 229 Hon. P'rank Morrison An Open Door to Industry on the Basis of Efficiency. . . 234 Bishop Theodore D. Bratton, D.D., LL.D. VI. The Child, the Woman, and the Future Nation. . . .243-278 The Cry of the Children 244 The Modem Orphanage in the South 245 Rev. M. L. Kesler, D.D. CONTENTS 7 PAGE The School as a Focus of Disease 251 Professor E. Godbold Responsibility for Health in Public Schools 257 Mrs. Helena Holley Teaching Health in the Public Schools 262 Professor James P. Faulkner The Child and Heredity 2G9 Rev. Richard W. Hogue, D.D. VII. Life More Abundant for All 279-294 The New Era 280 The Abolition of Poverty 281 Rabbi Rudolph I. Coffee, Ph.D. The Value of the Social Worker to the Community at Large 284 Mr. Charles H. Patterson Work for the Handicapped 287 Miss Elizabeth Oilman Policemen as Welfare Workers 290 Commissioner D. Hiden Ramsey VIII. Temperance for the Self-Governed 295-316 The Great Enemy of Labor 296 Alcohol's Health Toll 297 Miss Carolyn Geisel, M.D. Sociological Aspects of the Alcoholic Problem 305 T. D. Crothers, M.D. Some Phases of the World-Wide Prohibition Movement and Its Relation to Christian Citizenship 314 Hon, E. H. Cherrington IX. Negro Welfare and Race Relations 317-374 The Social Program of the Congress 318 Introductory Statement at Race Relations Section.... 319 James H. Dillard, D.Litt., LL.D. The Religious Life of the Negi'o and Its Bearing on Health 321 Professor W. H. Holloway The Negro Church as the Guardian of Public Health . . . 328 Rev. Richard Carroll, D.D. The Negro Home and the Future of the Race 334 Mrs. Booker T. Washington Secret Societies as Factors in the Social and Economic .—^ Life of the Negro [ 342 / Professor Monroe N. Work ^"-^ 111 Health, Narcotics, and Lawlessness Among Negroes 350 Hon. J. L. Sutton The Play Life of Negro Boys and Girls 353 Rev. A. M. Trawick Housing and Community Health Among Negroes 362 Fayette A. McKenzie, Ph.D. \^ ; DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST PAGE What Can the Church Do to Promote Good Will Between the Races? 366 Bishop George W. Clinton, D.D. Righting Racial Wrongs and Making Democracy Safe. 372 Dean W. F. Tillett X, The Church Efficient in Saving Life 375-408 What of the Church? 376 The Minister as a Health Propagandist 377 Professor Charles S. Gardner, D.D. The Point of Explosion Between the Spiritual and the Economic 382 Rev. F. M. Crouch The Preacher and Physician Yokefellows in the Health Campaign 389 Professor J. L. Kesler, Ph.D. The Church as the Conserver of Human Life 395 Father John D. Foulkes The Country Church and Human Life More Abundant 399 Rev. J. A. Hornbeck The Church Organized for Social Efficiency 404 Rev. Warren H. Wilson, D.D., Ph.D. XL Organization 409 Organization of the Congress 410 Constitution and By-Laws of the Southern Sociolog- ical Congress 411 Index to Speakers, Writers, and Officers 414 Index to Subjects 415 I. PRELIMINARY. The Great Commandment Greetings from President Wilson The Program of the Southern Sociological Congress The Objective of the Congress The Task of Good Citizenship The Present Task of the Southern Sociological Con- gress A Challenge to the New Chivalry THE GREAT COMMANDMENT A STUDENT of the Law came forward to test Jesus with a question. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do if I am to 'gain immortal life'?" "What is said in the Law?" answered Jesus. "What do you read there?" His reply was : "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy fellow man as much as thyself." "You have answered right," said Jesus; "do that, and you shall live." But the man, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus: "But what is meant by my 'fellow man'?" Jesus replied : "A man was once going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him of everything and beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. As it chanced, a priest was going down by that road. He saw the man, but passed by on the other side. A Levite, too, did the same: he came up to the spot, but, when he saw the man, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, traveling that way, came upon the man, and, when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, dressing them with oil and wine, and then put him on his own mule, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out four shillings and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Take care of him,' he said, 'and whatever more you may spend I will myself repay you on my way back.' Now which of those three men," asked Jesus, "seems to you to have acted like a fellow man to him who fell into the robbers' hands?" "The one that took pity on him," was the answer. "Go," said Jesus, "and do the same yourself." Qreetings , from PRESIDENT WILSON Will you not be kind enough to convey my warm personal greetings to th« Southern Sociological Congress And express my very sincere intere^ in the important conferences it is holding and my confident hope that the be^ sort of co-operation in the great common aims of the country at this time may issue from these conferences? THE PROGRAM OF THE CONGRESS OSCAR DOWLING, M.D., PRESIDENT OF LOUISIANA STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, NEW ORLEANS, LA. Eight j^ears ago one winter's evening in the home of an Alabama friend I outlined a dream of an organi- zation which would correlate and coordinate the activi- ties of social, medical, and philanthropic organizations. My friends listened, but condemned the dream as too Utopian for a practical age. Perhaps during that same winter in the library of a Nashville home the same idea was taking form. And now it is here in fulfill- ment, a working organization, thrilling with life and high and noble purposes because a generous, philan- thropic, and Utopian-minded patriot believed it a prac- tical, constructive plan fraught with tremendous im- port to human welfare. The program of the Southern Sociological Congress comprehends constructive activities in twelve problems pertinent to social conditions. Prevention and protec- tion are its watchwords — prevention of vice, crime, disease, and moral degradation, and protection of the weak, ignorant, defective, and those who from racial disability are unable to help themselves — these are the principles of its creed. To attain its purposes the Congress invites, even urges, all organized bodies of men and women engaged in the service of humanity to unite in one great band, a coordinating group, each a help and an inspiration to the other, and all working toward the end that social evils may be eliminated and social good substituted. THE OBJECTIVE OF THE CONGRESS HON. C. H. BROUGH, PH.D., GOVERNOR OF ARKANSAS AND EX- PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS The Southern Sociological Congress, with approximately three thousand members representing the best thought of the New South, has a very definite mission to perform, that of awakening a higher sense of civic consciousness throughout the length and breadth of our Southland, preach- ing the crusade of the new chivalry of health and sanity in dealing with every vital problem of civic and social welfare, and supplementing the "pew religion" of the different creeds represented by the "do religion" of twentieth-cen- tury efficiency. If the motto of the eighteenth century was liberty, and that of the nineteenth equality, then the motto of the twentieth century is certainly service. "What language did Christ speak? O sages, leave your Syriac and your Greek, For each heart holds the answer that you seek: Christ spoke the universal language — love." The Southern Sociological Congress is translating mod- em life and progress in terms of love. It is seeking to solve modern social problems in the light of love, and it is her- alding a new chivalry of love rather than the ancient chiv- alry that "might makes right and strength is triumphant." Its noble Foundress, Mrs. Anna Russell Cole, of Nashville, Tenn., its splendid Secretary, Mr. J. E. McCulloch, its great Presidents, who have held positions of great educational and official responsibility, and its consecrated membership have all been animated through the five years of its eventful and useful history by the ideal that has reverberated down the aisles of the ages, "We are our brother's keeper." Whether it be a study of the race problem in the spirit of the Man of Galilee; or the study of the problem of the dependents, the defectives, and delinquents, who demand of statesmen and economists their wisest thought and most careful treat- ment ; or the study of our great industrial problem, with its forty million workers in the United States of America; 14 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST or a scientific study of the effects of alcoholism, apart from political prejudice and factional bickerings, upon the physi- cal, mental, and moral constitution, causing as it does 25 per cent of our poverty, 37 per cent of our pauperism, and 80 per cent of our crime, and demanding each year its tribute of American young men, even as the Minotaur of Crete demanded each year its tribute of Athenian maidens; or a study of the far-reaching problems of health by experts, who tell us that forty per cent of our diseases are preventa- ble, that the economic wastage of sickness in our country amounts to the tremendous total of $1,250,000,000 each year, and that from 600,000 to 1,000,000 in the South alone have chills and fevers each year due to unsanitary conditions which germinate the carriers of disease, that the hookworm, pellagra, trachoma, and cancer are destined to become as dreadful scourges as tuberculosis unless mastered by pre- ventive rather than corrective medicine, that a large per cent of the $500,000,000 spent by the American people on medicines each year is wasted on quack nostrums, contain- ing frequently a high percentage of alcohol as an artificial tonic, that the loss of nine days in each working year by each of the 40,000,000 laborers of the United States could be materially reduced by shorter working hours, better wages, and more sanitary working conditions; or whether our Congress is seeking to better educational conditions in the South, six of whose States rank below the fortieth mark among the forty-eight States — this band of searchers after the truth, these social engineers and statesmen of the South, are exemplifying the divine law and promise, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall m.ake you free." We are going out as missionaries to the living, not to the dying, believing that social consciousness is as spiritual as individual con- sciousness ; for if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? As sons and daughters of an eager and buoyant South, we are going forth as twentieth-century crusaders, armed with scholar- ship, enthusiasm, and service, with faith, hope, and charity, not to rescue a tomb, but to redeem a people. THE TASK OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP 15 THE TASK OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP SAMUEL P. BROOKS, LL.D., PRESIDENT OF BAYLOR UNIVERSITY AND RETIRING PRESIDENT OF THE CONGRESS, WACO, TEX. The Southern Sociological Congress has a progressive program. Its tasks are never fully performed, for all social growth is a series of advances by reckoning and test. Its organizers and promoters, however, are not discouraged at the bigness of its difficulties, but rather emboldened to greater efforts. The task of the social-minded citizen is not to go barn- storming as a lurid reformer, but rather to watch and wait and work. Patience is for him a virtue, yet patience must not lull him to sleep. He must know wrong where he sees it, and correct errors when they arise. He is never an iconoclast, but a constructive builder. He caters to no class, but seeks the elevation of all men. He reveres the past, and uses it to throw light on the future. The aim of our Congress is not to stand as protagonist of any single creed. We are not politicians and seek the promotion of no particular men ; yet we would see legislation shot through and through with the moral quality of Christ. APPEAL TO ALL MEN We make our appeal to no single class. We approach all men alike — not the rich or poor, not the employer or em- ployee, not the consumer or producer, one against the other. We come to the farmer, with whose labor we are familiar. We know his love of home and family and country. We come to the day laborer, by whose side we have toiled in the ditches and on the railroad track. We know his habits of life and his longings for the comforts of a home. We come to the train or engine man, who must be much away from home amid the constant dangers from which he never re- coils. We know his heart yearnings are that wife and chil- dren may have those comforts and opportunities belonging to the neighbors near whom they live. We come to the clerks, who daily tread the paths that lead to drudgery or 16 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST to wealth. We know their faith in their employers and their dream of a better day. We come to the blacksmith and the wheelwright, the lawyer and the preacher, the cattleman and the truck grower. We come to them all, for we believe in them all. Governments do not exist for themselves, nor do political parties. Governments and political parties exist for the people whom they serve. And men are coming to see that policies of government cannot ignore the moral quality of the action by which results are attained. INTERDEPENDENCE OF ALL MEN We have learned that there can be no modem human progress without great sums of money brought together to aid in doing the world's great work. We shall therefore do what we can to promote all business and manufacturing industries without regard to the size of the business, but wholly with regard to their treatment of the people who make their enterprises possible by labor, by investment, or by consumption of their products. In the march of industrial affairs, however, farmers and mechanics have not had a square deal. The duties of work- ingmen have kept them out of hurrying throngs, out of the market places of great profits, out of the halls and lobbies of legislation. They have too often been misrepresented by men in legislative halls ignorant of their real needs, or will- ful and insolent in disdaining them. This is not true of manufacturing and banking industries, whose leaders have the leisure to study, the money for travel, and the financial ability to represent themselves in person or by proxy. We believe that the profits out of the products of labor and capital should be equitably divided. Many corporations, seeing this, have done so voluntarily; others, not seeing it and not influenced by public opinion, should be made to do it even by law. We also desire to do what we can to bring about arbitral settlements of all labor and capital disputes, to the end that both may prosper and neither lose time or money. THE TASK OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP 17 CHILD LABOR Can we be careless of the two million children under six- teen years of age that must work for a living? Are we unmoved to know that in some places nearly one-half of the children between ten and thirteen must work for wages? Do we forget that child-bearing mothers must be protected from the foul air and dangerous occupations in which so many of them now must work? For nine years the National Child Labor Committee has tried in vain to get Congressional relief. We want to help them. EVERY CITIZEN A SOCIAL WORKER What is social service? An act done for the benefit of the community. Does it deal with creeds or with lives? Does it espouse theoretical dogmas, or does it seek to propa- gate that which saves labor, develops mind, heartens mo- rality, destroys filth, keeps out flies and mosquitoes, digs up weeds, destroys or burns hurtful waste, or does anything else that enlarges the sum total of individual or general happiness? All these things it does and more. It will do yet more as eyes are opened upon the needs and achieve- ments of social living. Is the need or opportunity for social service peculiar to the South? Emphatically, no. The South and her cities, the more the pity, are not essentially different from other places. Social service for our country involves what we eat, how it is prepared, how delivered to the kitchen, and how served. It involves what we drink, the source, the quality, the amount, the method of transmission, and the methods of public drinking. It involves how we live in our homes, whether comfortable or uncomfortable; in rooms screened or unscreened, ventilated or stuffy. It cannot ignore the germ-laden dust of the streets, the lack of sanitation in kitchens and lavatories. It must not pass by the needs of the children, the babies of the poor, the child-bearing moth- ers who must work to live. Social service in the South is 2 18 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST not unmindful that though some of her citizens may live in houses modern and equipped for comfort and health, the cook or the nurse often comes from a home in quarters shamefully bad, that the weekly washing is sometimes brought home apparently clean, but in fact germ-laden with smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid, and the like, the neglect of which is a folly and a crime. Social service involves the bodies, minds, and spirits of our citizenship. Some things it can study ; for other things it can only prescribe. Germs of filth transmitted by any means respect no per- sons. They enter the bodies of Democrats as well as Re- publicans, of Jews and Gentiles, of Catholics and Protestants, of infidels as well as devout Christian believers. None of us may preach the gospel of the past, or declare the indi- vidualism of Thomas Jefll'erson as antitoxins of disease^ Social service is demanded in the care and upkeep of public buildings. It notes that many a courthouse in the South is little better than a pigpen, as evidenced by the free- dom in which men expectorate on the floors and walls, and whose toilets are usually bad beyond words and shocking to every sense of decency. Jury rooms and beds upon which jurors are required to sleep are often covered with dirt and reeking with vermin, and it is no wonder that some men will lie to avoid jury service. It is no excuse for county authorities to say that the fault lies in the janitors, many of whom are doing the best they know, for in some places these men are political "have-beens" or "never-weres," shambling around in the last stages of political bummery, unable to see filth with magnifying glasses, and ignorant of its proper disposition even if by some chance they should stumble over it. Social service observes whether criminals rot in jail, not only on moral grounds of responsibility not to kill, but on prophylactic grounds of their influence when they come out. Innocent men are often thrown into jails or prisons. Pas- THE TASK OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP 19 sions of hate cause deeds that incarcerate fathers whose families thereafter pay the dreadful price of diseases con- tracted. Do Southerners care if some anaemic, senile spinster is willing- to breathe polluted air with schoolrooms fetid with body smells and none of God's good air available for the lungs of youngsters yearning for the out-of-doors? Does it matter if our children are guarded well as to all these things in our homes when they must sometimes in public or private schools sit by children whose eyes have trachoma or on whose breath the white plague hovers? Into these schools the medical inspectors should go, and into their homes the district nurses should enter to observe, report, teach, and help those most needy of saving knowledge. Happily there is marked improvement over what we endured in the past. Let us note in the South the condition of many railroad station houses in our cities. In the winter months, when travel is heavy and when doors and windows are kept tightly closed, and people are crowded (men, women, and little chil- dren, some at the breast) , the air is suffocating. There is a combination smell of tobacco, whisky, cold lunches, old fruit, and filthy children. The wash rooms outwit descrip- tion. Probably during this season of travel, and under such fruitful environment, more contagious and infectious dis- eases run riot than at any other time. Have the people no rights? And shall the railroads have no protection? Is ignorance to prevail ? Is greed for profits the only standard ? Is sense to yield to the fetish of liberty and shall death take the weak while a few of us survive because we have lungs and hides like African hippopotami? Let no one doubt the social ultimatum that the fit will survive, but let all remem- ber that the process is exceedingly slow and the cost of human life ought not be so great. There is a better way. Moreover the fit must exercise the force of law to protect against the unfit. Let courage consort with sense, if society shall outwit preventable disease and abolish many needless dangers. 20 DEMOCRACT IN EARNEST NEEDS AT HOME There are thousands of good people who want to do good. They are looking, however, in distant places to find their field of labor. They do not see the opportunity at home or near by them. They do not know that in the field of social service God can be served and glorified as well as in dis- tinctively church or other religious work. Of course, some undertrained, supersensitive religious souls will be shocked at such worldly doctrines and they will cry out. But it must be remembered that in all the world's history human prog- ress has been held back by those bound fast to dogmas of religion or politics, and who would not, or could not, see that Christ pleaded for the life and health of the people more than he did for the sacraments of his Church. Let the preachers tell of iieaven and the way thereto, but let them tell also of life and how to magnify its useful- ness to others here. Let the teachers lead the way to the laboratories and fear not to confuse the Almighty. He has secrets yet for men to find, and often the searcher for his truths will find the Mas- ter Mind in his handiwork. Let parents bring children into the world, but let moth- ers know that they will die if the little lumps of helplessness are left unaided against disease and ignorance and injustice. Is there no way for club and church women to aid their municipalities? Let them point the way to business men absorbed in commerce too deep to see a germ of disease, a process of crime, or a blight of sin. Let editors tell out the truths which their large reading reveals and their large opportunities invite. Let them help create public sentiment. Let them keep the laws before the people and charge the responsibility to the guilty ones. Let city commissions and chambers of commerce be as careful about ridding their own cities of disease and crime as they are to get into them factories and conventions and whatever else begets or beglories gold. Let our state, county, and city departments of health be in the hands of intelligent men and have the support of all THE TASK OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP 21 good people. The laws for these departments are totally inadequate and the funds too small to care for the needs of a growing population like ours. Too frequently these depart- ments are presided over by men who could scarcely make a, living at their medical practice, and they get their appoint- ments by cheap toadyism and political pull. However, once in, it is the duty of the public to help them. In nearly every case they do the best they know, and in nearly all cases they know more, and ask much more of us, than we are will- ing to do. There should be proper Federal and State laws on vital statistics. Proper record, under heavy penalty for neglect, should be required of physician, midwife, nurse, or under- taker for every birth or death. Likewise, no communicable disease should go unrecorded by the physician in charge. This should include the rich and poor, the white and black. No exceptions should be made in this bookkeeping of humanity. It is time the fossilized system of segregated vice should be abolished and a single standard of morals for men and women set up. It will take courage to do this, and time must elapse in the process. Public opinion moves slowly, but happily it moves. The fact cries to heaven that often while rural people beg the government to rid their cattle of ticks, their horses of charbon, and their hogs of cholera, they appear ignorant or indifferent to the fact that hotbeds of vice win the credu- lous and passionate country boys. City booze joints are worse for country boys than ticks for country cattle. Segre- gated vices are the city sore spots which send into virtuous homes venereal diseases to blast the health of future wives and mothers, the result of the sins of wayward young men whose wild oats the public condoned. Segregated prostitu- tion is worse than charbon or hog cholera. Segregation of male prostitutes would count far more than segregation of female prostitutes. 22 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST THE AMERICAN SPIRIT Governments cannot create happiness, but they may clear away that which hinders the development. Govern- ments cannot make love and purity and honesty and broth- erly kindness, but g:overnments may protect the individual and society while the people get schools and churches and home^ and clothes and food and whatever else helps to the life that ought to be. But ive call upon the citizens of the South to remember that ive ivill never get out of life or out of governments more than we jnit into them. We remind them that much is ex- pected of those who have much, and that no 7nan has a right to throw off on good citizenship because he is poor. Our fathers taught the way. I know a motorman who for twenty years has been on the same run. He is loved and respected by all the men, women, and children, because of his uniform kindness and courtesy to them. He carries a smile of good morning to every passenger and good cheer is written on his face. One day we missed him. He had gone to the sanitarium for a capital operation. I went to see him to give a word of com- fort if I could. His greeting on the bed of suffering was so full of brotherly kindness that he gave me a benediction greater than I carried. What matter if he butchers the king's English, but meets a brother on the square? He dig- nifies service, he is my brother man, he has the American spirit. The American spirit not only teaches these principles for social service, but seeks to live them over again in deeds well done and in sons and daughters for the propagation of the race. It seeks to make them concrete in the humble homes of the people as set out in the actual stories of two men: The first man died. Of him it was widely published from platform and in papers that he was very wealthy, that he was a member of many exclusive clubs and fraternities, and that his sons were following his footsteps. This man had none of the American spirit. He was a snob. THE PRESENT TASK 23 The other man died. He had been a man whose life was full of human tasks. He trod the paths of labor and economy. His sons and daughters were many. Their lives were like that of their father. Each had taken a place in some responsible position where a livelihood could be earned. This man was American to the heart. America has been the cradle of liberty. She has not stood like some giant beast, ready to devour all who come within her borders. The oppressed of all the world have found a welcome here. America craves to be the teacher of the sorrovz-blinded and the helper of all, not the domineering mistress. She returned the Boxer Indemnity Fund to China, thereby win- ning the respect and admiration of the world. America has defended the Monroe doctrine, not so much for her own safety as for that of the weaker American republics. She may yet, by her example, knit in close Pan- American purpose the peoples of all the Western world. America has sent out missionaries and Red Cross nurses and salesmen and scholars and diplomats upon all the oceans wide, and she stands ready to-day to bring the blessings of peace to all the nations of the earth, if by any means it can be done. To the end that the task may be done, the Southern Socio- logical Congress tenders its services to all men everywhere. THE PRESENT TASK OF THE SOUTHERN SOCIO- LOGICAL CONGRESS ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTONE, CHAIRMAN According to the program, this meeting of the Southern Sociological Congress is "to mobilize the leadership of the South for a Win-the-War Campaign." The fundamental purpose of this Congress has always been, and now is, to inform and quicken the social conscience of the South and to have it express itself in aggressive social action. 24 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST The world war is the greatest social fact of modern times. Upon its issue — we will win — rests the future social order of humankind. But military victory to-day will issue in social defeat to-morrow — yes, will it not come to-day? — unless men and women of moral vision, moral purpose, moral faith, and moral achievement effect the enactment into our individual, political, corporate, social life of those funda- mental principles involved in making the world really safe for democracy. And so we Southerners are met together — as "one hun- dred per cent United States" — to see to it, not that we do our bit, but that the South does its best to win the war. This is no idle slogan; it expresses the one aim that justifies this Congress to-day. The Southern Sociological Congress stands alone in the South to-day. No other South-wide organization with its aims, purposes, and achievements exists within our borders. P'rom its beginning, in 1912, it has recognized that social salvation and the means of attaining it are essentially moral and religious. Consequently it has always commanded the continuous support of the best moral and religious elements of the South. With these high ideals it has sought to ener- gize the South in working out the problems of the South in the light of world experience. Therefore this Congress does not compete in any sense with the National Conference of Social Work. That organization discusses the technical experience of the social workers of North America; this Congress, through propaganda and educational activity, seeks to apply to our own needs the knowledge and proven experience of sociologists. The socially sensitive Southerner exists to-day in large numbers. His clan is increasing. But it must be multiplied at once, not alone in numbers, but in intelligence and in aggressive constructive effort. The splendid movement, now gaining momentum in Birmingham, by which 1,000 per- sons from this city will become members of the Southern Sociological Congress, is of the greatest significance to its continued usefulness. The American Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the K. of C, and other national organizations have found it necessary THE PRESENT TASK 25 greatly to increase their resources, both human and finan- cial, in order to perform their war-time duties. The South- ern Sociological Congress must do likewise if it is to seize its opportunity and mobilize the leadership of the South in fighting disease and in prosecuting crime — two social luxu- ries, expensive any time, especially now ; in producing more food and in conserving what is produced that we may fully discharge our duty to feed not only ourselves, but our muni- tion workers, our allies, our soldiers, and not — in the role of slackers — demand food supplies from other sections; in improving the living conditions and consequently the effi- ciency of our people ; in effecting race relations of growing harmony; in overcoming illiteracy; in fact, in widening, enriching, and guarding the social agencies and activities of our people. This is essential now and in the years immediately ahead. Great as have already been the problems of readjustment, the task before the social forces of America, lest the vic- tories of democracy become the spoils of war, will be more difficult still. Thousands of men will return from the excite- ment of the trenches to the pursuits of peace ; their mental and nervous reactions can hardly be predicted. Disease, injury, family disruption must not result in that discourage- ment or hopelessness out of which develops the pauperistic attitude. Recouping of personal fortunes, regaining foot- holds on the social ladder must not issue in self-centered living. The high ideals for our soldiers here must not become the platitudes of the political demagogue. The mili- tarism we fight to-day must not saddle Aiiierica after peace is declared. There is still a good deal of human nature in men. The best moral and religious leadership of our time must lead during the years of readjustment after the war, if the world is really to be made safe for democracy, if human nature is to be purified, if those social snakes whose poison is abroad in the world to-day are to be prevented from propagating of their kind. For this program the Southern Sociological Congress stands. Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation. 26 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY JAMES E. M'CULLOCH, EDUCATIONAL SECRETARY, SOUTHERN SOCIOLOGICAL CONGRESS The times in which we live are strange and evil and full of hope. All over the world we see unrest and upheaval and the signs that have hitherto in human history pre- ceded great revolutions. In all ages the two greatest enemies of mankind have been war and disease. Thousands of years ago civiliza- tion had its home in the tropics and in southern coun- tries — first at the head of the Persian Gulf and later in Egypt. Then war and disease forced civilization north- ward. The oppressed Hebrews left the Egypt of pestilence and war in search of a land of health and peace. Later war shifted the center of civilization from Palestine into Southern Europe. For many years Athens was the capital of the world. Then war, that had burned the library at Alexandria and had laid waste the temple at Jerusalem, brought down in dust and ashes at Athens the work of the centuries — the noblest achievements of the world's greatest thinkers and leaders. Again the center of civilization moved westward, first to Rome, then to Paris, to London, to Berlin. For over a thousand years these capitals of Western Europe have held an unchallenged supremacy in the world. But war has been destroying the products of civilization in these very- centers where for ten centuries the orderly progress of human society has been developed to the highest degree. Of the six hundred millions of Christian adherents in the world at present, five hundred and fifty millions are actually engaged in war — international destruction. This means the collapse of civilization again at its cente7\ Has this world tragedy no meaning for us as champions of human welfare? You may rest assured that out of this European Armageddon will come the advancement of civili- zation. God never tiirns hack. For when Egypt took up the sword against oppressed humanitj^ Jehovah built a new civilization out of the for- A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 27 mer slaves of Egypt, and made them the prophets and teachers of the world. While Athens and Rome were glori- fying Mars, the God of humanity was laying the founda- tions of modern civilization in Western Europe. If we had the prophetic eye, we could see once more above the flame and smoke of those burning homes and libraries and cathedrals yonder in Europe the star of hope, which the Almighty has repeatedly held in the dome of the darkest night. That star rises every night over the battle fields of Europe, and all who are not blind or dead watch it with a kindling faith as it moves still west- ward until it is lost in the light of a new day. Before many months those soldiers will turn their sad faces from the trenches toward home, and in their hearts will be the titanic resolve of many millions of chastened souls to have forever done with war. They, by the millions, will want to bring their families to the land of the free and the home of the brave. That will be a glorious migration, and God will be found to have been leading it by these battle flames and war clouds as truly as in days of old he led with the pillar of cloud and fire that guided an ancient people out from another kind of bondage. The center of civilization has shifted again. America is now the promised land of humanity. America has been anointed the high priest of the world and ordained as God's champion of human rights. Are we Americans prepared for such a high calling? How may we set 6ur house in order as the host of all nations and races? How shall we prove by our welcome and by our hospitality that we are worthy of the confidence and love of the world ? It is to this kind of preparedness that I challenge the members of the Southern Sociological Congress. You have been providentially called on to make ready for a service to humanity, in comparison with which all other move- ments in this country are as child's play. I challenge you to the task of qualifying America to become the guardian and champion of the civilization of the world by destroy- ing the greatest enemies of humanity — war and disease. 28 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST America must declare war on war everywhere. To do that, America must keep prepared. We are the heirs of the ages. America must be the keeper of the treasures of his- tory. In the heart of this nation beats the blood of all nations. In our veins throbs the ancient impulse and clamor the unfulfilled ideals of Hellenic artist and Hebrew seer. America is therefore duty-bound to undertake the achievement of human rights for all nations and races. Since the torch of civilization has been placed in the hand of America, she would be a recreant to history no less than a traitor to posterity if she failed to bear that light forward. I therefore challenge the members of this Congress to a prompt . and a passionate response to the President for Sociological preparedness — even to the higher pre- paredness of a nation once in histoiy made sociologically fit to serve her sister nations in their need. There is no other duty so solemnly and sacredly urgent for America to-day — not to make war, but to prevent war; not to slay, but to save. That was a terrible day in August, 1914, when the German government cast its treaty obliga- tions aside as mere scraps of paper and ordered her army to invade Belgium. By that act Germany also invaded the rights of every civilized nation on earth, and America ought to have been prepared to step instantly to her his- toric place in the first line of defense of human rights. If America had been so thoroughly prepared materially and spiritually then, if her unselfishness and courage and justice had been so proven to the world that she could have lifted the flag of justice and demanded obedience to international law, she would have been speaking not for herself alone, but in a high and noble sense for all nations, even for the German people themselves. Who can doubt that the flag of every nation in the Western Hemisphere would have been raised with the Stars and Stripes for the cause of justice, and that every other neutral nation on earth would have come forward to join a league of honor for the defense of international law? As it was, every nation was a law unto itself. No one spoke for humanity A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 29 as humanity. The whole world was unprepared for such an outbreak of international lawlessness, and most of all America. She could not speak for herself, much less for others. But suppose America had been ready for the noble task that I have indicated, this world war could not have been. More than ten millions of the strongest and bravest men of Europe would be with us yet working for a better day. Belgium, Poland, Servia, Armenia would yet lend their noble light to the constellation of our international hope. The world of most precious art and literature would yet gleam across that desert of ashes. No child would have been murdered, no woman wronged, no soldier smoth- ered like a rat with poisoned gases, and no ship scuttled in this modern piracy of the under seas. What would the higher preparedness have been worth then to humanity, could we have provided it? But preparedness to make war of conquest hereafter impossible will be needed more to-morrow than to-day. No other nation now is able to render such a service to humanity. Will America respond to this call — can she meet this need of the world? It will depend largely on whether such organizations as this Congress shall take and maintain the impregnable ground of positive convic- tion. It is ours to conserve human life — not in fne South alone, not in America alone, but in the world. It is there- fore our duty to help make a war of conquest in the future absolutely impossible. If there had never been any war in all history to destroy the strongest and bravest of each generation, the human stock to-day would be infinitely finer than it is, and the average of human achievement would be immeasurably superior. Moreover, while hu- manity in Europe is to-day securing the possibility of a new regeneration in the baptism of war, America can be saved from degenerating into selfish materialism only by releasing the forces of human personality in a conquest of social health and righteousness on such a scale as will demand greater sacrifice and heroism than war itself. I therefore challenge you to a new chivalry, to a larger sacrifice and to another kind of warfare, to a crusade 30 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST against disease — disease in all its havoc and disaster to humankind. Indeed, this is a far greater enemy of hu- manity than war has ever been. In the Crimean war four soldiers died of disease for every one that was killed in battle. In our civil war, on both sides, for every soldier who died of wounds two on an average died of disease. In the present war the actual facts are suppressed, but enough has come to light to show that disease is work- ing a terrible waste. Authorities estimate that a disease is sixteen times as destructive as the means of warfare. In the two hundred generations of history disease has been the heaviest drag on civilization. In every savage tribe, in every heathen nation, in every civilized country, disease has been ever present as the haunting threat to every human life. Even our common salutation in the streets is the morbid interrogation, "How are you?" To- day the whole world is sick and sub-normal. Every human being on this planet is either suffering from some actual disease or is oppressed by the constant fear of it. No life is secure. Moreover, war has been merely an occa- sional incident in history compared with the incessant ravages of disease. While war has killed its hundreds of thousands in every generation, disease has destroyed its millions by the year, and its ravages go on perpetually. In all the world it is estimated that during this year the number of people who die of preventable disease alone will reach the astounding figure of nine and a half millions. At the present rate, preventable disease is so deadly throughout the world that a nation the size of the United States is actually destroyed every ten years. In the United States it is estimated that six hundred and thirty thousand people die every year of preventable causes. At this rate, it takes only three years for prevent- able disease to destroy the population of an entire State the size of Louisiana. Every twenty-four hours 1,726 of our people are buried from preventable disease — twelve Lusitanias every week. Worst of all, some 250,000 babies die every year in this country. If the coffins of these babies were placed side by side, they would make a solid row ninety-five miles long. A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 31 In this country 2,900,000 people are constantly sick. This means an annual loss to the nation of three billions of dollars, more than twice as much as the average expense of the entire government. Tuberculosis alone costs this country more than the average expense of the Federal Gov- ernment. At the present death rate from tuberculosis, five millions, or one-twentieth of the people now living in the United States, will die of this white plague. The twin sister of this haglike horror is malaria, which causes 3,000,000 cases of sickness every year and costs the country not less than $160,000,000 annually. Typhoid is another of the vile breed — preventable by sanitation and by vaccination. It has already been prevented almost entirely in the armies of the world. In the United States army and navy no one that was properly vaccinated for typhoid has died of that disease for three years. Yet typhoid among our people is a terrific pestilence, causing 35,000 deaths annually and 340,000 other cases, at a financial loss of over $350,000,000. Hookworm is a penalty for filth. It is the demon that is born in soil pollution and putrefaction. Of all diseases, it is one of the easiest to prevent and to cure, and for these rea- sons is a more humiliating reflection upon us. Yet millions of our people here in the South are affected with it. In some counties as many as 78% of the school children are infected with hookworm. Of the 892,000 persons of all ages taken at random in the United States and examined for hookworm, more than one-third were suffering from this disease. It is estimated that South Carolina alone suffers a loss annually of $35,000,000 from the lowered vitality of her workers caused by hookworm. Then there is the great red plague — originally born out of the unholy wedlock of pleasure and sin. It is now spread- ing its deadly threat among the innocent and clean-living millions, until to-day no person, not even the purest woman and child, is wholly secure from the menace of syphilis. At least 190,000 persons in the United States are constantly ill from this plague, which is one of the most difficult to cure and one of the most infectious. If you want to realize 82 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the ghastly terror of this disease, go to the insane asylums of this country, where one out of every four of the inmates had his reason dethroned by this demon either directly or through heredity. Trace these cases back to the crowded hovels of the land and the red-light districts of our cities, where over every such door should be posted this warning : "Incurable insanity contracted here." The§e five diseases and others are absolutely preventable to-day. This was not always the case. A few years ago we did not know the cause of any disease. A hundred years ago smallpox was one of the most hideous, fatal, and dev- astating diseases. Then one-tenth of all the people on the globe died of this plague, and every fifth person was dis- figured for life. But now, thanks to such benefactors as Pasteur, Koch, and others, the causes of these diseases are discovered. We know how these disease demons live and do their work ; we know how to prevent them and how absolutely to exterminate them. Such diseases as tubercu- losis, malaria, typhoid, hookworm, and syphilis are no longer to be classed merely as diseases — they are social crimes! Death from such causes is manslaughter. I therefore challenge the members of this Congress to gird themselves for battle against the greatest of all ene- mies. It has robbed humanity of more wealth and of more happiness and of more lives than all other agencies com- bined. But for disease, this planet might indeed be a para- dise. It will become a heaven of beauty and happiness when the fiend Disease is destroyed. With this enemy banished America, and especially the South lying along the tropical border, might indeed become the new Eden of the olden dream. For thousands of years human happiness and eflfi- ciency have waited for the redemption of health, while or- ganized religion has been preaching about health and joy beyond the grave. But now science and religion alike have made public health a moral issue, and are therefore calling on the Church and every other social agency for a crusade of health. Why is the moral leadership of the world so slow to meet this challenge? Think of it! The cost of the mere coffins for deaths in this country due to preventable A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 33 causes alone is over $31,000,000 annually. This amount would finance a health crusade that would double the aver- age of human life in America within this generation. If a man from the planet Mars, where disease and war were probably prevented thousands of years ago, were to travel around our world and see the frequent funeral pro- cessions of children, observe the long death lists from pre- ventable diseases, witness how thousands of people are com- pelled to live in unsanitary conditions in our asylums, prisons, and almshouses, and learn how millions of human beings linger out their lives in houses unfit for human habi- tation, he would, I think, on returning to his healthy planet, where we assume that no one ever dies under a hundred years of age, make a report on this neighboring planet ; and I fancy the headline in the next morning paper would read like this: "Chikb-en die on earth: the inhahitants of the planet are a pnmitive race of beings, mostly savages ivho still engage in war, and so selfish and cruel and ignorant that they do not even protect their offspring from disease. One out of every eight children born into the ivorld dies under one year of age, and seldom does a person live to the age of one hundred years." This statement of fact, I am sure, would produce a sensation in any other world in the universe. But not so with us. These startling facts have not even aroused the Church, which is the divinely ordained guardian of human life. As long as the causes of disease were unknown, the Church was largely helpless and, therefore, exempt from responsi- bility. But, now that both the causes of disease and the means of prevention are understood, the position of the Church is shifted from that of a dim and superstitious indif- ference to that of a commanding moral obligation. Here- after a searching test of church efficiency will be her ability to achieve health for the people — physical, mental, and moral health. And every church that holds aloof from this holy interest will thereby forfeit her historic place in the reverence and the confidence of humanity. Savages believe that disease is a pestilence sent from the devil; barbarians teach that disease is a penalty for sin; 3 34 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST some ignorant Christians have talked of the mysterious dis- pensation of Providence during an epidemic of disease, and some ministers have preached the monstrous doctrine that children die by the will of God. I absolutely refuse to be- lieve that God ever meant for any child to die. Disease is no more of God than sin. No! Science has torn away the veil of mystery about disease. It is no more a mystery than fire and rain. We are face to face here with the law of cause and effect. We can no more prevent disease by piety and prayer alone than we can stop a flood or put out fire by such means alone. We no longer grope in the dark. We know the causes of disease and we know how to remove these causes. That knowledge brings with it tremendous responsibilities. Am I therefore to be censured when I confess to a pro- found astonishment upon hearing more than once recently the illogical declaration that the Church has nothing to do with clean-up campaigns and health crusades, because, as it is insisted, "The only business of the Church is to save souls." Surely, if any man wants scriptural authority for the obligation of the Church in health conservation, he can find it amply set forth in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Mosaic legislation sanitation and hygiene had a large place. In the ministry of Jesus the conservation of health and life was a predominant characteristic. I must dwell on this point and speak plainly, for I have no hope whatever of a successful advance in achieving health apart from organized religion. This is the only power that can work miracles for humanity. Think of the fanatical sword of Mohammed ! Think of Peter the Hermit and the Crusaders! Only to recover an empty tomb from the infidel, organized religion marched hundreds of thou- sands of Christians in Europe across the continent into Asia to die of exposure and starvation. In those crusades were sacrificed fabulous wealth and countless lives for no worthy purpose. Organized religion has not always, there- fore, been as intelligent as it has been powerful. But it is always a miracle worker. God meant for it to work mir- acles, as Moses and Jesus did, for healing and for life- A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 35 saving in all that those broad terms meant in the mind of the Master. I, for one, believe that the Church will respond to this grand recall of humanity. In all ages it has been the great- est altruistic agency. I do not believe that it will fail in this twentieth century. The most distressing fact is, of course, that the Church is broken up into so many warring camps that it is not capable of delivering its full strength in a health crusade, or in any other human cause. However,, what is this Congress but a council of war com- posed of the first line officers of all the churches? Are you not the watchman on the wall? All the members of the Church cannot be leaders. All cannot be seers. Have you yourselves, as the pioneers and prophets of humanity in our day, made the proper appeal to the church army to enter this warfare? When the rank and file of the Church once feel the thrill of the vision that you have, then will begin the greatest social reform that the world has ever witnessed. In this twentieth century the distinguishing achievement of the American Church, which has never in the past cen- turies been without her distinguishing achievements, will be the co7iservation of human life. What need have we to wait for further incentive? Our call comes from millions of new-made graves in Europe, from broken-hearted women and children who can only look wistfully to America, and from the mute prayers of hun- dreds of thousands of prisoners, insane and sick people in our own land. We are moved by the bitter tears of a quar- ter of a million mothers in this country who needlessly buried their babies last year, and we are ordained by the invisible scarred hands of Him who came that the world might have life more abundantly. Fellow-workers in this health crusade, if chivalry is not dead, if religion is not a mockery, you and I must devote ourselves to the task of a new era on earth. I therefore challenge the members of this Congress, as the representa- tives of all the churches and of the best science and the best purpose of this best day the world ever saw, that you shall ?S DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST accept the task and provide the imperative leadership of this higher preparedness. Surely there is need of some miracle-working power to arise in this hallowed land of the South, where every river and mountain can tell a story of the heroism of our fathers. You and I ought to be utterly ashamed to look at the grave of a Confederate soldier so long as the mob exists on this sacred soil. Our fathers died for law. It was only after they were dead that violence was done the Constitution of the United States. But though v/e are the sons of martyrs, yet the flag of every Southern State is stained with the fresh blood of mob murder. But this is not enough. When the mob spirit is dead and law and order are established, we shall have laid only the first stone in the foundation of the temple of democracy. Shall we never try to go on and complete this temple? If three-fourths of all the poverty in the United States is due to ill health, then why should our county asylums be conducted as Gehennas, and why should our charity be administered in such a manner as to break down all self- respect in the recipient? It is yours to teach the public that most poverty is due to sickness over which the victims have no control, and that the chief cause of poverty — disease — must be removed before poverty's blight can be relieved. If most crime is due to ill health, caused by either disease or drugs, it is yours to transform our prison system from one of punishment to one of cure. A thousand years from now it will be the amazement of the historian that it was ever possible for our present unspeakably cruel and bar- barous prison methods and Christianity to exist in the world at the same time. In this new human order one of the very first efforts must be in behalf of the mental and spiritual prisoners in our insane asylums. Here are tens of thousands of sick people being confined and treated, for the most part, like dangerous animals, when the tragic reality is that their malady in countless cases is purely physical. If there is an intellectual and moral giant among us, let him lead the forces of reform against the evils of the institutions for the in- A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 37 sane and relieve in some measure the bitter experiences of this vast multitude of most unfortunate people in jails, poor- houses, asylums, and roaming at large, I challenge, further, that this Congress lead an effort to enlist the churches definitely in a grand recall to the inestimable asset of human health; to Jiave this Coiv- gress occupy the same relation to the churches in a health crusade that the Anti-Saloon League of America occupies to the churches in the temperance movement. Once more, I challenge Southern chivalry to a needed reform in the medical profession. To-day the physician is called in after sickness occurs and is paid only for treat- ing cases. Public opinion has yielded to the medical pro- fession for these long, long years the antiquated and super- stitious fee system w^hich has made it to the interest of the physician to permit as many cases of sickness as possible and to suffer them to remain uncured as long as possible. During the last forty years preventive medicine has made marvelous progress on the scientific side, but owing to our present fee system the physician cannot apply his knov^^l- edge of preventive medicine on the practical side without pulling both against public opinion and against the power- ful personal motive of self-interest. Nothing could be more foolish and unjust than to hold this profession in a position where its interest and that of the public are directly opposite and in conflict. The motive of the profession must be so reversed that it shall be for the best interest of the physician to have as few cases of sick- ness as possible and to cure them as quickly as possible. This can be done by health clubs in schools and churches, by health insurance, and by teaching and promoting health in the home and through the press. At length and like a trumpet blast must go forth from this Congress at this fateful hour the challenge for a campaign against these two greatest enemies of mankind — war and disease. This must be accomplished by making better and more permanent this annual council of war, by the publication of literature, by its members carrying on a propaganda in churches, schools, and other meeting places. o8 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST by bringing about adequate legislation in the cities, states, and national government, by having laws of sanitation and hygiene strictly enforced, and by building up the member- ship of this organization to include all who are ready to re- spond to the call of the new chivalry. As your Secretary, I may be permitted, at the expense of a slight delay for detail, to include in my recommendations the proposal that to carry out this program it is imperative that we increase our annual budget from $7,000 to $15,000. This can be done by securing fifteen hundred new active members and by enlisting four hundred sustaining members (who will pay a ten-dollar fee) and ten new life members. But this will be only a beginning. The only limitation to this health crusade is the financial one. This Congress should have for its work in a few years an income of $50,000. That will require an endowment of one million dollars. Within a decade we ought also to build on this foundation by enrolling ten thousand active members, two thousand sustaining members, and one hun- dred life members. To expect less of Southern chivalry would be unreasonable, for it has always been true that when the South has been called on to fight the battles of justice and humanity she has never been less than heroic. I therefore appeal to you members to solemnly resolve, by the help of the Eternal, that you will build up the member- ship as I have indicated and that you will help secure the million-dollar endowment by donations and by bequests at the earliest possible moment. With such an organization, so equipped, this Congress can initiate and carry forward a work of preparedness beyond the dreams of even our most patriotic and far-seeing statesmen. For with the resources that I have mentioned this Congress could direct a health crusade that would double the average of human life in the South in this generation. You have my message. I have made my appeal. I have challenged you to lead a crusade against war and against disease. I have indicated the relation of the Church to such a movement, and the relation of this movement to the pres- ent national crisis also. I have pointed out some practical A CHALLENGE TO THE NEW CHIVALRY 39 steps that can be taken by this Congress immediately. The nation and God await your answer. Let me remind you, however, that victory can be achieved here only by great sacrifice. But such a cause as ours is worthy of any sacrifice. In the imperial city of Pekin, China, we are told by Laf- cadio Hearn that there is the most wonderful bell in the world, because all who hear it say that it has a human voice. Five hundred years ago the emperor ordered a mandarin to make a bell that could be heard twenty miles and that the bell should be made by fusing iron and brass and silver and gold. After great and prolonged preparation, the molten metals were cast. But when the earthen mold was re- moved from the casting it was discovered that the bell was a failure, for the metals had refused to blend. The gold scorned the brass, and the silver refused to mingle with the iron. So the emperor ordered another trial, but this second effort likewise failed, for the metals rebelled each against the other and the result was an ugly, knotty, slagged object utterly without value as a bell. Then the emperor grew impatient and wrote the man- darin a note which closed with these words : "If you fail a third time in fulfilling our command, thy head shall be sev- ered from thy neck. Tremble and obey." The only child of the mandarin was a daughter of wondrous beauty and loveliness. Her name was Ko-Ngai. She loved her father with a love that surpassed the love of humans. She asked an astrologer to tell her how she could save her father's life and carry out the will of her emperor. His answer was: "Gold and brass will never unite, silver and iron will never embrace until the flesh of a maiden be melted in the cruci- ble, until the blood of a virgin be mixed with the metals in their fusion." When all was ready for the third casting, the workmen suddenly heard one singing, and as they looked up there stood Ko-Ngai singing of filial love. Then as she sang the last words, "For thy sake, O my Father," she leaped headlong into the dazzling white flood of metal. The workmen were struck dumb and the father fainted in the agony of his grief. 40 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST But the emperor had to be obej'ed, and, hopeless as the task seemed, the workmen made the great casting for the last time. As the metal cooled they were amazed at the wonderful form and color and beauty of the bell. There were no fissures, no knots, no flaws of any kind. There were no traces of iron, nor silver, nor brass, nor gold ; nor even a trace of the body of Ko-Ngai. All had merged into a marvelous alloy such as no one had ever seen before. Then the bell was placed in position, and at the first stroke all were startled, for it was not as other bells. As the bell rang out the people stopped in the streets to listen and a million people for twenty miles around exclaimed : "The bell has a human voice." For with every stroke that bell cried out the name "Ko-Ngai! Ko-Ngai! Ko-Ngai!" Thousands of years ago humanity tried to develop a per- fect civilization in Egypt. War and disease made it impos- sible. All other efforts since have likewise failed. America is now the melting pot of the world. Here a final effort is being made to fuse and tune all nations and races into a democracy, into a human brotherhood. The war in Europe is going soon to pour a great flood of all discordant elements of mankind into this melting pot. The price of success here will be the same that Ko-Ngai paid. The social workers of America alone, imbued as they are with the all-sufl5cient Spirit of the Son of Man, love humanity enough to make this sacrifice. A nobler sacrifice! Ko-Ngai died to save her father; we are called to live heroically to save human- ity about us. God is calling to-day for a new type of hero- ism, as the Founder of this Congress has so often reminded us — not to die, but to live ; not a spasm of courage in a last hour, but a lifelong greatness of heart for unselfish and victorious service. Fellow Social Workers, turn your eyes from the crucifixion of humanity in Europe and get a vision of the ideal social order that is to be when men are as heroic in saving life here as they now are courageous in destroying it across the sea. Then everywhere men will say as they hear the name of our nation : "America, America is the most beautiful name on earth, for it has the divine soul of broth- erhood." II. AMERICA'S FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY The Challenge of the Congress The Necessity of America's Part in the War The Call from the Firing Line America's Answer to the German Challenge The Moral Causes of the War The Moral Aims of the War America — Peacemaker or Pacemaker? The Program of War and the Program of the League to Enforce Peace THE CHALLENGE OF THE CONGRESS The Southern Sociological Congress is a challenge to the men and women of the whole South : 1. It is a challenge to the Southern fathers and mothers and all social workers to lift the burdens of labor from childhood and to make education universal. 2. It is a challenge to the men who make and admin- ister laws to organize society as a school for the develop- ment of all her citizens rather than simply to be a master to dispose of the dependent, defective, and de- linquent population with the least expense to the State. 3. It is a challenge to all citizens to rally to the leaders of all social reforms, so as to secure for the South civic righteousness, temperance, and health. 4. It is a challenge to Southern chivalry to see that justice is guaranteed to all citizens regardless of race, color, or religion, and especially to befriend and defend the friendless and helpless. 5. It is a challenge to the Church to prove her right to social mastery by a universal and unselfish social ministry. 6. It is a challenge to the present generation to show its gratitude for the heritage bequeathed to it through the toil and blood of centuries by devoting, itself more earnestly to the task of making the nation a real brotherhood. 7. It is a challenge to strong young men and women to volunteer for a crusade of social service, and to be enlisted for heroic warfare against all destroyers of public health and purity, and to champion all that makes for an ideal national life. THE NECESSITY OF AMERICA'S PART IN THE WAR JAMES A. B. SCHERER, PH.D., LL.D., FIELD AGENT OF THE COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE, SPECIAL REPRESEN- TATIVE OF THE U. S. SHIPPING BOARD, AND PRESIDENT OF THROOP COLLEGE OF TECH- NOLOGY, PASADENA, CAL. Frequently, in dififerent parts of the country, I am warned of the presence of spies. Now, I could wish few things better for the American cause than that a German spy should have accompanied me on a trip that I completed this morning, and then reported truthfully to the Kaiser the things he had seen and heard. Here are two documents that I would ask my friendly spy to consider, for his own welfare, and then to enclose for the careful consideration of the Kaiser. Both of them are penned by Americans with German names and of Ger- man ancestry, like the speaker who now addresses you. But they are genuinely dehyphenated Americans, and this is the way they fling back into the impudent face of the Kaiser his insolent demand for their support. The first statement is printed in the "South Carolina Handbook of the War," and the American of German ancestry who wrote it is Dr. George B. Cromer, of Newberry : "We might have kept out of the war: "By admitting that Germany has the right selfishly to treat her solemn contracts with other nations as 'scraps of paper.' "By admitting that Germany had the right, with mailed fist and iron heel, ruthlessly to crush and destroy Belgium, a weak nation, whose neutrality she was under sacred obli- gation to protect. "By admitting that Germany, while enjoying our hos- pitality and professing to be our friend, had the right to maintain an army of spies and carry on a campaign of lav,^lessness in our own country. "By admitting that Germany, while professing to be our friend, had the right to embroil us with Mexico and Japan in an effort to destroy the integrity of our countiy. 44 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST "By admitting that Germany, while professing to be our friend, had the right, with ruthless and devilish disregard of law and humanity, to destroy our ships and murder our citizens — men, women, and children — traveling on peaceful missions and within their perfect legal rights. "By admitting that might is right ; that there is no law of nations above the will and power of the Imperial German Government; that our flag is no longer an emblem of sov- ereignty and national honor; that we have a spineless and nerveless Government or a nation of slackers and cowards ; and that our Constitution and the Declaration of Indepen- dence are 'scraps of paper.' "Being unwilling to admit these things, we are in the war. We will come out of the war by the gate of Victory — victory that will vindicate the rights and freedom of our own people, and victory for justice, liberty, and humanity. But we must overcome an army at home as well as vast armies in Europe. In our own country are spies, so-called pacifists, traitors, and demagogues, who are diligently sow- ing the seeds of sedition and treason by criticising the meth- ods and policies of our Government and by creating division and dissatisfaction among our own people. They are trying to shackle the Government, and, in effect, they are attack- ing our army in flank and rear. Our army is entitled to the undivided support of a united country. To this end and to the utmost limit of its constitutional authority, the Govern- ment should put down the sinister pro-German influences that are at work in our own country. There is no middle ground. Our citizens who are not pro-American are pro- German. Those v/ho are not for us are against us." So far. Dr. Cronier. This second very brief document com.es from 'way out in Nebraska, in the form of a short but most impressive declaration. Nebraska has a large German-born population, and this fact has created grave problems. The m.ayor of one of the cities which has a large German population, and who was himself bom in Germany, Mayor Harais, has done a great deal to assist in the solution of these problems. He has unquestionably the right method. When America went into the war he locked himself in the house for three days, as he declares, "to find himself" — THE NECESSITY OF AMERICA'S PART IN THE WAR 45 "to try out the feeling that had not only been born and bred in him, but had also been further strengthened by educa- tion." At the end of that time he knew that his teaching had been false, and that the salvation of the world depended upon the crushing forever of the German idea and spirit; but, as he said at the Nebraska War Conference last winter, "this should be done by kindness, by education, by persua- sion;" and then — as the tears rolled down his cheeks — "if it cannot be done that way, by jail ; and to put the people of the same country as that of my birth in jail is hard for me, because I am afraid that they have not been able to see the light as I know it; but even though it may be hard, if they cannot be reached by kindness and education, they must be reached by force, which is what they have been accustomed to, and in my city we have now no pro-German element, and we have now no pacifist element. Those that were pro-German have been educated by kindness or by force." The people of America are themselves being educated in consequence of this war. They are reading, and thinking as they read. Here is a red book, "Out of Their Own Mouths," which the people are reading and thinking about. It consists exclusively of authenticated German quotations — quoting all the way from Frederick the Great down to Zim- mermann the Little, the controlling ideas of Prussianism. It should be on every bookshelf in the land. Said Frederick in a letter to Minister Radziwill : "If there is anything to be gained by it, we will be honest ; if deception is necessary, let us be cheats." He wrote in his copy of Tacitus: "No ministers at home, but clerks ; no ministers abroad, but spies." This mJght have been written yesterday regarding Zimmerman and von BernstorfT if a modern German ofncial could only be found to tell the truth. "Scraps of paper" also is a time-worn phrase ; you will find it in a speech by Frederick William IV. from the throne in 1847, when he declared: "All written constitutions are but scraps of paper." Coming down to the pseudo-Napoleon, whose throne should be a gibbet, William II., we hear no uncertain note in his autobiographical reminiscences of God. On March 46 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST 28, 1901, he shouted, when there was no war: "We shall conquer everywhere, even though we be surrounded by enemies on all sides ; for there lives a powerful ally, the good old God in heaven, who has always been on our side ;" and only the other day he announced that this good old God, dur- ing the past year, had shown himself an "unconditional and avowed ally" of the Central Powers. That would not be serious except as blasphemy were it not that this fanatical megalomaniac has actually talked himself and his people into the faith that he acts as the vicegerent of God on the earth. As he said on August 25, 1910, "Looking upon myself as the instrument of the Lord, without regard to the opinions and intentions of the day, I go my way" — and let us devoutly hope and pray that he soon may go his way "to his own place," like that other Judas who betrayed his professed Master with blandish- ments. This modern Saul — I refer not to Tarsus but to Endor — giving instruction to his Chinese expeditionary force in 1900, said to them: "Give no quarter, take no prisoners. Use your weapons in such a way that for a thousand years no Chinese shall dare to look upon a German askance. Be as terrible as Attila's Huns" — and if the nickname sticks and rankles now, remember that it is William's own manufacture. This brings us to the period of the war. In his proclama- tion to the Army of the East in 1914 William said: "I am the instrument of the Almighty. I am his sword, his agent. Woe and death to all those who shall oppose my will ! Woe and death to those who do not believe in my mission ! Woe and death to the cowards ! Let them perish, all the enemies of the German people! God demands their destruction, God who, by my mouth, bids you to do His will !" In another proclamation in the following year he told us very clearly the goal of the German arms: "The triumph of the greater Germany, which some day must dominate all Europe, is the single end for which we are fighting." Do not let brother Maximilian Harden deceive you with soft words of camouflage. He wrote in the "Zukunft": THE NECESSITY OF AMERICA'S PART IN THE WAR 47 "One principle only is to be reckoned with — one which sums up and includes all others — force ! Boast of that and scorn all twaddle. Force ! that is what rings loud and clear ; that is what has distinction and fascination. Force, the fist — that is everything. Let us drop our pitiable efforts to excuse Germany's action ; let us cease heaping contemptible insults upon the enemy. Not against our will were we thrown into this gigantic adventure. It was not imposed on us by surprise. We willed it ; we were bound to will it. Our force will create a new law in Europe. It is Germany that strikes. When it shall have conquered new fields for its genius, then the priests of all the gods will exalt the war as blessed." Last and least of these citations of Prussian ideals is the Zimmermann letter to the envoy extraordinary and spy plenipotentiary to Mexico (January 19, 1917) regarding the United States. It seems wise to remind the people of it again. "On the first of February," wrote Zimmermann, "we intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare. In spite of this, it is our intention to endeavor to keep the United States of America neutral. If this attempt is not successful, we propose an allig,nce with Mexico on the fol- lowing basis: We shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost terri- tory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement. You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico of the above, in the greatest con- fidence, as soon as it is certain that there will be an out- break of war with the United States, and to suggest thai the President of Mexico, on his own initiative, should com- municate with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan. At the same time he should offer to mediate between Germany and Japan. Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico that the employment of the ruthless submarine warfare now promises to compel England to make peace jn a few months." More than a hundred years after the War of 1812, Ger- many proposed to do a thousand-fold over the iniquity for which we fought England and for which England was will- 48 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ing later on to fight us. Germany establishes huge arbitrary sea zones, and audaciously says that if our vessels so much as enter those zones she will destroy them just as if they were belligerent warships ; and this after solemnly covenant- ing with us to respect our vessels in the war zones, on pain of our positively declared intention to sever relations should she not do so. She proposes to wrest from international law its one most precious immunity, the freedom of the paths of the seas, and to enslave the ocean paths penna- nently, by this atrocious precedent, to the will of Mars. The pseudo-Napoleon of Germany out-Herods Herod, and calmly announces a permanent Lusitania policy in international law — making crime not the exception, but the rule. Had our Government refused to act, we should have been unworthy to survive; as the present Count Bernstorff himself has said, there was nothing else for the United States to do. It is as genuinely an American war as the war of the Revolu- tion itself, and in proportion as our people realized that fact they translated their thought into action. THE CALL FROM THE FIRING LINE HON. ALBERT JOHNSON, M.C. While our Congresisional party was abroad we were informed that during the short period while Belgium checked and delayed the German invasion France raised and equipped an army of more than 7,000,000 men. France had a population at that time of 39,000,000. She succeeded in placing 7,000,000 men under arms. Her total man power — that is, men between the ages of 18 and 45 — at that time was 9,000,000. Seven men out of every nine in France took up arms during the first weeks of the war. Since that fateful day in 1914, when the German Empire started to force the world to its belief that might makes right, France has added 2,000,000 men to her first stupen- dous enrollment, so that her total enlistments have been 9,000,000, or as many as her total man power — 18 to 45 — at the beginning. That means that France has placed in THE CALL FROM THE FIRING LINE 49 her armies almost every boy who has become of military age since the beginning of the war. What is the enlisted strength of France now? France now has, or rather had, at the end of throe years' fighting 6,000,000 men in her army. And that 6,000,000 represented 92.34 per cent of her present man power. Is not that a most astonishing statement? Of all the men available for war purposes in France at the present time, 92.34 per cent are with the colors. France had lost in killed at the end of three years 1,580,- 000 men, or 17.56 per cent of her total enlistment. In per- manently wounded, the French loss is given at 921,328, or 10.24 per cent of her total enlistment. Her captured or missing amounted, at about the first of July, 1917, to 696,- 548, or 7.74 per cent. I doubt if the people of the United States, even with the knowledge that has come during the raising of our own great Army, can realize what France has done in putting men into her army or comprehend the losses which she sustained in checking the invading army of Germany, and which she finally turned back 20 miles from Paris. Gen. Joffre, after retreating slowly from the frontier, fighting all the way, told his men to stand and die at the Marne. His brave soldiers stood, but they did not all die. They turned the Battle of the Marne into a victory and forced the Germans to fall back. And when the Germans fell back there began the retreat of monarchies before democracies, which continues and shall continue until vic- tory is ours. Before we discuss the losses of the British, I think we should remind ourselves that Belgium and France were forced to do nearly all of the fighting the first year. Bel- gium stood against the invading hordes until she was well- nigh exhausted, reduced to a fighting force of little more than 160,000 men, and, mind you, Belgium had a popula- tion of 7,600,000 and fighting men in proportion. Then France took up the great struggle, and in one year wrote the greatest page ever written in history. The Battle 4 50 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST of the Marne will stand out as the great decisive battle of the world. England sent to France as quickly as possible most of her regular army — an expeditionary force of 160,000 men — the "contemptible little army," as the German Emperor called it. That army was almost annihilated. It fought at Mons and at the first battle of the Ypres, and helped to roll the invaders back from the Marne. One division went into battle 12,000 strong, with 400 officers. It came out 3,000 strong, with 50 officers. By the end of November, 1914, hardly a man of England's "old" army was left. But France was saved. England's expeditionary force played its part in checking the carefully prepared and long-premeditated invasion. Now comes the winter of 1914 and spring of 1915 ; Eng- land's army wiped out. Great Britain unprepared, just as the United States was unprepared last spring. France fought on almost alone that winter and nearly all that next year. The men of France died and, perishing, saved Europe. As quickly as possible Great Britain raised a large army. The figures show that the man power of Great Britain at the beginning of the war — that is, men between the ages of 18 and 45 — was 12,000,000. The present man power is 11,000,000. The total men enlisted by Great Britain are 6,000,000, according to calculations made about the first of August, 1917 ; the present men enlisted, 5,000,000. The present enlistment percentage of present man power is 45.45 per cent. Those figures include Great Britain and not the colonies. When we come to the list of men killed the colo- nies are included. The number given killed for Great Brit- ain and colonies is 298,988. That is a percentage of the total enlistment of 4.98 ; seriously wounded, 177,224, or 2.95 per cent; captured or missing, 184,452. Let me clear up a misunderstanding which prevails con- cerning Great Britain and the colonies. How often do we hear it said throughout the United States that the British Empire has raised a great army, but that England has held back her troops and permitted the troops of Canada and THE CALL FROM THE FIRING LINE 51 Australia to do the fighting and dying. The troops of the colonies have fought gallantly and died nobly, but have not been sacrificed out of proportion to the troops of the rest of the British Empire, Our party of Congressmen abroad had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Lloyd-George in the House of Commons pay a tribute to the amiies of the British Empire, and in the course of his remarks he said that of the great armies fur- nished by the British Empire England has contributed 75 per cent and England has sustained 75 per cent of the losses. To make the words of that distinguished statesman quite clear in this country I think it well to say that when one says Great Britain one m.eans the British Isles; when one says Scotland one means Scotland ; when one says England he means England alone, not Scotland, Wales and Ireland ; and when one says the Empire one means the British Isles, the dominions, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and all the possessions that go to make the entire British Empire. In passing let me state that Canada had contrib- uted to August 1, 1917, between 700,000 and 800,000 men to the Empire's force, or fully five times as many as the original expeditionary force sent from England to France. Some statistics are obtainable as to the man power and losses of Germany. At the beginning of the war the man pov/er of Germany — men from 18 to 45 — was 14,000,000; present man power, 9,400,000. Total men enlisted since the v/ar began, 10,500,000; present enlistment, 7,000,000; present enlistment per cent of man power, 74.47 ; the num- ber of men killed in the German armies amounted to 1,908,- 800 in July, 1917. Up to about July 1, 1917, the Germans had lost in cap- tured 704,000, seriously wounded 958,000. Austria has had hea\y losses also. That nation has enlisted 7,000,000 since the war began and now has 4,000,000 enlisted, or 35.87 per cent of her man power. She has lost in killed 849,000; seriously wounded, 540,674; captured or missing, 833,600. The figures show Germany to have lost about 30,000 more, on estimates to July 1, 1917, than Great Britain and France combined. Since August 1 the losses to all forces 52 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST have been very heavy, but have not been reported except by Great Britain, which lost in killed, captured, and wounded 870,000 men in August, September, October, and November of 1917. Germany's greatest loss at one place was at Verdun. It is estimated that one-third of all her casualties occurred in and close around that great French fort. The party of Congressmen were privileged to visit that famous fort and the battle fields about it. We went down the slope on the far side of Verdun Hill, and as we were climbing the slope of Souville Hill, next beyond, the French general in charge stopped us, not far from the sky line, and said: "Gentle- men, this is as far as the Germans came in their tremen- dous assault on Verdun in February a year ago under the Crown Prince. If all those who fell dead in that terrible assault and all of those who perished in that magnificent defense were here nov/, dead on the ground, their bodies would be piled five deep on these slopes." As he spoke, the general, with a wave of his arm, covered all of the ground within range of the eye. He said further : "The Germans are estimated to have lost 600,000 men in dead alone. The French lost in dead 400,000." As we stood on those blood-soaked hills we were sad- dened beyond measure. We were not witnessing a battle,, although the French were firing artilleiy shells over our heads, and from the other side of Souville Hill exploding shells were being sent our way. We were stunned at the statements of war's cost in human life. Two military ceme- teries were there — one near the fort and one nearer the town. We were told that these cemeteries contained the bodies of 10,000 soldiers — all that could be found of that enormous number of dead. The rest were shot away, either blown back to the elements by that tremendous fall of artillery shell or else lost under the scarred and pock-marked earth, which has been churned and turned over and over again to a depth in many places of 30 feet. And yet, in spite of these tremendous figures which I have presented concerning loss of life, the actual death rate, as shown by the mortality records of the war, is not more THE CALL FROM THE FIRING LINE 53 than 45 per 1,000 per annum, or a loss of life of about 1 in 22 each year. The Committee on Public Information recently gave out this statement: "Figures taken when the casualties were greatest in proportion to mobilized strength and combined with the highest proportion of deaths show losses to deaths from wounds and killed in action to be approximately 11 in eveiy 1,000 of mobilized strength." One cannot learn of these losses without being brought to deep reflection. One cannot learn of the sufferings endured by Belgium without being saddened for a lifetime. One cannot traverse the devastated portion of France and ever expect to have that dreadful picture effaced from his memory. Our soldiers cannot go and see and come back the same. Those whom God permits to return will come back to us saddened, deeply religious, and sympathetic for humankind as never before. When one sees the horror of it all one cries out in anguish. One asks. Why must it be? Is it worth all the sacrifice? Yes; worth all that has been made and all that must be made. Oh, my friends, but for the heroism of Bel- gium, but for the sacrifices of France, but for the British Navy and the determination of Great Britain, but for the new vigor of Italy, but for the will of the United States to take up the fight for democracy in its last stand, Prussia would now be mistress of Europe and by this very day have been hurling her spears at this hemisphere. As we were leaving the Continent an aid to the King of Belgium gave us a little dinner in a shell-wrecked hotel in a Flemish town, which was even then being bombarded. The aid to Albert of Belgium proposed a toast to the Presi- dent of the United States and the King of Belgium. The response was made by Representative Stephens of Nebraska. He spoke for all of the members of our party, and I believe that he spoke for all of the people of the great United States when he said : "Now that the United States has drawn its sword, may that sword never be sheathed until the rights of these wronged peoples be restored to them and democracy made safe throughout the world." 54 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST AMERICA'S ANSWER TO THE GERMAN CHALLENGE STOCKTON AXSON, LITT.D., GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS The German people did not choose this course them- selves. It was chosen for them. They were simply so arrested in their political development, so mediasvally blind that thej' docilely submitted to the will of the choosers. How long will they continue to submit? The world is suffering nightmare because the German mind still sleeps. The challenge came from autocracj^ to democracy, and we may be quite sure that the answer has given autocracy some surprises. For one thing, the war has lasted so much longer than autocracy planned. A but slightly impeded rush to Paris, the crushing the life out of France, then an invasion of England, and that chapter at any rate of the war would be ended. It was a matter of a few months, perhaps a few weeks. But we are in the middle of the fourth year and Paris has not yet been reached, and Britain is stronger than ever. For another thing, autocracy has found it so very hard to scare people. She sank the Tuscania, and what was the result? Such a rush to the recruiting offices in America as had not been known since the opening days of America's participation in the war. I myself have been the indirect recipient of some letters from people in far-away portions of our country who have written to their Congressmen that they were over the age prescribed by the army and wanted to knov/ if there was not some back entrance through which they could slip into the fighting line, and Congressmen referred some of these letters to me in the hope that the Red Cross might find some service for these determined belligerents. That was an effective cartoon which represented Von Hindenberg, half gorilla, half Hindenberg, and all monster, waist deep in brine and filth, shaking his frenzied fists and asking, with amazement written all over his brutish counte- nance, "Why don't you get frightened?" Germany has been dropping bombs on London for years and still London AMERICA'S ANSWER TO THE GERMAN CHALLENGE 55 is not frightened. There could be no other object to these tactics than to scare England ; certainly no military advan- tage could accrue. Nor yet from the forays of her navy contingents on unguarded coast towns of England ; nor yet from that mysterious gun which at intervals of twenty and twelve minutes dropped projectiles on Paris. All through Palm Sunday the missiles fell with the regularity of the clock's motion. Surely Paris would be terrorized now, for, added to the material dread of exploding bombs, there is the immaterial, that which comes from mystery. "Whence come these shells?" people were asking. And not knowing, they would surely be frightened. But we read that Parisians went about all day, afoot and in vehicles, to their churches, to their cafes, to visit neighbors. We read how the old women of Paris sold their palm branches as they always had on Palm Sunday. Not even the old peddler women of Paris could be frightened. No, Herr Hindenberg, it can't be done. The primary effect of the challenge on America has been to arm America, to turn this peaceful democracy into a mili- tary nation — only temporarily, I earnestly hope. We have changed all our habits, reversed our ratio of values. Ameri- cans, who used to be so eager to make money, have to a considerable degree forgotten all about making money and are interested mainly in spending it for the Government and being spent by the Government. Germany expected to stop transatlantic traffic. A Red Cross commissioner to Serbia was talking with a German officer who asked him when he had come over. He replied, "In August." "It's a lie,"' said the officer; "nobody has crossed the Atlantic Ocean since the unrestricted submarine warfare began." Undoubtedly he believed it. His govern- ment had planned to stop all transatlantic traffic, and then it characteristically lied, saying that it was stopped. But the traffic goes right on. What have we been doing all these years that Germany was making her preparations for this murderous assault on the world's liberty? Of course much that she did was secret, but much else was no secret at all. We knew about 56 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST that army of hers. We knew about that navy she was build- ing. We knew of that toast, drunk nightly on the ships of Germany — "Der Tag." We knew the national philosophy that Germany was inculcating, the philosophy of might, of superman, of national aggrandizement, of world-compre- hending ambition — a political philosophy of world-extensive empire combined with an ethical philosophy that pity is the only sin — the politics of Bismarck married to the philosophy of Nietzsche, and both subject to the bidding of the supreme war council. We knew all this — why did we do nothing about it? Because it was not "our business." Because we were a peaceful, democratic, industrial people, living to ourselves on these protected shores, having no part in the conflicts and mixed purposes of Europe. Surely we see now where we made our crucial mistake. We were living in a neigh- borhood without realizing it. We were trying to lead the isolated life of the hermit, whereas in fact our future and our fortunes were inextricably tied up with the things that affect the rest of the world. We have learned the lesson now ; never again shall the doctrine of isolation be preached to America. We know now that modem science and modem commerce have made the world a "neighborhood" in reality. We had long used that phrase, but our use of it was purely academic, perhaps a bit Pickwickian. Now we see that it was a phrase full of portentous meaning. So it often hap- pens in the individual's life that, in his untroubled imma- turity, he prattles phrases which he has heard from others, not knowing what they mean until experience has gripped him, when suddenly the phrase is understood by him in all its bitter tragic force. So it has been with us as a nation. Experience has taught us now that it is absolutely impos- sible for any European nation to plot against any other European nation without affecting the uttermost parts of the earth. Thus, not through any willfulness or deliberate inten- tion to avoid duty, but simply through a human failure to understand our position in the world, we permitted Ger- many to go on unquestioned, pursuing her affairs as if they AMERICA'S ANSWER TO THE GERMAN CHALLENGE 57 were only her affairs and not ours, making her diligent preparation for the blow which she meant to strike and which she was showing by every political utterance and military gesture that she meant to strike. And now, with the rest of the distracted world, we have got to pay the penalty. Thousands of American boys must make their last bed in the soil of France, and American homes will be like the homes of ancient Israel, with the sign of the death of the firstborn over the lintel. It is a terrible price to pay, but it must be paid. I love life — just the mere fact of feeling and being alive — but I realize, as you do, that there are circumstances when life is not worth while. Deep as is the instinct for physical life in us, there is something even deeper, some- thing so associated with our instincts of life that it seems life-like. It is that thing for which our forefathers fought at Lexington — Liberty. Americans cannot conceive of life without liberty, and, thank God, we have arrived at the stage when we realize that it is not sufficient for us merely to say to the peoples of the world, "Come to us and we will give you liberty," but that we must take this precious thing to them with our guns and our ships and our armies. Sometimes we are forced to seek the ultimate meaning of this war in its relationship to the generations yet unborn. I have always admired those men who plant groves and forests of slow-maturing trees, knowing quite well that they themselves will never enjoy the shade, but visioning their children happy in the forests. So it is now. With w^eapons of war, on fields harrowed by shells and fertilized with the blood of our best born, we are planting the seed of liberty that our children may live in a world altogether fit for human beings. We are in one of those great tragic crises which come from time to time to individuals, to groups, and to nations, when only the long thought can be the hopeful thought. If we think about to-morrow only, we must be pessimists. But we look through the lurid murk and smoke and flame and see cloud-shaped promises of a better future. Democracy and humanity are almost interchangeable terms. Neither is perfect. Both we hope are in the way 58 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST of bettennent. Certainly each is better than its opposite. Humanity is better than inhumanity. Democracy is better than autocracy. Sometimes I am irritated, sometimes amused, at things I hear said about democracy. People point to admitted and notorious flaws in the operation of democ- racy and ask with a sneer: "How can you be enthusiastic about democracy with this thing prevailing?" Surely the answer is very clear. It is in the form of another question : "What do you offer in the place of it? Autocracy?" There is nothing else to offer. One of the good things about this war, which has so many terrible meanings, is that it has made perfectly clear to us that it must be decided now which is to possess the earth, democracy or autocracy. We see now that, because this world is a realized neighborhood, these two cannot dwell together. In Shakespeare's "King Henry IV." there is a fine passage in which Hotspur and Prince Hal meet for the first, last, and only time. They have been hearing reports of each other all through the play. Shakespeare, with the art of a master dramatist, has kept them in contrast before us throughout the entire play without ever bringing them face to face. At last, in the heat of battle, these two come upon each other. It is one of those splendid dramatic moments which only great dramatists achieve, where what has been going on through- out the play suddenly culminates in one tense moment. And as these two young men stand facing each other, swords drav.m, ready for the conflict. Prince Hal says : "I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy, To share with me in glorjr*any more: Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere; Nor can one England brook a double reign. Or Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales." This is the situation as between democracy and autoc- racy. For a hundred years and more there have been rumors and partisan claims of the benefits and defects of each, but now the Supreme Artificer of the universe has arrr^ngcd, or at least permitted it to be arranged, that these two should stand face to face on the field of battle. One or the other must go. AMERICA'S ANSWER TO THE GERMAN CHALLENGE 59 And according to which goes, shall it be determined whether the progress of the world shall be backward or forward. That is not my dogma; it is simple history. Autocracy was the method of the past ; democracy has been the method of only the recent present. This war will determine v/hich shall control the future. I know of no other case in history in which the hands of the clock have been turned back. It is not going to be so in this instance. I think the future is to prevail over the past. He who believes in democracy believes in it as an organic thing capable of development and fulfillments. Its fruition is a great "to-come." Democracy has its defects, and they are man5\ But the worst that democracy can do is very little as compared with v/hat autocracy has been doing these past four years. Democracy never could gage a wholesale war for conquest, for the simple reason that when the peo- ple have their ov/n way the people see that they themselves have not enough at stake to compensate them for the stu- pendous sacrifice that must be made. It is the ambition of kings and the pride of war lords that instigate wars of conquest. Where the people are choosers, there is not suf- ficient motive of ambition and pride to start such a war. And because this is so, I believe firmly that democracy at its worst is better than autocracy at its best. For democracy at least leaves people free to choose evil if they prefer evil. But autocracy leaves no freedom of choice at all. Nearly fifty years ago Walt Whitman said a very wise thing in his "Democratic Vistas" — a book, by the way, which, if I had my will, every school child in the country would be required to read. He said in effect that it is not necessary to sup- pose that democracy is the best imaginable form of gov- ernment, but that it is the only form of government which the future is going to put up with, the only government that the people will tolerate. In the face of that simple fact questions of perfection, questions even of "better or worse" become trivial. Democracy in fighting for itself is fighting for humanity, and it is proper and comely that in waging democracy's wars every effort should be made to abate its miseries. And 60 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST that is what your Red Cross is undertaking to do. For of course it is your Red Cross, not mine, not the property of any set of officers either in Washington, or New Orleans, or Birmingham, but the property of the American people. It is an expression of their will, and the organization of their effort to lessen the misery of the world, first of the sol- diers, then of the civilian population — soldiers both of Amer- ica and of our Allies, the civilian population of all lands whereon the desolating blight of war has fallen. Because we are all fighting with the same object, not merely for this war or for that war, but for the great principle that all countries shall have the right of self-determination, we are extending our Red Cross to our Allies as heartily as we are extending it to ourselves. Red Cross is sometimes criticised because it seems to be doing more for Europe than it is doing for America, send- ing more money to France than is appropriated in our own country. Of the something less than $80,000,000 appro- priated up to the first of March, much the largest item is $30,000,000 to France. This is because the war is being fought in France, not in America, and it is in the actual theater of the war that the need is greatest. So Red Cross went immediately to France, both to be of assistance to our Allies and to make all possible preparation for the arrival of our soldiers. If you stop to think about it, this volunteer relief move- ment of yours got mobilized and into the field much sooner than the military forces of the government. There was never a better example of the need of volunteer aid than this war has shown, of the fact that volunteers organize them- selves and render their emergency assistance in their own deft, elastic, plastic way better than is possible by the slower routine of the best ordered government. Of course this is no reflection on the government, whose processes ought to be deliberate, for there is danger in governmental haste. There are some things which only a government can do, such as organizing, equipping, and training an army. But because of the very fact that relief is an emergency matter, it is better administered when free of constitutional routine AMERICA'S ANSWER TO THE GERMAN CHALLENGE 61 and legal checks. So, in an astonishingly short time, Red Cross was organized on a scalfe commensurate with the vastness of the world war in which it was to participate. From less than a half million members it has increased to twenty-two million ; from 555 branches, chapters, and aux- iliaries, to more than 31,000; from an annual incorpe of $2,000,000 to an annual expenditure of approximately $100,- 000,000. It has run its line of relief from army canton- ments on the Pacific Coast to the impoverished inhabitants of Roumania, Palestine, and the Russian Steppes, and it has expended money on a scale varied from the complete rebuilding of a French village to the cost of a warm jacket for a little shivering French girl. The lion's share of appropriation went to France, with the thought always uppermost in our minds that it is in France that we must ultimately render the most aid to the American soldiers; for it is there that his pinch will be the sharpest. The hospitals of many varieties and all mod- ern equipment, the houses of rest behind the trenches, the rolling canteens, and all the devices to make the burden of the soldiers' living a little more tolerable and the burden of his suffering a little more easy — all this was prepared with the knowledge that in due time the chief objects of our min- istration would be our own flesh and blood, the boys of America gone to France to fight this war because it is in France that the war is being fought. Red Cross merely preceded the armies to France. But Red Cross caught the vision of Allied unification from the start — the idea now realized in military'' arrange- ment by putting General Foch in supreme command of the Western forces. Red Cross felt that its service must be to the French and Belgian soldiers, to the British (when they should need it) as well as to the American soldiers, and then, looking beyond the Western front to those Allies in the East, to the Russians and Roumanians, while they were still fighting, to the Serbians, who never cease fighting, and now, through our latest Commission, to the mixed forces in Palestine; and wherever a soldier is fighting the Teu- tonic monster for the sake of the world's liberty, that sol- 62 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST dier is our Ally, and deserves such help as America can give him. If there is one thing that I hold in my heart more pas- sionately than anything else, with such a passion indeed that it is never easy to speak of it without loss of self- control, it is the faith that the grand and final purpose of this war is to end war. My friends, if that is not the ulti- mate meaning of this war, then it seems to me that we must suppose that old Hugo von Trinberg was right when he opined that "God Almighty must needs laugh at his won- drous manikins below." Old Hugo was a saner German than Emperor William ; and though he did not presume to be on William's familiar terms with God, he guessed some things about God that surely must be true. Surely God must either laugh or weep, to see us doing what we are doing now, if we have any other object in the doing of it than to end the doing of it for all time. Fighting for democracy, fighting for humanity, fighting to end war — these are the things that make this war seem worth the cost of it, and I can think of nothing else that would make it worth the price. THE MORAL CAUSES OF THE WAR REV. CHARLES S. MACFARLAND, D.D., PH.D., GENERAL SECRE- TARY OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA AND A MEMBER OF THE NA- TIONAL COMMITTEE ON THE CHURCHES AND MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." These words of Jesus are from his most striking para- dox. The lips that spoke them were those of one whose life was far removed from peace. It was a troubled life, filled with controversy, with disappointment, with neglect. How could Jesus look these disciples in the face in these last hours as he faced a cruel death and tell them that his last gift to them was the gift of peace? THE MORAL CAUSES OF THE WAR 63 In the second place, a very hasty review of the subse- quent lives and experiences of those disciples makes it per- fectly clear that they did not receive the bequest. Their lives were the counterpart of his own troubled life. Still further, did not Jesus contradict his own words and in one of his moments of clearer thought tell them, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth ; I came not to send peace, but a sword"? This nation of ours has been for more than a quarter of a century a peace seeker. Never has it sought so diligently as in these four momentous years, but it has sought in vain. But let us think for a moment: Is this the truth? Is it not rather true that now during this past year our nation has really found peace? Let us go back again to those words of Jesus and read them once more; they are very carefully uttered. After telling the disciples that he gives them the bequest of peace he is very careful to add "My peace I give unto you," and he distinctly tells them that he gives "not as the world giveth." He distinguishes between his own and between their outward and inward life. The Gethsemane and the Calvary which he faced at that moment and which they were to face was the price of that peace. I have often wished that I had the genius of the artist that I might paint a series of pictures depicting and inter- preting, in striking colors, the life of Jesus. If I were such an artist, I would begin my set of pictures with the young boy standing before the teachers in the Temple and out through the window of the Temple far distant and dim I would portray ihe cross. I would picture him through the forty days in the v/ilderness with the cross coming nearer, so that its outlines now are clear. I would paint him as he wends his way along the dusty road as the disciples leave him. I would picture him standing before the scornful Pharisees in the presence of Pilate, upon the mountain side, in the garden, and at the last supper. In every one of these pictures I would bring the cross a little nearer. Under every picture I would put these striking words of Luke, "He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." 64 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST And I would like to place that series of pictures in every college hall, in every legislative assembly, in our own capitol at Washington, in every camp and barracks of our army and our navy. My friends, our nation now faces the Holy City. God grant that it may steadfastly set its face to go to Jerusalem ! Our nation is now finding the peace of Jesus. We are thus here to-day to consider this conflict from the viewpoint of religious men and women. It is not enough that we should accept a common and superficial view of patriotism and be thoughtlessly loyal to our nation; it is our solemn duty to consider the conflict in which we are engaged in its profounder issues, in its moral and spiritual aspects. I shall not take these moments to recount the awful and atrocious deeds, sickening to my heart as they were when I beheld them, for it is not enough for us to find the final basis of our struggle in these wretched embodi- ments of an unrelenting rage, and there are deeper issues for our thought. The very day the war broke out I sat in a peace con- ference in the little city of Constance, in Germany itself, with half a hundred leaders from a dozen nations, includ- ing all of those now engaged in conflict. War was abhor- rent to me then and, let me say, it is infinitely more abhor- rent to me now. For nearly three years, in such humble ways as were open to me, I sought to find the path to justice without further prolonged struggle, and two years ago, in a repre- sentative capacity, I threaded my way between mines and submarines, across the ocean, through the Channel and the North Sea, in the prayerful hope that I might find the way. And whatever may be the issue, I wish to stand before you as one who, with clear conscience and with the sense of exhausted effort, can say the things that I shall say. I still believe that war, upon the part of the aggressor, is absolutely without any justifying sanction; that war, even of defense, cannot receive the assent of the Christian conscience unless it be even more than utilitarian defense THE MORAL CAUSES OF THE WAR 65 itself; unless it be resistance in behalf of others and the defense of moral and spiritual ideals. And that even then the Christian conscience cannot give its sanction unless every other means known to the human mind and heart have first been sought and tried, to bring justice and righteousness without it. One cannot formulate the moral conscience which we are seeking without at least a brief survey of the courses of procedure, in contrast to each other, of the tM'"0 groups of nations which now stand over against each other before the world, to see whether or not these conditions have been met. We must consider the moral ideals which are at stake in the light of the stern human experience of these four momentous years. Two things stand out so clearly that it is almost waste- ful to debate them. The one is that the German nation had for years planned and prepared for what has come; that in conference after conference at the Hague, hers was the one force that persistently obstructed and finally prevented those international formularies which would have led the nations out into the light of heaven, and it is trivial to ask the question in the light of experience and event: Did the German nation start out with the deliberate purpose of the physical mastery of Europe and the world? Is it not the part of sensible men and v/omen to estimate what the Imperial Government intended to do by what it has actually done, with its iron heel upon Belgium, its hand upon the neck of France, with its domination over the whole Balkan section, over Austria-Hungary, over 'Poland, over Turkey, and now to-day with its ruthless subjugation of the whole Russian Empire, while the neutral states, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, and Holland, live in trembling fear of its endless subtleties and its unscrupulous defiance of international honor and its webs of conspiracy are woven in Mexico, in the Southern nations of this continent itself, in France, in Italy, in England and Ireland; and right within our own doors. Belgium resisted, poor Russia yielded ; but each receives absolutely the same recompense and reward. 5 66 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Is it not all a clear revelation of those fundamental prin- ciples of German thought in which the mind of the German people for a quarter of a century had been prepared and disciplined? Is it not clear evidence that the solemn treaty torn to fragments at Liege was but a type and symbol of a profound and a far-reaching policy? Review the history of this Imperial state — its literature, its philosophy, yea, even at least in some measure, the preaching of its pulpits — and we find in it a nation which believes with all its heart, with all its soul, with all its might, and with all its strength, in the survival of the mightiest, in physical warfare as the very sacrament of spiritual reality ; that the people exist for the sake of the state ; that the sword is the scepter of the highest court of justice, and that right is only measured by might; that the state is beyond good and evil, and that therefore f rightfulness itself has its divine sanction; that humanity and mercy are foolishness; that democracy is but an idle dream. Do we not have here a nation, and is it not as clear as day, which believes in new Beatitudes ; that the meek shall serve the mighty ; that the strong shall thrive upon the weak; that the only duty of the feeble is to perish and that the state has need of no con- cern for those memorable words of our own historic Decla- ration about a decent respect for the opinions of mankind? The evidence of these three sad years throws the clearest light on all those meetings at the Hague where treaties and arbitrations failed because they were foiled by the consistent resistance of the representatives of this nation and explains why the name of Get'many is not included in the thirty nations who signed the far-reaching treaties of Mr. Bryan with our own Government. Read, if you will, the very peace message of this nation a few short weeks before our own participation in the war, boasting of conquest and asking for peace upon the basis of its own haggard philosophy and ruthless deeds. But perhaps some one says, "Have not the other nations done v/rong in days that are past?" If it will please you, I am willing to admit that there have been weak spots in our own policy. God forbid that THE MORAL CAUSES OF THE WAR 67 we should ever play the role of Pharisee. But in this imper- fect world we must estimate by the general spirit and trend of nations as we do of individuals. What then has been the general spirit, we will say, in the last quarter of a century, of our own nation? What is our record as a whole? It is symbolized by our indemnity gratuitously returned to Japan; by the voluntary gift of indemnities to China, which, at their consummation, will amount to $40,000,000 ; of the island of Cuba handed over to her own people; of the West Indies purchased by a fair and honorable trade. And what would be the attitude of our people if this Government should even think of pro- claiming the permanent possession of the Philippines regardless of the rights and development of its people? I hasten to admit that it is our solemn duty to clean our own democratic household while we preach democracy to the world. But what has been the trend of our interna- tional life? First of all, it has been the tendency to isola- tion, with a Monroe Doctrine intended to free, not only ourselves, but the whole American continent from old world diplomacy. Look at the list of thirty nations with whom we have agreed to substitute arbitration for war, by treaties which initiated with ourselves. What did our long and patient neutrality tend to signify? With the exception of a few reactionary Congressmen, we have given our instant assent to a League of Nations. And what is the testimony of our absolute unprepared- ness? Did ever a President or a Cabinet or a people go to further lengths in the exercise of national patience, while a nation with whom we were not at war filled our land from one end to the other with intrigue and sent its agents from its own embassies to dynamite our factories? When did a nation's ruler ever try to such exhaustion sane counsels and advice, while a nation with whom we were at peace spoke her plausible lies to us to quiet our fears while she built her engines of death to destroy our ships and our people? And then finally, when every recourse had been tried, we still pleaded for a peace without victory, and our Presi- dent, by his request for the war aims of the nations, sought 68 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST to gain peace for a nation in whose people he still trusted, although he knew that its lords and rulers were enemies of all mankind. And then the final specious word came from the imperial capital : "We are the victors ; we will sit in conference now with those whom we have vanquished." In Heaven's name, what kind of a conference of peace would that have been? Never before in all history has a nation made the dis- tinction, in entering: a conflict, that our President made between the German people and their rulers, sending to the Ijeople the message that we do not war against them and even the trustful word that we believed in them. And what was the meaning of our neutrality? Was it that we condoned oppression and injustice? No; it was the long-deferred hope that by this means we could best serve all the peoples to bind up the wounds of the conflict. And finally, when the end came, our nation withheld its hand until the German Ambassador, who had been so faith- less to us, had reached Berlin, because at his departure he had asked that this be done; and meanwhile during this delay a few more hundred submarines were finished off. And so we hoped and prayed, in the midst of the official spies among us, despite the plots at our ovm. doors, the strife that was being fomented among us, and the attempts to embroil us with nations from one end of the world to the other, and still we held our peace. I hold in my hand a wireless message from the German Chancellor Von Bethmann - Hollweg. In 1916 I was requested by Ex-President Taft, in behalf of the League to Enforce Peace, to take up correspondence with the Chan- cellor relative to the attitude of the German Government and people toward a League of Nations. This message expresses approval of such a League, but it contains also two significant limitations which I think we can now understand better than we understood them then. Participation in such a League is put over until after the war. It states that then Germany will be disposed to take the leadership in such a League and that it will do so in order to restrain disturbers of the peace. That is to say : It THE MORAL CAUSES OF THE WAR 69 is to be a League between victor and vanquished, something like the present League between Germany and Russia. I have here another document. It was conveyed to the Government of Germany through the German churches h\te in January, 1917. It is signed by nearly a thousand of the most representative religious leaders of America. It states three proposals which, had the German nation been ready to accept, even at that late moment might have made pos- sible a cessation of conflict. I have still a third document of which you probably never heard. It is a copy of a wireless message which, in a widely representative capacity, I sent to the Chancellor and to Foreign Secretary Zimmermann in December, 1916. It urges that Germany reply to the note of the Allies with- out reference to causes and responsibility for beginning the war ; to omit all reference to victories ; to offer to leave territorial adjustments and indemnities to be decided by conference, but to express the purpose of Germany to enter such a conference ready to provide for general disarma- ment, a League of Nations, or other provisions to insure eternal peace. It was an appeal which, if heeded, might again have saved us from the present hour. I mention these things because they indicate our efforts up to the last moment, and indeed beyond the last moment, to bring peace and justice together. These, my friends, it seems to me adequately answer the Question: Did we try moral suasion, and did we enter this war with clean hands, with a pure heart, without hav- ing lifted up our souls to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully? And it raises the question : Had we turned our faces away from Jerusalem, should we not have been repudiated by a uni- verse whose integrity and pity are relentless? And meanwhile, instead of preparing our militaiy meas- ures for the thing that might come, we refrained; and I know from things that our President himself has said in my presence that the reason for that procedure was because he felt that for us to make manifest warlike preparations would tend to frustrate all our efforts to bring peace by other means. 70 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST And what were our busy activities? What were our plans? They were all occupied with deeds and measures of mercy and good will, of rehabilitation and of recon- struction. That is our history and it is the record with which we stand before the bar of the judgment of Almighty God. But we have said that no such conflict is justifiable unless it be a war of defense. Here we must be morally adequate in our conceptions of defense. Is a nation bound to defend and to protect other weaker nations ? It raises a still more significant question : Is a war which is in defense of the moral and the spiritual ideals from which the whole of mankind draws its life and being to be considered as a war of defense? But at this point some one raises the question: Must we not grant that the blame for this world conflict is to be distributed among the nations? Have they not all pursued wrong and foolish diplomatic ways? We need not be concerned with the sins of Napoleon or the wrongdoings of our British brethren a hundred years ago. We are dealing with present issues. Two years ago when I visited these peoples I marked their contrasts. I found in gi'eat Britain little of what could be called a sense of national hatred; I found in France everything else obscured by the self-sacrificing spirit to great ideals; and while in Paris they showed me side by side, first the letter representative French Protestant pastors sent to the court preacher at Berlin at the beginning of the war, earnestly beseeching that Christian institutions exercise their influ- ence in the spirit of amelioration and restraint, and then the letter from the court preacher and his associates in Berlin ruthlessly saying, in substance, that war is war and we must let it take its ruthless and unrestrained consequences. What did I find in Germany? Everything else seemed to be obscured by the sense of national self-consciousness and with the clearly apparent faith that, v/ith the German state, whatever is, is right. I am willing to be patient with our patient friends to-day while they recount to me the sins of our nation and its allies ; THE MORAL CAUSES OF THE WAR 71 but, my friends, the man is either knave or fool who can- not see the ineffaceable moral distinction in this hour between Germany and Turkey on the one side, and Great Britain, France, and the United States on the other. I have here still another message which probably you never saw. It was sent out at the beginning of the war to the churches of the world from representative church leaders in Germany. Its spirit may be indicated by such sentences as these: "Our sword is bright and keen." The conflict is laid at the doors of "those who have long secretly and cunningly been spinning a web of conspiracy against Germany, which now they have flung over us in order to strangle us therein." It is a message of hate. And then our churches in Federal Council assembled last May, representing a nation which had endured the things which I have set before you, issued a message and this is what they said : "To vindicate the principles of righteousness and the inviolability of faith as between nation and nation; to safeguard the right of all the people, great and small alike, to live their life in freedom and peace; to resist and over- come the forces that would prevent the union of the nations in a commonwealth of free people conscious of unity in the pursuit of ideal ends — these are aims for which every one of us may lay down our all, even life itself. We enter the war with no hatred nor bitterness against those with whom we contend. As members of the church of Christ, the hour lays upon us special duties : To purge our own hearts clean of arrogance and selfishness; to keep ever before the eyes of ourselves and of our allies the ends for which we fight ; to hold our own nation true to Its professed aims of justice, liberty, and brotherhood; to testify to our fellow Christians in every land, most of all to those from whom for the time we are estranged, our consciousness of unbroken unity in Christ; to unite in the fellowship of serv- ice multitudes who love their enemies and are ready to join with them in rebuilding the waste places as soon as peace shall come; to be vigilant against every attempt to arouse 72 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the spirit of vengeance and unjust suspicion toward those of foreign birth or sympathies; to protect the rights of conscience against every attempt to invade them ; and above all, to call men everywhere to share with him his ministry of reconciliation. With this hope we would join hands with all men of good will of every land and race, to rebuild on this v/ar-ridden and desolated earth the commonwealth of mankind." I profoundly believe that this indicates the general spirit of our nation. As I go from one end of the country to the other, I hear little of utterances of hate, little of ultimate revenge, and on every hand, I think I may say it with truth- fulness, a general spirit of desire to return good for evil. In the light of the national and international experience which I have tried to suggest to you, it seems to me then that the very warfaring man can discern the moral aims of the war. It is to deteiTnine the very nature of the State. Is "it above moral and divine law or is it subject to it? Must a State, like an individual, tell the truth, treat its neighbors as it does itself, and have the same obligation as the individual to be honorable and pitiful and human? As our President set it forth in his message, "A stead- fast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. Only free people can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own." And the ends for which we are in conflict are precisely the same as those which actuated the days of our neutrality and which go back to the sentiments of international good will and honor expressed by our representatives in the very first Conference at the Hague, the reconstruction of interna- tional institutions upon the basis of justice through peaceful arbitration and as a practical measure toward the accom- plishments of these ideals, the establishment of a League of Nations. THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 73 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR REV. FREDERICK LYNCH, D.D., SECRETARY NATIONAL COMMIT- TEE ON THE CHURCH AND MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR We have just been re-reading the various addresses of the President of the United States delivered to Congress and to other audiences since the entrance of the United States into the war. Again we have been impressed with the remarkable fact that in eveiy utterance the moral aims of the war are those which receive chief and almost only- emphasis. It is a new thing in history, with one exception, that of England's declaration of war to uphold the rights of Belgium. There have been innumerable declarations of war and statements of war aims by rulers which dwell upon the vindication of national honor, the preservation of the rights of the nation entering upon the war, the protection of property, the preservation of the lives of citizens and national defense, but none which put the service of human- ity, regardless of the gain to the nation itself. To quote from President Wilson's address of November 5, 1916: "Why, my fellow citizens, it is an unprecedented thing in the world that any nation in determining its foreign rela- tions should be unselfish, and my ambition is to see America set the great example." The United States lost millions of dollars' worth of prop- erty and hundreds of lives through the ruthless acts of submarines. As the war progressed the nation itself faced ultimate invasion, should Gemiany triumph. Evil machi- nations were going on inside our nation itself, and the nation was being used as a tool against the Allies. It would have been perfectly natural for the United States to have gone to war for all these attacks and for the innumerable violations of her honor. But when at last the President declared war it was not these things he emphasized, and he was meticulously careful to say it was not for gain of territory or revenge. In every utterance it was moral, eth- ical, religious aims that were emphasized. It marks a new era in history. It was one of the great steps forward in 74 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST civilization, when civilization seemed tottering to the ground. Five aims are mentioned again and again in these addresses. It is well that we should dwell upon these five aims, for they are all moral, religious aims. 1. In almost every address Mr. Wilson says we have entered upon this war to secure democracy for the whole world. "The world must be made safe for democracy." But democracy is a religious thing. It came straight from Jesus Christ. It is born out of the sense of the ivorth of every human soul as a child of God. It is a corollary of that truth forever on the lips of Jesus, the Fatherhood of God. Christianity began as a democracy of equal souls in the kingdom of God ; and in democracy lies the peace of the world. It is not — it never has been — democracies that orig- inate wars of aggrandizement or of dominion. Mr. Wilson has seen this : "Great democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or desire war. Their thought is of individual liberty and of the free labor that supports life and the uncensored thought that quickens it." World democracy means world peace, thinks the President, and therefore he puts it as one of the chief aims of the war. But again, democracy is a moral aim ; and the desire to win it for the whole world is an act of service, which is a Christian act. 2. We have entered upon this war, says the President, to secure "the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government." Here again we have a moral aim. We are fighting not for territory, not for revenge, but to insure for other peoples than ourselves the right to say what course their nation shall pursue in the common life of the world. The President assumes, and we believe rightly, that were it left to the people of any nation to determme the nation's policy, they would not vote for aggrandizement, for expansion at the cost of war, nor for the despoliation of other peoples. 3. "We shall fight . . . for the rights and liberties of small nations," says Mr. Wilson in his address of April 2, 1917. And he has said it many times. Here again the United States has set before it a moral aim. We are to THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 75 make untold sacrifices, not for ourselves, but for the right of the small and weak nations of the earth to live their own lives without fear of dictation, domination, or invasion. They must no longer be mere pawns to be moved about the map as suits the purposes of great and ambitious powers. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, they are peace-loving nations, and they have the right to pursue their own happy lives without fear or interference. "America seeks no mate- rial profit or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fighting for no advantage or selfish objects of her own, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force." 4. In almost every address which Mr. Wilson has made during the last year he has put as the great objective of the war a league of nations pledged to settle its own disputes by peaceful methods and committed, through its united power, to preserve the peace of the world. "We shall fight . . . for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." This is simply brotherhood, cooperation, good will, mutual service, the common life, applied to nations as Christianity has applied them to individuals from the beginning. It is putting the kingdom of righteousness above the selfishness of national- ism. It is the realizing of "each for all, and all for each" in the realm of nations as we have long since realized it am.ong men within the nation. It is establishing a democ- racy of nations similar to the democracy of men. It is a great, sublime, moral aim. 5. Finally the President has declared that we have entered upon this war to secure a Christian standard of con- duct between nations similar to that which obtains among good men. It has not been so in the past. We have had a double standard of ethics, Christian for individuals, pagan for nations. We have said it was wrong for men to steal from each other, but permissible to nations ; wrong for men to kill each other, but permissible for the mighty nation to destroy the weaker nation ; wrong for men to settle their disputes by guns and swords, right for nations ; wrong for 76 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST men to seek reveng-e, the natural thing- for nations. We have condemned the man who lives for self alone, for his rights alone, and we have called that man a knave who would seek his rights at the cost of the community's suf- fering; but we have expected nations to live for self and to plunge the whole world into misery to vindicate their own rights or honor. We have called the man who served most the great man; we have called the nation which could get the most, by any means, the great nation. All this must be changed, says the President. The nation must observe the same Christian rule of conduct that men observe in their relations with each other. In other words, we find the Pres- ident applying the gospel to nations. When was there ever a ruler who used such words as these : "We are at the begin- ning of an age in which it v/ill be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for w^rong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states." "It is clear that nations must in the future be gov- erned by the same high code of honor that we demand of individuals." AMERICA— PEACEMAKER OR PACEMAKER? CHARLES ZUEBLIN, PH.D., AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN MUNICI- PAL PROGRESS," "THE RELIGION OF A DEMOCRAT," ETC., FOUNDER UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT WORK Permanent peace can come within the range of possi- bility only by clearing the ground of Utopian proposals. To brand a peace measure as Utopian is not to call it absurd, only impracticable. No such impracticable Utopists have appeared in our time as the men who expect to settle any- thing by war. This Utopian device prevails momentarily over the others merely by the use of force. It disposes of treaties as paper, dismisses The Hague as tissue, and treats the organizations of Christianity as confetti. Such results ought to discourage a proposal of further Utopian sugges- tions. AMERICA — PEACEMAKER OR PACEMAKER? 77 If disarmament is recommended, what can we offer the nations of Europe? Continental countries think they must maintain armies, maritime countries navies. We have made no such preparation as they have, and cannot. We have over 20,000 miles of coast line to protect — eight times that of England, twenty-five times that of France. Our transportation facilities are purely accidental. The methods of communication of the future, as revealed by the use of flying machines in the present war, may menace even the interior. The body politic is suffering from inability to digest the sons of Mars, but it is not to be cured by sweets. Scientific proposals are needed to induce permanent peace. When war is upon us, we spend iijcredible millions and en- dure unheard-of suffering. The chief torture demanded of us to forestall these calamities is fearless thought. We must move toward free trade. While protectionist sentiment has been steadily growing in Great Britain, the Southern States, and other free trade territory, war makes free trade imperative. Protective and revenue tariffs are the proposals of children playing with bombs. We must meet each nation cordially and generously, with reciprocal tariffs and reciprocal patents. We must substitute a mer- chant marine for a navy. We shall go neither unarmed nor carrying concealed deadly weapons. We shall not talk about peace and prepare for war. We shall make peace profitable. We shall have an army — yes, as big as the nation; but an army with some sane use. We shall dedicate no man to the business of killing. If that is to be done, all of us will take a hand. America must revise its attitude toward immigration. We can only admit people as fast as we can assimilate them, but there must be no discrimination between European and Asiatic immigrants. We can admit freely Asiatics as well as Europeans up to the numbers we can assimilate in any year, if our native labor is protected by law and organiza- tion, so that no aliens are employed while natives are unem- ployed and immigrants are compelled to accept the Ameri- can standard of living. 78 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST We must face frankly the question of the density of popu- lation. China, Japan, and other nations are overcrowded. The United States can hold hundreds of millions more with comfort and profit. It is chimerical to try to monopolize this land for the handful of people in it, while other nations are overcrowded. The only correctives for density of popu- lation are emigration and a rising standard of living. The congested nations must have an outlet. The standard of all nations will rise as the working people get their share of production. The United States must develop a solidarity now lacking. No matter how insuperable the obstacles seem, economic justice must be done to the negro ; unions must be recognized and encouraged; home rule for each community must pre- vent a conflict of local, state, and national legislation, and all transportation and communication must be socialized. A unified nation is impossible with railways, express, tele- phone, and telegraph in private hands. America must recognize that militarism cannot be abol- ished by prayer or fasting alone, but only by a reasonable counter-proposal also. America must have a working army. Every girl, as well as every boy, should be a conscript to public service. A year of each young life should be given to public works. This will incidentally inculcate a sound patriotism harmonious with universal, as well as national, well-being. It will take care of the surplus labor that makes a fringe of poverty, degrading the life of each community. It will furnish an opportunity for vocational training in which young people can experiment in life and the nation may select its soldiers, engineers, nurses, and social work- ers. No man shall be set aside primarily for murder. The army shall be a working army, not a standing army. The United States can carry the olive branch to other countries only as it proves its sincerity. It already enjoys a great prestige because of its relations to Canada, South America, and Cuba. It can come into similar friendly rela- tions with the world by proving that conquest is futile, solidarity feasible, and permeation scientific. PROBLEM OF WAR — LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 79 THE PROBLEM OF WAR AND THE PROGRAM OF THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE PROFESSOR FRANK J. KLINGBERG, PH.D., REPRESENTING THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE The League to Enforce Peace was inaugurated at a meeting held in Philadelphia in June, 1915. President Wilson indorsed it in May, 1916. It was later indorsed by the British government, the French government, and even by the German Chancellor, who went so far as to offer him- self as the head of the League! President Wilson accepted the program again very definitely in his speech to the Senate in January, 1917, and again in his second inaugural address. The Russian revolutionary movement, together with our entrance into the war, made the program of the League even more feasible than it had been under the old condi- tions, and the President in his war message insists that we are fighting in behalf of a League to Enforce Peace, and in support of democracy. In other words, our foreign policy has become the encouragement of world democracy and the organization of international peace along the lines of justice and right. As Americans we are not planning to give up the Monroe Doctrine, but, as has been so well said by our President, we are planning to extend its benefits to the whole world. This doctrine has kept our hemisphere from becoming a stake of diplomacy and has permitted the Latin American states to work out their own salvation. Europe has been saved from the friction and possible wars which would have resulted from the partition and consequent quarrels over territory. The Latin American states have been enabled to develop with the minimum of outside interference. Mexico is an almost notorious example of this generous policy of the United States. A world-wide application of the Monroe Doctrine would mean removing relatively backward coun- tries as a source of friction among the great powers while at the same time permitting these backward regions an opportunity to develop under tha most favorable conditions- 80 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST After every war international cooperation takes place. This is to be seen in the great congresses of the last hun- dred years. At the end of the Napoleonic wars came the Congress of Vienna; after the Crimean War, the Congress of Paris, where many questions of world importance were discussed, such as a better code of maritime laws. After the Russo-Turkish war an attempt was made to settle the problems of the Near East at the Congress of Berlin. When the active partition of Africa began in the eighties, a Congress met and formed rules for the division and government of the continent, especially in the Congo region. Indeed, there is no more wonderful illustration of cooperation between nations than the peaceful partition of this vast continent. These are examples of special coopera- tion; in times of peace there is constant cooperation. The problem of war with a view to its prevention has never been m^ore penetratingly studied ; the pages of history are eagerly scanned for light on the subject. The question is an old one and many attempts have been made to answer it. The modern vievv^ is that the problem of war is essen- tially that of the problem of growth and decay. One group of people for some reason becomes static or decays. An- other nation develops rapidly. In that way the balance is constantly upset. The one group is in possession of a rich inheritance. Its claim is a legal one. Its title has been won through centuries of effort in w^ar and in peace. It wants to have the world maintained as it is. Another nation, hungry for expansion in land or com- merce, insists that it does not have its share of the world's goods, that in proportion to its rapidily growing population and general vitality there ought to be a new division of wealth, and finally that its need, whether real or imaginary, makes it right to despoil its neighbors by force or to occupy the lands of backward races. Many illuminating historical illustrations can be taken from the past. The Roman Empire gave its inhabitants a marvelous period of peace, lasting several centuries. No invader could break through the walls of the Empire, no outside power or people were feared. This was a peace of PROBLEM OF WAR— LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 81 conquest, and yet the longest era of cessation from strife that the world has ever known. Gibbon, the great historian, calls the second century A.D. the happiest century man has ever known. The peace of Rome was spread over the world. Finally the Empire weakened; Germans and other bar- barians came pouring over the walls to capture and sack the imperial city. Perpetual war occurred after the break- ing down of the Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire, which took its place, and the Holy Catholic Church, the two forces of internationalism of that period, could maintain neither national nor international peace. With the Reforma- tion the Roman Catholic Church was split, and the chances of its playing a harmonizing role, which it often did in the Middle Ages, were greatly diminished. Many contending states now developed in Europe as the forces of nationalism or particularism grew stronger among the young and rival nations succeeding the Roman Empire. In time what we know as the National State appeared, the scale of war spreading with the expansion of the countries. The map of Europe was constantly changing, and combina- tions were made against the particular country in the ascendancy. What we know of the French Revolution interprets for us many phases of the problem of war. France had become the most powerful state in Europe, but the upper crust of its brilliant society and court rested on boiling ingredients below, the intelligence and ability of the lower classes hav- ing reached a pitch which urgently demanded far-reaching change and adjustment. The regime of disharmony in taxation, privileges of all kinds, had legal recognition, and rivers of blood might have been saved if the necessary changes to new conditions could have been made peacefully, as in the present remarkable Russian Revolution, struggling to adjust internal disharmony despite all the confusion of disorganization. Mirabeau could control neither the King nor the Assem- bly, and the Revolution swept on until, as Carlyle has described it, the great fire licked the stars, burning kings, queens, thrones, chariots, and all the paraphernalia of roy- 6 82 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST alty and misrule, and purifying the earth and air of all that was offensive in government. The privileged classes in France and in the surrounding countries had united to check the Revolution by a counter revolution, and this movement at once determined the revolutionaiy leaders to cany their banners of liberty, equality, and fraternity to other parts of Europe. The Revolution now had to fight for its existence through a long, bitter struggle, resulting in the rise of a certain adventurer, Napoleon Bonaparte, who declared him- self the child and heir of the Revolution, and promised the people to preserve for them all that they had won. Quite aware of the new hour that had struck, he maintained for the people the social structure which had been built up dur- ing the revolutionary period, but alarmed the world by transforming France into a great military empire, threat- ening the independence of all Europe. The result was a great development in nationalism, and by the determination of the different peoples to free themselves from the Napo- leonic empire, the Corsican was driven out of Europe. With the Kaiser of that day dispatched, the problem of reconstruction, on almost as large a scale as that which the world new looks forward to, confronted the powers. The decisions were very momentous. The social structure, the immediate result of the French Revolution, was left intact; the old regime was not restored. The chief problem was largely one of territorial readjustment. To complete this territorial adjustment, the Congress of Vienna was called together and the territory of Europe was apportioned among the different powers. France received her old boundary lines, Germany was tied into a loose confederation, many of the smaller states were not restored, Holland and Belgium were joined togther, Russia gained territory, and many changes were made. A complete victory in crushing Napoleon, the military dictator of the day, had been won, and the important* observation of to-day is that the fruits of this victory were not secured. The coming Congress of the twentieth cen- tum will strive to avoid this great waste of effort. How- PROBLEM OF WAR— LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 83 ever, an article introduced in the final act of the Congi*ess of Vienna by Alexander I. of Russia led to some very inter- esting developments, helpful to the democratic powers of to-day in their search for the experience of the past. This clause of the treaty provided that four great powers were to review at fixed intervals the conditions of the nations of Europe, evidently with the idea of catching future Napo- leons and revolutions in their infancy. The four nations, known as the Quadruple Alliance, were Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain. Later, the organization was developed as the Holy Alliance, embodying the view that the princes were to regard each other as brothers and their acts were to be in harmony with the teachings of Christ. This schem.e led strangely to the formation of the Monroe Doctrine in this country and to the beginning of what may be called one of the cardinal points of our foreign policy. According to the agreement, a number of congresses met between the years 1815 and 1823 ; their work forms the most serious attempt that has ever been made to give the world international government. At these different con- gresses serious questions were taken up and settled. France was admitted as a fifth power. Alexander advocated in 1818 a general alliance for a status quo and legitimate sov- ereignty. He argued that governments would then be relieved from the fear of revolutions and could give greater liberties. The British objected that treaties between the nations already existing were sufficient. Such questions as the slave trade, piracy, and revolu- tions were considered. The last congress, which met at Verona in 1822, discussed the Greek question, the revolution in the Spanish colonies and in Spain, the revolution in Italy, etc. The Spanish colonies in South America were strug- gling for independence, and to oppose the work accom- plished by the congresses President Monroe issued his famous doctrine, successfully preventing an attack on Latin America by the Holy Alliance, and also preventing the Russian bear from marching too far south from his Alas- kan territory. It was at this last congress that Great Britain broke away from the other reactionary powers, and 84 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST with the secession of England the attempt at international congresses came to an end. George Canning, the British Foreign Minister, said wittily: "So things have come to a wholesome state again ; every nation for itself and God for us all." The chief defect of this attempt was that the powers tried to maintain peace without justice, to maintain the status quo, both internal and international, and that at a time when the world was changing rapidly. New classes of wealthy and powerful manufacturers, sturdy working classes, were developing in the different countries as a result of the industrial revolution and its marvelous inven- tions. The whole modern age of science and its application to the problems of man was well under way. This policy of trying to prevent changes by maintaining the old system was doomed, and just as it had brought on the French Revo- lution it now brought on revolutions in 1820, 1830, and 1848. Another difficulty was the choice of only five powers to gov- ern the world instead of a large group of powers, as the present plan of the Allies provides for the future. It is interesting to note that the first projects to render peace perpetual were fathered by distinguished men in widely different positions and countries. Over two hundred years ago, in 1713, the Abbe de Saint-Pierre used modern phrases, very similar to President Wilson's, expressing his hopes for a European League; a quaint dream of the clois- ter, as it was then, it may now become a practical reality. A similar scheme was worked out in 1791 by the Austrian Chancellor Kaunitz for preserving the inviolability of pos- sessions as well as the faith of treaties. This idea of a central constitution for Europe did not become of serious importance until the Czar of Russia began writing to Pitt with the results described above in the work of the remark- able congresses. Even Napoleon had dreams of peace, just as the Kaiser had. These dreams were to be attained by the same means, Napoleon saying that his plan after conquering the world was to unite all nations in one Empire and give them peace. His dream of government, as he pondered on his career at PROBLEM OF WAR—LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 85 St. Helena, was to unite Europe by a uniform code of laws, a common religion, and other ties which would outweigh the forces of disruption. His remarkable prophecy that in a hundred years Europe would be either Cossack or republican we believe to be coming to pass almost to the minute, and republican government is the decision. Napo- leon's other vision of international organization is in sight and will emphasize his idea that the ideas common to all men overbalance their antagonisms. It is an interesting fact that, shortly before the assassi- nation of the Archduke Ferdinand, which was the imme- diate occasion of the outbreak of war, an agreement had been reached between Great Britain and Germany by which the latter was very generously treated in the Near East. The Germans received nearly everything they wanted in Turkey, a chance to build the Bagdad Railway with a port on the Persian Gulf, a promise of British cooperation or good will in the colonial field, suggestive of a prospect that the Germans might in time and by peaceful means inherit a large part of the decaying Portuguese colonial empire. British interests on the Persian Gulf were adequately pro- tected and Egypt was to be protected by a French sphere of influence in Syria. There seems good reason to believe that had the assasination not taken place before the publica- tion of the agreement, so fully recognizing Germany's inter- ests, the European tension would have been relieved and the Germans would have felt their period of isolation was at an end. When Germany finds that her choice of war has spelled complete ruin, her bitterest realization will be that her chief objects were within her honorable grasp. Such an agreement, actually providing peacefully for a great change from the status quo, would have been an inspiring victory for the forces of reason ; but it may be true that the minds of the ruling caste in Germany were too thoroughly poisoned with the false doctrines exalting force above all morality, honor, and decency, and the people too completely prepared for this war to have been permanently satisfied. As Ex-President Taft has so well said, a provi- dential punishment has followed their violation of the moral 86 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST law, the supermen of the autocracy having become totally blind to the strength of the moral motives that control other peoples, and believing that England, burdened with Ireland, would leave Belgium to her fate, that France was decadent and unable to resist. "Contemptuous of a peace-loving peo- ple, the German military dynasty brought into the contest a nation fresh in its strength, which can furnish more money, more food, and more fighting men, if necessary, than any other nation in the world" — this at the crisis of the v/ar when the victory must abide by the weight of wealth, resources, food, equipment, and fighting men. One great object of the League is the preparation of the basis of a permanent peace. The democratic nations must come to the council table prepared to secure a just peace. The basis for future good relations is not established by victon'- alone, but by the terms and temper of the settlement is the future made safe and certain, as Mr. Taft has so well expressed it, in speaking of the bad judgment of the North- ern politicians as an obstacle to the successful results which would have followed the work of Lincoln and Grant in the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. The plan of the League is so simple that it may briefly be stated as a League of Nations in which all agree that legal international controversies shall be heard and decided by a court ; that controversies not to be settled by principles of law (such as territorial boundaiy disputes, or economic and commercial privileges) shall be submitted to a Com- mission of Conciliation for recommendation of a settlement; that the united forces of the League shall resist any nation beginning war before the quarrel has been submitted to one tribunal or the other and decided. The English plan pro- vides that if the council of nations so decides they must enforce the judgment or settlement, using all their joint economic and military powers to that end. The American League believes it unwise to attempt the enforcement of judgment, and that by restraining the contending parties from resorting to war until the peaceable procedure and decision have been attained most wars will be prevented. III. HEALTH FOR ALL Healthgrams The State as the Guardian of Public Health Some Objections to the Fee System in the Practice of Medicine Some Evils of Self-Medication The Marriage Health Certificate Maintaining a Proper Bacteriological and Chemical Standard for Drinl^ing Water The Evolution of the Trained Nurse Housing in Preventing Disease Protection Against Bad Air The Prevention of Blindness Treatment of the Insane Outside of Hospitals Prevalence and Prevention of Malaria The Fight Against Tuberculosis The Mortality from Cancer in the Southern States The Peril of Venereal Diseases Keeping the Soldier Fit to Fight HEALTHGRAMS 1. In the United States an average of 685 babies die every day, or 250,000 a year. The coffins for babies who die annually in this country, if placed side by side, would make a solid row ninety-five miles long. One out of every four babies born in the South dies under one year of age. 2. In the United States there are 630,000 pre- ventable deaths a year, or 1,726 every twenty-four hours — twelve Lusitanias a week! 3. There are 2,900,000 persons constantly sick in this country. This is a loss annually to the nation of over $3,000,000,000— enough to build seven Panama Canals a year. 4. Tuberculosis alone costs more than the ex- pense of the entire Federal Government. At the present rate at least 5,000,000 of the people now living in the United States will die of tuberculosis. 5. Typhoid fever costs the nation $350,000,000 annually. 6. There are 3,000,000 cases of sickness from malaria every year in the United States, causing a loss of $100,000,000. 7. Of the 892,000 persons of all ages taken at random in the United States and examined for hook- worm, thirty-four per cent were suffering from this disease. It is estimated that South Carolina alone suffers a loss annually of $35,000,000 from the lowered vitality of her workers caused by hook- worm. 8. At least 190,000 persons in the United States are constantly ill from syphilis, while thirty per cent of the insanity of this country is due to this disease. THE STATE AS THE GUARDIAN OF PUBLIC HEALTH SEALE HARRIS, M.D., SECRETARY OF THE SOUTHERN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, BIRMINGHAM, ALA. Disraeli, in one of his most important messages to his countrymen, said: "Public health is the foundation upon which rest the happiness of the people and the welfare of the State. Reform directed toward the advancement of public health must ever take precedence of all others." Many of our ablest statesmen fail to see that the conserva- tion of the health and lives of their constituents is one of the most important functions of the States and the nation. The waste from diseases that ought not to exist in a civilized country costs the United States, according to an estimate by Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale University, more than a billion and a half dollars annually. The South's share in this wanton waste from preventable dis- eases amounts to five hundred million dollars a year, not to mention the suffering of the sick and dying, or the sorrow of the loved ones left behind to mourn the deaths, each year, of at least two hundred thousand good citizens, who ought not to die, hut who are sacrificed on the altar of our igno- rance. Tuberculosis is said to be the most destructive disease that affects mankind. It kills 200,000 persons each year in the United States, and it is estimated that 1,000,000 have the disease. Our country wastes more than $500,000,000 every year in the loss of life and labor from the ravages of the great white plague. In the sixteen Southern States ap- proximately 60,000 people die every year from, and not less than 750,000 of our citizens are now afflicted with, this pre- ventable disease. Tuberculosis alone causes an economic loss to the South of more than $150,000,000 annually. Pennsylvania spends $1,487,903.50 per annum for the prevention of tuberculosis, and her State Board of Health has three central hospitals and fifteen hundred tuberculosis dispensaries, besides having adequate funds to educate the public regarding methods for preventing the disease. In 90 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the last ten years tuberculosis has dropped from first to second place in the causes of death in Pennsylvania and thousands of lives have been saved by the far-sighted health policy of her legislators. Should not every State provide funds to conduct a campaign against this greatest enemy to her citizens? The death rate from malaria is insignificant compared CO the number of cases ; but since thousands of persons are ill and inefFcient a part of the time each year, its de- structive effects are manifested in the economic loss to the States and by the increase in general death rate. L. 0. Howard, Entomologist of the United States Department of Agriculture, estimates that malaiia costs the United States $100,000,000 annually. R. H. von Ezdorf, who has charge of the malaria work for the United States Public Health Service, makes a minimum estimate of $50,000,000, ]\Iost of this economic waste is in the sixteen Southern, States. Besides this actual loss, the development of our agricultural resources has been interfered with by malaria, since thousands of desirable farmers from the Middle West have sought homes in Canada and the Northwest because they feared this enemy of the South. Malaria has been practically stamped out in Havana and in the Canal Zone by the South's distinguished son. Surgeon General Gorgas of Alabama. Mississippi, Louisi- ana, and other States are conducting vigorous campaigns against malaria. What are we doing to stamp out this easily prevented disease that is interfering with our pros- perity? Typhoid fever, a disease resulting from filth, and which has been called the worst of sanitary crimes, is said to be more prevalent in the South than in other regions of the United States. There is hardly a family that has not had some of its members stricken with typhoid fever at some time, yet with the expenditure of a comparatively small sum it can be made a rare disease in a few years. The fol- lowing extract from a report of the Commissioner of Health of Pennsylvania indicates what might be done in prevent- ing typhoid fever in the South : "Four thousand deaths and THE STATE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 91 forty thousand illnesses from typhoid fever was the annual toll exacted from Pennsylvania's citizens ten years ago. To-day it has been decreased more than 75 per cent, although in the meantime the population of the State has increased more than a million ; the number of deaths from this cause is only one-fourth the former figure." How long will we bear the sanitarj^ disgrace of being classed among the States in which typhoid fever is most prevalent? Two million persons living in the sixteen Southern States are said to be incapacitated one-fourth of their time because of hookworm disease, yet it remained for a dona- tion from a Northern philanthropist to begin the work of its eradication in the South. The Rockefeller fund for hook- worm will not be available after this year, and its beneficent results will be lost if the States do not appropriate money to save our boys and girls from the energy- and life- sapping disease that, perhaps as much as any other cause, is responsible for illiteracy in the South and for the ill health and inefficiency of a respectable proportion of our population in the rural districts. Pellagra is attracting much attention at this time be- cause it is a dreadful disease and seems to be increasing. The prevention and cure of pellagra has been announced by the United States Public Health Service. Whether Gold- berger's theory of the unbalanced diet as being the cause of pellagra, and the balanced diet the cure of it, is accepted or not, we do know that it prevails most among the poorly nourished with unsanitary environments, and that in the early stages, with proper diet, nearly all cases get well. It is largelj'- a rural disease and may be eradicated by edu- cating the people of the country to the necessity of a varied diet, in which milk, vegetables, fruit, and fresh meats should be among the most important foods. Should not the States do their part in educating the people regarding the causes and the cure of pellagra? Most of the Southern States have inaugurated campaigns for education among their farmers on diversified farming because of its economic importance and not with any idea of preventing disease, but 92 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST diversified farming will decrease pellagra. When the farm- ers raise their own foodstuff and have their own cows and gardens, pellagra will become one of the rare diseases, or will vanish. What about the babies? Do the innocent, helpless little children get a fair chance to live in the South? One out of every four babies born in the South dies before the age of one year. One out of three children dies before the age of five years. Last year 25,000 babies under two years of age died of diarrhea in the South, most of them from im- pure milk. Have our States ever done anything to safe- guard the lives of the babies by the enforcement of the proper laws regarding milk production? What has been done to educate the mothers regarding the care and feed- ing of their babies ? The State boards of health cannot get the simple instructions to the mothers for protecting the lives of their children without money to pay for printing and without an adequate force of trained workers in child welfare. It is therefore the duty of the States to provide money to save our babies. We hear much about illiteracy in the South, and we should not stop until this blot is removed from our States. Safeguarding the health of the children of the school age and their parents, who must provide means for the children to attend school, is essential to remove illiteracy from the South. Thousands of children and young men and women are deprived of the privileges of an education because of the prevalence of hookworm, malaria, pellagra, and other pre- ventable diseases. Many thousands more derive but little good from the time they are in school because they are weak physically and mentally from the chronic diseases mentioned. Improvement of health conditions, particularly in the rural districts, is, therefore, of great importance in the education of our boys and girls. There are many other public health problems, like diph- theria, scarlet fever, venereal diseases, other contagious dis- eases, that are of vital importance to every good citizen, which cannot be discussed in a brief address, but enough facts have been presented to convince any thinking man THE STATE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 93 that the South's greatest need is the money and the trained men to "fight these hosts of death" that kill and wound so many of the bravest, fairest, and best men, women, and children in our great section. Can there be ariy doubt that the South's greatest economic problem is the prevention of disease? The trouble is that few people realize that human beings have a money value unless they are killed or injured by a railroad or by an automobile — then they come high. If the States had to pay for the people who are killed and injured by reckless indifference regarding the prevalence of pre- ventable diseases, at the same rate that railroads and auto- mobile owners have to pay for the people that they kill and maim, they would be well-nigh bankrupted in a year. Has not a citizen the same right to expect protection from dan- gerous diseases as he has the right to expect protection from accidents or thieves or murderers? How much does the South spend for courts, jails, and prisons? Then con- sider the insignificant sum that is given to our health de- partments to fight disease. What a blind statesmanship in us all! I have not statistics showing the amount of money ap- propriated by each of the Southern States for their State boards of health, but I do know what is appropriated in one State. Alabama gives $25,000 per year to its State Board of Health, for its treatment of all human diseases. It appropriates $30,000 for the eradication of cattle ticks and $30,000 for establishing a laboratory for preparing hog cholera serum. It is wise and right that the State should aid in protecting cattle and hogs from disease, because it affects the prosperity of the State. Are not human beings as valuable as cattle and pigs, and is not the prosperity of our people affected by diseases that infect men and women? Pennsylvania last year appropriated for public health work in that State during the next two years $Jt.,632,387, which is more than all the sixteen Southern States com- bined appropriate for public health work in ten years. The South has all the diseases that prevail in Pennsylvania, and in addition has malaria, hookworm, and pellagra. If it is 94 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST good business for Pennsylvania to spend two and a half million dollars a year in preventing diseases, it would surely seem that the Southern States ought to spend amounts pro- portionate to their population and wealth. Surely the health and lives of our people are as valuable as the fami- lies of the men and women of Pennsylvania. Many of the Southern States, however, are awaking to the great need of public health work and in some States magnificent results have been accomplished at a minimum cost. This is not- ably true of the State of Louisiana, whose State Board of Health, under the presidency of Dr. Oscar Dowling, a Vice President of this Congress, has made an enviable record. Dr. Dowling's work has done more to advertise Louisiana in a favorable way — i. e., put it in the path to prosperity — than anything that has happened in the State for many years. There can be no question but that many desirable inhabitants have been added to Louisiana because of the impression that prevails abroad that Dr. Dowling has cleaned up the State, made it a healthful and desirable place in which to live. Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi are also making excellent records in public health work; but none of the States in the South is doing what it should in preventing diseases. The best investment that any State can make is to pro- vide a sanitarian as a whole-time health officer in each county. No other section of our great country has greater resources than the South, and if the Southern States can be freed of malaria, hookworm, and pellagra, thereby in- creasing the efficiency of the poor whites and negroes as laborers, capital and capitalists will pour into the South to develop our agricultural and mineral lands, the cotton mills will come to our cotton fields, and every industry and every individual will enjoy prosperity greater than we ever dreamed of before. The South has produced the greatest sanitary genius in the history of the world. Surgeon General Gorgas's achievements in ridding Havana of yellow fever and ma- SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE FEE SYSTEM 95 laria for the first time in a century, and in changing the Canal Zone from a veritable death hole to a health resort, represent an epoch of far-reaching importance in the prog- ress of the world. In a recent address Surgeon General Gorgas said : "With the eradication of malaria, yellow fever, and other endemic diseases, the tropics will become the centers of industry and population of the world." The problem of eradicating ma- laria, hookworm, and other tropical diseases from the South is much simpler than in Havana or on the Canal Zone, and we should profit by the advice of Dr. Gorgas and by the examples of practical sanitation that he has given to the world. SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE FEE SYSTEM IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE ROBERT S. HYER, A.M., LL.D., PRESmENT SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY, DALLAS, TEX. All are agreed that the laborer is worthy of his hire, but it is sometimes difficult to agree upon the value of his services. Shall the personal value of the service determine our indebtedness in dollars and cents? A man falls into the water and would drown were it not that a fisherman in a boat is near at hand and pulls him out. To save a man's life is surely the greatest service that can be rendered him, but in this instance we say the fisher- man is to receive no fee. A hero's medal may be awarded him, if it can be shown that he risked his own life. Later this same man falls ill. The doctor tells him that an opera- tion is necessary to save his life, whereupon he submits to the operation and regains his health. Apparently his life has again been saved, but this time he must pay. ' The doc- tor sends in a bill for one thousand dollars, which is half of the patient's yearly income. Has he been charged too much? He is apt to think so. A friend of his next becomes 96 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ill, appearing to have a similar affliction. He advises the friend to have a similar operation, but suggests that he find a cheaper doctor. One is found v^ho agrees to charge only a hundred dollars. The operation is performed and the patient dies, the doctor explaining that the operation had been delayed too long. By this time the fortunate patient is not so sure that he was charged too much. But another friend becomes afflicted in a similar manner. He, too, should submit to an operation, but refuses to do so and gets well. Again, the first patient is in doubt as to whether he was charged too much or not. He may finally conclude that he was imposed upon, not only in the amount of the fee, but in the operation itself. The foregoing is just enough like life, just enough in accord with our experiences and observations to make us doubtful of our ability to pass judgment on the fees which doctors are accustomed to charge. Ordinarily we say of services that their intrinsic value, the skill of the workman, the time required to prepare himself for the work and the time necessary to perform it should all be taken into con- sideration. In some instances emphasis is to be given one particular consideration and in other instances it is a dif- ferent one. If I were appearing as an attorney for the doctor, I would call your attention to the time that he must give in preparing for his profession. Owing largely to the in- fluence of the American Medical Association, it has come to pass that a young man can scarcely enter the profession under twenty-seven years of age. No form of education is quite so expensive; the standards are high and rigidly enforced. Just now, as never before, we are prepared to form a true estimate of what medical science can do for humanity. We have been accustomed to look upon all sciences as the friend of man. We have said that each has enlarged and made better man's estate. But lately we have seen how these things in which he trusted may betray him in the hour of his greatest need. During the past year and a half the SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE FEE SYSTEM 97 men in the trenches have not been befriended by the genii of science; they have been attacked with a fury that has made war vastly more terrible than ever before. These spirits of evil have fallen upon him from the skies, have risen up out of the bowels of the earth, have rolled upon him in great suffocating billows. When unable to lay hands upon him they have made such a din of fury about him as to shatter his nerves and drive him mad. But there is one science that has wrought valiantly for him in this hour of his greatest need. In all former wars more have died of disease than in battle, and the seriously wounded have had but little hope save for a speedy death. In the present war the soldier's greatest enemy, pestilence, has been kept away, and so carefully has he been guarded that his health in the trenches has been about the same as it was at home, and the wounded have recovered in a very magical way. The modern cry for efficiency has been fully met by the modern doctor — and great should be his reward. Now suppose that in our morning paper we should read that one of the great powers, England or France, is pre- paring to reward its doctors in this way : A careful record is being kept of the operations performed by each doctor, and in every case he is credited with the pay of that par- ticular patient for a month, six months, or a year, accord- ing to the seriousness of the case ; and whenever he enters the ranks to examine the men for suspicious symptoms of disease a like transfer is made of each soldier's pay for a day or a week. If you should read such a story as that in to-morrow morning's paper, you would say that it was a wicked and monstrous thing to thus rob the soldier for the benefit of the doctor. Some people declare that a thing just like that is going on all the time right here at home. Recently a man from a small town brought his wife to the city to be examined by a doctor of much local reputa- tion. Before going to the doctor's office this man called to see a friend to ask how great was the risk in taking his wife to this particular doctor. His anxious inquiry was, "Do you suppose he will charge me a thousand dollars for the 7 98 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST examination?" Is there ever real ground to fear that a doctor will take advantage of our misfortune? A friend of mine was convalescing in a great hospital. His surgeon came by to inform him that he was about to go to Europe for a vacation. "You are about well and will not need me any longer." "Before you go, Doctor, may I learn what you are going to charge me?" "Well, let's see. The man in the room next to you has just paid me five thousand dol- lars, the man in the room across the hall will pay four thou- sand dollars. I will make your bill just three thousand." And that was three-fourths of the patient's yearly income. I was once in the office of a physician whose average daily income is more than seventy dollars. He had just received a bill for some repairs on an office building which he owned. The plasterers had charged him seven dollars per day, the price current in that city at that time. "See," said he, "how the mechanics of this town are highwaymen and rascals!" Then I went home and took a look through my books to see if I could find a story that would put a better taste in my mouth when I thought of the gentleman of the medical profession. As my eye fell upon Chaucer I recalled the lawyer, the miller, the clerk, and the friar, all of whom surely needed to go to Canterbury; but I could recall no doctor among the pilgrims. When I looked on Scott, I remembered his gentle humor that makes us laugh at preacher, schoolmaster, and lawyer; but Scott makes no fun of doctors, and makes us hold his "worthy leech" in high regard. Then when I came to Dickens I remembered the hypocrisy, the selfish greed, the unworthy deed of many, among whom was a particularly infamous nurse ; but I could recall no doctor among the unworthy of Dickens. Then I turned to that great stage of human drama which Balzac has filled with so many different types — mostly ignoble, un- worthy, and some infamous. Among those that played their part upon that great stage I recalled one who was truly great and truly good : the country doctor, who transformed a community of idle, ignorant, selfish peasants into a town of thrift, intelligence, and true brotherhood. Then I took SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE FEE SYSTEM 99 down the book and read aigain: "Is he not a clever doctor?" "I do not know; he cures poor people for nothing." "He must be quite a man." "O yes, and a good man too. There is scarcely any one hereabouts that does not put his name in their prayers, morning and night." When the visitor meets this doctor, he can detect no sign of a wish to appear generous or to pose as a philan- thropist; but he hears him say: "Rich people shall not have all my time by paying for it. It belongs to the folks here in the valley." This country doctor and Maclaren's "Doctor of the Old School" are both idealized characters. In this practical modern age of ours it would not be practical — would it? — for a doctor to even approximate such an ideal. At Rochester, Minn., are two brothers who began as country doctors. Like Balzac's doctor, they have changed an insignificant village into an important town. They have brought wealth to this community, for their fame has spread to all parts of the world. Perhaps at least fifty new pa- tients come from all sections each day. At least, there are so many that the entire medical staff must begin work every day at seven o'clock. The casual visitor can see that these patients are just the ordinary people that we meet every- where. Some are rich, more are poor — the majority of mod- erate means. These doctors do not pose as philanthropists — they expect everybody to pay something; but no one com- plains that he has been overcharged. Their rule is that a patient is never to pay them more than one-tenth of his yearly income. The aggregate of such fees has been great. William and Charles Mayo do not live in the finest houses in their town, but they have recently presented the State of Minnesota with a million-dollar clinic. Could such a system be given a wider application ? Some are contending that the fee system cannot be made satis- factory by modification, that it must be entirely abandoned. They tell us that the Chinese have solved the problem : pay- ing their doctors to keep them well, his pay stopping when they get sick and beginning again only when they get well. 100 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST This example, however, may not convince every one ; for we want not only equitable fees, but competent doctors also, and the Chinese rule seems to have produced no high degree of skill in medical practice. In certain communities the fee system has been sup- planted by the salary system. A number of colleges and universities charge each student a yearly fee, ranging from three to ten dollars, for medical service. This is the col- lege physician's fee for the following services: First, each student at stated intervals must report to the college physician for a physical examination, in order that it may be determined what form of physical exercise should be required of him. Recently two cases came to my knowledge which show the value of such a regulation. Among the students preparing to begin training for track work two were found who had leaky hearts. As soon as this was discovered they were peremptorily forbidden to indulge further in any form of athletic sport. Another benefit that is claimed for this system of official examination is that it tends to preserve purity of life among the stu- dents. The certainty of detection should he become con- taminated is a moral restraining influence. Secondly, each student has the privilege of medical ex- amination at all times. He is encouraged to go to the phy- sician for the slightest symptom of illness. All cases which do not require removal to a hospital are treated without charge. Wherever this rule has been tried it has given satis- factory results. The cynic would say that it works well because all of the weakness and selfishness of human nature are arrayed on the side of the patient. It is to the doctor's personal interest that there should be just as few cases of sickness as possible, and he will see to it that his services are de- manded in each case for as short a time as possible. Can this salary system be given a wider application? It has been tried in a number of industrial communities and, so far as I am informed, has been more satisfactory th§in the usual fee system. In communities where the individuals SOME OBJECTIONS TO THE FEE SYSTEM 101 are on practically the same level, both socially and finan- cially, it may be possible to greatly improve health conditions generally and to reduce individual suffering and its at- tendant hardships by the adoption of the salary system. But vv^here society has its usual complexities the attempt to introduce such a system might become unsatisfactory, im- practicable, and hazardous. We do devoutly wish that for his own sake, as well as ours, the doctor could be less in- fluenced by the desire to acquire wealth. We admit that he is worth more to us than ever before, and that some are worth more than others. We cannot afford to restrain by legislation the desire which he has in common with all of us, if by so doing we are going to retard medical progress and reduce all doctors to the same level of the commonplace and inefficient. But should not something be done to relieve us from some of the recognized evils of the fee system? The doctors themselves admit that it has one great attend- ant evil — namely, fee-splitting. But that is another story that we are not going to consider now. The average layman is concerned not so much over how this fee is to be divided as to the fact that he is absolutely at the mercy of the doctor as to the amount of that fee. The doctor claims he has so much charity practice that he must get a fat fee when he finds the man who can be made to pay it. He usually charges what he thinks the patient can be induced to pay. The rule of Robin Hood and his merry men was to take from the rich and give a part to the poor. However much our youthful judgments approved of this poetic justice, our maturer opinion is that we would rather have the question of the distribution of wealth settled by general legislative enactment or the working of economic laws than left to the caprice and personal greed of some doctors. Whenever enlarged opportunity and greater power have been given an art, an industry, or a commercial enterprise, a new moral code of conduct has often been demanded by public opinion, and if not granted has been enforced by legislation. Now that the medical profession has gained such larger power, let it profit by these examples! 102 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST SOME EVILS OF SELF-MEDICATION ISADORE DYER, PH.B., M.D., DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF MEDI- CINE, TULANE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA, NEW ORLEANS The average individual places too high an estimate upon his own intelligence. The more educated men and women rely much less upon their own judgment in mat- ters upon which they know they are not informed ; the less educated stumble into all sorts of pitfalls from the assump- tion of a superior information, which does not really exist. The host of watchful pirates appreciates this fact and always calculates upon the vanity and self-indulgence of an inferior intelligence. The cure-all brigade, therefore, con- tinues to flourish and, curiously enough, is still able to find many courageous supporters who are not at all influenced by a succession of doubtful experiences. Most patent medicine manufacturers have no conscience and their sole object is to make money. Their methods are always seductive and flourish a vast "success" by means of a blatant pretense which in its very audacity carries some conviction to those who do not take the trouble to do their own thinking. The enormous army of people which helps in the money-making does not seem to grow any less in spite of a wider education. The conclusion must be that patent medicine consumption has become an established vice, to be classed with all other sorts of prostitution, only worse because of the uncertain results from its indulgence. The charlatan, as such, has been with us since the begin- ning of history; his methods have varied with the times. The chief assets of the trade have always been pretense and audacity, covered by incantation at first, later by a mass of high-sounding terms, sufficiently obscure to create the proper curiosity in the ignorant victim. The examination of any of the present-day preparations will show a con- tinuance of these practices — the confusion of a pretended medical application of terms being sufficient to satisfy the overcurious. SOME EVILS OF SELF-MEDICATION 103 There has been a wholesale slaughter of pretentious fakirs in the last few years, because the United States Gov- ernment has taken a hand in helping the public, in spite of itself. Within the past decade the pure food and drug laws have compelled a proper labeling of patent medicines, and those formerly carrying all kinds of poisons have either had to modify their formulas or have had to go out of busi- ness. The victims of the habits of opium, cocaine, and alco- hol have less opportunity to satisfy their vices by the use of the nostrums formerly going into the household as medi- cines, but really adding to the host of fakes by their mere- tricious labels. Men, women, and children have been the unconscious victims of such drugs — innocently beginning with a wholesale familiar use of a remedy which had no virtue but a lurking wreck in it. The prosecution by the government has successfully silenced a large number of well-known cure-alls, but the drug stores of to-day still have nearly half of their shelves filled with the miscellaneous collection of sure remedies for every ill, from ingrowing toe nails to galloping consumption and floating kidney. The druggist cannot be honest, even if he desired to be, for the public continues to demand such things ; and in most cities, if the drug store will not supply them, the purchaser is able to find many of them in the department store. Nearly all of the stuff has been derived from some origi- nal prescription of some physician, and either a patient or a drug clerk has furthered the prescription to a popular use. A prescription which may have been given originally for acute indigestion may ultimately develop into a patent medicine claiming to cure a dozen organic diseases. The curious part of the business is that when the victim of one patent medicine derives no benefit from the first one, he goes on experimenting with others, equally useless, and finally employs a physician as a last resort ! Occasionally the experience assumes a criminal aspect which ought to be deterrent. Several years ago an Ohio druggist sold a cough remedy of his own make to a middle- class workman, who wanted it for a child at his home. The 104 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST medicine proved fatal to the child and the result was a five years' penitentiary term for the druggist. In this instance Ohio enforced its drug laws. Other States have such laws, but as yet their enforcement has not been sufficient to put the patent medicines out of business. No unqualified person may practice medicine in most States. This means that no unqualified or unlicensed per- son may administer drugs for the treatment or cure of dis- ease or engage in the practice of medicine. Notwithstand- ing this provision, it is possible, in most States, for news- papers to advertise remedies which are much more poten- tial of real harm than practice by an unlicensed physician. The remedies which newspapers advertise are full of possi- bilities of dangerous injury to the community, but no law has yet arrived through which the people have attempted self-protection. The better class of newspapers have long since closed their advertising pages to such nostrums, but there are still newspapers venal enough to go on advertising impossible remedies. One of the New Orleans dailies has an array of advertisements covering pretentious remedies for the dis- orders of the stomach, skin, lungs, etc., while one remedy alone proposes to cure such variable disorders as indiges- tion, rheumatism, and nervous debility. Any day other such advertisements may appear, with no conscience in the business office as to the paper's obligation to the public, which assuredly assumes the editorial indorsement of such propaganda. The street cars present, in prominent display, notices of cough syrups, bowel evacuants, and other stuff, each with more assurance of results than the average intelligent doc- tor would venture, even when he knew the diagnosis of the particular disease. The householder would soon rebel against the trades- man who took advantage of his pocketbook by selling some- thing through misrepresentation; but so many are gulled by the patent medicine business that it seems a matter of unobjectionable habit. The case with which such nostrums have been obtainable has made self-medication a habit. SOME EVILS OF SELF-MEDICATION 105 The supposed economy, too, has played a large part in the practice. The medical profession has been partly responsible for many cases of self-medication, through proper motives, no doubt. The frank discussion of the patient's medical needs often leads the latter to an assumption of knowledge on his own account at another occasion. The physician may sug- gest that he thinks the patient needs a little strychnine for a few days, to tone him up. The next time the patient feels that he needs toning up, he takes strychnine of his own accord and absolutely without the knowledge that he really needs strychnine — when it may even be contraindi- cated. The ease with which he so advises himself tends to make him adviser to others, and before long he has devel- oped a group of strychnine adherents, in turn dosing them- selves in ignorance of their need of such a whip to their arteries. Other drugs are likewise abused. The coal tar products, as phenacetin, antipyrine, and antifebrine, grew into universal usage a few years ago. The public learned that these were commonly administered by physicians, so the public began to use the drug on their own account. Any sort of headache was treated with one or another of these products, and often without any regard to dosage. I have known a lay person to take a half tea- spoonful of antipyrine at the dose, with the statement that a smaller dose did no good ! The harm comes through the self-diagnosis which may postpone the real determination of a remote and serious cause of the symptoms until it is too late. More than one case of kidney disturbance and degeneration has gone on to a fatal issue, through the neglect of simple beginning symptoms. The introduction of aspirin and its easy administra- tion have added this drug to the household provisions. The other coal tar products have practically disappeared under the aspirin popularity. "Why don't you take some aspi- rin?" is almost as common an expression as "How do you do?" and the variety of applications of aspirin is difficult to define. The result is that many families buy aspirin 106 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST wholesale — and administer it proportionately. These prac- tices have led to a very natural result — namely, a high de- gree of carelessness vi^ith drugs, and their abuse in sheer recklessness. The only too frequent victim of such fool- hardiness does not seem to act as deterrent. Many a consumptive has been hustled into an earlier grave by a wholesale use of some horse liniment or some patent cough cure, when a reasonable amount of medical attention might have saved them. Fortunately the education which has come about in recent years has been supported by the suppression of the more flagrant ofi'enders. The end is not yet in sight, how- ever. The newspapers more and more detail the court pro- cedures which show the manner in which the public is played for mercenary ends. Only recently the account of a notorious case detailed the manner in which women have been led to write most intimately of themselves to men and women in the offices of a nostrum, and these men and women, when forced to confess, declared in plain terms that none of them had any sort of a medical education ; yet they were ready to make a diagnosis of and to treat all sorts of diseases, some of which could not possibly be in- fluenced by any medicine on earth. Children are forced into the habit of household medica- tion with all sorts of drugs, in a penny wise and pound foolish method of supposed health protection; and only when they have suffered the consequence are they, in later life, made aware of the abuse of their constitutions by the patent medicines they have swallowed. Certain household remedies may have their places, but these are certainly limited in number and should be restricted to emergency. The cause of disease is often obscure, and any ignorant in- terpretation of symptoms is sure to lead to ultimate dis- tress. Drugs at best are uncertain implements, and the number of real service and in actual medical use is smaller as the days go by, in spite of the multiplication of drugs by the manufacturers. The druggist in time may cease to act as adviser as soon as he is forced to limit his occupation to the provisions THE MARRIAGE HEALTH CERTIFICATE 107 of his practice covered by his license, which at no time contemplated that he should treat disease. He confesses that the profit he derives from patent medicines does not justify his sale of them. The matter rests, then, almost entirely with the pub- lic, the more intelligent public really ; for they must attack evil practices as destructive of their own integrity and as the offense of a continued violation of health, truth, and justice against those with whom they are socially bound up. It is ours to produce a legislation so restricting the use and abuse of all drugs as to protect the generations to come, and to relieve and deliver those of the present generation, who are as yet too ignorant to protect themselves. THE MARRIAGE HEALTH CERTIFICATE OSCAR BOWLING, M.D., PRESIDENT OF THE LOUISIANA BOARD OF HEALTH, NEW ORLEANS, LA. It is just seventy-four years since Tennyson, the seer- poet of England, pictured his "vision of the world and all the wonder that would be." Many read with enjoyment the rhythmic lines, thrilling with youth and hope, but few shared in his faith. To his own generation, and even to those that followed, "the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue" seemed merely a fiction, a creation of the poet's imagination. To-day, in the daily news, we read the long death roll of Zeppelin and aeroplane victims ; we read of struggles in the "airy blue" of the deadly instruments of modern civilized warfare. This single illustration serves to show the world's prog- ress in control of nature's forces since the dreamer wrote his vision. In other sciences than war there have been even greater, if less spectacular, achievements. To transport an army in flying machines is a glorious tribute to man's intel- ligence and power, but the conquest of the unseen enemies to human health and vigor and life is even more marvelous and, as we see things, far more beneficent. The one great fact that nature's own poison, her own active agent in the 108 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST cause of disease and death, can be turned into a beneficent saving agency is paramount ; that the tiny vegetable or ani- mal microbe, the cause of economic loss and suffering and death, can be transmuted in the laboratory into a curative and preventive agent is, perhaps, of all the discoveries of all the sciences the greatest in its import to human welfare. I have used just these two achievements as signposts of progress since 1842. They are sufficient to indicate the heights from which we view the widened horizon ; they are significant of what has been done, and an earnest of other and greater accomplishments toward which our faces are set. As the dominant note of modern medicine is prevention, it touches the subject assigned me for discussion, "The Marriage Health Certificate." Naturally our first inquiry is, Have we sufficient knowl- edge on this subject to become arbiters? Have the sciences proved principles which justify law and their enforcement? Are the facts of heredity so established that we may be cer- tain of a rational and scientific basis for restrictive laws relating to marriage? Is biology so clear in its teaching that we may feel confident? Is medicine absolutely sure? Is eugenics yet a science? A reasonable certainty of positive facts, fundamental and essential, should be ours before any legislation is at- tempted or proposed which enters so intimately into the social system and into the life of the individual as this. We are told that the laws of nature are universal, that the laws of heredity are the same, whether we consider the ancestry of the chicken, the horse, or the human being. Doubt- less, in the main, this is true, but no one will deny that there is an essential difference in the mating of human beings and animals. There is the element of election to be considered. The stock expert may breed a fine racing mare, but his intelligence made the selection of the sire and dam. There can be no such arbiter in the union of human beings. The principles of heredity may be ever so well defined, but their application cannot be made by an outside agency. Choice, attraction — the human element THE MARRIAGE HEALTH CERTIFICATE 109 plays its part. It follows that education, not legislation, is essential, and this can be only after principles have been clearly evolved. However, this is only one aspect. There are facts proved by preventive medicine which bear upon the sub- ject. Observations teach that a child may be born with dis- ease, but that it is not inherited unless transmitted from parent to child through the germinal cells. On the other hand, there are diseases which are clearly transmissible from one person to another; from mother to child; from husband to wife. Tuberculosis of the lungs and the vene- real diseases, most especially gonorrhea, are highly trans- missible. Medicine affirms that from these the innocent may be protected. Logically, if not really, we may differentiate. In this legislation there are two oujects in view, the protection of the individual and protection of the unborn. The courts have set a standard in one of these, if not the other. In New York the Supreme Court recently ruled that conceal- ment of tuberculosis justifies the legal annulment of the marriage contract. A similar decision in regard to gonor- rhea has been handed down by the Supreme Court of Wis- consin. If these diseases can be diagnosed (and they can), if these diseases are infectious (and they are) , then there can be no doubt as to the scientific basis for restrictive leg- islation concerning them. There are other bodily states which, for the want of a better term, we call disease that fall into the class with tuberculosis and the venereal maladies — alcoholism, in- sanity, and moral degeneracy. Alcoholism in this sense means not the drinking habit, not even habitual drunken- ness, but more than either. It means the inherent defect which may show itself in drunkenness, in the "dope" habit, or in other forms of perverted appetite. While it is con- ceded that the alcoholic parent may beget healthy children, family histories show that "with continued debauchery of parent the children become progressively less rugged in constitution," and the result finally is a condition inimical to the natural development before birth. 110 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Evidence seems clear that defects of a certain charac- ter are hereditary and that they manifest themselves in a condition which we call insanity. Intelligent, intensive study now in progress in every well-managed hospital for the insane is bringing us every day nearer to a scientific diagnosis of this condition. As yet, we have little that can be used as a working basis for legislation. Gross inherent moral depravity can be considered as a condition which may be ascertained. We have not suf- ficient evidence to affirm without qualification the trans- mission of crime or criminal tendency. While family rec- ords show criminals generation after generation, usually those same individuals show other weaknesses, many be- ing in the nature of imperfect mental development. Al- though the conclusions of scientists as to the hereditary effect of these bodily states are not explicit, some States have in the matter of the moral degenerate passed laws which are proof of conviction that the State has a right to protect itself from the transmission of this type of defect. In New Jersey last September the Court of Chancery handed down a decision on insanity. It declared that the concealment by one party of insanity in the family is not a ground for annulment of marriage. I have quoted the decree of the courts in three cases of recent date more to indicate the complexities of this question than for any other reason. This phase also is illustrated in the ruling of Judge F. G. Eschweisler, of Milwaukee, on the marriage law of that State, handed down in January, 1914. The Judge declared the law unconstitutional because of the small fee ($3) provided for the examination. It was held that a thorough examination could not be made for this amount, and if the physician should give a certificate with- out the thorough examination, he might be liable for per- jury. When to the difficulties which grow out of our im- perfect knowledge of the laws of heredity, biology, and physiological psychology, we add the lack of machinery for the proper enforcement of a marriage health certificate law, we are appalled at the outlook. That any law may be en- forced, there must be a strong public demand. More espe- THE MARRIAGE HEALTH CERTIFICATE 111 cially is this true of a law which affects intimately the personal privileges of the individual. We have just begun to perceive the idea of social oneness. We are yet in the state of mind which subordinates society to the individual. We are not convinced that society is justified, even for its own protection, in passing a regulation which goes beyond those traditional in relation to property and violence. The state of mind is logical. Preventive medicine and mental sciences are so new that the great masses of the people have not yet confidence in their conclusions, and many are en- tirely ignorant of well-established facts and principles. I have suggested the obstacles to a law on this subject. Let us consider for a moment the situation. Authentic reports tell the story of thousands of deaths from tuber- culosis each year and tens of thousands of cases. The same is true of the venereal diseases. In the asylums we find insanity traceable to alcoholism and syphilis and many with a heritage, apparently, of moral as well as physical degen- eracy. I have purposely omitted mention of the vast army of the feeble-minded, though they too form a part of the problem. We know that these conditions exist and we know that the State, the community, the public, are being injured by the perpetuation of these canker sores. Are we not under obligation to put into effect such laws as we know can be framed on a basis of scientific facts furnished by biology and medicine? Shall we not make a beginning in the hope that further requirements will be demanded as the simple regulations first adopted prove themselves ? Let us have a law requiring a health certificate exami- nation which would he limited to diseases clearly and un- mistakably transmissible from person to person. This at least would protect the innocent party. It would sec- ondarily aid in the development of a social conscience on the single standard of morals, and it would be educational. The examinations for tuberculosis, even for syphilis and gonorrhea, if placed under community control, would soon prove the expense involved justified. Budgets are elastic when it comes to control of an epidemic of any communi- cable diseases. Budget makers should take into account 112 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the lessened number of persons the community would have to care for if poverty due to the death of the wage-earner and the sickness of the families of those infected could be prevented. We need not fear a rational law based on facts that are known. We have great need to beware of freakish or un- reasonable legislation on this or any other subject. A law pertaining to public health, not too radical, based on com- mon sense, wins support, slowly it may be, but surely. The Wisconsin marriage law was fought bitterly; it was de- clared by one court unconstitutional, but sustained by the higher tribunal, and, in spite of the unfavorable social con- ditions for its enforcement and bitter opposition,^it is gain- ing in public favor. Another aspect of this subject is its effect on the rela- tive number of legal and illegal marriages. It is contended that any restriction of marriage tends to the extension of illicit intercourse and to the development of irresponsibility as to the civic or religious formalities. No doubt the civil license required reacts toward the same result. But the need of a legal certificate is established in the public mind ; its uses are accepted and regarded as a community and indi- vidual right and safeguard. The same would soon become true of the health certificate. No one will deny that under- lying the union of two human beings is the primal impulse of nature. It is the impelling force of the universe. All living things obey the call. "In the spring a livelier iris shines upon the burnished dove, In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Is it wise or economic from nature's point of view to place restrictions which may turn nature from her way or give excuse for the setting aside that which tends to the stability of the family life? The reply is written in our statute books on many other subjects. We have developed far beyond the animal of the lower order or the savage. For good or ill, we have traveled toward social solidarity. It has cost the individual something ; it may cost him more. But nature herself teaches a lesson. Of fifty seeds, not one STANDARD FOR DRINKING WATER 113 may live. The whole is greater than its parts. No man lives or dies unto himself. Whether we will or no, we are bound for a goal which means the sacrifice of the individ- ual for the good of the whole — when necessary. Partly in our ignorance of nature's laws in some things we have brought upon ourselves the penalty. It would seem that through the individual, his development and his sacrifice, society is to become perfect. Then back through that there will come the perfection of the individual. While the difficulties and complexities surrounding the operation of a marriage law seem insuperable and unsolv- able, we should not be discouraged. Science has just stepped across the portal of the unknown ; society has only a glimpse of the potential force of social unity ; men see as in a glass darkly. The vision of the poet of forty years ago is concrete fact to-day ; the vision of the social reformer to-day may seem a Utopian dream, but achievements already won give us hope and faith. MAINTAINING A PROPER BACTERIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL STANDARD FOR DRINKING WATER W. H. SEEMANN, M.D., NEW ORLEANS, LA. The connection of water and disease has been so thor- oughly exploited and is so well understood by most peo- ple who are engaged in sociological work that it need not be referred to. From a sanitary standpoint the maintenance of a prop- er control over the water supply rests upon the proofs which experience and study have given us. Economically, the great financial loss to a community which is incident to cases of typhoid fever is in itself adequate justification for a consistent and determined effort on the part of communi- ties to maintain a good and sufficient water supply. The question that is not yet thoroughly decided is the one relat- ing to the consideration of the methods which are best to apply to this end and the manner in which these methods should be applied. As Prescott many years ago affirmed 114 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST in his article on "Farm Water Supplies" in the American Journal of Public Health, there is a decided difference in the chemical and bacteriological characteristics of the natural types of water — namely, meteoric, surface, and hroivn water. Rain, snow, and hail, belonging to the first group, forming by condensation of moisture from large bodies of water, such as the oceans, rivers, and lakes, are somewhat like distilled water, and under proper conditions of collection and storage may be comparatively pure, this being especially true where cut-offs are used, and the early fall of rain which contains impurities from the roofs of buildings and the air is discarded. In such waters the num- ber of bacteria is usually low and the water generally very "soft." With surface waters the contact with the soil is sufficient to change the aspect of the water from a chemical and bacteriological standpoint. In the case of deep waters a further change is found on account of the filtration by which, in most instances, the bacterial content is reduced and the chemical content increased. It becomes necessary, therefore, in discussing the meth- ods by v/hich some fairly fixed standard of purity may be arrived at, that experiments and observation, which must be carefully reported, collected, and passed on by com- petent investigators, should form the basis for the formu- lation of the rules and standards which are to become the working manuals of all activities in the purification, hand- ling, and supervision of water supplies. First of all agencies are the municipalities or private companies which furnish water supplies. It is an abso- lute necessity that these organizations should have the serv- ice of a laboratory worker, who is able to make examina- tions and maintain a daily supervision of the outgo from the plant. As a check further on this control, the municipal health boards should stand as guardians of the water supply. These boards can operate with most efficiency first of all by making daily examinations of water samples for bac- teriological impurities, and examination at least weekly from a chemical standpoint. In addition, the vital statis- STANDARD FOR DRINKING WATER 115 tics department, with the aid of maps and other agencies, should keep a careful watch on the morbidity rates of wa- ter-borne conditions in order that at the very first sign of danger, as indicated by these records, an immediate and more thorough investigation of the water supply may be made. In order to maintain a high standard of efficiency and attention on the part of the two preceding agencies, it is absolutely necessary that the boards of health of the dif- ferent States maintain a constant supervision over all the water supplies of the State, increasing their vigilance and attention and multiplying their activities v/hen either of the other two agencies are found deficient, either on account of lack of interest or application or on account of deficiency of equipment or finances. In an advisory capacity and in a supervisory capacity, on account of the superior authority vested in State boards of health, they should be better pre- pared in equipment, field forces, and finances than either of the other agencies. Among the different activities that are absolutely essential to the proper control of water sup- plies by State boards of health are a bacteriological depart- ment, an analytical chemical department, and a department of sanitary engineering. For the best efficiency, these de- partments in relation to the water supply question should be grouped together under one head, a supervisory depart- ment of water supplies. The great distances to be traversed in order that sam- ples may reach a central laboratory afford considerable ob- stacles to the successs of a constant supervision of the water supplies. To obviate this difficulty branch labora- tories should be established or, as has been done by the Louisiana State Board of Health, a laboratory car should be provided. We have now in connection with the activi- ties of the Louisiana State Board of Health a laboratory car — i. e., a converted Pullman car — in which every facility afforded by a modern laboratory is at hand for the pur- pose, among other things and above all other things, of maintaining a proper and constant supej'vision of the wa- ter supply of this State. This car is now in actual opera- 116 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST tion at Lake Charles, and its great value in these four days of operation has been proven by the fact that some thirty- five or forty samples of water have been collected and ex- amined according to standard methods, without the least inconvenience or delay, and in each instance it has been possible to have the specimens in the incubator in an aver- age of a half hour after collection. Where a laboratory car is not available, and even in conjunction with one, proper water containers for the shipment of water samples is an absolute necesssity. We use here, in connection with the work of the Louisiana State Board of Health, a modifica- tion of the Nebraska type of water container, which we have been able to produce at the low cost of $5,30 a con- tainer, and which is practically indestructible, and has proven of great value to us. While most of us who are engaged in sanitary or socio- logical work are well acquainted with the im.portance of the water problem, the great majority of the citizens whom we serve are absolutely uneducated and negligent about this question. The passage and promulgation and enforcement of laws on this subject is a mandatory duty on the part of legislators, but more far-reaching in its consequences and more lasting in its benefits, in this as well as in every other health work, is education. By education I do not mean the distribution of high-sounding pamphlets or the delivery of flowery speeches to an assemblage of mystified hearers, but I am convinced that individualizing the instruction is neces- sary in this as in every other field, A bad result of the examination of a water supply should not be merely followed by a peremptory letter of vague instructions, but should automatically mean that a follow- up inspection and personal discussion of the proposition should be put in effect. Along with this system of individ- ual instruction, the confidence of the public is absolutely necessary in the promotion of any public enterprise, and this demands not only an unfaltering and consistent watch- fulness on the part of the authorities, but, in return for the confidence imposed, an added duty of taking the public into the confidence of the authorities is not more than common justice. THE EVOLUTION OF THE TRAINED NURSE 117 It is possible, especially in filtration plants, that no mat- ter how great the efficiency or how constant and loyal the watchfulness, there may come a time when the water is unsafe; then, if it is not possible to immediately remedy this condition by disinfection at the source of supply, a prompt notification of the conditions should be made to the consumers. Otherwise the liability and moral responsi- bility incurred are too great for any man or set of men to assume. Some system of control of waste products, espe- cially of sewage in streams which are used as a source of water supplies, must be undertaken and carried out sooner or later. In some sections of the country this necessity has already been recognized and met in part. Here in the South the subject has been given consider- able attention, but not a great deal of action has been produced. In summing up the situation, I believe that the mainte- nance of a proper bacteriological and chemical standard for drinking water resolves itself into these three things — namely, watchfulness and preparedness on the part of supervisory health bodies; confidence and a compliance with sanitary laws on the part of the public, and education, education, education. THE EVOLUTION OF THE TRAINED NURSE MARY M. RIDDLE, R.N., REPRESENTING AMERICAN NURSES' ASSOCIATION AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF NURS- ING EDUCATION, NEWTON, MASS. Florence Nightingale returned from the Crimea im- bued with the thought that England must have more and better nurses so that another war, near or distant, should not find the nation again so totally unprepared to bear the burden of adequately caring for its sick and maimed ; Pas- tor Fliedner and his good wife deplored the want of refine- ment, limited education, and shortness of vision in their devout and self-sacrificing deaconesses ; the Sanitary Com- mission and its leading workers in our own country in the sixties learned that their powers were curtailed and their 118 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST purposes sometimes even thwarted by the shortage of skilled nurses. Accordingly the establishment of training schools for nurses during the latter half of the nineteenth century became a part of the history of England and the United States. It was an outgrowth of the need of the world for such service; and while the schools multiplied in an almost unprecedented manner, the need for more and better nurses for the sick and well continues. Nurses there have always been, from the animals and early savages who cared for their young by instinct, men and women of the early Christian era who nursed their sick as a religious ceremony, thus accomplishing penance for sins, on down to the time of the Crimean War, which pro- duced an awakening of the conscience of the nations and some action on the part of earnest and public-spiirited men and women. The need was everywhere felt and nurses must be edu- cated to meet the need.- It was realized at length that more than good intent, willingness to work, and great physical powers of endurance were required to make a nurse accept- able to all grades of people under all the exigencies of their service ; but one of the earliest to express a wish for quali- fications in advance was Pastor Fliedner's wife, the super- intendent of the deaconesses, w^ho longed for better op- portunities for them both before and during their period of training, and this too in the face of the fact that the deaconesses were most devoted to their duty and technic- ally quite capable. One may better appreciate the position taken by Mrs. Fliedner when one remembers the admonition to her pupils which finally became her motto: "Never sacrifice the soul of the work for its technique." This theory, though now and then temporarily obscured by the haste of nurse teachers and the selfishness of hos- pitals and the public, remains one of the basic principles upon which is built the superstructure of nurse education. Instruction in the early nurse schools of our country was good, though circumscribed (in practice it was excel- lent), and many noble, self-sacrificing women were gradu- TPIE EVOLUTION OF THE TRAINED NURSE 119 ated from them to take the places in life where they were required. The women themselves were older in years and had set- tled and firm convictions regarding their choice of a calling. The training was almost never an experiment, but was al- ways taken with a desire to become useful. The first schools furnished many missionaries for the foreign field. Tim.es have changed, the advancing years have brought new problems to be solved for the public health, and these problems have frequently demanded talents as yet undevel- oped and minds untrained along the lines required. In corroboration of this statement one has but to recall the status of the trained nurse in this country twenty-five years ago, when the only kinds of work open to her were the different branches of nursing in hospitals and other in- stitutions and the care of the sick in their own homes. These remain, but they have been vastly increased by the addition of the various forms of public health nursing and other welfare work calling for the skilled services of the trained nurse. The so-called district or visiting nursing, though having had its inception earlier, has nearly all grown up within this period, while nurses in the public schools, in the army and navy, in medical social service, in the nurses' settlements, and in the various positions with boards of health have all come into being within the last two decades. When one considers that 7iine hundred nurses are em- ployed in the health department of Neiv York City aloney one can but realize what a huge army is required to satisfy the demands of even this country. To meet this condition, hospitals and schools of nursing have been confronted with a double proposition--— they must turn out more and better qualified nurses, and at the same time they must have more and better within their own walls. The registration laws have temporarily added somewhat to the difficulty, but in such a way as to secure ultimate advantage. Again the demand for nurses has been augmented by the methods followed in the practice of modern medicine and 120 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST surgery. The nursing profession is called the handmaiden of the profession of medicine. The medical profession has many times found itself unable to proceed without the as- sistance of the nurse. The growth and development of the nursing profession and its scope for usefulness is little short of marvelous. It is less than fifty years since the first school for nurses was established in this country, and yet to-day they are num- bered by thousands. It is less than twenty years since the first laws for the registration of nurses were passed, and to-day nearly every State in the Union has a statute which more or less clearly defines the status of the nurse and establishes a minimum standard of training. This growth and this development have in no sense been by chance. Wise men and women early saw the possibili- ties for the new calling which had not yet been given the name of a "profession," and were quick to take advantage of them and assist in unfolding them; mostly, it must be confessed, for the benefit of the hospital, which has seldom returned "value received" to the nurse who gave her all for at least two years in the hospital. There are few instances when such condemnation should be allowed to fall upon the head of any individual. The superintendent of the school as well as the superintendent of the hospital reasoned rightly that the first item for consideration in a hospital is the best interest of the patient, therefore all things else must give way that he may have every opportunity for ultimate recovery and the resumption of his place in life. To-day his interests are as completely guarded and his wel- fare as carefully studied, but it is no longer so generally believed that his salvation should be by the sacrifice of the nurse, but rather that the nurse should receive such instruc- tion while caring for him as to enable her the better to care for future patients of his kind. While it has taken time to correct the earlier errors, the time taken is so comparatively little as to prove the preva- lence of the sense of justice and expediency in the hearts and minds of directors of hospitals and schools, as well as their ability to convert boards of control and governors to THE EVOLUTION OF THE TRAINED NURSE 121 the same belief. To-day problems remain. There have been solutions, but they have hardly kept pace with the growths and demands. Increase in the number of nurse schools calls for an increase in capable instructors and supervisors. Increased demand for the services of public health nurses signifies that more must be prepared for the work, and so on down the whole line of nurse activities. Increase in work means increase in education, in prepara- tion ; and vice versa, increased preparation is sure to be met with additional opportunities for work. It is the duty of nurse instructors not only to keep in step with the requirements, but to be sufficiently far- sighted and alert as to be a few paces in advance and con- sequently able to anticipate them. Therefore education is the slogan in the camp of the nurses to-day. Strange as it may seem, this has its opposition, which comes from friend and foe in almost equal proportion. There are very evidently two reasons for the hostility. The friends fear that early ideals regarding the nurse and her work may be sacrificed; the foes see as the result of the increased educational opportunities an output of nurses, obstreperous, authoritative, and unmanageable — a type hitherto unknown, but greatly to be dreaded and avoided. The opposition of the former class is negative and arises from apprehension; that of the latter is positive, selfish, and obstructive. The fearful should be calmed by the reflection that there is naturally less sentiment in the worker of the present, whether he works for pleasure or for his bread, but more sense and just as much real charity or benevolence as there has ever been. The change is due more to a change in method and a desire for definite results than to a change in motive. Time will do much for the calming of the fearful. The obstructionist fails in knowledge, possibly through want of experience, it may be through obduracy. His psy- chological sense should teach him or his mental processes, aided by the smallest amount of experience, should reveal to him the fact that the well-bred man or woman who works with the finest intelligence and keenest perception 122 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST does the best and most acceptable work; and, other things being equal, does it for a longer period of time than does any other class of workman. Intelligence enables him to adapt himself readily to his work and suggests means for improving his methods. It gives a sense of power with a resultant pleasure that can only be productive of better work. To him no necessary work is menial or debasing. His objective is the finished product in which he expects perfection no less when it is nursing work done for the sick mind or body than if it were done in bronze or stone designed to last through ages. For early recognizing this necessity and the possibili- ties for meeting it, too much credit cannot be given Mrs. Isabel Hampton Robb, who, w^ith her colleague and pupil, Miss M. Adelaide Nutting, was most instrumental in hav- ing established at Teachers' College, Columbia University, a course in what was at first known as Hospital Economics, but which has since developed into the Department of Nurs- ing and Health. Education as there offered and from there distributed has very thoroughly inculcated the principle that the first essential toward the production of a good and highly intel- ligent nurse is a young woman of refinement; of good, though not always college education; of ability to assimi- late that which is presented and with power to adapt it to the need at hand. For this standard some criticism has been offered, but it has grown less with time, as the aver- age mind settles down on the homely axiom that it is impos- sible to make something out of nothing. Schools of nursing should be willing to supplement the already acquired education and give the pupil every oppor- tunity for making the most of her instruction and environ- ment ; but in three short j^ears they can do little other than their specific work, and this is therefore an additional rea- son why the entrance requirements to the school should be high. Opportunities for practical work are far more frequent than is that for theoretical instruction. Notwithstanding the improvements in the education and technical training of nurses during the last decade, and the THE EVOLUTION OF THE TRAINED NURSE 123 uplift of the calling by the nurses themselves, who are largely responsible for the advancements made, there are many who contend that nursing is not a profession. An eminent physician once gave several reasons why nursing shou'd not be so called: 1. Becai'se its members make no sacrifices for its pro- motion and do nothing in its practice for charity. He was evidently unacquainted with the fact that the course in Hospital Economics was largely financed by contributions from the modest earnings of nurse superintendents of train- ing schools; he knew nothing of the hours and days of serv ■{ e ^enalty that follows the commission of such revolting deeds ; secondly, that it does away with the law's delay and imposes the penalty at the very moment when the community is keenly alive to the enormity of the offense and the lesson is most likely to be driven home; and lastly, that it spares the victim of atrocious crime the trying ordeal of reciting the details in a crowded court room. A careful study of the facts fails to substantiate a single one of these defenses. In the first place, far from acting as a preventive of crime, lynching tends actually to increase it. It defeats the very object at which it expressly aims. It does not prevent ravishing. Assaults upon women have frequently been repeated in neighborhoods where a mob had only recently dealt with a previous offender. Instead of checking wrongdoing, mob violence is apt to arouse a morbid state of mind that tends to manifest itself in anti- social acts. By provoking irritation, suspicion, and bitter- 188 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ness between the races, it only fertilizes the soil for a larger crop of lawlessness. In substantiation of this statement, I beg leave to quote a few extracts adapted from the newspaper reports of a lynching that occurred in one of our neighboring States some years ago. The grewsome details are not recited in any muckraking spirit, but are reproduced for the purpose of showing the fearful extremes to which a mob will go. This is how the story reads: "The cowering, shivering wretch, whose face was a picture of agony and terror, was taken from a wagon and forced up the steps, where he was pinioned to a stake. His coat and shirt were torn off him piece by piece and thrown among the crowd, where they were eagerly seized as relics. When he was stripped to the waist, they began to thrust red-hot irons under his feet. Every contortion of his body and every groan that escaped his lips brought forth shouts of approval. Vainly he begged for mercy. The red-hot irons burned into his flesh deeper and deeper, and he uttered terrible cries. . . . The crowd gazed on the scene with a horrible fasci- nation, as the slow process of torture proceeded. The climax was reached when the irons were thrust into his eyes, burning the balls away. Then they were thrust into his throat, and still he lived and writhed and suffered." This is not a story of Rome in the days of Nero, but an account of an act committed in a modern American com- munity which boasts its Anglo-Saxon civilization and its Christian ideals. Who can portray the brutalizing effect of this deed upon those who perpetrated it and its degrad- ing influence upon the community in which such scenes were enacted? Yet this terrible punishment did not put an end to crime within that State. In the following year the number of mob murders within its borders increased twenty-five per cent, while the next year brought a further increase of seventy per cent. One crime does not prevent another. It has become almost a truism that cruel and unusual punishment, instead of deterring crime, serves rather to increase it. If punishment is to deter the would- MOB VIOLENCE — AN ENEMY OF BOTH RACES 189 be criminal, it must be prompt and sure, not actuated by the spirit of revenge, devoid of degrading effects upon the pubhc, and strictly in accordance with the law of the land. In none of these particulars save, perhaps, that of prompt- ness, does lynching meet the canons of modern penology. Not only is lynching no preventive of cnmes against wome7i, but statistics prove that only one time in four are such crimes the cause of lynching. In 1915 only sixteen per cent of the persons lynched were charged with crimes against womanhood. But even if all the lynchings were the result of such crimes mob law would still not be justi- fied. For who constitute the mob? Since frontier days the quality of the mob has greatly deteriorated, and to-day it generally consists of the worst elements of a community. By what right does this degraded mass of humanity con- stitute itself the guardian of virtue? Have we fallen to such low estate that woman's honor can be avenged only by such as these? Is our civilization to be vindicated by a group of frenzied "rounders" suddenly transformed into savages ? With regard to the claim that mob violence prevents the law's delay it may be said that the law's delay is not for the poor criminal, be he white or black. The law's delay is the luxury of the rich and influential. The guilty negro in our courts rarely escapes conviction; indeed, ho usually receives the extreme penalty of the law. On the other hand, the mob often makes mistakes and wreaks its vengeance on the innocent, while the real offender goes free. In 1915 four innocent persons fell victims to the fury of the mob. In answer, next, to the contention that the mob saves the victim of the crime from humiliating publicity, it may be stated that this argument is entirely inconsistent with the one which would justify mob violence on the ground that the wide publicity given to the terrible punishment has a deterring influence. It is a deplorable fact that when a ravisher is hanged or burned at the stake his name and that of his victim are coupled together and telegraphed to 190 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST every section of the country. This certainly does not shield outraged womanhood, and it would not occur if the crimi- nal were dealt with by lawful methods. It is always prac- ticable to conduct the trial of this class of offenders with the utmost regard for the feelings of the unfortunate vic- tim ; but it is highly probable that many of those who join the mob ostensibly to shield violated innocence would be the first to clamor for admission to the court room, where they would stare at the chief witness with morbid curiosity, and, like buzzards after carrion, eagerly devour every mor- sel of the unclean evidence. The foregoing facts fully justify the conclusion that mob violence to-day is utterly without excuse, inimical to the progress of civilization, and a crime against society. In attempting to show wherein it is an enemy of both races, I have not deemed it necessary to specify wherein it is injurious to whites and wherein it is injurious to blacks. It is only necessary to show that it is injurious to humanity. The evils resulting from mob riots may eventually affect us in ways that we do not now suspect. Violence by groups tends to beget violence by individuals, and thence by whole republics. If fifty or a hundred men can put themselves above the law with impunity, the time may come when one man or a nation may do likewise. If we tolerate anarchy in dealing with criminals, the time may come when we shall have to tolerate it in other matters. The mob exercises absolute power ivithout incurring an iota of the responsibility that should always accompany the exercise of power. Mob law means government by pas- sion, the worst possible government that can be devised; it results in the supplanting of reason and judgment by the emotional insanity of the crowd; it creates intense racial hatred, and thus works to the grave injury of both whites and blacks. "It is the duty of all good people," says a noted Southern bishop, "in all parts of this country to unite in putting down the mob. For let us be well assured that the good people will put down the mob or the mob will put down the good people." CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, CURE OF MOB VIOLENCE 191 THE CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, AND CURE OF MOB VIOLENCE CHARLES M. BISHOP, D.D., PRESIDENT SOUTHWESTERN UNIVER- SITY, GEORGETOWN, TEX. THE CAUSES The causes for the blot of mob violence upon our civili- zation — this series of hideous crimes which shames our Christian pretensions and stultifies our social conscience — are numerous and complex. Some of them run back into the obscure sources of our biological inheritance, the resurgence of brutal instincts and revenge, the triumph over us of that which we call uncontrollable passion. Some of them are found in that deep-seated sentiment, almost as ancient as the other, but maintained and strengthened by modern conven- tionalities, which we call race antipathy. Others of them are more open to common observation and lie within the range of more simple comprehension. These we may list under a broad analysis, as Historical, Psychological, and Legal, remembering that all the phases blend in every con- crete case. HistoHcal. — There were a few instances of the lynching of negroes before the Civil War, but not many. The war itself, with the breakdown of the social institutions which had constituted our civilization, and the change in the rela- tion of whites and blacks not only induced a somewhat gen- eral state of lawlessness, but put an end to the kindly human sentiments between the two races. Then the nightmare of Reconstruction made anarchy inevitable, solidified the races against each other, and raised one question in the South which overshadowed every other: Should the blacks rule in ignorant lawlessness, the tools of evil politicians v^^ho planned the further and final ruin of the South? or should the whites rule in conscious defiance of law, saving their land and what remained of their cherished institutions for their own children and later descendants, and leaving the negro to make the most he could out of the situation for himself? The whites decided upon the latter course, to 192 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST which I do not hesitate to say they felt they were compelled by considerations higher than the sanctity of any law which the party in power would or did make. But this not only completely separated the two races from each other, but fixed them in a relation which had been determined by vio- lation of law, and which was maintained by a theory that the law as then understood should not and did not apply to the numbers of both races alike. Thus lawlessness, or an attitude of denial and defiance of law, became an irremov- able element in the antagonism of the races. Neither race has since that period been willing to acquiesce in a system of laws which would be acceptable to the other, or grant to the other what the other would regard as justice. And with both races such phrases as the "dignity of the law," the "inviolability of law," have lost their usual sanctity of meaning as applied by either to the other. To some extent each considers the other outside the pale of the law. This is somewhat illustrated in the attitude of the average negro toward certain property rights of the white man; and of the white man toward the question of the political rights of the negro. The white man denies the franchise to the negro because he is a negro; and the negro — at any rate many individuals among them — regards theft from a white man as no stain to his soul or infraction of his honor. This tendency of each race to outlaw the other ha^ had its most revolting and violent illustration in the crime of rape on the part of the negro and of lynching on the part of the white man. These reciprocal crimes have of course widened the breach between the races and led to still more open defiance of the law as applicable in all respects equally to members of the different races. Psychological Causes. — The crime which first led to the lynching of a negro by a mob is the most horrible and bestial known to mankind. The awful terror which the thought of the mere possibility of it excites in the mind of the gentlewoman is the most horrible which she can pos- sibly experience. And the infuriation and hate which it arouses in the mind of her male protector and friend is the CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, CURE OF MOB VIOLENCE 193 most violent he can feel. No one can treat the subject justly who does not recognize these facts. I have some- times seen hints by stupid critics which tended to belittle the reality and intensity of these instinctive feelings. It is evident that some earnest negro writers do not clearly understand their significance. The violent outrage of woman is the most damnable of all crimes from the stand- point of the victim and the friends of the victim. But when the criminal is black and the victim an innocent white woman it is many times more horrible. The strongest words in human language can only faintly hint the incur- able repulsion and shame and agony and hate which are thus aroused. Here, lying deep and hidden in instincts and sentiments which our wills have never learned to con- trol nor our minds to fathom, is the main original source or cause of the murder of criminal negroes by mobs of white men. And in this hereditary psychology of the white man is the explanation of the fact that no partici- pant in the execution by the mob of a negro guilty of this crime has ever been known to express any feeling of regret or shame for his own violation of the law in that case. The human capacity for repentance does not seem to go as deep into the very roots of being as these instincts lie. I am giving rather strong statement to this psychological aspect of the case simply because the honest study of the question requires it, and not for one moment to condone the work of the mob. But the leaders of our negro fellow- men must be brought to some apprehension of the tre- mendous weight and meaning of these facts; and I regret to say that I have seen but little evidence of any earnest attempt upon the part of their preachers and teachers and other leaders persistently to impress the mind of their race with the hideousness of this crime, hi fact, the members of each race have spent their strength in the condemnation of the sins or crimes of the other. Legal Causes. — I use this phrase very broadly to desig- nate those defects in the law and in its execution which have operated as provocative causes of mob violence; and I shall briefly mention them, without prolonged discussion. 13 194 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST 1. What seem to the laymen as the unnecessary delays of the law have had large place in the public mind in more recent years as a justifying reason for the resort to mob law. 2. The effect of technical errors upon court decisions and the further delay and often the complete miscarriage of justice thus occasioned have also been extremely irritat- ing and have added to the weight of reasons which have swayed the judgment of the otherwise law-abiding citizen. After a most revolting instance of public lynching in Texas last year, in which there was no possible doubt of the guilt of the man accused, an honest farmer was heard to express his approval of the horrible community crime upon the ground that the misplacing of a comma here and there in the court record would probably have led, after long delay and great expense, to the remanding of the case by the Court of Appeals for new trial, making possible the final escape of the criminal. 3. There are many thoughtful people who regard our present legal machinery and modes of procedure as dan- gerously defective for dealing both with the crime of out- rage upon women and with murder by the mob. And the distrust and disrespect thus created act as contributing causes to mob violence. 4. Moreover the inefficiency and cowardice and often the connivance of petty officials elected or permitted to be elected by us have, in many instances, actually encouraged the mob in its dastardly designs. CONSEQUENCES The consequences following this long reign of mob law in the South have been so terrible and widespread, so insid- ious and yet so fatally ruinous to many of the higher inter- ests of our civilization, that it is quite depressing even to think of them. Indeed many of our people have refused to think of them, and some of our would-be leaders have misrepresented and denied them. The moral and social disease of which it is both a symptom and a cause, like some of the most fearful of physical diseases, has been its own anaesthetic, and the slowly decaying patient is in dan- CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, CURE OF MOB VIOLENCE 195 ger of a giddy optimism which regards his bed of death as the restful couch of his own luxurious health. Perhaps only the trained criminologist and the student of social psychology', and those whom they have taught, can rightly apprehend the awful deterioration of our moral and civil life which we have already suffered and the further danger with which we are threatened. 1. The prevalence of mob violence has dulled the con- science of us all with reference to the sacredness of human life and the majesty and sanctity of laws which are older than the Ten Commandments, and which have been at the very basis of all civilization and of all stable government. Mob murder is anarchy in its relation to government, bru- tal savagery as compared with civilization, and defiant infidelity in its attitude toward pure religion. It is destruc- tive, in all those who participate in it and those who ap- prove of it and those who allow it, of those finer human sentiments and principles which it is the province of reli- gion to inspire and develop, of which true culture is the expression, and upon which all real progress depends. It has already wrought some of these sinister effects in our Southern society. As is well known the mob long since ceased to regard the negro rape fiend as its special prey. But whites as well as blacks, women as well as men, have often been the victims of its fury. And the crimes which it has taken it upon itself to expiate by its methods of hor- rible butchery are, more than eighty per cent of them, of quite different character and lower degree of baseness than roipe, including such as "murder, robbery, looting, clubbing an officer, stealing cotton, stealing hogs, poisoning mules, and being accessory to the burning of a barn." In at least five per cent of the cases last year it later developed that the persons lynched ivere innocent of the crimes charged. 2. Lawlessness in general is increased by the preva- lence of mob violence. There are more homicides in the United States than in any other country in the world of like civilized pretensions; and more in the South than in any other section of the nation in proportion to population — in a single Southern city more than in all the British Isles. 196 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST 3. Mob law is the rule of the baser elements of the population, the large majority of those participating being generally of the vicious and lawless class. But the con- science of the general public has been so dulled and stupe- fied by its frequent recurrence that in many cases com- paratively respectable and honest persons have been caught in the rush of its wild passion and swept into participa- tion in the orgies which make a hoodlum's holiday. Law- abiding men have thus been made murderers, to carry the guilty, unexpiated, and degrading consciousness of it in their breasts, injuring their self-respect and lowering their standards of conduct, for the balance of their days. Young men and young women out of respectable homes have rushed in automobiles to witness the spectacle of a naked negro yelling and cursing while he roasted to death, and to converse with each other concerning the unspeakable crime with which he was charged. Mothers have been known to lift their little children in their arms to behold the demoniac exhibition. Following such occasions the shops have done large business in post cards with pictures of the burning victim at various stages of his terror and agony and dying. While worst of all, let us confess it with shame, many teachers and preachers have been discreetly mute about the outrage of it, and many politicians have secretly and sometimes even openly expressed their appro- bation : for often some of the guilty participants have been prominent patrons of our schools and members of our churches; and hoodlums and even criminals until convicted of crime have votes — if they are twenty-one years old and are of the male sex. 4. Race antipathy has been aggravated as an element of our social situation, and thus the race problem made more difficult, by the multiplication of cases of mob vio- lence. Most lynchings are of negroes by whites. A cer- tain type of negro criminal lives in constant terror of the white mob. And a certain type of low-grade whites are ready to join the mob at any time upon the slightest occa- sion if only leadership is offered. The terror of the negro CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, CURE OF MOB VIOLENCE 197 does not deter him from crime, but increases his resent- ment and rage, and criminal inclination as a policy of frightfulness always inflames passion. The readiness of the low-grade white to "punish" the negro offender does not constitute him a defender of virtue or protector of the community. Far from it. It only finds here opportunity for the expression of hatred and bloodthirstiness and for some new animal excitement which reduces him to a lower level of bestiality even than before. 5. Thus mob violence becomes the storm in which lust and rage and revenge and terror and hate and love of blood run riot over every civilized and Christian sentiment and institution, and tear asunder the ties of sympathy and friendship and cooperation which could otherwise make it possible for thesfe diverse races to live together in peace. Into the whirl of this storm of passion, born in the hearts of the criminal and vicious of both races, have been caught thousands and thousands of better men, and of women and even children, of both races, until the whole social life of our Southland has been disturbed, and many have declared that real peace and prosperity and social happiness, and friendship and helpfulness and cooperation between the races was impossible. God forbid! The South has suffered in unspeakable disgrace in the eyes of the world already on account of this virulent social madness; but let us not consign it to ruin. Let us not con- sent that its task is impossible, and its doom as the land of chivalry and culture and freedom and Christian democ- racy inevitable. When something more than a year ago the Turkish Ambassador withdrew in high dudgeon from his position in this country, he flouted the people of the United States in the most insulting language with their record of lawless butchery of negro suspects. His angry and stinging words were echoed throughout the world. There was too much of truth in what he said for us to dare to attempt an answer. O, the shame of it to us of the South! It was chiefly our sin which this scornful Mohammedan was laying bare before the world. What can we do about it ? I say we can cure it. 198 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ^ THE CURE I have only space to suggest in most general terms what should be done to remedy this evil — to exorcise this devil from our social and civil and moral and religious life. 1. If necessary, we should summon the strength to revo-i lutionize the tradition-shackled modes of judicial procedure which in many respects no longer command the respect either of the thoughtful student or of the average man. But as the crime of outrage of woman is itself exceptional in its brutality and in its effects upon human sentiments, and as the crime of murder by a mob of one accused of crime does not fall distinctly under the category of crimes for which our laws were provided, it is not unreasonable to suggest that specific laws and modes of^ procedure might be adopted which would furnish society with better protec- tion from these forms of outlawry. As a mere speculative suggestion it occurs to me that a special court of qualified judges, taken from judicial districts other than that in which the crime was committed, might be constituted to sit in the case of one charged with rape, and directed to proceed to final decision without delay, no appeal to be allowed on technical grounds, and the sentence upon the guilty to be executed at once. The public should be ex- cluded from such trials except through representatives duly selected, so as to guard all the interests of the accused and of society at large. Thus might be done away some of the abuses of the outworn and inefficient jury system. 2. The mob should be dealt with as a form of anar- chistic insurrection, and military power should be given to duly appointed officials with instructions to deal with it under the severest forms of martial law. 3. But the cure upon which we can best rely is that of education and the creation of public sentiment, in increased respect for human life and for established law. I asked a friend of mine — a college president in another State — the other day how we x^ould create this public sen- timent, and he replied with intense, even alarming, earnest- ness: "If a mob would burn you at the stake and a few CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, CURE OF MOB VIOLENCE 199 others like you, it would accomplish the end desired !" And then he added, "Somebody has always to die to save society from its sins." But I am hoping that we shall not have to resort to such extreme measures ! The school, the pulpit, and the press are the agencies upon which we shall chiefly have to depend. The press is in the main all right upon the subject in its editorial col- umns. The news columns ought to be more completely con- verted to the standards of propriety and righteousness. The pulpit will utter its voice when attention has been fully called to the matter. The school, from university down to country schoolhouse, can be made the most efficient instrumentality. The underlying principles of law and or- der can be more specifically taught in the classroom. Stu- dent bodies can be organized into self-governing Law and Order Leagues, and the youth who are to be the leaders of their various communities trained in self-control, and in reverence for human life and for justice, until the organi- zation of a mob for lawless purposes will become impos- sible or be easily defeated under the leadership of stronger men and women. I would not omit to call special attention here to the importance of using the school as an instrument in this behalf among the negroes also. Let the negro schools be organized so as to promote training in the principles of social order and propriety. But I am here confronted with the fact that our negro population is far less adequately provided with educational privileges and opportunities than the whites. This is a disgrace to the principles of our humanity and a reflection upon the wisdom of our political leadership. I do not agree with some of my friends that it is the part of social prudence or Christian consideration for us to attempt to condemn the negro to universal servi- tude. While industrial education is at present probably the most valuable to him practically, it is stupid, in my judg- ment, to refuse to him or any other human being all oppor- tunity for the highest and most liberal culture. I do not mean to be offensive, but the attitude of some of our South- A 200 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST erners on the question of negro education suggests the sus- picion that they fear that if the Negro has a fair chance he will outstrip the white man. So far as the race is concerned, I have no fear of that. Unfortunately for him, the Negro is centuries behind the leading races of mankind. But for humanity's sake let us give him a fair chance. No society or civilization is Christian or of the highest type which will deliberately deny any human being the right to make the most out of himself and out of his life. Let us give the negroes of our land full opportunity for education in their own schools adequately equipped. And then surely we can trust them to heed the friendly admonition to make their education contribute to the development of clean- minded, industrious members of the social order with a true passion for service to their kind and to humanity. No educated negro is ever a rapist, and almost none of them criminals of any sort. Thus by these means, education of white and black, through school and press and pulpit, we shall produce at length an orderly, law-loving, prosperous, happy South, in which the unspeakable pains which race divergences induce shall be completely compensated by the usefulness of each race to the other and to all, and by the friendship which they shall mutually acknowledge and ex- press. If in the impossible and irrational conditions of slavery there could be, as we know there were in thousands of cases, friendship and trust and love and happiness, so that old men and women of both races who remember them think of those old days before the war as Elysian days, then surely in these better days — Are they better days? God help us to make them so! — in these days at least of greater opportunity we can find some way to walk together in Christian friendship and cooperation, and to enter to- gether into a conspiracy to put an end forever to the crimes which have disgraced both races and brought unmeasured shame and sorrow and threatening to our common South- land. RACE DISTINCTIONS VS. RACE DISCRIMINATIONS 201 RACE DISTINCTIONS VERSUS RACE DISCRIMI- NATIONS JUDGE GILBERT T. STEPHENSON, WINSTON-SALEM, N. C. A RACE distinction is in principle fundamentally differ- ent from a race discrimination, although the two terms have ordinarily been considered synonymous when the ne- gro was one of the races in mind. A distinction connotes a difference and nothing more, while a discrimination im- plies partiality and favoritism. Statutes prohibiting inter- marriage between the races and requiring the separation of the races in schools, public conveyances, and other pub- lic places are based on race distinctions. Giving white peo- ple better accommodations for the same fare than negroes in public conveyances and requiring negroes to satisfy more rigid literacy tests for voting than white men, are discrimi- nations against negroes. Distinctions between white people and negroes have been made ever since the first negroes came to America in 1619. But until the negro was emancipated it was impos- sible to say whether the distinction was made on account of his race or his state of servitude. It is only within the last generation that most of the race distinctions, that had there- tofore existed only as customs, have been defined and required by law. Though the people of Massachusetts gave the name "Jim Crow" as early as 1841 to a railroad car set apart for the use of negroes, and though the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held as early as 1865 that it was not an unreasonable regulation of the railroad company to separate the passengers by race so as to promote personal comfort and convenience, and though Mississippi, Florida, and Texas actually had separate coaches for negroes as early as 1866, still separation in these instances was entirely a matter of regulation by the railroad companies and was not controlled at all by statutes. It was not till 1881 that the first law was passed requiring railroad companies to provide separate accommodations for the races, and it was not until 1902' that the first State, Louisiana, required sepa- 202 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ration of the races on street cars. Massachusetts actually had separate schools for negroes as early as 1800. The Supreme Court of that State in 1849 spoke upon the ques- tion of separate schools as follows: "It is urged that this maintenance of separate schools tends to deepen and per- petuate the odious distinction of caste, founded in a deep- rooted prejudice in public opinion. This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law and probably cannot be changed by law. Whether this distinction and prejudice, existing in the opinion and feelings of the community, would not be as effectually fostered by compelling colored and white children to associate together in the same schools, may well be doubted; at all events, it is a fair and proper question for the school committee to consider and decide upon, hav- ing in view the best interests of both classes of children placed under their superintendence, and we cannot say that their decision upon it is not founded on just grounds of reason and experience and is not the result of a discrimi- nating and honest judgment." Separate schools have been required in all the Southern States from the very founda- tion of the public school system. But it is only within the last few years that statutes have been passed separating the races in private schools as well; and the constitution- ality of such statutes has already been upheld by the Su- preme Court of the United States (Berea College v. Ky., 211 U. S., 45). Negroes were, for the most part, disfran- chised in the South after 1877; but it was not until 1890 that Mississippi passed the first suffrage amendment, the purpose of which was indirectly to disfranchise negroes. The latest race distinction that has crystallized into law is urban segregation — that is, the separation of residence dis- tricts in cities according to the race of the occupants there- of. Oklahoma City has passed such a segregation ordinance within the last three weeks. Already there is in some quar- ters agitation in favor of rural segregation — that is, set- ting apart in the rural districts certain neighborhoods for white people and others for colored. In other words, we are in the midst of a generation in which, one after another. RACE DISTINCTIONS VS. RACE DISCRIMINATIONS 203 race distinctions are being crystallized into law. And it is significant that the two leading cases on race distinctions which have furnished precedents for the Southern courts have both arisen in States outside the South — one from Massachusetts in 1849, justifying separation of the races in schools (Roberts v. City of Boston, 59 Mass., 198) , and the other from Pennsylvania in 1865, justifying separation in public conveyances (West Chester & Phila. Ry. Co. v. Mills, 55 Pa. S., 209). No State, since the evanescent Black Laws of 1865, has undertaken to legalize race discriminations — that is, no State, speaking through its legislature or court, has ever said in so many words that white people are entitled to better accommodations in schools or in public conveyances because of their race. In the civil rights cases of 1883 the Four- teenth Amendment was interpreted to permit race distinc- tions, but not race discriminations. Yet it is common knowledge that most statutory race distinctions have lent themselves to discriminations against the negro. Other laws which made no mention of race were passed largely for the purpose of affecting the negro. In the face of the suffrage amandments, for instance, nothing is said about race; and yet it is common knowledge that their purpose was to curtail, if not to eliminate altogether, the vote of the negro. Thinking not at all of temporary benefit or harm, but considering only the highest good of both races, can one justify the race distinctions that have already been made? And are there other distinctions which should be expressed in statutes? My answer is, ''So far, so good." I have not the time to make an argument for race distinctions, but can only state conclusions. I am of the opinion that our State Legislatures have acted wisely in requiring the separation of the races in schools, public conveyances, and other public places. I believe that statutes against intermarriage, already in force in twenty-six States, ought to be enacted by the other twenty-four States of the Union and by Con- gress for the District of Columbia. More than that, I be- 204 DEMOCRACY IN EAI^NEST lieve that every State ought to make miscegenation — that is, illicit cohabitation of the races — as heinous a crime as inter- marriage and that the law ought to be as rigidly enforced. This is needed for the protection of colored women as well as white men. Already most of the cities, North as well as South, have residence districts given over exclusively to one race, some to negroes and others to white people. But in these same cities are other districts partly white and partly colored; and these are the ones in which race fric- tion is most apt to occur. In order to clear up this twilight zone, I am in favor of the governing body of each city pass- ing a segregation ordinance as will meet its local needs. Further than this in segregation I cannot go. I am opposed to rural segregation — that is, as I have explained, setting apart, by the vote of the people within the community, of certain neighborhoods for negroes and others for white people — because I believe that it cannot be worked with- out doing an injus'tice to the negro, which would be un- worthy of our race. I am aware that the rural segrega- tion law that has been suggested is on its face only a race distinction; but I have been unable to see how it could be made effective without becoming a discrimination against the negro. This leads me to consider the next proposition — namely, considering only the highest good of both races, can one justify discriminations against the negro in any instance? On what principle of equity can one say that a negro who pays full fare is not entitled to as good accommodations in a railroad or street car as the white person paying the same fare? Why should a negro child not be as much entitled to an education suited to his needs as the white child is entitled to one suited to his needs? It is wise to require white children and colored children to go to differ- ent schools; but simple justice demands that we give to the negro children the course of study best suited to their needs and to the white children the course of study best suited to theirs. These courses may be different, quite likely they would be, but, as I have explained, a distinction RACE DISTINCTIONS VS. RACE DISCRIMINATIONS 205 is not in itself a discrimination. In this instance it would be a discrimination against the negro child to force upon him a course of study unsuited to his needs simply because it was the one best suited to the needs of the white child. Such a discrimination against negroes we have been mak- ing for the last fifty years. They have needed a fish, and we have given them a scorpion; they have needed bread, and we have given them a stone. That is, they have needed training in the habits of industry and economy; we have given them training in dead languages. It is wise to sepa- rate the races in public conveyances; but simple justice demands that we give the negro passenger as good accom- , modations for his money as the white passenger gets. It is wise to prescribe educational and property and poll tax requirements for voting; but simple justice demands that we apply these tests with absolute impartiality to both races. I believe that it is wise to segregate the residence districts in many of the Southern cities; but it is just, if such segregation is undertaken, to give the negroes as good streets and sewers and water connections and police and fire protection as the white people have. Such reasonable race distinctions must be recognized and enforced if the two races are to live together in peace here in the South; but an abiding harmony between the races can never be established upon a basis of discrimination. For over fifty years the two races have been living together side by side here in the South. In all probability they will continue so to live for hundreds of years to come, if not until the end of time. Yet circumstances have been such that no serious effort has so far been made to state ' a comprehensive set of principles to govern the two races in their relations with 'each other. But the difficulties have been removed to such a degree that I believe the time is come when the men and women of the South of both races who are doing constructive thinking on race relationships ought to set themselves to the task of stating a set of fun- damental principles and then of seeing them put into prac- tice by the people at large in their daily conduct. I know 206 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST of no body of students better prepared to undertake such a task than the members of this Congress. In the promotion of such a creed on race relationships I venture to suggest two practical lines of conduct, one involving a change of attitude on the part of negroes, the other of white people. The first is that the negroes of the South ought to cooperate whole-heartedly with the white people in the recognition and enforcement of all race dis- tinctions within the bounds of reason and equity. So far most of them have only given a begrudging acquiescence in them. One should not blame them. They have regarded them as but another expression by the white race of its feeling of superiority to the negro race. They have seen that distinctions have been but another word of discrimi- nations against negroes. Once define distinctions and dis- criminations in the thinking of negroes, and they will give their hearty cooperation to all reasonable distinctions. The other suggestion is that the white people of the South ought to give their whole-hearted cooperation to the negroes in obliterating race discriminations. We white people have agreed that as an issue of abstract ethics the negro ought not to be discriminated against on account of his race. We have said in such meetings as these that the common carrier ought to provide as good accommodations for negro passengers as for white passengers. We have been conscious that the negro school children were not get- ting the training suited to their needs. But our protests against these discriminations have been so feeble and so largely confined to academic circles that the negroes have doubted either our sincerity or our courage. The oblitera- tion of discriminations against negroes by white people of the South — and if they are obliterated it must be by our- selves and not by coercion from the outside — is more than an academic question. It is a moral question. "The issue will test the moral quality of this nation; and if it finds no settlement, the failure will be a moral failure and show the point at which our civilization broke down for the lack of moral strength." V. WORK FOR ALL A Creed and a Crusade Letter from Hon. W. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor Labor Values Destroyed by Disease The Duty of Southern Labor During the War Labor's Challenge to Democracy An Open Door to Industry on the Basis of Efficiency A CREED AND A CRUSADE We Believe: 1. That God, our Father, is the Giver of All Life. 2. That health, justice, and good will for all the people are fundamental in a democracy. 3. That health is the basis of prosperity and hap- piness, and therefore the first duty both of the State and the Church. 4. That fifty per cent of the deaths in our country are preventable, and that ninety per cent of com- municable diseases should be prevented. 5. That the essential and first work of the medical profession is the conservation, not the correction, of health; and that the physician should be paid for preventing disease rather than for curing it. 6. That the Federal Government should establish a Coordinate Cabinet Department of Health. 7. That the death of children is a defeat of God's purpose, and their health — physical, mental, and moral — should be a primary function and responsi- bility of the Church. 8. That the promotion of the health of children and of the community should be to a school of corre- sponding interest and obligation with instruction. 9. That the press can render at the present time no greater service to the nation than to champion the cause of public health. 10. That the time has come for a nation-wide cru- sade for health, justice, and cooperation. And We Call on the people of the South to aid, through the agencies of home and school, medical profession and press, church and government, for the achievement of health and justice for the individual, for the com- munity, and for the nation. LETTER FROM HON. W. B. WILSON, SECRETARY OF LABOR The special War Workers' Conferences to be con- ducted by the Southern Sociological Congress impress me as a very significant step in the effort of the nation to mob- ilize its labor power for one hundred per cent production in industry and agriculture. Such use of the labor power of the country is imperative as a second line of defense behind the millions of our men now on the fighting front in France, in the army camps in this countiy, and in our navy upon the high seas. The experts tell us that it takes from six to ten workers at home to keep one soldier on the firing line in Europe. Whatever, therefore, helps to mobilize, distribute, and ener- gize those who do the work of our war industries has become as important a factor in winning the war as the prowess of our armies in the field or our navy on the seas. The President of the United States has lodged the func- tion of recruiting and placing labor for war industries in the United States Employment Service of the Department of Labor. Beginning with common labor on August 1, this service will gradually take charge of the mobilizing and placement of all labor for war industries employing one hundred or more workers. This will profoundly affect all other industries and all other workers. It will correct the abuses and the troubles growing out of the large labor turn- over with the consequent disruption of regular work. In assuming such responsibility the Department of Labor is aware of the dangers. We need the cooperation and help of such men and women as gather in your conferences to guard against these dangers. Workers must not be taken from one essential industry only to be placed in other work not necessary to the prosecution of the war. Discretion and care must be used in the movement of laborers from one part of the country to another, in order that the economic fabric of the nation will be disturbed as little as possible. We need to keep ever before us the idea that the interests of the laborers and the interests of the business men are com- 14 210 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST plementaiy. They are parts of that great organization of industry and agriculture so necessary to the successful wag- ing of this war and so essential to the life of the nation. Above all, every safeguard must be taken to protect the standard of living and the morale of the wage earners. Especially must great care be taken to keep the age limit of those who enter industry at a high level, lest we rob our future citizenship of its right to growth and time for edu- cation. We must also take knowledge of the dangers attendant upon the large entrance of women into heavy and hazardous industries. The exigencies of w^ar times should not be made the occasion for the breaking down of those standards of hours, wages, and conditions of work which are designed to protect the childhood, the womanhood, and the motherhood of the present and the future. It is especially important at this crucial period, when we need to conserve all the resources of the nation for the con- duct of the war, that these principles should be applied to all the people of our country, including the Negro people, who constitute about one-sixth of the total laboring popu- lation. A similar policy will be equally important in the readjustment period which- will follow the war. I am pleased to know that your Congress is giving the problem its earnest consideration. The American workingman is known to have the highest standard f living of any wage earner in the world. This is because the American wage worker is the most produc- tive in the world. The two things play back and forth as cause and effect, one of the other. I am sure that your Con- gress stands with the Department of Labor in its vigilance to see that this relation of cause and effect between high power of production of the workers and high quality of working and living conditions for the workers should be maintained and advanced. Wishing for you, therefore, successful conferences, I beg to remain. Yours very truly, W. B. Wilson, Secretary. LABOR VALUES DESTROYED BY DISEASE 211 LABOR VALUES DESTROYED BY DISEASE JOSIAH MORSE, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, COLUMBIA, S. C. The facts are quickly told. In 1914 one million and a half men, women, and children in the United States died, and some three millions were on the sick list all the time. Of these deaths and diseases, 40 per cent, according to Pro- fessor Irving Fisher, were needless. Dr. B. S. Warren, Surgeon, United States Public Health Service, estimates that the average wage-earner in the United States loses nine days annually on account of sickness. Statistics gath- ered by the Austrian Government show a variation from four days per annum for clerks and salesmen in shops to 15.7 for cardboard and paper-box factory workers. Simi- lar figures were collected in England and Germany. According to the 1910 census there were 38,167,336 male and female workers in the United States. This num- ber multiplied by nine gives us a total of 343,506,024 days, or 941,112 years lost yearly on account of sickness in this country. Reports received in 1911 by the Rockefeller SaBi- tary Commission from their agents in various parts of Co- lumbia, British and Dutch Guiana, India, China, Ceylon, Panama, and Costa Rica showed that from 50 to 90 per cent of the native populations were infected with the hookworm disease. Of the 548,992 Southern rural children examined, 39 per cent were infected. What this means in the way of loss of wealth production can be roughly estimated from the fact that in South Carolina alone $30,000,000 is lost annually because of the lowered vitality of the workers, and that the working efficiency of laborers on coffee planta- tions in Porto Rico was increased from 30 to 50 per cent after treatment for the disease. An examination of 2,283 workers in New York State — bakers, tailors, furriers, and tobacco workers — showed that from 57 to 89 per cent had one or more diseases. An examination of more than 7,000 212 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST employees of Sears, Roebuck & Co., showed a tuberculosis rate of more than 4 per cent. Again, on the basis of the total number of days lost, it is conservative to estimate that "the total annual loss in wages and expenses for medical attention in the United States is over a billion dollars," and it is further estimated that the people spend at least $500,000,000 annually for medicines, "and most of this is consumed haphazardly and not under the direction of a physician." Were we adept in multiplication and long division, we might determine the number of Panama Canals that could be built in that time and for that sum ; how many macadamized highways from coast to coast could be constructed; the number of Lusi- tanias dreadnaughts, miles of railway, and so on — but the bare numbers themselves are sufficiently impressive. To the average intelligence they simply mean that an enor- mous, almost incalculable, amount of labor and capital is annually lost in our country on account of unnecessary sickness. Dr. Eugene L. Fisk, Director of Hygiene, Life Exten- sion Institute, found, as a result of an examination of life insurance policy holders who asked to be examined, that only 2.40 per cent were normal. All the rest needed advice regarding their physical condition or their living habits, and 65.75 per cent were referred to physicians for treat- ment. Another examination of employees of commercial houses, banks, etc., showed practically the same results. Statistical studies of the diseases themselves made by Dr. Fisk, and especially by Louis I. Dublin, Statistician of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, show that while modern medicine has made great headway against the germ and contagious diseases (which are diseases chiefly of in- fancy and early life), the diseases of later life, character- ized by degenei'ation or premature wearing out of the im- portant organs of the body — e. cj., diseases of the heart and arteries, Bright's disease, diabetes, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver — these have been rapidly and continuously increasing. LABOR VALUES DESTROYED BY DISEASE , 213 Dr. Dublin presents the following table showing the per cent of increase for the various diseases during the decade 1900-1910: Per cent 1900 1910 Increase Cancer (all forms) 63.5 82.9 30.6 Diabetes 11.0 17.6 60.0 Cerebral hemorrhage and apo- plexy 72.5 86.1 18.8 Organic diseases of heart 116.0 161.6 39.3 Diseases of ai-teries 5.2 25.8 396.2 Cirrhosis of liver 12.6 14.4 14.3 Bright's disease 81.0 95.7 18.1 Total 361.8 484.1 33.8 A recent Census Bureau Bulletin gives the exact number of deaths for each of the several diseases during 1913 : Heart diseases 93,142 Pneumonia 83,778 Bright's disease and nephritis 65,106 Diarrhea and enteritis 57,080 Cancer 49,928 Apoplexy 47,220 Diphtheria and croup 11,920 These figures interpreted mean that the medical and educational agencies of the country have succeeded in mak- ing an impression upon the home and been able to bring about great improvement in the hygienic and sanitary con- ditions there. Also that the State and municipal boards of health have done much in the way of improving public hygiene and sanitation. But they further mean that these agencies have not yet made any considerable impression on the industrial and commercial worlds, where the bodies of men and women are worn out without mercy or reason. And the reason for this is not far to seek. In the one case we are dealing with parents, neighbors, citizens; in the other with employers, or, worse still, "soulless corporations." The former can be influenced by physician, teacher, social worker, books, and articles ; the latter are, as a rule, moved only by a State legislature backed by the Supreme Court, 2] 4 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST and we know something of the pacifist history of both these institutions in their dealings with big business. Dr. Warren found sickness "much more prevalent among low-paid workers than among those whose incomes are sufficient to provide sanitary housing, adequate food, and pleasant surroundings in the home and the shop," and he came to the conclusion that "fully one-half of the wage- earners in this country do not receive incomes sufficient to maintain healthful conditions of living.'* There lies the whole story in a nutshell — underpay, overwork, occupa- tional dangers and diseases, followed closely by intemper- ance, vice, ignorance, and crime, as effect and reciprocal cause. "There is no longer any doubt," says Dr. Warren, "that modern industry is responsible for a considerable pro- portion of workingmen's physical ills." The new preventive medicine has given life to tens of thousands of infants, and they have grown to full maturity. But it will take more than the science of medicine to pre- vent the economic and industrial evils, which increasingly result in disease and death for the workers. We are told, for example, that "there is scarcely any one line of modern manufacture which is free from the dangers of industrial poisoning." And sanitary surveys of manufacturing plants in Louisiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota showed that "a very considerable proportion were in 'poor* or 'bad' condition from the standpoint of sanitation and hygiene." To these evils must be added those of "long hours, the piece-work system, and the increasing use of ma- chine methods," which are especially productive of over- fatigue. I do not know that we have a right to expect the phy- sician to try to follow up his splendid work in the home and hospital with similar work in the factory and shop, mine or m.ill ; but if he does not become social worker him- self, he will certainly be expected to cooperate actively with all the agencies that will struggle for economic and indus- trial reforms. The science of medicine is far in advance of practical or applied sociology. We have much more LABOR VALUES DESTROYED BY DISEASE 215 knowledg'e now than we use, or perhaps can use for some time, so that one is almost tempted to ask science to wait on practice and let it catch up a bit. For what will it profit society to save increasingly the lives of the little ones, if even before they reach puberty they are begun to be ground out slowly in the industrial machine and converted into profits for the few? We have seen that already half the wage-earners are underpaid, and that means that they are underfed, insufficiently clad, and unhealthily housed. Why increase the number and add to the burdens of those who must even now wage a bitter struggle for existence? Dr. Thomas Darlington, secretary of the welfare committee of the American Iron and Steel Institute, commenting upon the findings of that committee after visiting a number of industrial towns, says: "A study of the causes of death shows that, in general, but 4 per cent die from old age, 4 per cent more die from violence, and 92 per cent die from dis- eases. Of this last great group, nearly one-half are due to disease of environment — that is, to diseases which are wholly preventable." Numerous investigations show that a family of five can- not be supported with a minimum degree of adequacy under $800 per annum, some say $1,000. And yet statistics show that four-fifths of wage-workers earn less than $800, one- half less than $600, and one-fourth less than $W0. In the absence of corresponding economic and industrial reforms are we sure that progress in life-saving and prolonging is altogether a blessing to the workers? Is not the case somewhat analogous to painstakingly keeping prisoners alive in order to execute them later on? I confess I am not so sure in my mind about this as I should like to be. It should be mentioned, however, that the death rate for the children of the low-paid workers is from 50 to 150 per cent greater than the average for the whole country, which means that nature is at work correcting as best she can the errors of man. Briefly, my conclusion is that inasmuch as health is not only a medical problem, but also an economic, industrial, and social one, the need for the present and im- mediate future, so far as the wage-earner is concerned, is 216 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST not SO much for more medical progress, valuable as that is, as for more legislative progress with respect to wages, and hours, and conditions of work, like the famous Oregon law, drafted by Miss Josephine Goldmark and Louis Bran- dies, protecting women against overwork, and the new Ore- gon law now before the United States Supreme Court, drawn by Miss Goldmark and Felix Frankfurter for the protection of men from the same evil. It is an encoura- ging sign that a few of the larger corporations are begin- ning to realize that justice and humaneness are not only good morals and religion, but also good business. For where is the wisdom in killing the geese that lay the golden eggs? Thus, for example, a committee of stockholders of the United States Steel Corporation declared in their re- port : "Whether viewed from the physical, social, or moral point of view, we believe that the seven-day week is detri- mental to those engaged in it. . . . We are of the opin- ion that a twelve-hour day of labor followed continuously by any group of men for any considerable number of years means a decreasing of the efficiency and lessening of the vigor and virility of such men." And yet as late as 1913 nearly two-thirds of the blast-furnace workers in the plants which were investigated were on an 84-hours-per-week basis, and the customary working time for over three- fourths of the workers in this department was seven days a week. In very many coal and copper mines, slaughter- ing plants, cotton, hosiery, and knit-goods mills, and leather factories the working day was ten hours or longer. Some large employers have engaged extensively in wel- fare work, have established hospitals, employed sanitary engineers and health lecturers, and generally improved con- ditions in their plants. It is to be hoped that their example will be imitated by all the others, even though such meas- ures are palliatives only, and that they will all soon go on to the next step and shorten the hours of labor, increase the wages, and eliminate the work of children so that every sober and healthy and industrious worker and head of a family may live and labor under conditions that will not doom him to poverty and disease and premature death. LABOR VALUES DESTROYED BY DISEASE 217 Of course the employers are not the only ones respon- sible for the diseases and miseries of the workers. So- ciety itself is particeps criminis in permitting such labor conditions to exist, and in the failure to insist on healthy and wholesome houses and surroundings for those who labor and produce. And the workers themselves are re- sponsible, in that they do not most wisely and economically spend what little incomes they do receive. Nor do they keep their homes and premises as clean and sanitary as they should. Nor do many of them observe even the most elementary laws of personal hygiene. But it is a good prin- ciple to place the heaviest burden on the strongest shoulder. That is why I have emphasized the responsibility of society and the employers. Speaking from the point of view of the sanitarian, and from his extensive experience. Surgeon General William C. Gorgas said at a gathering of single taxers: "That poverty is the greatest single cause of bad sanitary conditions was very early impressed upon me. If I should go again into a community such as Cuba or Pana- ma, and were allowed to select only one sanitary measure, but were at the same time given power to choose from all sanitary measures, I would select that of doubling wages. This, in my case, is not altogether theory. In our tropical possessions, in Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, Panama, the result has always come about that we have largely increased wages; the result has also come about that in all these cases we have greatly improved sanitation." And another leader in the field of preventive medicine declared : "The employer who raises the pay of his help does more to stop tuberculosis than all we doctors can do." The need is for better labor laws everyivhere, and for a more willing and generous response from the employers. The capitalists must be the first to realize that their best interests are not at variance with the best interests of the laborers, but one with them. They need to learn, many of them, the ele- mentary lesson that whatever injures the worker, lowers his vitality, or reduces his efficiency at the same time im- pairs his productivity and minimizes his purchasing power, thus injuring capital itself. They need to learn that we 218 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST are all cells of one living- tissue, and that no part of the organism, however protected and favored it may be, can be completely healthy or safe so long as a large part of the organism is diseased. They need to get a broader vision and a longer time-sense, and realize that if they seem to "get away" with certain evil or unfair practices now, they do not really do so. For evils engendered in the system must work themselves out sooner or later, and very often the descendants of those responsible for the evils have to pay a heavy price for their fathers' sins. If they have wisdom and foresight, they will not allow the oft-repeated history in governments and religions — the history of abuse, exploitation, and tyranny followed by bit- ter and destructive revolution — to be the history of busi- ness and industry. The world's work must go on in ever- increasing volume, and profitably, of course — profitably to capital and labor alike — but it can and must go on with- out damage to the health and happiness of the workers, without injury to future generations. There is more than enough intelligence in the world to solve this life and labor problem. The question is, Is there enough heart, enough altruism? In a foreword to Surgeon General Gorgas's ad- dress, signed by twenty-three men of prominence, includ- ing such names as Jaques Loeb, Frederick C. Howe, Thomas Mott Osborne, George Foster Peabody, and Louis F. Post, there occur the following interesting sentences: "The last twenty-five years have witnessed an enormous interest in all kinds of welfare work. The physician, en- gineer, pathologist, the bacteriologist, the sociologist, the economist, the social worker have each in turn attacked the problems of social hygiene. The result has been the accu- mulation of a mass of facts invaluable for the comfort and safety of mankind. But, however varied the fields of the workers may be, at one point they all converge at last. Every one of these workers, who looks beyond and beneath his own particular field, every one who ponders on the pri- mary causes of disease, of vice, of alcoholism, of feeble- mindedness; every one who, in other words, brings his scientific imagination as well as his scientific knowledge to THE QUTY OF SOUTHERN LABOR DURING THE WAR 219 bear upon this problem, is finally forced into the convic- tion that underneath all obvious and immediate causes there lies one great, general, and determining social cause — poverty." "Of what use," says the tuberculosis expert, "to send a patient to a sanatorium and perhaps cure him, only to re- turn him to the slums?" "Of what use," says the tem- perance advocate, "to preach temperance, when overworked and underpaid labor must needs seek surcease of sorrow in the saloon?" How telling and how biting the reply of the London city missionary when found fault with for not sav- ing more souls : "If you will fill their stomachs with food, I will fill their hearts with the love of God." THE DUTY OF SOUTHERN LABOR DURING THE WAR PEESroENT ROBERT RUSSA MOTON, TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALA. Hon. Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, in a recent address said: "We have done more for democracy in six months of war than in six years of peace. Our sol- diers who come back from France are not going to be any- thing but men; for in this war we are establishing a new spirit of universal equality and brotherhood." Truly the old order of things is undergoing a radical change — a change which is bound to have a far-reaching effect on the men and women of the world who labor with their hands — and I know of no organization which has con- tributed so much toward this change in attitude in our own country as the American Federation of Labor, an organiza- tion which, along with many others throughout the world, is awakening our conscience to the importance of fairer treatment for the man who works. They are teaching us that the builder of a house is as much to be respected and honored as the builder of a good poem ; that the man who executes the plans of the architect should share with the architect the glory of the completed work. We are also learning that the man who digs in the street, provided he 220 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST gives honest and conscientious service, deserves as much consideration in his way as the leaders of industry who ride on the same streets in their automobiles. The man who sells labor of good quality, whether skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled, is as much deserving of respect as the man who sells groceries or dry goods or who sells the use of money through the bank cashier's window. The woman who cooks and serves economically a palatable and wholesome meal from a clean, well-ordered kitchen is as deserving of con- sideration as the woman who graces the drawing-room and can execute acceptably the most difficult musical selection. As is true of other sections of the country, the South is called upon to do its utmost to assist in winning the war. Every resource, every agency must be mobilized and used in the most efficient manner. The products of the South are playing a most important part in the war. It is from the cotton which it raises that a great part of the clothing used is manufactured. Cotton also enters to a large extent into the manufacture of munitions. A great part of the timber for war purposes, including much of the lumber which goes into the hundreds of ships now under construction, comes from the South. There is the great nitrate plant on the Tennessee River on which the Government is spending sixty million dollars in order to produce nitrogen for the manufacture of munitions and also for commercial fertilizer. There are also the products from the coal and iron industries of this district. Another thing that the South is called upon to do is to produce food stuffs in such quantities as it has never hitherto done. From reliable reports we find that the South, before we entered into this war, was importing from the North almost a billion dollars' worth of food products annually. The exigencies of the war are such that we have curtailed this importation of foods, and last year we raised almost enough to feed ourselves. The slogan, "The South Must Feed Herself," has virtually become a reality. To understand the labor problem back of the South feeding itself, and at the same time keeping her mines, her factories, and other increasingly important industries in THE DUTY OF SOUTHERN LABOR DURING THE WAR 221 operation, it is necessary to call attention to two important facts : In the first place, until recently, the South was more or less a one-crop section — cotton. In the second place, it has been the custom to work in the South in a more or less leisurely manner. Partly because of climatic conditions, perhaps, we were not given to working at high pressure, especially in hot weather, as is true of some other sections. The South is now seeing the imperative necessity of work- ing at higher pressure and of diversification of crops. The importance of labor in this connection is readily seen. The industrial revolution that is taking place in the South has profoundly affected labor; for not only must labor do old things in new ways, but labor must work six days in the week and at least two hundred and fifty days in the year. The late Dr. Booker T. Washington estimated that the aver- age laborer in the South worked about one hundred and fifty days in the year. A few weeks ago I was delivering an address in the interest of the Thrift Stamp Campaign in Marengo County. There was an audience of perhaps two thousand people, white and colored, a large percentage of whom were colored farmers. In the course of my remarks I asked how many worked every Saturday afternoon. There was considerable laughter, and I know that less than fifty hands were raised. This is an example of how that Southern custom of taking a half holiday off on Saturday manifests itself. I am told that many manufacturing and industrial con- cerns were accustomed to carry from twenty to fifty per cent more men on their pay rolls than would be at work each day, so that the number of workers needed daily would be on hand. Here, then, are two respects in which Southern labor can do its duty in helping to win the war and pros- perity after the war — namely, it can work regularly and accomplish more in a day than it has been accustomed to do. There was recently held at the Ttiskegee Institute a meeting of the Negro Farm Demonstration Agents for the State of Alabama. A campaign was launched in that meet- ing to encourage the Negro farmers of the State to work six days in the week. It was estimated that if this is done 222 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the farm production in the State would be increased at least 16 2-3 per cent. I am pleased to report that the farm- ers of the State are responding to this appeal, and are agreeing to work the entire six days in order that produc- tion may be increased. I am convinced that, in spite of its handicaps and shortcomings, NIegro labor can be depended upon to do its duty to the extent that it understands and appreciates what its duty is and, on the other hand, has the opportunity to do it. One of the strongest appeals in getting Negro labor to do its duty at the present time is to call attention to the fact that thousands of our countrymen, black men as well as white men, who have been drafted into the army and are being sent to France are dependent upon those who remain behind for their food, their clothing, and all of those things which are essential for a soldier in active service. When labor in the South fully appreciates this and realizes its duty, there is every reason to believe that it will rise to the occasion and do everything that is possible to be done in the way of sustained work and increased efficiency. We sometimes overlook, I fear, the importance of Negro labor to the development of the South. More than one-third of all the labor in the South is performed by Negroes, and practically all of the rough work is done by them. In spite of the migration to the North, there are still probably two million Negroes working on the farms as hired hands or as independent farmers, croppers, renters, or independent owners. Here is a tremendous amount of labor, and in it are tremendous possibilities. The large number of Negro laborers and the vast territory they occupy make a serious and important question not only for the South, but for the whole country. The late Dr. Booker T. Washington said that, in his opinion, this mass of Negro labor is an undiscovered gold mine. "How to improve the efficiency of these two million black farmers," he said, "is one of the problems that now confront the South." Recent development indicates that the North has discovered and tapped this "mine of gold" and drawn off a great deal of valuable material from it. THE DUTY OF SOUTHERN LABOR DURING THE WAR 223 The prosperity of the South is bound up with the improvement of the Negro. Just in proportion as he becomes more efficient, reliable, and dependable will the prosperity of the South be increased, for it must be kept in mind that two-thirds of all the land tilled in the South is cultivated by Negro labor. One-tenth of all the farm prop- erty in the South is owned by Negroes. If the efficiency of the Negro in the South is increased, say twenty-five per cent ; if his farming methods are improved so that the aver- age number of bales of cotton that he raises will be increased one-fourth, the amount of corn that he raises be doubled, and the bushels of sweet potatoes and other crops be proportionately increased — all of which are possible — the agricultural wealth of the South would be increased by more than twenty-five per cent and a billion dollars would be added annually to its agricultural* wealth. In some quarters questions are being raised just now about the indifference of Negro labor to the needs of the hour, and it is charged that many hundreds of them are idling while the work necessary to win the war is crying to be done. Discussing this, a writer on Negro migration said that in Columbia, S. C, everj^ employer with whom he talked complained of his need of labor. "Yet," said this writer, "on every prominent thoroughfare husky Negroes and able-bodied white men sauntered along or could be found in numbers in pool rooms and other resorts." It would appear that a number of the white people and the black people of the South have not as yet been impressed with the necessity of persistent industry. This Congress and every other agency must help in the effort to get all available and potential labor on a war basis, in order that every one capable of laboring shall do his best and that the South may do her full share in helping to "make the world safe for democracy." The most serious charge made against Negro labor is that it is not dependable. Wherever shiftlessness and unre- liability exist, it is due largely, in my opinion, to lack of edu- cation. Few people of any class or race will work six days in the week, when two or three days' work will satisfy their 224 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST demands. Education will not only increase the efficiency of the labor, but it will also increase his wants, and as a result cause him to work more regnlarly. For twenty-five years I have lived within a few miles of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, at Newport News, Va., and am fairly well acquainted with their labor situation, especially as it relates to the Negro. This firm employs about four thousand Negro laborers, of whom about eight hundred are boys, who are used as heaters, holders-on, and riveters. Something like an aver- age of eighty-seven of these boys were absent from their work every day, and Mr. H. L. Ferguson, the manager of the company, undertook to devise some plan whereby they could be induced to work more regularly. A Young Men's Christian Association was established by the company and a night school was maintained for their benefit. The Negro banks in Virginia also began a campaign among them to encourage them to save their money and start bank accounts. Through these influences, I am glad to say, the absences have been reduced to from a daily average of eighty-seven to nine each day. Thus it is that in propor- tion as these boys became educated and independent through their savings, their wants were correspondingly increased and they became more reliable and more efficient. This is an example of how the welfare work around industrial plants helps to increase the efficiency and con- tentedness of the men. Such work is always a good invest- ment. Mr. Ferguson told me that every one of these boys was regularly employed as a helper for one of the skilled laborers, and when the boys were absent from work it simply meant that the work of the organization was inter- rupted to the equivalent of the absence of from two to three hundred men. Other organizations that have been experimenting with this welfare work are the American Cast Iron Pipe Com- pany, of Birmingham, and the Tennessee Coal and Iron Com- pany. These companies, I understand, are working on the principle that the best results may be obtained from their laborers in proportion as they are well cared for; in pro- THE DUTY OF SOUTHERN LABOR DURING THE WAR 225 portion as they have educational facilities, comfortable homes, and their general welfare conserved. Only last week I had a letter from the American Alumi- num Company, at IMaryville, Tenn., and they sent me a group of pictures shov/ing model homes they have erected for the colored men employed by them. There was a picture of a community hall and an athletic field, where the men had an opportunity to enjoy recreation and healthful sports after their work was over. We had a similar letter from the American Cyanamid Company, in Brewster, Florida, asking us to recommend a capable and efficient welfare secretary to take charge of the welfare work among the several hundred colored men employed at their factory. These firms are expending hundreds of thousands of dollars in preparing good schools and other welfare facilities for the general welfare of their employees. I do not believe that any company that takes such interest in its laborers was seriously affected by the migration of Negroes to the North during the past two or three years. Employers of Negro labor are seeing the importance of making their laborers contented by giving them education and thereby increasing their wants. What has been done around these industrial plants for the welfare of their laborers can just as well be done by the plantation owners who employ farm labor. Near Tuskegee there is a large plantation owner, Mr. W. E. Huddleston, who runs 125 plows. He told me some days ago that he had not lost a single tenant through migra- tion. This is in contrast with the experience of hundreds of planters throughout the South. When I inquired as to the reasons for this, Mr. Huddleston said that he had endeavored in all respects to treat his labor right. The South has lost much of its most valuable labor through migration. The principal reasons for this, so far as I have been able to ascertain, are mainly two: High wages in the North and dissatisfaction with conditions in the South. Both in the North and here in the South I have had opportunity to talk with many persons concerning their reasons for migrating or wanting to migrate. They 15 226 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST have invariably told me that they would much rather live in the South than in the North, provided they could get from one-half to two-thirds the wages here that they get there and were assured of adequate educational facilities and fair and just treatment in the South. Going more into the details of the causes of the migra- tion of Negroes to the North, I find that not a few of the best colored laborers have left the farms because of the poor houses furnished. In the city he may have a harder time in other respects, but he can generally find a reasonably comfortable house in which to live. Still another reason why so many Negroes have left the farms is that they want their children to have an education. A large and valuable element of colored labor has left the farms because education could not be secured in many cases. We have just held at Tuskegee Institute a meeting of the rural school supervisors working under the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, of which Dr. James H. Dillard is the President. I was very much interested in the reports on school condi- tions at this meeting, and especially the improvements which are being made by the building of good schoolhouses and the lengthening of school terms. On the other hand, I was disappointed with the large number of reports of instances of communities where, during the past year, no schools were in operation, or they ran for only six weeks or two or three months. I am sure that the people in these com- munities are not satisfied with their educational facilities, and I would not be surprised if many of them should leave in order to get elsewhere those educational facilities that are not available at their homes. Just now the South is forced into strong competition with other sections of the country to secure the services of Negro labor. This means that if the South is to retain the use of this labor it must, like the great manufacturing con- cerns, make provision for the general welfare of its labor and provide educational and other facilities that will tend to make this labor satisfied, contented, and in the end more efficient. THE DUTY OF SOUTHERN LABOR DURING THE WAR 227 Just recently the United States Bureau of Education issued a very valuable and illuminating report on "Negro Education." In this report Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, the compiler, in discussing the importance of the Negro to Southern industry, said: "The South is rich in economic resources, but poor both in the quantity and quality of its labor supply. 'What the South most needs,' said a well-known writer of that section, 'is not new discoveries, but the application of what is known.' . Man, not nature, is at fault. The industrial edu- cation of both the white and colored youth is undoubtedly the most important element in the economic development of that section. "The Southern people are just beginning to appreciate the remarkable economic possibilities of their States. The United States Geological Survey reports that one-fifth of all the mineral output of the country is from the Southern States. The Forest Service reports that the South, with a magnificent belt of pines stretching from Virginia to Texas, ranging in width from 150 to 200 miles, is the chief lumber- producing region of the country. In addition, it is esti- mated that the waterfalls have a capacity of 10,000,000 horsepower, of which only a relatively small amount has been harnessed for factory purposes. The value of the present output of mineral and lumber resources is but a small part of the possible production. Even now, it is but a fraction of the agricultural production of these States. Cotton alone has an annual valuation of fully three-quarters of a billion dollars. "An analysis of the population of the Southern States makes it certain that the hope of the South for an improved labor supply is not immigration, but the effective education of their white and colored youth. After all the years of tre- mendous immigration to America, the South had in 1910 only 726,171 persons of foreign birth. The proportion of the immigration stream going to the South has long been less than five per cent of the total number of immigrants. The inevitable conclusion is, therefore, that the two great sources of labor in the South are the more than twenty 228 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST million native white persons and the nine million Negroes. Recent evidence indicates the possibility that the supply of Negro labor is threatened by the increasing tide to the North. "I am laying special emphasis upon the necessity of more education for the Negro because, after all is said and done, the most successful, the most reliable, the most influen- tial element in the Negro race, as in every race, is the edu- cated class. It is this class that has had the greatest influ- ence for caution and conservatism; who have been most patient and most persistent in their efforts to fit the whole Negi'o race for freedom and citizenship in the broadest sense. It seems to me that the best means of bringing about a more cordial, sympathetic, and helpful relationship between the two races is through systematic training and practical education for both races. This means loyalty and efficiency. Our struggle, then, to bring all the laborers in the South to the point where they will do their duty in this world crisis turns upon the ability of the South to feed, clothe, and properly house this labor: to train it intelli- gently, morally, and spiritually. For this training, the white people, the directing class, must see that all labor, black as well as white, has full and complete opportunity to get the very best, broadest, deepest, and highest that the Creator has given to all mankind." All the dictates of justice and humanity would seem to indicate that we should be fair to the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, not merely because they may hew more vv'ood and draw more water, but that they may be encouraged to look forward to that day when they, through efficiency and reliability, may be able to hew wood from their own land and enjoy the fruits from their own labor under their own "vine and fig tree." This ideal will not be attained by all of our laborers, either black or white, but it is a "door of hope" which should be opened to every American, North and South. It is this door of hope which will, in my opinion, induce and encourage and inspire to reach the highest possible degree of reliability and eflficiency. LABOR'S CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY 229 LABOR'S CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY HON. FRANK MORRISON, SECRETARY AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR With our country engaged in a war that it may maintain the heritage of its forefathers, organized labor takes its stand with every other American institution and individual. While there may be some small unpatriotic influences in this country, I cannot but believe that this influence will become totally negative as the war progresses and our countrymen better understand the issues involved. Man is too prone to overlook the Vital for the super- ficial. He is liable, for instance, to be attracted by elements of incompetency or corruption that are more or less insep- arable from war, and ignore the stupendous things our coun- try has accomplished since April 6, 1917. Other nations may question our right to the claim that America has placed four million men under arms, built can- tonments and camps, and placed itself on a military basis quicker than any other people imbued with the doctrine of peace. But no nation in all history can point to the decla- rations of its authorized spokesman and show where he has so repeatedly emphasized the views of his fellow countrymen that they war for peace and without selfish aim. Our Presi- dent has revolutionized international statesmanship and diplomacy, and our Allies now see the folly and uselessness of former practices that made this world an armed camp. No element in our national life realizes the value of freedom and democracy to a greater extent than does the organized labor movement. These principles are the bed rock upon which our structure rests. Our movement is a continued protest against autocracy, be it political or indus- trial, and when our Government calls for support in its present hour the organized workers respond because they are American citizens and because they must be true to their trade union principles. It should not be understood that the unorganized wage worker, in factory or office, is less patriotic than members 230 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST of trade unions. Assuming these two elements to be imbued with the same patriotic ideals, the organized worker is of greater value to his country because of his ability to work with others, his faculty for "teamwork." Our Govern- ment has realized this point, and in all affairs affecting the interest of wage workers the Government has consulted with organized workers, and has appointed these workers on its various high commissions, committees, and boards. While the trade union movement is devoting every energy to patriotic work, it believes that patriotism does not consist entirely in repelling those who would attack from the outside our democratic form of government. Other opponents to real democracy and sound citizenship are those who would lower working standards and be given a free hand in the employment of women, the mothers of children, who will be the nation of to-morrow. On this subject representatives of the national and international unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor said: "The guarantees of human conservation should be recognized in war as well as in peace." This statement was made on March 12, 1917, vv^hen these trade union officials, meeting in Washington, announced that, while the trade union movement abhorred war, it was behind the Government in this hour of peril, come what may. President Wilson quickly sensed the danger of destroy- ing or even weakening standards of labor secured after years of effort, and in an address to trade union officials on May 15, 1917, six weeks after the declaration that a state of war exists with Germany, he said: "I have been very much alarmed at one or two things that have happened at the apparent inclination of the Legislatures of one or two of our States to set aside even temporarily the laws which have safeguarded standards of labor and of life. 1 think nothing could be more deplorable than that. We are trying to fight in a cause which means the lifting of the standards of life, and we can fight in that cause best by voluntary cooperation. I do not doubt that any body of men repre- senting labor in this country speaking for their fellows will LABOR'S CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY 231 be willing to make any sacrifice that is necessary in order to carry this contest to a successful issue, and in that confi- dence I feel that it would be inexcusable if we deprived men and women of such a spirit of any of the existing safeguards of law. Therefore I shall exercise my influence so far as it goes to see that that does not happen, and that the sacrifices we make shall be made voluntarily and not under the com- pulsion which mistakenly is interpreted to mean a lowering of the standards which we have sought through so many generations to bring to their present level." The government has indicated that it intends to main- tain labor standards, and the Council of National Defense has stated that before standards are reduced it should pass upon the question. Labor will accept the word of President Wilson, but not the word of those employers, their represen- tatives in Congress and their newspapers, that are always found behind every reactionary move in support of the dol- lar as against the man, I believe labor's position is understood and appreciated by sound thinking citizens, who have noted that, despite calls for the abolition of labor standards, the Government has assisted during the past two months, through mediation processes, in placing the Northwest lumber industry on the eight-hour basis. The nation's packing industry will go on a basic eight-hour day shortly, through a decision by an arbiter selected by Secretary Wilson, of the Labor Depart- ment. The placing of these important industries on the shorter work-day basis indicates that our Government accepts the investigations of the British Government, which discovered, after practical tests, that long hours is no answer to the demand for increased war munitions. The packing house industry of this country has been revolutionized. In past years representatives of the packing houses refused to permit their employes to organize, but through the efforts of the trade union movement and a com- mission appointed by President Wilson that industry has been placed upon the basic eight-hour day, with price and a quarter for overtime up to ten hours and price and a half for ten hours, with a substantial increase in wages. 232 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST COMPULSORY EDUCATION The labor movement has been persistent in its agitation for free schools, free text books, and compulsory education. As a result of the agitation, every State has now a com- pulsory education law. Notwithstanding that fact. Secre- tary Lane, in a communication to Senator Hoke Smith, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, said that the number of persons in America that cannot read and write is almost unbelievable. "There are in the United States," Secretary Lane said, "or were when the census was taken in 1910, 5,516,163 persons over ten years of age who were unable to read or write in any language. There are now nearly 700,000 men of draft age in the United States who cannot read 'or write in English or any other , language. Over 4,000,000 of ttie illiterates in this country are twenty years of age or more. It would seem to be almost axiomatic that an illiterate man cannot make a good soldier in modern warfare. Until last April the regular army would not enlist illiterates, yet in the first draft between 30,000 and 40,000 illiterates were brought into the army and approximately as many near-illiterates. They cannot sign their names. They cannot read their orders posted daily on bulletin boards in camps. They cannot read their manual of arms. They cannot read their letters or write home. They cannot understand the signals or follow the signal corps in time of battle." The trade union movement opposes the conscription of labor unless wealth is likewise conscripted. The claim that labor should be conscripted on the same theory that the country drafts its citizens for universal service is a ridicu- lous assertion. The Government conscripts its citizens for service; the employer would conscript for exploitation. Courts have repeatedly drawn a sharp line between civilian and military life ; and while in theory no one can deny the Government's right to draft any citizen for any purpose it sees fit when the nation's life is in jeopardy, the dollar should be forced to surrender its per cent rights, just as labor would be called upon to surrender its right of freedom. LABOR'S CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY 233 Labor notified these elements that urge conscription of labor that it will go farther than they will and that it will be the first to accept the Government's dictum — if that time ever comes — that every ounce of man power and every dollar and other evidence of wealth must be thrown in the common lot with every citizen on soldiers' rations that the Nation may live. We notify these employers and their spokesmen in the United States Senate that they cannot use the war to estab- lish principles of peonage that they long for when the days of peace return, while they insist on interest and on the establishment of depreciation funds so that when the war ends it will be found that they have not only maintained well-rounded profits during this period of stress, but that the people have paid for their equipment to make these profits. The claim made in the United States Senate a few days ago that labor is not doing its share in this war is not sup- ported by men less interested in publicity than in securing facts. These claims possess a value, however. They con- ceal deplorable working conditions, lack of housing, and a labor turnover that has amounted in some cases to seven men for every job in one month. Labor suggests that strikes can be removed by removing causes for strikes. We protest when it is charged that labor will strike without reason, and when conditions are satisfactory, for if our workers were so lacking in patriotism then our Nation rests on a foundation of sand. The trade unionist's remedy for strikes is a calm and dispassionate discussion of reasons for this condition, and then prompt application of the remedy. We appreciate, however, the mental attitude of men who urge conscription of labor. They realize the changing orders from the day when workers were looked upon as separate and apart from other portions of society, when workers were but "hewers of wood and drawers of water," without voice and denied any part in the affairs of our country. It is impossible to stay progress, and it is impos- sible to reestablish former conditions and former ideals. 234 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST In this world crisis labor only asks for conditions that will permit it to maintain its productive powers and equip the coming generation with an education. Labor takes its stand with every other American in this world struggle for right. With a triumphant peace none will gain more than the men and women of labor, for they realize that with the acceptance of every democratic ideal the wage-earner, who has emerged from the age-long serf, down-trodden and denied, will be morally, spiritually, and materially advanced. AN OPEN DOOR TO INDUSTRY ON THE BASIS OF EFFICIENCY BISHOP THEODORE D. BRATTON, D.D., LL.D., JACKSON, MISS. The presence of a large number of any race in the midst of another and distinct race of itself creates a grave problem. When the white man settled upon American soil he became an immediate problem to the aborigines. The Indians in turn have become a problem to the new nation. The presence of Americans in China and Japan is prob- ably as distinctly a problem as our Chinese and Japanese citizens are to us. And what is said of these peoples is equally true of America and Africa, of the whites in the latter and the negroes in the former. The problem is not solved by declaring the fact that the different races are still men, members of one family, and therefore to be treated simply as men. It is out of the fact that they are men, but different as much in racial characteristics — e. g., color — that the problem arises, and increases in propor- tion to the closeness of contact of the racial groups. It becomes increasingly difficult of solution because the issue even in two counties of a single State is not the same. For a full and philosophic study of the problem as such, I refer you to Dr. Edgar Gardner Murphy's "The Basis of Ascend- ancy." Dr. Murphy's book will furnish the foundation for sane study of the negro problem for an indefinite time to come. The principles which he lays down are of perma- OPEN DOOR TO INDUSTRY ON BASIS OF EFFICIENCY 235 nent value, whatever the details of superstructure which may be built upon them. His books, from which I will often quote, should live as the work of a great teacher of teachers of both the races concerned. Not the least important phase of this greatest of Ameri- can problems is that which my subject introduces, "An Open Door to Industry on the Basis of Efficiency." This stands at the heart of the matter; for whatever justice there may be in the claim of social or political rights, the claim of fundamental right to earn one's bread, under the happiest and most wholesome conditions possible to us, must ever be unquestioned. The so-called "social right" is a misnomer, since it is bestowed by no greater authority than the mutual consent and the mutual pleasure of the socially related. The "political right" is not now, and never has been, the inherent possession of anybody or any race or gender or class. But the right to labor and to live is in- herent and can only rightly be denied or abridged for grave cause by organized society. I cannot speak from a legal viewpoint, but from a moral one it is clear to me that if the laws of the land should approve the law of the labor union which denies the right of employment to a nonunion man such approval would be a moral iniquity. It would mean the ostracism by organized force of classes and indi- viduals from the company of workers, which is coterminous with the family made by God for toil. If we are to discuss in a limited time and space a theme whose details would require volumes, I think we had best plunge at once into the middle of it. What, first, should be the attitude of the older, stronger race toward the weaker and more dependent one? Every chivalrous instinct in the stronger should, and ultimately must, revolt against the thought of oppression or suppres- sion of the weaker. We have listened to an address on racial integrity. In order to preserve it, fixed racial atti- tudes and perhaps definite laws may both be needed as growing conditions demand. But the strong race will be eager to make both attitude and law protective and pre- 236 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST servative of the character and integrity of each race, and careful to guard against injustice and suppression toward the weaker. It has been a matter of profound satisfaction to me to observe how strongly and sanely the principle of race integrity has taken root in the minds of the negro leaders, and how patiently and wisely the laws for social safety have been more and more rightly interpreted by them. I cannot but think that the door to industry will be more and more widely opened as the realization of racial integrity, as God's will for us, is more perfectly attained. Nothing will more surely dispel the illusion, so commonly the thought of the masses of our white race, that protec- tion of the white against the social or industrial aggres- sions of the negro is necessary and therefore desirable. When integrity of race is realized to be the dominant pas- sion of the negro, as I believe it to be so certainly of the educated class of his race, the law of competition will be- come less and less applied to racial conditions, and more and more the familiar law which controls all industries and all labor. But this passion for racial integrity is created and fostered only by racial self-respect, itself the outcome of racial achievement and success. "It becomes strange to us," says Dr. Murphy, "that any one should ever have im- agined that we could promote the self-respect of one race by weakening the self-respect of the other." We must therefore seek to disillusion the masses of our white race who imagine that any race can climb upon the prostrate hopes and ambitions of another. The fruit of earnest, self- sacrificing toil may be material success, but it is still more the self-respect which the conscious ability to toil success- fully creates. It seems to me so clearly true that I find it difficult to see it from any other angle, that the only wise policy for the South is to seek that sound and rounded development of the negro which, in making him increasingly the mas- ter of himself, will secure for the races an intelligent and permanent differentiation, I believe this policy will eventu- ally prevail as the white South advances and the possibili- OPEN DOOR TO INDUSTRY ON BASIS OF EFFICIENCY 237 ties of aggression from the side of the negro are discov- ered to be far more remote than was once thought. I quote again from Dr. Murphy: "The perils involved in the prog- ress of the negro are as nothing compared to the perils invited by his failure. If any race is to live, it must have something to live for. It will hardly cling with pride to its race integrity, if its race world is a world wholly synon- ymous with deprivation, and if the world of the white man is the only generous and honorable world of which it knows. It will hardly hold with tenacity to its racial standpoint, it will hardly give any deep spiritual or conscious allegiance to its racial future, if its race life is to be forever burdened with contempt and denied the larger possibilities of thought and effort. The true hope, therefore, of race integrity for the negro lies in establishing for him, within his own racial life, the possibilities of social differentiation. A race which must ever be tempted to go outside of itself for any share in the largeness and the freedom of experience will never be securely anchored in its racial self-respect, can never achieve any legitimate racial standpoint, and as its mem- bers rise they must be perpetually tempted to desert its own distinctive life and its own distinctive service to the world. There is no hope for a race which begins by despising itself. The winning of generic confidence, of a legitimate racial pride, will come with the larger creation of oppor- tunity within the race. The clew to racial integrity for the negro is thus to be found not in race suppression, but in race sufficiency." As the members of the race achieve that which is a real contribution to the progress of the world in which he lives, the value of his race will correspondingly rise, and the just pride which accompanies moral victory and self- mastery will increasingly be felt. Without this founda- tion race integrity can have no permanence nor perhaps even any reality. With it there will be no temptation to the negro to despair of his permanent place among the races of the w^orld, each of which must surely have its pur- pose in God's creative design. Of it will be born the am- 288 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST bition to learn that purpose, and to claim the right to ful- fill it in his own right and in his own racial name. And as this becomes more and more clearly realized by the thoughtful, educated, humanity-loving South, there will be less and less opposition to the progress of the negro, and more and more interest in the education which is to fit him the more fully to work out his God-given destiny. It will mean that in protecting the higher form of life against the deteriorating influence of the lower, the lower is not thereby to be prevented from rising, but rather to be en- couraged in his toilsome upward movement. It will be clearly seen that the rise of the lower is not at the intoler- able cost of the fall of the higher, but is contributing to the still greater upward progress of both. The conditions of our Southern life, almost completely rural, not only illustrate the truth of -what I have said, but intensify its vital significance. The prosperity of the South is dependent upon the productiveness of its soil, which is proportioned to the industry and intelligence of its laborers in her fields — to that combination of acquire- ments that is called efficiency. Surely, if the negro is the laborer that the South has, that it most wants, and happily is likely to have for unnumbered ages, then not only the door to industry must be opened wide, but the door to the greatest efficiency possible to him. We should help him, with consistent and persistent purpose, to increase the skill of his hands and the productive capacity of his brain and brawn. It is to me just as inconceivable that the domi- nant white race should not want that for him as that the negro should not want it for himself. It is difficult to un- derstand the viewpoint of the man who, knowing the ex- pensiveness of cheap labor, wants to make and to keep the labor that he has cheap and inefficient. Yet there has come a strangely inconsistent change in the opinion of many men concerning the kind of education that the negro should have. Dr. Murphy calls attention to this, while he declaims against its injustice and folly: *'Many of the same men who assured us, ten years ago, OPEN DOOR TO INDUSTRY ON BASIS OF EFFICIENCY 239 that industrial education is the only education the negro should have, are now ready with the assurance that, for fear the industrial development of the negro will clash with that of the white man, this form of negro training is the most dangerous contribution that has thus far been made to the solution of our Southern problems. The poor negro ! The men who would keep him in ignorance, and then would disfranchise him because he is ignorant, must seem to him as a paragon of erect and radiant consistency when com- pared with the man who first tells him he must work, and then tells him he must not learn how. He tells the negro he must have shoes, but that he must not make shoes which people can wear; that he may be a wheelwright, but that he must make neither good wheels nor salable wagons; that he must be a farmer, but that he must not farm well. According to this fatuous philosophy of our situation, we are to find the true ground of inter-racial harmony when we have proved to the negro that it is useless for him to be useful, and only after we have consistently sought the ne- gro's industrial contentment on the basis of his industrial despair!" The folly of this fatal policy was vividly illustrated when that devouring little beast, the boll weevil, first estab- lished himself in the lower cotton counties of Mississippi. Never was there a more painful exhibition of the dire results of inefficiency issuing in the inability to cope with conditions which necessitated an intelligent revolution of agricultural methods which alone could win the grewsome battle. And so long as the labor of the South continues to be untutored and inefficient, the crises which, having come in the past, must be expected in the future will be met with varying degrees of failure, but always failure in some measure. To me the fact that the door to industry in the South has been as open as it is for the negro is one for sincerest gratification. "It is in the South," says Dr. Washington, "that the black man finds the open sesame in labor, indus- try, and business that is not surpassed anywhere." The 240 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST plea for the negro is, thus, not so much that the door shall be opened, but that, already having been opened, its en- trance should be made more and more a reward of efficiency. The employer who is willing to accept any sort of work, who demands no standard and no progress, who is content to continue year after year a policy of inefficiency or half efficiency, is as far from being a friend to the negro as the man who opposes the education that would increase his efficiency. The trouble is not that the negro is deprived of the right to enter any trade or any calling which his needs and desires suggest. He is not confined in the South to menial tasks. Law, medicine, the pulpit, the school, the mercantile lines are all open to him. His real problem is the gaining of a measure of efficiency that will reward his industry with success. Out of the inconsistencies of those who demand that the negro labor but must not be taught how to labor, who would keep him a field hand but deny him industrial instruc- tion, who would educate him but confine the curriculum below the standard that would provide him with teachers, who would see him taught but without teachers; who in short accept his inefficiency and then deride him for it, we of the white race must somehow bring about a consistency of desire for our negro brethren, and an equal consistency of effort to help him train himself after that fashion which will make the best and the most out of the raw material which God has given him. In spite of these inconsistencies, the South has, I verily believe, beyond any other section or nation, approached the "best gift of a civilization to an individual — the opportunity to live industriously and honestly, to acquire and to fashion his home, to realize the legitimate ambitions of an awakened manhood, and to en- joy the fruit of hope, of self-sacrifice, of self-respect." And now I turn to my friends of the negro race and ask. What is, and is progressively to be, your response to the open door? The answer is not a simple one, but is a^ complex for the negro as is the problem of opening the door to the white man, who first and last must shoulder OPEN DOOR TO INDUSTRY ON BASIS OF EFFICIENCY 241 the responsibility of, and for, the opening of it. To com- plicate the problem, the negro, as a race, has not yet meas- ured his own capability, and the white man is equally igno- rant of it. I do not underrate the abilities of those truly able leaders who have been born to the day of need, nor do I undervalue the sincerity and the self-sacrifice which have achieved social and industrial wonders during the past half century. But the leaders themselves have been very widely separated from the mass of those whom they were to lead, and this veritable isolation has but too often brought into clear relief our ignorance concerning the capacity of the race. I venture the assertion that until very recently there has been no even partially successful effort by a negro leader to interpret the negro and to reveal him to himself. And although such a task must be performed, if at all, by a negro, the conditions of his development in a democracy of which he has been but a fraction have forced into the foreground all manner of relative issues which have ob- scured the primary, vital issue of the revelation of his own capacities through the development of his own life. His leaders, forced to the study of the political or social issues, in a word, of the race as related to another and a domi- nant race, have been lured away from the study of their race as such. They have been occupied, until this present generation, with the question of his abnormal situation — a question well-nigh wholly unprofitable, until the prior riddle is solved — viz.. What ajn I, what can I do? So to the leaders of the negro people is committed by the "Providence which shapes our ends" the splendid task of leading his race through the open door of opportunity. I know that they are far from wishing to discount the coun- sel and sympathy and help of the white race. But more and more, in the coming years, will the task become the negro's own task, as the number of leaders becomes en- larged and also mere skilled in the powers of self-mastery, moderation, love, and the power for good. 16 242 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST In this the negro will be no exception. It is not him- self alone who has swelled the population of America. In our midst is spoken every language of peoples who have entered the door of opportunity. No continent is the pos- session, any longer, of a single race — not even Africa is any longer the negro's alone. Rightly or wrongly, for good or for ill, the world is henceforth cosmopolitan, the world is the home of the races together. And why should it not be? God made it for man. And surely the issue cannot be in doubt if man will but set himself the task of subduing the world for God, of making it a veritable home for the families of God's children, while remembering that the world is God's, and man his steward. \ VI. THE CHILD, THE WOMAN, AND THE FUTURE NATION The Cry of the Children The Modern Orphanage in the South The School as a Focus of Disease Responsibility for Health in Public Schools Teaching Health in the Public Schools The Child and Heredity THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (The influence of poetry is greater than is genei'ally real- ized, and many find inspiration to action in reading it. Mrs. Browning in this pathetic poem did much to rouse England to the evil of child labor and to perceive the wrongs done the little ones toiling in its factories and coal mines far beyond their strength.) Do ye hear the children weeping, my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west ; But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly ! They are weeping in the playtime of the others. In the country of the free. Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark ; And the children's souls, which God is calling sun- ward, Spin on blindly in the dark. THE MODERN ORPHANAGE IN THE SOUTH M. L. KESLER, D.D., THOMASVILLE, N. C. This is the century of the child. So radical has been the shift of emphasis that the proper study of mankind has become the study of the child. The "better babies" slogan does not expend itself on prenatal influences, but with equal zeal we are concerned about the first steps of little feet. Early training is divid- ing honors with theories of heredity, and the first three years of a child's life to-day are of more importance than his course at the university. It is particularly true of the little child that "he is a part of all that he has met." We accept the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes to the young mother, that her child's education should begin one hun- dred years before he is born. But our case is very much like that of the young mother; the children we know are already born, and the very best thing we can do for them is to begin their training a hundred years before somebody else is born. My special reference is to the dependent child. "Some of them ought never to have been born," you say? Per- haps so. But upon our disposition of these depends the advancement of the human race; they are at once the menace and the hope of our civilization. The care that the "unfit" child shall live is the assurance that the "proper child" will enter the race with the least possible hindrance. The careful study of defectives has greatly enriched the teaching of the normal child. So the child placed in the midst by misfortune's fling may furnish a new interpreta- tion of the "all things working together for good." To-day all forward-looking forces are concerned about the child without a chance. It was not always so. The orphan was not accorded the rights and opportunities of the ordinary child. They were as an alien race, fit only to be "bound out" as servants for common people. The old feeling has not altogether passed, but it is going, along with a brood of cruelties that can no longer face the light. There are agencies in the field set to the task of helping 246 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the neglected child. They must be willing to stand the acid test for soundness and efficiency. Any agency that encourages the breaking up of the home, that can and ought to be held together, should be discouraged. The widowed mother in good health, men- tally and morally 'fit, should not be relieved of the duty or deprived of the privilege of training her own children. Re- lieving the widow by pension, or otherwise, is the most economical as well as humane method. It is beset with difficulties, to be sure, chief of which is perpetuating pov- erty and encouraging dependency. But the whole difficulty must be faced, and the earlier the better. The orphanages and the children's home societies are the accredited agencies for the care of the dependent child. There is a large mission and also plenty of room for both of these agencies in the South, and without friction. Each may help and supplement the other. But unfortunately certain "placing-out" advocates have spread their benevo- lent wings over the entire field, suggesting that the orphan- age get out of their way. With one mighty wave of the hand the Theodore Roosevelt White House Conference, of a few years ago, settled this question for the whole coun- try. But the orphanage workers of the Soutlj are not ready to retire from the field at the behest of bureaucratic and syndicated advice. If certain writers in some of our magazines had dis- played a spirit of open-minded fairness equal to their cock- sureness, real progress would have been made toward a proper and helpful adjustment of these agencies to their respective tasks. Such screeds as referred to above are entirely gratuitous, for the orphanage is here to stay. There are several reasons why this is true. In the first place, almost every great denomination in every State has its orphanage. This is not only a help to their dependent children, but is a great asset as a form of social service upon which they can all agree and is an unselfish bond of union. Millions of dollars are already invested in plants and equipment, and bequests in increasing numbers are materializing annually. The various orders are establish- THE MODERN ORPHANAGE IN THE SOUTH 247 ing" similar institutions and are putting much money into them. They are not favorably inclined to a dispersion of their children over the regions round about. Now, in other sections of the country, the placing-out system is perhaps the one I would advocate ; but here in the South we are not far enough removed from slavery days to yield the entire field. "My lady," newly rich or of broken-down aristoc- racy, makes "my servant" and "my girl" too large a part of her conversation. Her speech betrayeth her. This type of snobbery still exists and stands as a barrier against turn- ing our orphanages into bureaus for supplying v/asher- women and cooks. We also have the widow, who could, with the help of the orphanage for a time, by and by reunite her little family. Perhaps she is broken in health and in fortune; after a few years' treatment and rest she recovers herself, and the little circle is restored on a firm basis. This is in itself an important and a large part of our orphanage work. In the South we have a large population of the worthy poor, whose widows, even if they are never able on account of physical inability to restore the home, find the well-regu- lated orphanage the best place for their children. These mothers are physically unable to care for their children, even with a widow's pension. They have the refined type of mother-love and recoil at the thought of having their children separated and scattered to the four quarters of the country. A civilization that has no regard for this feel- ing may chatter and prate about "home life" and "mother love," and know very little of the heart values expressed in words that sound the deeps of humble human life. Broad-minded orphanage workers see a great task be- fore the children's home societies and are ready to cooper- ate; but we prefer no odious comparisons, and that they make no faces at us. Any contention between the agencies in the midst of such distressing need is as unseemly as a quarrel between life-saving crews over their respective styles of boat. Let the saving work go on with friendly interest, and each craft will through its work become ad- justed to its task. 248 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST We have the modern church, the modern school, and the modern orphanage as well. There is an organization knovv'n as the Tri-State Orphanage Conference, composed of workers from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- gia. It has held annual meetings for the past eleven years. This is one of many expressions of progress. The unworthy and inefficient orphanage can no longer stand by the wayside of modern life asking alms. In the first place, the orphanage must be worthily planned and equipped. The cottage system is the only one that has been seriously considered in the South for years. Forty years ago J. H. Mills, of North Carolina, and Dr. W. P. Jacobs, of South Carolina, introduced and made popular this system. The cottages should be arranged on a plan of magnificent distances, with room for beauty, flower gardens, and playgrounds. Young human life is at its best in the midst of the growing, thrifty life of a farm. The location ought to be near a good town; it must be on a good farm. A good physical equipment, like good clothes, has a tonic effect, both for efficiency and for better morals. The orphanage is at once in line with the modern effort for sound bodies for young Americans. It stands at the end of the human moraine, bringing down the drift of the physically inefficient, and has the interesting task of bring- ing the young straggler back to his lost heritage. Clean him up inside and out — this is the first aid that should be administered to the injured young life. The relation of good health to mind and morals is so apparent to the intel- ligent worker that the orphanage becomes a sort of physi- cal and psychological laboratory in the study of the child. Before successful work can be done in the schoolroom every child must be relieved of adenoid, eye, and tooth troubles. Sunshine, fresh air, general sanitation, and hygienic living should be such a part of daily life that a special coarse for these things in the schoolroom would be unnecessary. Hookworm and pellagra should be well-nigh impossible diseases in a well-regulated orphanage; and if the institu- tion cannot get the consent of its mind to go to the pains THE MODERN ORPHANAGE IN THE SOUTH 249 and expense of maintaining a balanced ration, it should at an early day give its consent to disband. Along with health culture training, all-round training should be the slogan of this modern orphanage. It offers, perhaps, the best all-round educational opportunity we have. We have the children in the home all day and all the year, in school and out of school, at work and at play. Every employee should, in his place, be a teacher, and every department of work outside the schoolroom should have its cultural value. Here can be worked out, without hin- drance, a correlated system of education. Much of the manual training, in different departments of work, can be used in the schoolroom as a supplement to textbook work. Daily activities furnish material for practical mathematics and work in English composition. It gives an easy and natural mastery of language. In a large way the educa- tion is related to the activities of daily life and thereby greatly enriches both the education and the daily life. The farm school idea can be worked out better than by the school set apart for that purpose. It is a question whether vocational training, in the narrow sense, should be given in complete courses, or whether such training should not be given in such variety and to such extent that the child may find himself, and later on complete specific training. The aesthetic in education holds a large place also in the program. Overlook this, and the whole education is im- poverished ; for with one hand the aesthetic reaches out into the intellectual, and with the other up into the moral and spiritual. The life into which the natural world of sod and flower and sky does not pour a song and a message is uncul- tured and bereft. The flower garden, birds, grass, and fields, made glorious by inspiring teachers, present God's great equipment in his out-of-doors uni\^ersity. In any worthy institution the children are allowed ownership and participation in this life of beauty. The modern orphanage easily finds a place for the inspirational features of an education. Chief of these is music. The institution that resolves itself into a chorus of trained children's voices cannot be common or unclean. 250 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Literary and missionary societies and other simple organi- zations can be made most useful in this democracy of childhood. Of all institutions, it must be permeated by Christian ideals placed within reach of the child. This is one great plea for the denominational orphanage. In a throng of youth, life is intense and at the forming stage. This life must be gripped by a mighty tide and swept out from the dangerous reefs. Helpful and directive discipline and high culture alike are dependent upon a deep and genuine reli- gious life. This efficient institution which I have described in out- line is in the main dependent upon its administration. Em- erson said that every great institution was but the length- ened shadow of one man — and of his successors, let it be added. The notion that an orphanage is a sort of lazaretto, a form of organized poverty, has not entirely passed; and along with it the idea that any good-natured, worn-out old favorite will do for the superintendent, and that economy demands teachers that cost least money. This has been the weakness, amounting almost to a crime in our work of this kind. The esprit de corps and tone of the institution de- pend upon the personality of the workers in it; here char- acter is imparted rather than taught. This young life is easily impressed, and for that reason needs the strongest hand. At one time it goes into the air and then all at once the bottom drops out; it is the exuberant life, and is safe only in the hands of its master. The institution will be visited by prominent men. If the superintendent suffers in comparison, in the eyes of the children, either in culture or strength of character, he has, in a measure, lost his leadership, and they suffer a shattered idol. Only the strongest men, measured from every side, should be selected. This may demand a thinning out among us; but the call has gone forth, the order has been issued, that the neediest child needs the best, in order to save him from the worst. THE SCHOOL AS A FOCUS OF DISEASE 251 Yes, there is a modern orphanage. It may not have a place in the sun, but it has a place in the earth. It no longer apologizes and "with a poor mouth" whines itself into favor, but offers itself for a share of service to the stricken poor, resting in confidence that "Wisdom is justi- fied in her children." THE SCHOOL AS A FOCUS OF DISEASE E. GODBOLD, STATE SECRETARY OF LOUISIANA BAPTIST EDUCA- TION COMMISSION, ALEXANDRIA, LA. One of the healthiest signs of the healthy advancement of our Southern region is the concern among our thinking people for the health of our population. This concern has come, perhaps, from two sources. Every person who has any sort of humanitarian feeling desires the best welfare of all his fellows. He sympathizes with the suffering; he grieves with the sorrowing; he desires the relief of the needy. This passion for service is a very helpful element in our complicated human natures. The fact that the mod- ern American is moved to action and often to sacrifice by the needs and suffering of those who are less fortunate proves that we are in the midst of an advancing civilization. The second sign of this healthy growth is the almost universal cry for efficiency and conservation. Those on whom we depend for leadership, in all lines of endeavor, are becoming more and more concerned because of the waste and loss of time, of energy, and of money. Undoubt- edly this concern has been caused by the sharp competition we find in every trade and calling, which has come as a result of the increasing density of our population and the inevitable struggle for livelihood. It has perhaps been forced upon us, but we must admit that it is a command- ing one. The interest manifested in this Sociological Con- gress, and the conferences held in connection with it, is per- haps largely due to this motive of feeling and this desire for efficiency. 252 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST The most casual observation will convince any one that the school is really a focus of disease, that contagion spreads more rapidly on account of this ag-gregated com- munity. When any sort of contagious disease is in an assembly of people, the result will always be a more rapid spread of this contagion. It is undoubtedly true that, be- cause of the many diseases to which children are subject, the school is the most felt focus of disease we have in our community life. There has come to my knowledge, in the last few days, an example of this in a small rural school, the instruction of which is confined to the grammar grades, whose teaching force consists of a principal and one assist- ant, and whose entire enrollment during this session has been sixty-seven pupils. This school is located in the pine woods of Rapides Parish, La., on the north side of Red River. On inquiry I found that of the sixty-seven pupils in the school eighteen have had "chills and fever" during the past seven months of this session. The average loss of time by each of these eighteen was five days; the average number of recitations per day Vv^as four; the average cost per pupil for the session was $11. One can very easily determine the monetary loss to the county on account of these cases of malaria. Prior to the opening of the ses- sion last October, only one family in the community, so far as could be learned, had had a case of "chills and fever" in it. During the session this disease spread to eight dif- ferent families. I have before me from the principal of a city high school a letter which says that during the last session this school, in the high school department, enrolled 229 pupils. The actual number of days present was 32,025. If every pupil had been present every day, this number would have been 40,075. The school administration endeavored to learn the cause of this loss in attendance, and found that approximately 4,150 days' loss of time was due to sickness. The average cost per pupil in this school was $43 per ses- sion. This would make a total loss, according to the lowest calculation, of more than $1,000. This school principal reports that the main diseases to which this loss of time, THE SCHOOL AS A FOCUS OF DISEASE 253 was due were measles, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, sore eyes of a certain kind, malaria, influenza, and colds. It is a patent fact that with proper medical supervision the spread of every one of these dis- eases is preventable. I have before me the reports of several college phy- sicians, and find that, almost without exception, the biggest problem each one had to deal with resulted from some form of contagion. One college in Mississippi reports that in a student body of approximately 500 during the last two years there have been 67 cases of measles, 182 of influenza, 74 of tonsilitis, 37 of malaria, and an unknown number of cases of ordinary colds. The estimated loss of this school, because of these diseases, was nearly $5,000. In this school it was found that the measles, in both cases of outbreak, was imported. The beginning of the malaria infection was traced to an importation. Another college with approxi- mately 400 students reports that, because of an imported case of measles, there resulted in the student body 100 cases. The average number of days out of school, for each student who was stricken, was 15, giving a total of 1,500 days' loss of time, and a loss of not less than 6,000 recita- tions due to this epidemic. Ten students were forced to leave school on account of impaired eyes. The physician estimated that three per cent of those aff'ected have a per- manent weakness of the eyes. This does not take into con- sideration the lowering of scholarship records and the loss in a financial way to the college itself. The latest statistics available show that during 1914 there were 62,000 deaths among school children. It is esti- mated that sixty-eight per cent of these were entirely pre- ventable. This does not consider the losses to the school communities due to sickness and deformities and discour- agement and loss of time from school, all of which placed extraordinarily heavy burdens on the shoulders of the young long before they were able to bear them; neither does this consider the economic loss to the parents and to the State, and the untold sorrows that death always brings. 254 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Can we destroy these foci of disease? We must have the schools, and if this disease feature is a necessary accom- paniment, we must have the schools notwithstanding. In the face of our present day knowledge, we are not ready to admit that this feature is a necessary evil. With proper supervision and inspection, the greater part of this loss of time and money and mental and physical strength can be avoided. The eternal question before us is, "How?" The first means that ought to be mentioned is the use of common sense in running the school community. We cannot stress too strongly the need of proper ventilation. In too many cases our teachers are woefully ignorant con- cerning this subject, and more often their ignorance is not nearly so great as their indifference. Our school authori- ties are entirely too negligent concerning ordinary sanita- tion measures. In one village high school which I visited a few weeks since I found old-fashioned roller towels in use; and the community in which this condition of aflFairs existed is not what might be termed one of our most back- ward rural communities. Our county school boards ought to take steps that would remedy such conditions. Our peo- ple are too intelligent now to charge that such action on the part of any school board would savor too much of the pater- nal. I have found that often the rural schools of the State are not provided with any sort of toilets, and that the great majority of them have entirely neglected sanitation in the construction of the toilets they have. Another means of carrying out some measures looking to the elimination of the disease focus feature of our schools is a rigid medical inspection. So far as my infor- mation goes, this has never been tried in a ruraf school in Louisiana. Some of our States have provided for compul- sory medical inspection; but, for the most part, the people of our Southern States have not yet realized the necessity of this step. The success of such inspections in our col- leges has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt their effec- tiveness. I quote the following from the report of a col- lege physician for the session of 1914-15 : THE SCHOOL AS A FOCUS OF DISEASE 255 "Doubtless never before in the history of College has there been such a fortunate year in matters of health. Not a single contagious disease has made its development during the session. Not a single death of the student en- rollment (approximately 400) has occurred either here or at home. There has not even been a student sufficiently sick to require that he be taken to our local hospital for treatment. The college has not been asked for a cent for hospital care and nursing. From this minimum of illness, we have realized a great saving to the students in the ex- penses always connected with sickness, and also a saving in scholarship that results from absence from school duties. "As something of an index to the nature of the work undertaken, I will state that during the first week of the session a call was made for the students to report for phys- ical examination. An office and clinic were provided for in the biological laboratory. My records show that 300 students responded voluntarily to this call. Of these, it was discovered that 63 had either acute or chronic malaria ; 36 had some form of either liver or kidney disease ; 180 had throat ailments requiring some attention; 70 had blood strength ranging from 10 per cent to 30 per cent below nor- mal; 44 had hookworm disease, every one of which was given treatment ; 23 had venereal diseases of various kinds ; 130 had cases of physical weakness caused by tobacco habit; 30 had heart disease and unclassified conditions. The treatment of these diseases covers a vast amount of personal attention and prescriptions that aggregated prac- tically the same as previous years, with, however, the sav- ing of practically all bedside attention. Along with the more or less permanent removal of the diseases named above, 38 students have taken the tobacco-habit treatment and, so far as I know, have permanently abandoned its use. I am glad to say that the students have been very appre- ciative and responsive and, notwithstanding the fact that the response to my call was entirely voluntary, I found it possible to know finally the health condith)n to the remot- est feature of almost every student in school. It appears 256 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST justifiable, in lieu of the above facts, to state that conserva- tion in liealth is just as possible as in timber, or land, or domestic animals, and there is really a place for such work in our educational system." This report proves beyond a doubt that a compulsory medical inspection will pay. If it worked so well volun- tarily in a college, it can surely be used to a good degree of success in every one of our schools, from the highest to the lowest. In my conversation with schoolmen concerning this fea- ture of their work, I have found that there is some com- plaint among them lodged against our boards of health. It is impossible to keep colds and influenza out of schools unless we can keep the affected pupils out. This is a hard problem because most of our people are not disposed to take the other fellow's health into consideration unless com- pelled to do so. Ought not health boards take charge of this matter and see that some steps are taken toward remedying this condition? In many of our rural and vil- lage communities the contagion among school children can be traced to the failure of the board of health to locate and isolate the first infection. Of course, the board of health is powerless unless physicians report these diseases. Under our present regime the physician is woefully handicapped in a matter like this. Instead of using him in an effort to prevent disease, he is considered only as a necessity to cure disease. Therefore, the only safe means of eliminating the disease focus feature in our schools is the employment of a regular school physician and providing for a rigid medi- cal inspection of all pupils. In most of our communities we have not yet reached this state of development. The strongest agency in educating our people up to the place where they can realize the necessity of this is our health boards. These, with the physicians cooperating, can soon create enough sentiment among our thinking people to en- force measures that will provide for such medical inspec- tion and prevention. RESPONSIBILITY FOR HEALTH IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 257 RESPONSIBILITY FOR HEALTH IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS MRS. HELENA HOLLEY, HOUSTON CITY SCHOOLS, HOUS- TON, TEX. Spencer says : "To be a nation of good animals is the first condition to national prosperity." In the United States §500,000,000 is expended annually for schools. Should not the children themselves be of equal importance with the subjects taught them? Changing conditions are increasing daily the responsibility of the school for the children intrusted to its care. A century ago 3 1-3 per cent of the population of the United States was urban. To-day, according to the census of 1910, 46 1-3 per cent is urban, and our large cities have from 75 to 85 per cent of foreign- born population. The public schools, with their cosmic mass of priceless human material, are our greatest foci of infection, both physical and moral. Compulsory school attendance is an untold danger, unless it insures against physical and moral detriment. The State provides for the education of all citizens as a measure of self-protection. It is even more mandatory that it should provide for the physical welfare of its chil- dren, for the same reason. Proper sanitation, as to en- vironment, grounds, school building, and equipment, is in- dispensable. The most potent factor for health in the schools, how- ever, is medical inspection by experts, and treatment when necessary. This is the day of specialization and coopera- tion. A teacher, however excellent, is not a trained expert in detecting disease, although he or she can intelligently cooperate with physician, nurse, and parent. A few years ago fifty of our largest cities in the United States averaged 30 cents per capita for prevention of dis- ease and $1.63 per capita for prevention of fire! In Minne- sota alone 40,000 children each year suffered retardation because of adenoids and enlarged tonsils. In 1908 only five cities in Texas and one in Louisiana (New Orleans) had 17 258 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST medical inspection in their schools. Now we are awaken- ing all over the South to this great need. It is interesting to note the nation-wide evolution. First, the investigation of communicable disease alone, at an estimated cost of 15 cents per capita; then, inspection for every physical trouble, with prevention rather than remedy ever the aim, at an average cost of 50 cents per capita. Now comes Dr. Richard Cabot, in a recent Ameri- can, sounding an urgent plea for a reorganization of the entire medical profession, when the doctor will not be paid to get one well, but to keep one so ; when the State will pro- vide free expert medical inspection of every kind for all its boys and girls, along with free and compulsory education, and will provide free medical treatment for those who need it. The University of California may serve as an ilistance of what has already been done. Seven thousand students pay $5 a year each toward a fund for the care of their health. This entitles them to free medical advice and inspection, and treatment in a most up-to-date hospital any and every day in the year if they need it. Some may gasp at the expense that this, given free to all its children, might entail for the State. It is cheaper, however, to spend pence on children than pounds on paupers, defectives, and crimi- nals. Ad(i together, however, the wasted cost and loss of mental output from retardation and elimination in our schools, where the work has either to be repeated the next year at the same expense or be lost entirely by child and State, and the cost of useless material carried in the cur- riculum of practically every public school in our land, and it will be seen that California's insurance for health is more than paid for every child in America ! This vital question, however, is not one of dollars and cents, but of the security for greater educational returns, and the saving effected, by bringing about physical, mental, and moral conditions which render future citizens more efficient for life. The most important and, in fact, the indispensable ad- junct to school health, next to medical inspection, is the RESPONSIBILITY FOR HEALTH IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 259 school nurse. The follow-up work is impossible without her. Before her introduction in the New York city schools only 10 per cent of the cases excluded from school for phys- ical troubles returned. After her introduction, 86 per cent returned. Through her cooperation, diphtheria cases have decreased two-thirds and scarlet fever five-sixths. The nurse gets into the home, prevents loss of time, and locates the cause of sickness and delinquency in a way im- possible for either teacher or doctor. In many places, where compulsory education is in force, she plays the double role of nurse and truant officer. She acts as inter- mediary, correlates the work of* clinic, home, and school, and is a teacher of practical applied hygiene to pupil, teacher, and parent. She is a potent possible factor also in the Americanization of our foreigners. We know the case where the teacher wrote to Johnny's foreign mother that Johnny must be kept clean in school, both for his own sake and for those around him. The answer swiftly came, fearfully and wonderfully constructed and spelled: "Jon aint no roze, dont smel him, lern him." It is the school nurse that can best help that ignorant mother to learn that John is a rose, in God's great garden of human life, influ- encing and influenced by all he meets, and that clean hands and bodies and clothes help to clean work and lives and hearts and souls. Another great means for the promotion of health in schools is instruction and practice in preventive care of the teeth, and dental work when needed. Of the very great number of school children examined, 50 per cent have been found with defective teeth. In one Southern city, where 2,200 were examined, 96 were defective, and not one child had had dental work of any kind. Now who can study with the toothache? In some of our Houston schools we have a dental hygiene catechism studied by the children, talks on care of the teeth by experts, and free clinic work when desired. We believe with Squeers, that the way to spell both "winder" and teeth is to spell them "correct" and then go wash them. In some of our schools we have tooth- brushes for each child, given by our dental association, and 260 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST daily toothbrush drills on the school grounds, where the teeth are thoroughly cleaned after the lunch is eaten. As an evidence of its fruit, we were rejoiced at a full-page write-up, in a great daily, of toothbrush drills in some of the Providence, R. L, schools, which they said were sug- gested by moving pictures, seen in Boston, of this work done in Houston, Tex. ! Experts declare that, if preventive dental work now started is sufficiently continued, within a few decades artificial teeth will be as unknown and as un- necessary, among civilized people, as they now are among the savages! We must not minimize in any way the necessity, in the schools, for proper feeding. Statistics conclusively show that improper feeding is more responsible than all else for race degeneracy and the increasing number of defectives. I heard the inimitable Sam Jones once tell of a woman who came to him with heart grieved and soul bowed, because she thought she had "lost her religion." He said there was nothing in the world the matter, except something that she had "et!" And just as true it is that Mary's pallor, Mar- tha's lassitude, and Johnny's pranks and truancy are greatly due to what they have "et," and sometimes what they have iiot "et." Contrary to popular belief, the great- est menace to health and society is not the underfed, but the overfed and badly fed. I have seen, in the cafeteria attached to the practice school of one of our greatest Ameri- can universities, a pampered child of the rich order and eat five different kinds of dessert for a single lunch ! Not only are sanitary lunch rooms needed in every school, where warm, economic, and wholesome lunches may be obtained by all, and where teachers and pupils m2ist take at least thirty minutes to sit at separate tables and eat their lunches in quiet and enjoyment, but where all is under the super- vision of an expert dietitian, who knows, practices, and teaches the proper balance of protein, fat, and carbohy- drate, of uncooked and bulky foods, and all the other pre- requisites to scientific, which is common-sense, cookery. In some of our Houston schools we have not stopped at proper feeding for school children, but have a baby clinic. RESPONSIBILITY FOR HEALTH IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 261 where all babies may be brought and measured by "better baby" standards, and where infant care and feeding and prenatal influence are studied by the mothers, from govern- ent pamphlets, and through the free and voluntary teach- ing of an expert woman physician. We had in our city not long ago, as I suspect you had in yours, lectures on how to keep active and useful, by a woman who claimed to be ninety-one years young! Her health rules boiled down were these : Study your diet, ex- ercise daily every muscle of the body, work worthily for self and humanity, keep serene, and feed your soul. Women paid her as much as $100 apiece for private les- sons, to learn truths which should have been taught them from infancy, and for a hundred years before they were born. Among our potent means for securing public health we must not fail to mention play. A noted judge of a juvenile court says 60 per cent of all truancy which leads to delinquency is caused by lack of proper playgrounds. Play is more necessary now than ever before in the his- tory of the world. Through the invention of labor-saving machinery muscular work has largely gone. The average school child's work is six hours a day, for ten months in the year, with additional home work of from one to four hours per day. These conditions result in decreased power to live, both as to length of time and as to efficiency. Every school in our land should have its ample, well-equipped playgrounds. Aside from enjoyment and physical upbuild, the psychologic fact remains that "a passive chest induces the things for which a passive chest stands," and the men- tal and moral results from organized play can never be told this side the final day of reckoning. Millions have been spent in our large cities on physical equipment. Yet, allow- ing just three yards square per child, only one child in ten could be given play room. Just room enough to play a game of craps or smoke a cigarette ! Is it a wonder, then, that these are among the favorite American juvenile diver- sions? Every school that needs it should have its baths and swimming pool — not only for cleanliness, health, and enjoy- 262 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ment, but as direct means toward preservation of life. The ologies and isms of life are great, within their proper place, but all else fades to insignificance when compared with knowledge, or practice, that teaches how to live, both lengthily and well. To sum up, we need medical inspection in our schools. We need the school visiting nurse who can weld together the work of the clinic, school, and home, and be a health teacher from personal cleanliness to sex hygiene. We need instruction and practice in the care of teeth and in proper feeding. We need ample playgrounds, with all the joy and health-giving equipment that thought and ingenuity can devise. We need simple health rules printed on the cover of every textbook. We need an auditorium where health talks may be given to the entire community, and where healthful, happy programs shall be a part of the daily cur- riculum. We need well-paid, well-trained, Christian teach- ers, who can keep healthy and happy themselves, and, by example as well as precept, teach physical, mental, and moral health and happiness. TEACHING HEALTH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS PROFESSOR JAMES P. FAULKNER, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY RAOUL FOUNDATION, ATLANTA, GA. The public health movement can hardly be said to have existed before the discoveries of Pasteur, Koch, and their colaborers, which resulted in the establishment of the germ theory of disease. Certainly it did not have, and could not sooner have had, any definite scientific basis or limitations. The enunciation of Pasteur's famous dictum, "It is with- in the power of man to cause all germ diseases to disappear from the earth," may be said both to have marked the be- ginning of the age of preventive medicine and to have given definite scope to the public health movement. Immediately the public health was seen to depend upon sanitation, hous- ing, nutrition, and disease recognized as an economic prob- TEACHING HEALTH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 263 lem, a sociological problem, an educational problem, educa- tional not only in the sense that it was a good subject for the popular lecturer, but a problem which the school would be expected to take a part in solving. And the schools were not slow in undertaking the task, but their methods were inadequate, and, in many instances, poor. Unfortunately this condition still obtains. Text- books on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene were rapidly introduced and classes set to work to commit to memory the names of all the bones and muscles, to learn the function of all the organs, and to memorize numerous rules, just as if these things had something to do with health. The want of the practical element in the presentation of the subject led many students to consider it just another text upon which they must be examined, something to be thoroughly hated, and a study, like many others, to be for- gotten as soon as possible. The textbook method is still widely, almost universally, used. Less than three months ago I visited a little country school where no attention was given to ventilation, no re- gard to the direction or the amount of light, no adjustment of desks, no separate drinking cups, no toilets whatever; and the teacher so ignorant himself and thoughtless of the worth of example as to spit upon the floor, except when he did not miss a crack at which he constantly aimed; and yet a splendid exhibition was given of the use of the textbook. I was to talk to the school on matters of health, but before I was introduced the teacher must show me how little they need any suggestions from me. After his questioning it developed that they knew the bones, could recite their names in singsong fashion, knew most of the muscles and could illustrate by movements those of the arms and hands. They also knew the number of teeth in the child and adult stages and the names of their divisions, biit there was no word concerning the preservation of the teeth or the use of the toothbrush. They could tell, in answer to the teacher's ques- tions, that there were two skins and could give the name of each, but there was nothing about bodily cleanliness or 264 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the necessity of soap. They knew that they had a heart and a stomach and some other organs, but there was noth- ing developed in the questioning to show how these organs were to be kept in a normal condition or the result of their abuse. This is an extreme case, of course, but one would think that the sound principle of education — learn by doing — would have made such an exhibition impossible anywhere long ago. Certainly the discoveries in medical science and the changes in our thought concerning the causes, preven- tion, and treatment of disease are as revolutionary as hu- man, and as helpful as anything that has occurred either in the field of education or theology. Dr. Victor C. Vaughn, then President of the American Medical Association, declared, in an address in Newport, Ky., in 1914, that nearly 85 per cent of the deaths that occur yearly are preventable. The statement is startling; and, from such an authority, does not invite dispute, but appeals for action. It calls for a program — a definite plan of campaign which should not be difficult to outline. All germ diseases and some of the so-called degenera- tive diseases, though incurable, are preventable; and sani- tation, scientific sanitation, offer^ the solution in the one case and normal living in the other. The warfare against disease must be therefore both offensive and defensive. The enemy may be attacked on his own ground or fortified against in anticipation of attack. The old way to health was sought through the pill, patent medicine, and pre- scription; the new way to health comes through the prin- ciple of indirection or prevention. A number of years ago a State agricultural lecturer in discussing his work with me declared that his department realized its mistake. "We have been trying to teach scien- tific agriculture to graybeards," he declared, "and we have failed. We shall not discard the method altogether, for a few may hear us, and we must keep up appearances ; but we are going to make our appeal to the children. We shall organize corn clubs and tomato clubs, and we shall make TEACHING HEALTH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 265 the schools our allies. We shall teach the parents through the children." "You are right," I said, "and we have made the same mistake. We can no more teach the graybeards health than you can teach them agriculture. We, too, are going to enlist the teachers and the schools. We shall continue our appeals to the public, but shall rely largely upon the chil- dren becoming the teachers of their parents." About the same time our State Board of Health caught the vision. "We have sufficient knowledge," they declared in a bulletin, "to reduce the death rate to a minimum, but we are lacking in machinery. We must enlist the teachers and the school children." The State Department of Educa- tion responded to the call for recruits by outlining a course of health instruction for every grade in every public school in the State, and prefaced the course by the statement that every school that year was to be measured by four yard- sticks: First, physical health; second, moral health: third, efficiency or ability to make a living; fourth, appreciation of things. A splendid program this, and it accomplished a great deal of good, but its effectiveness was discounted because it caught the teachers unprepared, and the campaign, there- fore, dwindled again to the proportions of a textbook course. Soon thereafter it was my privilege, reenforced by an exhibit car, to put the matter before the teachers directly in the institutes, mv first aim being to impress them with the importance of the problem and accustom them to think of themselves as public health agents. To do this it was only necessary to remind them of the non-medical factors that might be used in the public health campaign and the splendid results to be obtained thereby. Of course, I called their attention to the appeal of the State Board of Health and sought to inspire in them the spirit of the social worker or nurse and the vision and courage of the crusader. In the second place they were reminded of the power of example as a factor in teaching and urged to give imme- 266 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST diate attention, if necessary, to their own physical condi- tion. The possibility and importance of living up to "con- cert pitch" physically was emphasized and many sugges- tions of a helpful nature were made, the thought being that the teacher should radiate and illustrate health in the schoolroom, on the playground, and everywhere should lure to joyous, healthful living and lead the way. The appointments of the schoolroom, the grounds, and surroundings were not forgotten, and the possibility was stressed of the teacher making these conform to her ideals and thus become significant factors in the health movement through persuasion and the power of her personality. My third attempt was to discourage the use of the text- book in the class, and the teacher was urged to make only such use of it as necessary, to digest its contents and assimi- late them, but to take care to speak as one knowing and having authority and not as the quacks and dilettantes. The plea was also made to remove the subject entirely from the class of texts upon which examinations were to be re- quired, the object being to create a vital interest and to avoid a blighting aversion. It was suggested also that no specific time be fixed when health matters should be discussed, the idea being that it should come as a surprise and be looked forward to as a time of recreation and entertainment, a kind of excursion away from anything in the nature of drudgery into the fields of frolic and fun and inspiration to the highest and best physically. My next endeavor was an attempt to approach the sub- ject specifically, to illustrate the principle of indirection, to suggest a factor which, employed by the teacher, would not only bear immediate fruit, but seek forceful expression through the years to come. Attention was therefore called to the fact that filth and ugliness always do and always will vanish before the aesthetic sense, and that if the sense of the beautiful has lodgment in one's thought, it will find expression in the body and in the surroundings; that such a person can never be contented in a home of squalor and TEACHING HEALTH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 267 surrounded with conditions that breed disease. If the means of escape are not at hand, the aesthetic sense will manifest itself and the environment will be changed. I have urged, therefore, as the supreme factor in bringing about sanitary conditions, in combating the filth diseases, the cleaning up of the back yards, the back alleys, and the stable yards of the future, the inoculation by the teacher, through the power of suggestion, of every child in his care with the sense of the beautiful. Of course the teacher is cautioned and must be cautioned not to let his purpose be known. If he sometimes fails to get a response, if the object that appeals to him as beauti- ful fails to arouse a like expression in his pupils, he must not scold nor express disappointment, but continue his sug- gestions, searching through Nature's laboratories of field, and stream, of roadside and forest, of mountain and the star-spangled heavens for that which will interest and kindle a flame that is later to consume filth and ugliness, and that will later build the home and the city beautiful and healthful. But teaching by precept has and must continue to have a place in the program, and at this point the story is to be utilized. To illustrate this phase of the teaching, I have usually taken classes of children before the institutes and demonstrated the method of presenting the health subject, separate addresses, suitable to the first, second, and third grades, on one hand, and to the fourth and fifth on the other, and again to the upper grades, being given. In this work I seek only to give an example of what can be done, and always urge the teacher to use stories and outlines to begin with, if he needs them, but to call upon his own resources and to be constantly on the alert for something new that will illustrate the thought he wishes to impress. It has been my thought that talks of this nature need not be given more frequently than once every two weeks or once a month. And in city schools, where a special in- structor in physical training or a supervisor of play is em- ployed, he or she should be looked to for some of the ad- 2G8 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST dresses. A social-spirited doctor or other citizen may be judiciously used. Of course, the illustrations and stories should not relate simply to the sanitary program, but should cover the entire subject of the development of the body, or normal living. For the lower grades the Mother Goose rhymes can be changed into health rhymes and utilized. For the intermediate and higher grades demonstrations can be made of the effect of intemperance, the cigarette, im- proper diet, and certain forms <5f vice upon the natural defenders of the body — the white corpuscles — while pride in the body, respect for its beauty of form, and the desire to excel physically can be inculcated. And one is not con- fined to the use of stories, of course. They are used to illustrate and entertain, and along with them, though clothed in attractive form, may be imparted the very basic facts of health. If health is something worth working for and living for, and not something to be obtained through prayer and supplications alone, or to be bought at the drug store, it will be readily seen that it is ours to combat disease throughithe implantation of the principles of health in the school. Another factor that the teacher must use is play, or- ganized play. But again he must be cautioned not to let it be known that the object sought is health. Here the prin- ciple of suggestion is splendidly illustrated. The great advantage of play over work and systematic exercise lies in the fact that the interest is on the game, and the thought is taken away from the body and bodily conditions, thus giving the recuperative powers a chance. A final factor and one that has only recently come into vogue is the short play, of which there are now dozens suit- able for staging in the simplest one-room country school or the city high school. Different short plays emphasize the different features of the health movement, and not only impress upon the school in the most effective manner every phase of the health propaganda, but have almost an equally good effect upon the parents who are drawn to the school by the unusual programs. THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 269 I have made it a practice to give a book of these small plays to the teachers who, after hearing them described, expressed a desire to use them in their schools. The foregoing is an outline of health instruction as de- veloped during several years of experience in public health v^'ork in Kentucky, and for a little more than a year I have been advocating and putting into effect the same methods in my work with the Raoul Foundation in Georgia, the Department of Education being in thorough accord with the program, and in reality calling for more of my time and more demonstrations and illustrations of the method before institutes than I could possibly give. Just recently in Atlanta under the auspices of the Col- ored Anti-Tuberculosis Association we have introduced the plan in Jthe colored schools, and instead of sending special lecturers into the various schools during clean-up week, the teachers have met in two sections on several successive Thursday afternoons when definite instruction has been given to them. In other words, it is hoped to send the gospel of good health through the teachers to every child and into every home. THE CHILD AND HEREDITY REV. RICHARD W. HOGUE, D.D. We are all familiar with the ancient idiomatic sentence, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." I heard only recently of the outcome of the effort of the Chinese to re-translate this easily understood idiom into his foreign tongue; the result was the following somewhat astounding sentence: "The ghost is acquiescent, but the meat is not strong." I thought of this somewhat humorous illustration as it applies to the predicament of any man, even the highest specialist, who seeks to re-translate the simplicity of the child, so wholly without guile, into the psychology of social science. With this as an apology for one who is not a specialist in child study, but only an intense and passionate 270 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST lover of the child, I shall talk with you, in an informal fashion, along lines which I trust will be practically helpful in proportion as they are not scientifically phrased. Let me begin with two illustrations drawn from my sphere of service among criminals, in the midst of their families, and in the lives of their victims. Certainly this is a justifiable and fruitful field for illustration of the harm of an evil heredity of multitudes of children, particularly in our large cities. Gilbert Jones (we shall call him in order to avoid the use of his real name) is a young fellow of unusually fine physique and splendid mental equipment, with a good inheritancy and the environment of an unusually wholesome home. At 'the age of nineteen, surrounded by friends and in a life of active occupation, Gilbert is accused of and then convicted of theft. The evidence proves that it has "become a habit with him. The general conclusion was that here was another young fellow living beyond his means and in the gay life — swept off his feet. This, however, is the real diag- nosis revealed in the searching interview with his father and mother: For the first six months when his life began, in that real beginning before he entered the world, his mother was stricken with a strange malady which baffled the physicians, robbed her of vitality, and brought her to the point where her own life was seriously endangered, and the unanimous verdict of the specialists called in was that the child was undoubtedly dead. Through an unusual cir- cumstance that led to the discovery by accident of a treat- ment for the mother, the next three months brought the gradual restoration of her strength. In desperate antici- pation of a sub-normal and perhaps mentally defective child, the anguish of her trial was spent. To the astonishment of all, there came a little infant of maivelous perfect physical proportions, who in later years developed an unusual intellect. Seemingly, there was no problem of heredity for this child to battle against. In reality there was a serious and a tragic one. It was discovered when the boy was at the age of eighteen that his moral sense had not developed THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 271 beyond the age of a child of eight, and that it was accom- panied by an apparent absence of any sense of the difference between his right of possession and that of other people. Without shame and without fear, as a little child, he would take things belonging to others. This was known to his mother. This was her battle; in the secret struggle of prayer, in the earnest oversight of her boy's conduct, and in the patient effort toward his training. It was only when a crime against society was detected that the power of this subtly harmful heredity was revealed. The second instance is at the other extreme, and is from that abundant field of physical defects, but with their pecu- liar application to social wrong. Ralph's inheritance, mor- ally and mentally, was above the average. His mother, therefore, was baffled by his failure to keep up with his class as a little lad in the public school. She sent him to the doctor, and as a result a serious defect in his eyesight was discovered and he was compelled to wear glasses. It was at a time and in a community where the wearing of glasses by little children was a most unusual sight. Ralph's nature was high-strung, sensitive, and proud. You can quickly realize, therefore, the effect upon him of the jeers and taunts and fun-making which greeted his first appearance at school with the big wide glasses covering a large part of his small child face. It drove his little soul back into its sensitive shell. He said to himself: "I am not responsible for these weak eyes; God is. I do not deserve to be shunned and laughed at by my playmates. It is their fault." All the while, buried deep beneath the crust of his silent resent- ment and willful separation, there lay the yearning for companionship that is so large a part of every child. The opportunity came a little later in the alleys and the pool rooms. He was taught a few tricks, the practice of which meant fellowship, and in his quest of fellowship he lost his half-formed sense of moral responsibility. He was detected in a misdemeanor and punished beyond all proportion either to the act or the really guiltless motive behind it. Once again he held himself less responsible than society, and in 272 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST resentment against the law that with all of its wisdom could so little understand his nature and could so inordi- nately punish his misdemeanor, he bagan the career of crime which brought a bank robber, safe blower, and train robber. He spent seventeen years behind the bars, and if I can give no other suggestion which you will carry with you from this Conference, let me suggest that you at least get a copy of the book that is written by this man whom I now love to count as my friend, and who is living a life of fidelity to his splendid wife and child as well as to the laws of good citizenship. It is entitled, "Seventeen Years in the Under- world," by Wellington Scott, which of course is not his real name. It is not, as its title seems to suggest, a description of underworld scenes and characters, but an illuminating, inside interpretation of the mind of the criminal and his treatment by society and the law, with particular emphasis upon his treatment as a child. To my mind one of the most deadly heritages of the child is what we might term the negative inheritance which affects multitudes of children born to parents whose lives are with- out any positive motive power, creative ambition, or intel- lectual stimulus. Think for a moment of what a tragedy lies behind the indictment that as a whole the American people are a non-reading people, so far as real literature is concerned. How little of history, poetry, music is read nowadays ; how little of anything but the daily newspaper, of which one of our Senators has recently said : "There is nothing so dead as yesterday's paper." And the rich? To what do they turn as a relief from the satiety of their lives of luxury? Generally to the society column or the stock market. Now all this goes into the make-up of the child in that nine-months' period which fre- quently forms a larger part of t\\e education of the future child than the first ten years of its life in the world, that period in which not merely bone and blood and shape are given to the body, but stimulus and bent and tendency and power are stored up in the mental and spiritual being. What can we expect from such an inheritance but just what wo are getting — a complexity of problems, an enormity of sub- THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 273 normal and abnormal beings, and an increasing rather than a decreasing supply of victims to every possible form of tejnptation? One of our government's pure food inspectors told me recenth that a gentleman out West in opening a can of oysters found in it a man's thumb. This incident stands to me as a symbol of what is going on every day in our great cities. The nerves, the joy, the sunshine, the minds, the opportunities, the consciences of little children are being canned in a process as steady and relentless as it is pos- sible for human ingenuity to develop and human greed to devise. I have seen mothers who ought to be at home where they had left children — many of them almost on the eve of bringing children into life — work with feverish speed, according to our modern piece-work pay, in canneries and in factories. The effect of all this is enormous injustice and untold waste, to say nothing of its moral and spiritual aspects. We have but to ask the question in order to answer it in the same breath — What will the next generation, and the next, and the next be if this process is allowed to con- tinue? What is our attitude toward it? What is our inter- est in it? That of indifferent citizenship, which is as great a crime as deliberate wrong, or that of receiving profits in the dividends or products of those industries which coin motherhood and childhood into cash. Let us remember that the environment and occupation of to-day create the inheritance of to-morrow ! "No fledgeling' feeds the father bird, No chicken feeds the hen, No kitten mouses for the cat — This glory is for men. "We are the wisest, strongest race — Lord, may our praise be sung! The only animal alive That feeds upon its young!" Of course every child has a right to be born with a body free from inherited diseases. There is no need to dwell on this subject to this group. I mention it only to suggest to 18 274 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST you a most important movement, just in its beginning, to which I would have you lend all the force of your backing — whenever, wherever, and however you may. I refer to the movement on the part of an increasing number of fearless and social-minded physicians who are seeking to viake all venereal diseases as reportable as smallpox or scarlet fever. Above almost everything else, the child has an inalien- able right to a home. You doubtless think that this goes without saying. It also goes without sanction to an alarming extent throughout this favored, civilized land of ours. Reflect for a moment upon these facts culled from the most recent news letter of the University of North Carolina : "Our homeless people form three-fifths of our entire population in the country at large. In North Carolina 52 per cent of all of our dwellings in town and country regions are occu- pied by renters; 1,180,000 of our people of both races are landless and homeless. Twenty-eight States make a better showing in ownership of homes and farms, and seventeen a poorer showing. In Asheville, Charlotte, and Wilmington two-thirds of the people live in rented dwellings, in Raleigh 70 per cent, Durham 71 per cent, Winston 72 per cent. Greensboro leads in home ownership, and yet 62 per cent of her people are without homes. In Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Boston twenty people in the hundred own all the dwell- ings. In Manhattan and the Bronx ninety-four people in the hundred are renters. Upon an average a little more than half of our farm tenants in the South move every year. In some States the ratio of change is larger." There is no need to dwell on the effect of this anomalous reversion to a prac- tice of barbarism upon the children to whom home is a right and a necessary blessing. THE child's unsocial INHERITANCE Take the conversation of the average husband and wife (when they are caught in the rare act of conversing) in the average home, around the table, or in the sitting room, where the eager ears of the little children are open to the permanent impression of everything they hear. It is just as the time when the subconscious absorption by the child of THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 275 the ideas and ideals which it hears is apt to produce the most formative effect upon the temper, tone, character, and outlook of the child. And yet that conversation is, as a rule, not only superficial and petty, but miserably self- centered ; it is a succession of trivialities concerning details of their narrow self-interests, their engagements, their dress, their automobile, their vacation. What is more cer- tain than the implanting within the child of the unsocial, the individualistic, the selfish spirit? It has become a proverb that our greatest men have come from the country, and this fact is attributed in large measure to the bigness and freedom and vision which they there gain. I am prone to attribute it as much, if not more, to the neighborliness of country life, to the common consciousness of the oneness of the people's joys and the people's sorrows, as well as to the fact that everything seems to belong to everybody. There is not the separating, the isolating and dividing process which is "the life of our great cities. The child grows up in the sight of the great woods, and is not told that they are the property of Mr. So-and-So, the pastures are free, the daisies belong to all, the streams, the great broad sky — al! these are a part of the child's subconscious inheritance of a great, kindly, inclusive, generous world. In our cities children grow up conscious thai everything is claimed by somebody — from the jitney-bus to the Wool- worth sky-scraper. The flowers are owned by the florist and must be bought with money, or if owned by the city must not be plucked for fear of a policeman. There is not even the larger social consciousness of the community as a family-unit owning its own utilities, the very arteries that are as necessary in linking life to life as the arteries of the separate body are to its unity and health. These are owned and controlled by small groups of men who manipu- late them and their profits, as well as the cost for their use, behind the closed doors of corporation offices. To me there is a vital connection between the dwarfing of the social con- sciousness and the narrowing of the social vision of the child and the effect of private ownership of the public utili- ties in the great corporate home life of the city of the child. 276 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Let us go back feeling that every child is your child and my child, that the heart that loves childhood may be more truly a parent-heart than that of a mother or father who has neither the consciousness nor the interpretation of real parenthood. Let us remember that, in a sense, to be an adult is to be a parent, and that to foster and protect and love to the uttermost every child may bring a deeper joy and a more profound help into our lives than the selfish sense of private possession of a child whom we call our own. In doing this we are just responding to an eternal law of response that God plants in us. We are not forcing ourselves to do anything abnormal ; and, above all, we are not arousing by compulsion a sense of a superior benevo- lence and lofty dictation from above to the child below. We are instead appropriating for ourselves the spirit of the Christ, who once long ago set the child in the midst of a critical and alienating group as an eternal symbol that childhood must ever be in the midst of our civilizlition and in the center of our hearts — supreme. The other night I was in the smoking compartment of a Pullman car with a group of men who were engaged in conversation rather more jocular and profane than one is apt to find nowadays. As I sat there, I wondered what I might say, and how say it, to help change not only the conversation but the concep- tion of life voiced by these men. I did not have to speak at all, for suddenly the curtain at the door parted and a young father entered with a little baby in his arms about two years of age. He sat the child down in one of the seats and began to prepare it for its berth. Over the lips of eveiy man who had spoken coarsely but a moment before spread a smile that was pure and kind and loving, and every hand eagerly sought to help the father with the child. To every man there seemed to come a joyous sense of sharing the responsibility, almost the possession of that little child. What we need is to carry this consciousness with us every- where, not merely for the child that unexpectedly comes into the Pullman where we are, but for the child that goes regularly, all too regularly, and in all too great numbers to the factory, the mine, and the field. THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 277 In our work for child welfare let us avoid and refute the false philosophy with its consequent discouragement of all reform, that there is any such thing as a "necessary evil," remembering, as another puts it, that if it is necessary it is not an evil, and if it is evil it is not necessary. Return to your homes determined to make a closer acquaintance with politics. Remember that politics con- trols or conceals human welfare in a larger measure than anywhere else in life. Bear in mind, when we deplore cor- rupt politics and bad government, that the government of eveiy city, no matter how bad, is as good as the people deserve. "The indifference of the good is the opportunity of the bad," and the political boss who barters the welfare of child-life for preferment or for money is at least more honest in being open in his profession than the respectable church member whose indifference makes the political boss possible. Carry with you the wholesome verdict of the wise colored preacher who was asked his opinion of the doctrine of election : "I ain't very lamed in de Scriptures, and I ain't never studied no theology, but de doctrine of election is as clar as daylight to me. It's jes like dis: de Lord is votin' for you, de Devil is votin' agin you ; ivhichever way you vote de 'lection goes." With aH my soul I plead with you who go back into church life and membership to do some missionary work in your Sunday schools, to extend their studies, their sym- pathies, their interest, their consciousness of responsibility beyond the class room, the parish, and the denomination into the alleys, the motion-picture theaters, and the joyless lives of overworked and underfed children. Seek to make your Sunday school and your church what Christ meant that his kingdom should be — not a separate fold to shelter saved souls, but an arsenal to furnish the implements of service to humanity — a force which only finds itself in losing itself. We can do this and all else that I have suggested and much more, if we ivill. It is the ivill to do that is the great need of the average church and the typical church member to-day. If one-tenth of the knowledge we have, one-tenth of the opportunity we face, and one-tenth of the people who 278 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST are at heart ready to serve were organized and led to do the things that can be done now without compromise and without delay, we should shortly see the day when it would be no longer necessary to realize that the words of Mrs. Browning are as true to-day and in America as they were in her time and in our own nation : "The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west. "But the young, young children, O my brothers! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others In the country of the free." VII. LIFE MORE ABUNDANT FOR ALL The New Era The Abolition of Poverty The Value of the Social Worker to the Community at Large Work for the Handicapped Policemen as Welfare Workers THE NEW ERA BY SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON It is coming! it is coming"! The day is just a-dawning When man shall be to fellow-man a helper and a brother ; When the mansion, with its gilded hall, its tower and arch and awning. Shall be to hovel desolate a kind and foster-mother. When the men who work for wages shall not toil from morn till even. With no vision of the sunlight, nor flowers, nor birds a-singing; When the men who hire the workers, blest with all the gifts of heaven, Shall the golden rule remember, its glad millen- nium bringing. The time is coming when the man who cares not for another Shall be accounted as a stain upon a fair creation ; Who lives to fill his coffers full, his better self to smother. As blight and mildew on the fame and glory of a nation. Tho hours are growing shorter for the millions who are toiling. And the homes are growing better for the millions who are yet to be ; And the poor shall learn the lesson, how that waste and sin are spoiling The fairest and the finest of a grand humanity. It is coming! it is coming! and men's thoughts are growing deeper; They are giving of their millions as they never gave before; They are learning the new gospel, man must be his brother's keeper, And right, not might, shall triumph, and the selfish rule no more. THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY RABBI RUDOLPH I. COFFEE, PH.D., CHICAGO, ILL. Popular views, which have been held for centuries, give way slowly. Most people believe that poverty is a condi- tion which can never be overcome. They accept it as a matter of course, and offer charity to alleviate the suffering of poor people. We believe that poverty is a disgrace to a civilized na- tion. In the past, people sought to mitigate poverty by doling out alms in the name of charity. In truth, this word "charity" has stopped the hands of the clock of progress more than a thousand years. It has done positive harm, more than almost any other word in the dictionary. The Old Testament knows nothing of "charity." The word is not even found within its pages. Neither is its use in the New Testament at all that with which we have in- vested it. True, we read in Deuteronomy xv. 11: "For the needy shall not cease out of the land." This merely meant that people whose ancestors had been slaves for centuries would not become independent and self-supporting in one generation. Therefore, Moses urged Israel to be kind, gen- erous, open-hearted to the weak and the needy. That Moses so thought, is plain from another verse in the same chapter, where we read, "IF there be among you a poor man" (v. 7) . Moses did not believe in poverty. There would be none if righteousness and justice ruled the nation. What did Moses propose, if not charity? His whole idea was one of justice. The prophets echoed and reechoed the thought that "justice, only justice shalt thou pursue." In our day the spirit of the ancient lawgiver is again being recognized, and it is said that "the greatest discovery of the twentieth century is the rediscovery of the Old Testament." In the spirit of justice we shall overcome poverty and rele- gate it to the past with feudalism and slavery. The abolition of poverty presupposes the right of every person to be well born. This means that the unfit may not propagate their kind. It implies the acceptance of the 282 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST broad fundamentals of Eugenics. It accepts the general thesis of birth control. Before poverty can be abolished, the Jukes, Kallikaks, and Ishmaels must leave no succes- sors. We argue for quality in the next generation, not quantity. If there be a sincerely devout friend who believes this is contrary to the Bible in its command that we must "multiply and replenish the earth," I ask. What religion teaches that we should multiply and fill the earth with idiots, imbeciles, and blind babies? How are we creating man in the image of God when the army of insane, epileptic, and other incurables steadily increases? Before we can abolish poverty, we must absolutely abolish this sinful waste of human lives. Poverty will continue as long as we tolerate warfare. How a sincere and devout believer in the Bible can advocate war, passes comprehension. Is not Jesus called the "Prince of Peace"? A great German critic has said that the finest expression in the world's literature is the Messianic dream of Micah. Its sublimest utterance is, "Nation shall no longer war against nation." War spells waste, and waste mothers poverty. When nations cease wholesale murder, the second thought of Micah will follow, "They shall dwell every man under his own vine and fig tree." When shall we abolish poverty? When every man will own his own home; when we shall be free economically and live independently. Through government aid, there must be employment agencies throughout the country, so that no man desiring work shall walk around empty-handed. This willingness to work presupposes the ability to work. The public schools in America fail, in their full duty to American citizenship, unless they 'train their pupils, not so much in the dead languages, but to take their proper places in the industrial life of to-day. A pupil should not receive his diploma be- cause he has passed through eight or nine years of school- ing and is fourteen or fifteen years of age. That gradua- tion certificate should be withheld until the pupils are so trained that they are able to earn their own living. How- ever we may interpret the Garden of Eden story, God surely THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY 283 intended every man to dwell in a Garden of Eden. We must create a public opinion to fight unceasingly to make every city a Garden of Eden, clean, healthy, and free from disease. Figures show that over six hundred thousand per- sons whose deaths could be prevented will pass away this year. What a shocking economic loss, more than a bil- lion dollars yearly! What a terrible contribution to pov- erty ! Hitherto we blamed God for the plague and the pes- tilence; now we know they can be prevented by man. To- day we place our medical experts on duty at the harbor of New Orleans. Our sanitary engineers clean Panama of its malaria and drive out the mosquito before our workmen commence to dig the canal. We shall overcome poverty just as quickly as we are educated to blame man, and not God, for the terrible catastrophes which issue in such ap- palling loss of life. Whether it be the Johnstown flood, the sinking of a Titanic or Lusitania, the overflow of the Missis- sippi River, or the Eastland disaster, all were man-made dis- asters. Every one was preventable and never should have happened. Given the fundamental conception that life is sacred, that every baby shall be brought into the world with a healthy heritage, that every child needs proper schooling, that every man and woman desiring work should obtain it, and poverty will be considerably lessened on earth. Our great problem is to create public opinion and make the start. Two stupendous conflicts are now raging. The one is in Europe — brother is fighting brother, governments are spending millions in murderous warfare, and the hero is he who can invent some still more deadly man-killing instru- ment. Gazing into the future with vision, I see another con- flict raging — brother is fighting with brother to better the world. Men are striving to uplift and not to kill down their neighbors. This warfare is a silent one. The laboratory prolongs life by combating the germs of disease and dis- covering the secrets of God's natural laws. To this army we pledge our allegiance. We want to fight — not to kill our fellow-man for the glory of God, but more truly to honor 284 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST God through spreading; happiness and joy among his chil- dren. May America be the great recruiting ground in which this Messianic army shall be organized! God grant us the privilege of contributing something, however small, to this great warfare, which will only cease when disease shall have been swept away, war overcome, sin blotted out, and poverty banished from civilization. THE VALUE OF THE SOCIAL WORKER TO THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE CHARLES H. PATTERSON, SECRETARY CHARITY ORGANIZATION, NEW ORLEANS One of the achievements of which we are proudest here in the widespread delta of the Mississippi is our reclama- tion work. And you all know what it means. Not only the draining of the swamps, the clearing of the snake-infested jungle, the wiping out of plague-bearing insects, the re- moval of a constant menace and mischief from our great river valley ; but, more than all this, our drainage systems give us in the place of noxious swamps such fertile soils as the ripening sunshine never fails and no drought can ever parch. Our reclamation work, in the place of the worth- less jungle, gives us orange groves and cornfields and cat- tle pastures and truck gardens such as were never known. In this creative worth of our reclamation work, I find a parable of our social service. The social worker must, to begin with, be a rescuer. But he doesn't end with that. Whether as a visitor of a charity organization, a nurse of the Anti-Tuberculosis League or of the Child's Welfare Association, whether as an agent of the Travelers' Aid So- ciety, a probation officer of the Juvenile Court, an official of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a settlement worker, or what not, every effort of his curative work done in behalf of some distressed or afflicted person or family has the same creative result as we find in our delta reclamation: it upbuilds and enriches as well as res- VALUE OF SOCIAL WORKER TO COMMUNITY AT LARGE 285 cues. The visitor of the charity organization goes out into the morass of destitution to rescue the submerged ; and, like one of our reclamation engineers, she makes her skilled survey, she measures accurately the depths of distress she has to deal with, she investigates the conditions as they are, and then applies the necessary remedies. If there is sickness in the family, she immediately calls the doctor and thus prevents the possible spread of contagion. While she prevents children under the legal age from working and thus violating the child labor laws, she insists upon those of school age attending school. She reconciles differences between husband and wife. She converts the thief and the crook. She sees that unsanitary premises are, as far as possible, made wholesome. She does her best to prevent or cure indolence and jobless idleness and shiftlessness by securing suitable employment for the unemployed, and then sees to it that they go to work. She endeavors with the help of her organization to lessen the ravages of the great white plague, and to check its possible spread through infection from the person afflicted. The air and sunshine she gets admitted into shut-in homes are as invigorating to the well as they are healing to the sick. Through her con- stant efforts she helps to reduce infant mortality and give the little ones a vigorous start in life. The agent of the Travelers' Aid Society is continually giving her protection to young women who arrive in our city, endangered by the temptations and allurements of the cabarets and the glare of lights in the restricted district, and she sets them on the path of safety and happiness. The officers of the juvenile court and the children's society are eternally vigilant in their protective care and work of reformation among juvenile delinquents. And the settlement worker is ever- lastingly trying to better the social and domestic conditions in her own neighborhood. Now the one great claim I want to make in this short speech of mine is just this: That the efficient social worker in doing what I have barely out- lined, in solving the problems and remedying the ill condi- tions of her charges, is at the same time creating good health and amassing future wealth for the community. 286 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Just as our physical reclamation work puts fertility and peace and prosperity where rotting and waste and parasitic plague were rife, so our social service, by overcoming idle- ness, degeneracy, and parasitic beggary, not only insures the general public from endless irritation and spoliation, but induces honest effort and worthy achievement in the place of blood-sucking dependence. Look at a single local illustration. Last year the charity organization of this city had the handling of the relief for the local sufferers from the disastrous storm of September 29. Out of a total of 1,852 groups or families applying for relief, 556 were found to he fraudulent — not storm sufferers at all. Tempted into graft by hearing that the city was giving away groceries and other supplies with lavish generosity, they expected to get a finger in the pie. However, owing to the efficiency of the trained social workers who handled this distribution, and their ability to discriminate between the worthy and the fraudulent, not only was several thousand dollars saved to relieve the real and pitiful suffering caused by the storm, but the tendency of many to lapse from self-support and self-respect into graft and pauper- ism was averted. And this is but one instance of many. In our campaigns against false appeals for charity, against fraudulent solicitors — such as we have in women begging money to "buy wheel chairs for their crippled children," or "to send their consumptive sons to Colorado," or one-legged men so lively in collecting funds for artificial legs they will never wear, because it spoils their game, or pretended ladies soliciting money for non-existent Homes for Blind Babies; or lead-pencil fakirs who hate to sell a pencil, and countless other frauds — few realize how much of wasteful parasitic life is not alone thus checked, but, better still, is turned back to usefulness and self-support. Only the social worker knows our reclamation work in its less apparent and yet direct and most beneficient results. And if you, welcome guests of our good old city, can only get the oppor- tunity while here to visit some of our great delta reclama- tion areas, you will realize what it means to change the stagnant swamp, the infested air, the sunless jungle into WORK FOR THE HANDICAPPED 287 a land of sunshine and breeze and fruitfulness and beauty. How much of this comes into the experience of the social worker and gives him inspiration, you in the service of our sacred cause already know. WORK FOR THE HANDICAPPED MISS ELIZABETH OILMAN, BALTIMORE, MD. Those of us who have visited free dispensaries and watched the continual stream of people passing in for ad- vice and out again with a bottle of medicine can easily realize that the cure can, in many cases, be only begun by the medical care received by many visits to the most expert physicians or even by hospital treatment. This has been felt so strongly by the medical authorities that in many hospitals social service departments have been established to study the home conditions of the patient, and to follow up with after-care and after-cure — trained social workers, and volunteers working with them, visiting the patients in their homes and trying to find out whether there are con- ditions unfavorable to recovery. There are many such unfavorable conditions, but we are only studying one — the work or occupation to which the patient returns after treatment, in order to earn his daily bread, and often that of a family dependent upon him. You have perhaps heard of the man who was dis- missed as cured, but told not to carry heavy weights and to avoid going upstairs. Soon he returned to his physician in very bad shape ; but when upon questioning it was found that he had returned to his trade of hod carrier, his condi- tion was not surprising. Nor would the possibilities of continued health be much better if a painter, suffering from lead-poisoning, should return to his trade; nor for the tubercular woman in a crowded, unsanitary room ; nor for others numbered, alas, by the thousands through our broad country, whose working conditions are incompatible with a permanent return to health and self-dependence. 288 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Abroad there are such vast numbers of men who have been too seriously injured in the war to return either to the army or to their own trades, that the study is being taken up very seriously and from all sides. An interesting piece of work has been done by motion picture films to ascertain exactly what fingers are needed to run various machines, and trade schools for the wounded are being established. This is being done in countries suffering from the great war; but it behooves us just as truly, if not on such a large scale, to help those who have fallen by the wayside in the great army of industry. There are three courses that may be followed by those dismissed from hospitals or dispensaries : 1. Return to old employment, causing recurrence of old diseases and return to hospital. This may be repeated many times by one man. Indeed, it is on the records of one hospital that a man returned there nineteen times, only to die in the end. Think of the waste of that man's strength and of the economic efficiency of that institution, which at the same expense could have cured twenty men. 2. A dismissed patient returns to his home, looks in vain for a position suited to his strength, becomes discour- aged and gets the out-of-work habit, drops into depend- ency, if not into mendicancy, and he and his family must be supported by a relief-giving society — again a great ex- pense to the charitable public, and a loss to citizenship. 3. The third possible course is by far the most compli- cated and difficult, but the only one having the basis of humanity and economic efficiency. It is to give the patient vocational guidance, if possible by a trained psychologist, as to what employment he is able to perform with his phys- ical and mental make-up; and then to give him suitable training for this work; and, lastly, to get him into a per- manent self-supporting position either in a workshop run on a business basis for just such cases, or, if it proves pos- sible, in the general world of industry. This is indeed a very difficult and complicated problem, but we maintain that it is practicable and will reward the WORK FOR THE HANDICAPPED 289 efforts of physicians, social workers, and philanthropists to an almost incredible extent. The only work of this kind that has been organized for a generation is that for the blind, and therefore we natu- rally find the best results in these institutions. Let me give you one or two facts from this work in my own State of Maryland: From the School for the Blind 70 per cent of the graduates are self-supporting, and in the Workshop for the Blind, organized but eight years ago, the treasurer's report shows that in the last two years over $54,000 has been paid in salaries and wages to 170 blind persons, be- sides over 200 who are being taught in their own homes. An interesting instance of self-support is that of women cured in sanatoria for the tubercular who remain there as nurses. In hospitals for the insane the handi- crafts reach a high development — weaving, basketry, rug- making. These last two instances, however, are for work within the institutions, while my plea to-day is for schools and shops for dismissed patients. Experiments along these lines are being made in every part of the country with very gratifying success, and we can find the best summary of these undertakings in a small volume called "The Work of Our Hands," by Dr. H. J. Hall, of Marblehead, published by Moffat, Yard & Co. We long for an appropriation from one of the great philan- thropic foundations for an adequate experiment; but until that is given we must do our best with the means at our command. The overhead expenses must at first be large for salaries of trained workers and purchase of equip- ment, and the work must in each case be suited to the capabilities, both mental and physical, of the worker. In Baltimore, where we have started a very small experimental workshop, training a dozen men, cripples, cardiac, nephritic, and nervous patients, to make toys, nur- sery furniture, and decorating flowerpots, we find that the majority of them have not a high intellectual efficiency. Out of the thirteen examined by the Yerkes point scale tests, ten ranked with children between the ages of eight and a half and thirteen and a half. This was due in most 19 290 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST cases to insufficient schooling and lack of training. This shows another difficulty of the workshop, but it is only by facing difficulties resolutely that we can gain results in such problems; so I have not hesitated to place them before you. The encouragement and pleasure in the work comes from the appreciation and fine cooperation shown by the men themselves, and the consciousness that we are not only helping these particular people who sorely need our help, but that we are "doing our bit" in the great work of pre- venting men and women from falling into the pitiably large number of dependents on public and private bounty. POLICEMEN AS WELFARE WORKERS D. HIDEN RAMSEY, COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SAFETY, ASHEVILLE, N. C. Ten years ago the policeman was commonly regarded as a legalized bully whose sole ambition in life was to vaunt the authority which an undiscerning government reposed in him, a peculiarly bulky and uniformed shape of neces- sary evil who came into power by virtue of his party serv- ices. Unfortunately he was essential to the enforcement of the knock-down laws of society, and as such was endured. To-day no truer index of the municipal progress of this country can be found than in the gradual enlargement of police duties to include labors which were formerly re- garded as absolutely foreign to the accustomed routine of the policeman's daily life. Under the most advanced system for the selection of the personnel of a municipal police department the officer must satisfy the most rigid physical requirements ; he must be of irreproachable character; he must be of courteous address ; he must be mentally alert and must possess infinite courage and judgment. His primary duties are to preserve the peace, to enforce the law, to protect life and property, to prevent and detect crime, and to arrest violators of the POLICEMEN AS WELFARE WORKERS 291 law. He is vested with more power than any other official of our city government, for in a sense he embodies the sovereignty of this government. There is more salary and more dignity attaching to other offices. But who has such summary control over the liberties of the citizens? There is romance to his work, for it often carries, him into danger as he stands as the buffer between the law-abiding citizen and the criminal element, between the city and those things th^t are antagonizing the peace and health of the city. Some one has defined an ambassador as being a glorified messenger boy, conveying the greetings of his nation to another nation and, in a sense, reflecting in his official demeanor the majesty of his country. And we might with propriety refer to the policeman as being, in a way, the glorified messenger of his city, carrying into the lives of the great body of citizens the mandates and ideals of his government. There is a significance to his uniform and to his badge and to his military bearing; there is a mean- ing to the pomp and circumstance that surround him in his daily life. No government, however just and enlight- ened, can persist long unless in emergencies it can resort to a judicious exercise of force in compelling obedience to the obligation which it imposes upon its members. The policeman is the instrument of force that the city employs in securing adherence to its laws. Ofttimes it is necessary for him to resort to violence in preserving the public peace, and to protect him in such crises we clothe him with great power and greater responsibility. But under the new dispensation the municipal police- man is something more than a mere proponent of force who is employed to do the scavenger work of organized society. We are coming to look upon him as the field agent of that gentler, more idealistic thought which is now domi- nating the policies of all progressive cities. While he still plays his role as the disciplinarian of a delinquent and an immoral people, he is also their teacher. In his daily rounds, which carry him into all the neighborhoods of a crowded city, he sees much that goes on under the clean, 292 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST lawful exterior of his community ; he sees much of the seamy side of municipal life. And the thoughtful cities are teaching him to use this knowledge in serving all the pur- poses of his government. We have now introduced into our police administration that same principle of economy of time and space and equipment which has brought such success to the Gary system of public schools. The American policeman is gradually developing into what the Continen- tal policeman has been these many years — something more serviceable than a mere arresting officer. Our cities are now administering their police departments under the con- viction that the officer should use his knowledge and time in assisting all of the many activities of his government. This enlargement of police duties has probably evi- denced itself more dramatically in the realm of health and sanitation. This may be due to the fact that the policeman is merely reflecting in his official conduct the temper of the times, which is dem.anding greater emphasis on the protec- tion of the public health. It also springs from the logic of the circumstances. In the first place, the health administration of a city must be regarded as being peculiarly a police function when the actual details of inspection and remedial action are con- sidered. Truly enough there must be the technical knowl- edge behind it all, determining the policies and directing the lines along which definite action must be taken. This technical knowledge must be written into the prohibitions of legislation. But to secure the enforcement of the health laws the outward appearance of force is frequently neces- sary. Too often men must be convinced against their own will and judgment that a condition which they harbor is dangerous to the health of themselves and of the great body of people. It is a peculiar circumstance when we are forced to tax ourselves to protect our lives and property against our own ignorance and obstinacy and dereliction. The average urban resident may sneer at much of the mock dignity of the policeman's life, but for all this he respects his au- POLICEMEN AS WELFARE WORKERS 293 thority. He looks upon his police officer rather much in the same manner that a witty Hindoo regarded his idol- god : "You are ugly, but you are powerful, therefore I bow to you." The same power which we delegate to our police- men is the power which is ordinarily necessary to secure obedience to all the laws enacted for the preservation of health. The term "public health" has a deeper content now than at any other previous time. We have reached the stage when willful disobedience of the laws designed to guard the public health assumes a criminal character. This view of the situation is brought home to us with peculiar force by the recent newspaper story which reported how an infamous murderer took the life of his victim by inoculat- ing him with the germs of a dangerous disease. A man who consciously endangers the health of others is just as culpable as a person who handles a deadly weapon in such a manner as to imperil human lives. This evolution is impressing upon us more forcibly the police character of public health administration. For another reason, it is peculiarly appropriate that the police officer should be the apostle of health. Before he can become eligible for appointment, he must pass a physical examination sufficiently strict to satisfy the authorities that he is able to endure the most arduous labors. We tell him that he can best serve us by keeping his body clean and healthy. Of all the city employees, we exact a greater meas- ure of personal health from him. Why not deputize him to carry this same gospel into the homes of the hundreds of citizens whom he must see every day in the discharge of his duties? No public official meets a larger number of people in their intimate daily life ; no public official has the same opportunities to observe the conditions that environ the bulk of the people in their home surroundings. The time is fast coming in police administration when we will judge the efficiency of an officer, not by the number of arrests that he makes, but rather by his ability to keep his beat free from crime and disease and the evil effects, 294 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST generally, of poverty and ignorance. He will still retain his character as an instrument of preparedness against crime, but we will also use him as an instrument of preparedness against disease which is most often the mother of crime. He will travel his rounds with eyes open for all conditions that may be hostile to any of the varied purposes of a city government. And in his attitude toward the people, in the warnings which he must issue and in the advice which he must give, he will be the friend rather than the enemy of the people whom he is privileged to serve. The health program of our municipalities is indeed a courageous undertaking. Every city should pledge itself to the solemn determination that public health is a public asset and should obligate itself to a full exercise of its gov- ernmental powders in checking the spread of disease and in making healthy and wholesome the environment of the city-dwelling man. It is a proud boast and it demands a faith of triple brass to bring its achievement. There is such a liberal portion of communism to our city life and manners. In a city we are always deriving something from the intimate contact with our fellows — ideas and strength of character and the popular viewpoint and diseases. It is a great democratic jumble with the eternal congestion and the constant battling for the boon of elbowroom. Every good movement lifts the whole line, while every bad cause drags down the whole chain of collective prosperity and health. In the same manner that a great ideal will quickly permeate the peoples of a city, so will an unhealthy condi- tion or a contagious disease quickly broaden its circle of infection unless summarily checked. Congestion creates the supreme problem of public health. Of all the governmental agencies, I know of none that can serve the cause more efficiently and more economically than the police departments of our cities. It implies the employment of no additional officials; it means no extra outlay of money. An enlargement of police duties to include health and sanitation inspection is all that is necessary. VIII. TEMPERANCE FOR THE SELF- GOVERNED The Great Enemy of Labor Alcohol's Health Toll Sociological Aspects of the Alcoholic Problem Some Phases of the World-Wide Prohibition Move- ment and Its Relation to Christian Citizenship THE GREAT ENEMY OF LABOR DR. T. DEWITT TALMAGE Gather up the money that the working classes have spent for rum during the last thirty years, and I will build for every workingman a house, lay out for him a gardefi, clothe his sons in broadcloth and his daughters in silks, stand at his front door a prancing span of sorrels or bays, and secure him a policy of life insurance so that the present home may be well maintained after he is dead. The most persistent, most overpowering enemy of the work- ing classes is intoxicating liquor. It is the anarchist of the centuries, and has boycotted and is now boy- cotting the body and mind and soul of American labor. It annually swindles industry out of a large percentage of its earnings. It holds out its blasting solicitations to the mechanic or operative on his way to work, at the noon spell, and on his way home at eventide. On Saturday, when the wages are paid, it snatches a large part of the money that might come to the family and sacrifices it among the saloon keepers. This evil is pouring its vitriolic and damnable liquors down the throats of hundreds of thousands of laborers, and while the ordinary strikes are ruin- ous both to employers and employees, I proclaim a universal strike against strong drink, which strike, if kept up, will be the relief of the working classes and the salvation of the nation. I will undertake to say that there is not a healthy laborer in the United States, who, within the next twenty years, if he will refuse all intoxicating beverages and be saving, may not become a capitalist on a small scale. ALCOHOL'S HEALTH TOLL CAROLYN GEISEL, M.D,, MEMBER ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PUB- LIC HEALTH, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS, BATTLE CREEK, MICH. The American home is not the corner stone of the gov- ernment: it is the whole blessed foundation. If then the American home is threatened with destruction because the American man is not doing his share, something more is happening — the foundations of the government itself are being broken up, and the danger that faces us is danger of a very real sort. A nation or a country is not great because of its great mines, minerals, or money. It is great only because it has great sons ; and if this American government is ever to go farther in the years that are to come, and pre- serve peace for the world, it will be because the American home has been preserved, a safe place for the American man to grow up to the splendor of his mature manhood. Last year, in the United States, we lost fifty-six thousand more middle-aged men than ever before in history. These fifty-six thousand men died of three diseases, as follows: Bright's disease — and sixty-two per cent of Bright's dis- ease is caused by alcohol; apoplexy — and forty per cent of apoplexy is caused by alcohol ; heart disease — now concern- ing heart disease there is difference of opinion, as some au- thorities say forty per cent, while others claim as high as sixty per cent is caused by alcohol. Yet this middle-aged man is the man worth while, for he is the man who must carry all the real burdens of our civic and national life. You do not want a doctor just out of college, but rather a man with experience added to his education. Not only does alcohol produce disease in the body, but it lowers the body's efficiency even when taken in very small doses. Professor Kraepelin, of Munich, has invented an ingenious instrument for testing human efficiency. With it he has proved that one single glass of beer lowers efficiency by seven per cent ; that two drinks of whisky rob a man of twenty-three per cent of his normal power, leaving him only 298 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST seventy-seven per cent himself, making him about three- fourths of a man. The Czar of all the Russians knew the truth of Kraepelin's teaching when he said to his army, "You are only three-fourths men. We were whipped once by sober little Japan. You must be whole men to fight the Germans, and vodka must go!" And my friend Slabinski said he could see the difference in the peasantry in two weeks. Does prohibition increase national efficiency? Why, in all her drunken life Russia had never saved more than fifteen millions a year; but when prohibition went into effect her manhood was so much more efficient that in the midst of the most devastating war Russia ever had any part in she was able in one month to save thirty millions — twice as much in one month when she was sober as in one whole year when she was drunk! If Russia needed four-fourths men to carry on the war with Germany, then, my America, what part of manhood is necessary to preserve peace in this old United States of ours? If we need four-fourths men to go to the forefront of battle, what do we need for the heroic battles of home and peace? We were deceived for a long time by the teaching that alcohol was necessary as medicine. I am proud of my pro- fession, for we have proved that alcohol is not necessary as medicine, has no value as food, and is a habit-forming drug. The medical institution with which I have the honor to be connected is forty-eight years old. It has an international reputation for curing incurables. This institution now treats a daily average of one thousand patients. In forty-eight years it has never used one single ounce of alcohol as medi- cine. Why not? Because it is not necessary and does more harm than good. Not long ago the Interstate Medical Society met in this Southland, and that great body of medical men, in council assembled, passed a resolution, every member signing it, to the effect that alcohol is not necessary as a medicine, that it is harmful to the human body, and that therefore we, the undersigned medical society, will not use it in our practice. It is a habit-forming drug. ALCOHOL'S HEALTH TOLL 299 Very few drunkards go to a saloon for the first drink ; they get a taste of it some other place, and then another taste, and finally they do not care much where they get it so they get it. The worst case of delirium tremens I ever treated was a Peruna drunk. Alcohol is a habit-forming drug ; and whether the victim gets the first taste at a social function or in patent medicine, it is too often an easy way from there to the saloon. Turn back with me and let me give you an instance out of my own life — back there in the years when my profession believed in that falsehood that alcohol is necessary as a medicine. We were taught in the great university from which I graduated to use alcohol in the crisis of disease. Back there I had a chum, a dainty little woman, not as large as I, and frail. She came to Kansas City, and there she married and became the mother of a boy. Her husband was a Christian lawyer, superintendent of a Sunday school — we called him the coming man. The community was already beginning to consult him on important things, and he was being talked of for Governor. It was then that he was suddenly stricken with typhoid fever, and naturally I was called, for I was both physician and friend. I was there in that room myself with a bottle of so-called "best" brandy on the table, when the twenty-first day came, and we gave it to him. Can you imagine my feeling when the nurse told me that he had reached for that bottle in the night? Three weeks after I dismissed him as cured he came home in a cab, drunk. That was repeated again and again and again. Please remember that he was a Christian gentleman, headed for the governorship of his State. His wife walked into my office one morning. She had her boy with her, and she said: "We must go. George has threatened to kill baby." She did go, for safety's sake, and that meant a divorce. Another year passed, and just three years from the time I dismissed him as cured of his fever we made a narrow bed out there under the sunshine and drew the daisy-dotted coverlid up over the head of a dead defective. I killed, even if ignorantly, that little boy's father. I took away from him 300 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the gruardianship of a Christian parent, left him to go on through life without even the memory of a Christian father, but labeled as a drunkard's son. I murdered my chum's hus- band, left her to fight her way as best she could. She stood it for about six years, and then her heart broke, and we made another grave in the cemetery. Now let there be no uncertain sound : I am a suffragist. But in spite of suffrage, in spite of the freedom granted to the women of this century — I am old-fashioned, I guess — I am harking back through all the ages and hearing Him, the Master of all life, calling us, the womanhood of the world, calling us to our business, to the business of man-raising. It is woman's business to raise men — and it is an awful job! It takes at least two women to raise one good man. It takes his mother twenty-one straight years of her life — that is a long time to put on one piece of business. Then she turns that unfinished piece over to another woman, his wife — sometimes it takes more than one wife to finish the job, but it is worth it. Little mother, you are not raising live stock. It were a task truly worth while, if you were raising men for that old flag ; but that is not all you are doing. In this United States of America, in these great, perilous times we need better men under that old flag ; and it would be worth your while to give twenty-one years of your time to raise a man who is strong enough, true enough, pure and noble enough to defend and support it. That boy, made in the image of God, is triune in his nature : he is physical, mental, and spiritual, and that third part of him is immortal. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him." So, little mother, you are raising men to people the country that is eternal, raising sons for the living God. Is it worth while? There is no greater business in all the world ; and it fills up the citizenship of heaven — this business of man-raising. But something has gone wrong with our business; we are not raising as good men as our mothers did. I attended a race betterment convention a year ago, and we asked: ALCOHOL'S HEALTH TOLL 301 "What is the matter with our business? Why can we not turn out from the American home men as strong and splen- did as were our own fathers?" The answer was: "Because America is not furnishing sound sires for sound sons." The stock raisers have discovered that they cannot raise sound swine without sound sires. Motherhood at last has come to recognize that the child is the product of both his inheritance and his environment, and science has proved that the man who fills himself with alcohol receives upon himself, upon his body, upon his mind, upon his very soul, scars to his unborn babe. The laws of heredity are absolutely inex- orable ; you cannot escape them. You are what your father was, and the man who scars and blurs himself with alcohol scars also his unborn babe. Did you think a man paid for his glass of beer when he put the nickel upon the counter? He does not pay: his baby pays, that is who pays for it. Von Schaefer, of Munich, studied for eight long years the effect of alcohol on the unborn babe. In 1911 he printed the conclusion of his research in the Wochenchrieft. He de- clared that for every hundred babes born to beer-drinking Munich seventy-two were imperfect. Listen to me, man, was not life hard enough for you, you with all your perfect faculties? Tell me what it would have been had you been marked with the scars of drink on your body, or your mind, or your soul. Seventy-two out of every hundred babies unsound in wet territory! Think of it! Why, if there were seventy- two unsound piggies out of every hundred born on the farm — all because a poison was poured through the trough from which the parent hogs were fed — you men would rise in your masculine, political might and do something conclusive before sunset. A mother goes almost to the gates of death, raps at the door of her own grave to bring back a man-child, and then for one rapturous, transcendent moment she holds him close to her heart lest he may slip back into his little grave, for one baby out of every two born in the world dies before it reaches maturity. Science sa3^s with all definiteness that 302 DEMOCRACY' IN EARNEST the man who drags his soul through the shame of a licensed saloon takes out of his unborn baby its vitality, literally cashes it in, and the child is born feeble, cannot live, because its father — and sometimes, the shame of it, its mother — has cashed in its little life for alcohol. O people, hear me ! We are losing our babies because of the recklessness and dissipation on the part of fathers and mothers. I am not so rash as to say that every baby that dies in America is cursed by the saloon, but science has proved that among the causes of race degeneracy, first of all comes alcohol. Do you know that in the fifty years since America went into partnership with the liquor traffic we have produced so many feeble-minded children that feeble- mindedness has increased five hundred per cent? Does it pay a mother to go to the doors of death to bring back an idiot? You spent ninety millions last year to take care of the feeble-minded ; but that is not all, for all are not taken care of by public money. For every two children in the institutions for feeble-minded there is a third one in his mother's arms ; many a tender mother will not give her child to be cared for in an institution, but yields her own life to take care of it. Dr. Zuntz, of Berlin, says that one out of every two feeble-minded folk in the world is feeble-minded because of drink in the first, second, or third generation. Dr. Kellogg says : "We have increased insanity five hun- dred per cent in the past fifty years in the United States. Fifty years ago there were not as many crazy folk in the United States as there are in the State of Indiana to-night." This same authority computed the length of time it would take for us all to go crazy, and he discovered that in ex- actly two hundred and sixty years we will all be crazy. One out of every two cases of insanity is caused by drink in the first, second, or third generation. This is the statement of Lord Shaftesbury, Commissioner of Lunacy in London for forty years. To-night there are two hundred and forty thou- sand of America's sons and daughters in the penitentiary! I do not mean jails and workhouses, but the penitentiaries. Do you wonder that woman's head is bowed with shame and alcohol's health toll 303 her heart broken? The conservative criminologists of the world declare that sixty-two out of every one hundred men in the penitentiaries are there because of alcohol in the first, second, or third generation. Mothers have done their best. We hold our better baby contests, our race betterment conventions ; we have medical inspection in public schools; you helped us to get an anti- child labor law ; in some States you have made it impossible for the defective to multiply his kind ; already we are ask- ing for a clean bill of health for every man who approaches the marriage altar — but you are making more degenerates in the saloons in one day than can be corrected in genera- tions. Will the government never awake to the need of pro- tecting the business of motherhood ? I have frequently heard people, who look quite like you, declare this twentieth century to be the most wonderful of all the world's history. Are you sure? Remember, you and I were not living when Greece was in her glory. Look back- ward now, see Greece a glory-crowned mountain peak, shed- ding the light of learning over the known world. Watch while one, just one of her cities (Athens) gives to the world, in a very few years, ten of twenty-seven of the world's greatest men. Then see the deep valley of the Dark Ages that blackens the world's history following the gleam of the glory of Greece. Then again the upward climb, up and up until majestic Rome sat on her seven hills and ruled the whole world. Ah, what sons she begat! I rarely hear you speak of the wealth of Rome, or of her culture and learn- ing, but you talk, even now, of the mighty Romans. But do you remember that Rome was "dry territory" for five hundred years? Then she began dispensing red liquor to her sons and her sons did what all sons of hum.anity must do under wine's influence: they declined to defectiveness, became millstones round the nation's neck, and dragged civilization down again to the Dark Ages. Can you see it^ that deep valley of the shadow of forgotten power? Out of that shadow civilization, again reborn, rose slowly to the wondrous beauty of the Italian Renaissance. 304 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Then Italy did what Rome had done: she crushed the pur- ple g-rape and dispensed the purple blood of the grape to her sons, and again, with the decline of manhood, came the decline of the nation, again civilization was shrouded in the shadows of the Dark Ages. Once more the slow, steady, difficult upward climb — past part of the sixteenth century, past the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the nineteenth to the wonders of our twen- tieth century. Fortunes are amassed by millions, science achieves marvels, we fly through the air, we talk to our friends thous'ands of miles distant without so much as the aid of a wire, we sing by machinery, we feast and make merry, and suddenly — like a bolt out of the blue — the world- war-cloud broke. The crashing fall of kingdoms and the dirge of doomed nations smother the meanings of mother- hood and the agony of man. Rivers run red with the blood of mighty sires and sun-crowned sons of honor choke in the trenches of death, while America stands facing forward to — God forbid it — to a waning civilization. With your eyes fixed on the mountain peaks of the past — Greece, Rome, the Italian Renaissance — will you hear me now, men, my brothers, hear me while I affirm that right here in my America's hand rests all that now remains of our boasted twentieth-century civilization? I am not forgetting little Switzerland, and Norway and Sweden still at peace, but I would remind you that the only really great world power at peace to-night is under Old Glory — must we go down to the Dark Ages again ? Look at that old flag and answer me, look at that old flag and quit you like men. See her stripes, red with the blood of the best sires that ever breathed ; see her stripes, white with the pure virtue of noble mother- hood ; look at her glory stars, set in the blue of God's eter- nal truth. Listen — I can hear you singing, "The old flag never touched the ground. The old flag never yet was downed," but she will be downed, she will drag in the very mire unless you hold her up, men, hold her in her place as defender of freedom, in her place as guardian of the help- SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ALCOHOLIC PROBLEM 305 less, in her place as champion of religious liberty. Then give to her sons that are mighty, keep for her sons that are true, stamp out every curse that threatens manhood until we can face our God in a freedom that shall avail for the world. "Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget!" Lest we forget the flag in her need of real men, lest we forget a dying old world, lest we forget a waning civiliza- tion. Lord God of hosts, be with my America now, for it sometimes seems to me we have forgotten. SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE ALCOHOLIC PROBLEM T. D. CROTHERS, M.D., SECRETARY AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR STUDY OF ALCOHOLIC AND OTHER NARCOTICS, SUPER- INTENDENT WALNUT LODGE HOS- PITAL, HARTFORD, CONN. Every new study of health problems concerning com- munities and homes shows that alcohol is very intimately associated, both as active and contributing causes, with the disorders and diseases which are prevalent. Studies of the causes of pauperism and conditions which develop the dependent classes reveal the same active sources. Studies of the indigent from the point of heredity bring out the startling fact of alcoholic drinking in the ancestors, followed by defective children. Thus epilepsy, idiocy, in- sanity, and consumption, that apparently grow from some distinct conditions, are very often traceable to this particu- lar agent in the parents. The statistics proving this are very startling and are so uniform as to leave no possible doubt as to the degenera- tive effects of alcohol on the second and third generations. The conclusion, based on accurate facts, is that alcohol is one of the most widespread degenerative agents in common use to-day. 20 306 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST The wonder is that this has not been recognized before, in view of the evidence that can be seen in every town and community of the country. For five thousand years alcohol has been condemned as a beverage and said to be particu- larly dangerous to health, and yet the theory that it has some stimulant and tonic properties when properly used has come down to very recent times, and is to-day believed in by a number of persons. Twenty years ago scientific men took up the question of testing the effects of alcohol on brain and tissue. The question was. Were the old theories correct? Did alcohol have a tonic and medicinal value, and were there certain stimulant effects that were valuable on certain occasions? Accurate studies and experiments in laboratories denied these theories and brought no confirmation whatever. This stimulated enthusiastic men to make new and advanced studies in every direction concerning alcohol and its effects on cell and tissue. They filially all reached one great con- clusion — namely, that alcohol is not a stimidant, but a nar- cotic and depressant, and that if it had any medicinal effect it was that of a narcotic. This is sustained by every new examination of the sub- ject; and though opposed to the supposed common experi- ence of many persons, it has become an established fact. These new facts give a wider aspect to the subject of alco- hol and explain many of the phenomena which have puzzled thoughtful men and women everywhere. Thus the poor workman after a hard day's work, using a glass of beer or spirits, feels better and has a sense of exhilaration and relief from the fatigue. The glass of wine to one who is tired and weary covers up the discomfort and gives a consciousness of vigor again. The idea that it is a food or that it in some way develops strength and vigor becomes pronounced. In reality, science shows that this is narcotism, that the drug has simply covered up the bad feeling and given a sense of relief, but in no way has it removed the cause. The signal flags of pain, weariness, and discomfort have been taken down and their meaning de- stroyed. SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ALCOHOLIC PROBLEM 307 This delusion of vigor and strength becomes a veritable fascination ; and no matter what the feelings may be after- wards, the fact that this particular drug brought relief is accepted as evidence of its value. Later these effects pass away, and the impulse is to take some more. The after effects are never ascribed to the real cause, but attributed to something else. What has happened has been practically a covering up process or a veritable anaesthesia of the ener- gies of the body. This is not a matter of theory, but can be demonstrated by instruments of precision. Thus every one of the five senses has been lowered in activity. The reasoning power has been diminished and the muscular activity lessened ; and this occurs in every instance, whether recognized or not. Other experiments show that all use of spirits practically and literally poisons the organism. The degree may be very small, but it exists. This poisoning affects the cells, prevents their activity, and interferes with the chemistry of the body and the delicate changes of foods into cell and tissue. Beyond this, the order of repair and building up is checked, so that it can be said scientifically that all use of spirits produces a degtee of starvation and poisoning which can be demonstrated beyond any question. Innumerable illustrations confirm this in the histories of persons who use spirits, and can be seen in every section of the country. Such persons are really starved and poisoned in ways that they do not understand. Evidently any agent which poisons the system and lowers the power of building up will certainly produce dangerous consequences, and this is the fact that modern science is teaching to-day. Outside of the laboratory teach- ings, there is a mass of evidence that is startling in the extreme. Thus life insurance companies that study vitality and longevity on exact mathematical lines find that alcohol is one of the most serious agents in shortening life. Some companies now refuse to insure any one who uses spirits, simply because of the increased risks. Other companies 308 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST raise the premiums on those who use alcohol, and the fact is recognized everywhere that spirit drinkers are uncertain and precarious risks. These are facts outside of personal opinions. Large manufacturing concerns, where the product of the employees is studied on the same mathematical basis, find that spirit drinkers are incapable of doing the same amount of work as the abstainers, and there is a constant effort to eliminate that class of people and fill their places with total abstainers. Probably the railroad companies have more intense inter- est in this question than other business concerns. Their business is very seriously imperiled by men who drink. Wherever responsible men are permitted to use spirits in their service, accidents, collisions, and public disasters that could and should be prevented are prevalent. And they are widely and emphatically demanding entire abstinence. The Interstate Commerce Commission, which studies the causes of public disasters, finds that a very large percentage of accidents are traceable to the moderate or occasional drinking of responsible persons. Recently a railroad accident in which forty lives were lost was clearly referable to the stupidity of the engineer, who used spirits before the accident. The old theories of chance, dispensation of Providence, and the will of God to explain great public catastrophes have passed away. Science shows that they all result from causes distinct and traceable — causes which could have been recog- nized, with results that should have been prevented. Fire insurance companies have created an equally start- ling mass of evidence from their studies of the causes of fires. Some of the statements here show that from ten to twenty per cent of fires are traceable to the carelessness of persons who were under the influence of alcohol at the time or shortly before. The mercantile agency statistics, which deal with the question of forecasting the capacity and reliability of busi- ness men, show that a moderate or excessive drinker is SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ALCOHOLIC PROBLEM 309 always a dangerous risk, and should be rated accordingly. As an example, of a thousand men rated as worth $5,000 apiece, who were occasional or moderate drinkers, in the course of ten years at least half of them would be bankrupt or have lost their property. Of another thousand men rated for the same amount, who were known as total ab- stainers, in the course of ten years not more than two or three per cent would have lost their property. It is said in business circles that the probability of suc- cess are from ten to fifteen per cent less in the drinking man than in the total abstainer, and this is confirmed by a great variety of evidence. Another field, in which the evidence grows with startling rapidity, comes from the bonding companies, who insure persons occupying responsible positions against loss to their .employers. These companies find that alcoholic habits and association with men who drink are the greatest perils they have to contend with, hence they are constantly eliminating risks of this character and refusing to be responsible for the conduct of men who use spirits. Thus, the great question in the business world to-day is the capacity and sobriety of the persons who are doing important work. The moderate drinker of a few years ago is being rapidly replaced in business circles. His vigor, capacity, and power of control are always under suspicion while he is drinking. The significance of these facts in any sociological study of the community is very evident. Clearly, this is the beginning of a vast army of men and women who become degenerates, dependents, paupers, and defectives. What- ever other causes may have been present, the early and continuous use of alcohol as a beverage has laid the foun- dation for future physical and mental bankruptcy. The so-called moderate drinker, who boasts of his ca- pacity to stop any moment, is often the most seriously dis- eased. All sociological studies which would improve the conditions of living and eliminate the sources of peril must begin in the home, in the community, with the small and 310 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST insignificant thing's of life. Here is the foundation for future failure and prosperity. The community that toler- ates any form of spirit-drinking, or the man or woman who defends it as natural and normal, is literally sowing- seeds for his own and others' destruction. The man or woman who finds relief from spirits and drugs is starting on a downward track. Covering up the exhaustion never re- moves it. The highest kind of preventive training by health boards and physicians is to point out the sources of danger at their beginning and suggest some other method of over- coming the exhaustion for which spirits are taken. Schools as well as families open up a tremendous field for the pre- vention of diseases, disorders, and future physical and mental bankruptcies. Here the great facts that we are gov- erned by a world of cause and effect and physical conditions, which recognize everything that develops and enlarges hu- man life, are to be studied with as much exactness as food and surroundings. There is something more in the churches and schools to be taught and studied than the theories and conceptions of life here and beyond. They should be made veritable kin- dergartens for the culture and teaching of things that make life strong and vigorous. The twentieth century has brought with it an imperative demand for a new alignment of theories, practices, and con- ceptions of life. The teachings of the fathers, the prestiges and traditions of the past, often sacred, can give little or no help to the solution of the great modern questions and problems that appeal to us. We must face the fact that the present mortality of the race is double what it should be; that the losses and crosses which come to every human being are preventable to a startling degree; that diseases are a tremendous reflection on our ignorance and neglect. We know that the diseases and scourges which prevailed years ago have largely disappeared. The shadow of yellow fever that yearly crossed the Southland, taking its terrible toll of victims, has faded. Malaria, an affliction that was expected and treated as inevitable in every community, is SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ALCOHOLIC PROBLEM 311 now the exception and will disappear from a larger intelli- gence. Pellagra is now coming under the scrutiny of investi- gation, and will soon be relegated with other diseases to the past. Even consumption, the great white plague, is receding before the march of a clearer knowledge of cause and effect. Thus the trend everywhere of public and scientific sen- timent is to discover the causes of sanitary and other evils and to remove them at the beginning. This is the most intensely practical work for physicians and sociologists in every community. It is literally a field white unto the harvest and with few gleaners. These are the facts which we must recognize and make practical in both home. and community life. The delusion that alcohol in some form or some way contributes to lengthen life, prevent disease, and increase enjoyment has no place in modern science. It has no basis and cannot be sustained by exact study. Science has cleared away the ground here and calls for a larger, wider study of this sub- ject, above the views and traditions of the past. Temperance reform is something more than signing the pledge, joining a political party, or becoming converted to some particular faith. It is really a recognition of the facts and putting them to practical service in our everyday life. It is more than the word "reform" indicates. It is stepping out of the dead past on to a higher level of reality and readjustment, and putting to service these great facts. Alcohol as a beverage should not receive any more con- sideration than theories of witchcraft or the possession of the devil, but as an anaesthetic in the form of chloroform and ether it has made possible the most marvelous advances in surgery. A few pioneers pressing these truths on a halting public sentiment have not yet received the warm support they deserve. In view of all the facts, this is one of the wonder- ments of the day. It is clearly evident that the alcoholic problem is to be the most intensely agitated subject in the sociological world for many years to come. Starting from the fact that alcohol 312 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST is a depressant and narcotic, and any good effects from it are anaesthetic, there opens up a very wide field of causes and conditions that provoke its use both as a beverage and medicine. Among the intense questions that suggest themselves are these: Why do men and women in all grades of life, with all stages of culture, become possessed with a desire to use spirits? Why do they continue a whole lifetime, in view of the danger, risk, and peril ? What fascination makes the business man imperil his home and financial interests by the use of wines, beer, or spirits? Why do not the thoughtful man and woman heed the warnings of debility and degeneration from the use of alcohol, and make an effort to escape? What are really the motive, the impulse, the impression at the bottom of the alcoholic craze ? Examples like the following are inexplicable. A sober man in middle life suddenly becomes a heavy drinker and soon after dies. A young man brought up in the very best circles and surroundings suddenly resorts to spirits and is wrecked. Thousands of business men stop at intervals and drink to great excess, then become sober and go on with their work. Gilded saloons and fashionable clubhouses actually grow and cultivate the desire for spirits which is repelled by outside influences. Innumerable instances of drinking parents with de- fective descendants, who not only drink in the early period of life, but seem to have no conception of anything higher than present gratification regardless of all consequences, may be cited. This is the field where inebriety, insanity, idiocy, pauper- ism, disease, crime, and the armies of degenerates and de- fectives get their start. This is the undiscovered country, the great dark continent, where the causes and conditions that we deplore so much are to be ascertained and pointed out. A research hospital for the study of these causes has been established in Hartford, Conn., the purpose of which is to gather and formulate the facts and determine their SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ALCOHOLIC PROBLEM 313 meaning, and point out some of the great physiological laws which control this great scourge of the human race. The facts are almost innumerable. Almost every family and certainly every community of the country can furnish histories of cases, the causes and reasons of which are unknown. Doctors and health boards and students of soci- ology everywhere are confronted with the phenomena of the drink evil which they are unable to understand except in a very limited way. It is proposed to gather this vast mass of facts, tabulate them, and verify the conclusions which they indicate. In this way we shall know why the drink craze has come down through all generations and spreads through all communi- ties. We shall know why the armies of dependents and defectives exist. We shall get back to the first causes and concentrate all our efforts here for their prevention and removal. This great alcoholic problem has got to be studied from this point of view. Then we can concentrate our great- est efforts toward cure and prevention. The saloon, the brewery, and the distillery will disap- pear when we realize how far they are deflecting the course of human life on the sidetracks, and how far they are destroying the interests and activities of every human being. When we know how far they are schools of training down- ward for the race, there will be no argument or theor>\ It will be a matter of facts and their meaning. It is one of the most startling facts of the present times that the public sentiment in many parts of the country, all unconsciously, is fostering and cultivating the very condi- tions out of which spring the alcoholic evil. The tremen- dous efforts made in all circles to overcome this evil fail, to a large degree, because they are not founded on facts and the causes which develop the inebriate and the degenerate everywhere. Sociologically this is one of the great burning questions of the hour, and sometime in the near future it will be settled and the race of degenerates will disappear. 314 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST SOME PHASES OF THE WORLD-WIDE PROHIBITION MOVEMENT AND ITS RELATION TO CHRIS- TIAN CITIZENSHIP ERNEST H. CHERRINGTON, GENERAL MANAGER PUBLISHING INTERESTS OF THE ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE OF AMERICA, WESTERVILLE, OHIO In one sense history never repeats itself; in another sense history is largely a series of repetitions. Individuals, tribes, communities, and nations change in their development, in their attitude toward truth and in their conceptions of truth, but truth itself and the laws w^hich it directly governs never change. The remarkable fact of the Sermon on the Mount is that no new law was laid down, but that in simple language Christ gave to the multitude an understandable interpre- tation of truths hoary with age. The world-wide temperance reform is in this respect no exception. The modern liquor traffic, as we know it, owes its existence and perpetuation unreservedly to the young nations of the world. The Eastern religions — Confucian- ism, Buddhism, Brahminism, as well as Mohammedanism — have all been prohibition religions. As long as these East- ern nations stood alone without interference from the West, they consistently maintained and enforced prohibition. The only liquor problem in the Orient and of the island nations to-day is that which has been forced upon them by the blind greed of European and American liquor interests. The Christian nations of Europe and America in the present world-wide crusade against alcohol are experien- cing repetitions of what occurred in Oriental countries thou- sands of years before modern nations recognized the im- portance of the liquor problem. A most significant fact in this connection, however, is that, while these Christian nations are largely responsible for the liquor evil in prac- tically all countries of the world, these same Christian na- tions are just now in better position to correct the wrong SOME PHASES OF WORLD-WIDE PROHIBITION 315 that has been done than at any other time in the world's history. Through the avenues of international political control, and through their missionary agencies, Europe and America occupy a most strategic position. In the year 1600 only seven per cent of the world's area was controlled by the Christian nations ; to-day eighty -two per cent is so con- trolled. A century ago the Christian nations goveraed 400,000,000 people ; to-day they govern 1,000,000,000 people. Just before the outbreak of the great war in Europe, there were indications on every hand of a great awakening in the matter of prohibition and anti-liquor activity. The greatest progress which had been made in Europe, up to that time, was in the Land of the Midnight Sun — Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark — all of which are under some form of local option, and in large areas of which the liquor traffic has been entirely prohibited. Aside from Scandinavia, Switzerland was the only European nation where the people had a legal voice on the liquor question. Over against these light spots, however, there stood out in distinct and threatening contrast the black areas of Ger- many, France, England, Holland, Belgium, Austro-Hun- gary, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, where not even any form of local veto existed, and the great Russian Empire, where the government control of the vodka traffic had presented the spectacle of a great nation directly debauching her sub- jects for the sake of the profit which the monopoly brought to the royal treasury. The increased consumption of spirituous liquors in Russia from the inauguration of the government monopoly in 1894 to 1914 was over 500 per cent. Belgium, with a population of 7,500,000, had more than 220,000 liquor-selling establishments before the war began. This was one for every eight adult men. The output of the 13,000 breweries in the German Em- pire had continued its work of debauchery until the per capita consumption of beer alone in Germany was larger than the per capita consumption of all kinds of intoxicat- ing liquors in America. In the single city of Berlin there were, before the war, 9,000 "animier kneipen." These are 316 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST public houses where women are employed as waitresses in order that their personal appearance may attract the crowd and increase the sale of beer. For more than a hundred years the advocates of tem- perance reform have held up to the world's gaze the vivid and searching pictures of the horrors that follow in the wake of the liquor traffic. The miseries of weak men, the injustices to helpless women, the atrocious cruelties to inno- cent children have all cried out for redress. Moreover, the terrific cost of the liquor traffic has been shown in the robbery of the poor man, in the increase of taxes, in the sapping of vitality, in the depression of legtimate business, in the toll on efficiency in the causation of accidents, in the loss of labor and time, and in the frightful waste affect- ing practically every phase of national wealth and preser- vation of individual and national resources. The truths which have been presented, argued, and reiterated along all these lines have come to be commonplace. Jesus Christ himself touched the keynote of all religious thought and activity when in his first sermon at Nazareth, standing before those who ridiculed his presumption and yet who were amazed and capitivated at his doctrine, he declared that he had been anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty the bruised. In fact, the great central value of every religion that this world has known has consisted in the ability of that religion to alleviate human suffering, to do away with human sorrows and heartaches, to create human happiness, to right human wrongs, and to establish not only yonder in the heavens, but here on earth among men, God's real kingdom of righteousness. IX. NEGRO WELFARE AND RACE RELATIONS The Social Program of the Congress Introductory Statement at Race Relations Section The Religious Life of the Negro and Its Bearing on Health The Negro Church as the Guardian of Public Health The Negro Home and the Future of the Race Secret Societies as Factors in the Social and Eco- nomic Life of the Negro 111 Health, Narcotics, and Lawlessness Among Negroes The Play Life of Negro Boys and Girls Housing and Community Health Among Negroes What Can the Church Do to Promote Good Will Between the Races ? Righting Racial Wrongs and Making Democracy Safe THE SOCIAL PROGRAM OF THE CONGRESS The Southern Sociological Congress stands: For the abolition of the convict lease and contract systems, and for the adoption of modern principles of prison reform. For the extension and improvement of juvenile courts and juvenile reformatories. For the proper care and treatment of defectives, the blind, the deaf, the insane, the epileptic, and the feeble-minded. For the recognition of the relation of alcoholism to disease, to crime, to pauperism, and to vice, and for the adoption of appropriate preventive measures. For the adoption of uniform laws of the highest standards concerning marriage and divorce. For the adoption of the uniform law on vital sta- tistics. For the abolition of child labor by the enactment of the uniform child labor law. For the enactment of school attendance laws, that the reproach of the greatest degree of illiteracy may be removed from our section. For the suppression of prostitution. For the solving of the race question in a spirit of helpfulness to the negro and of equal justice to both races. For the conservation of health for the individual, for the community, and for the nation. For the closest cooperation between the Church and all social agencies for the securing of these re- sults. INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT AT RACE RELATIONS SECTION JAMES HARDY DILLARD, LL.D., CHAIRMAN I CONGRATULATE ourselves on meeting again in this Race Relations Section of the Southern Sociological Congress. The meetings which we have held in past years have been helpful and useful, and have been generally recognized as among the best held under the auspices of the Congress. Those of us who are especially interested in this subject of the relations of the races in our Southern States are grateful to the managers of the Congress for providing this oppor- tunity for frank discussion. At each meeting members of both races have met together and spoken out in good will their thoughts bearing on matters of mutual concern. The meeting in Atlanta, five years ago, was the first important meeting of such character ever held, and the addresses given on that occasion were highly valuable. Of equal value were the candid discussions following the formal addresses. So valuable were these Atlanta addresses con- sidered to be that by unanimous resolution it was voted that they be published in a separate volume. This was done, under the title of 'The Human Way." The book has been pronounced by many to contain, on the whole, the best presentation of the most important phases of the subject that has been published. A new edition, with some changes and additions, has recently been issued. All who have attended these meetings appreciate their importance, and all who may read this book will have a like appreciation. It is good sometimes to stop and think of the object of meetings like these, and indeed of all our work and efforts and strivings. Is it not simply to try to improve ourselves and our relations to each other, and to try to make this world a better place for all of us to live in? We want a wider spread of knowledge that we may all know how to deal better with the things of nature and to produce more abundantly the good things which all need and which all should be able to enjoy. We want these good things to be produced for the use and enjoyment of all the children of 320 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST men who are born into this common world of ours. And more than the increase and spread of any material goods, we want the feeling of good relations with our fellowmen, the feeling of cooperation, of peace, of good will, of the spirit of give and take. We want the realization that the well-being and advancement of one individual, of one race, or of one nation does not mean the ill-being and debasement of the other man, or the other race, or the other nation. Was there ever a time in which the need of this realiza- tion could be more keenly felt than in these awful days when the spirit of domination has drawn the whole world, the innocent with the guilty, into a whirlwind of destruction? What is the remedy? Palliatives there may be, govern- mental arrangements, legal forms ; but at bottom we know that sane and sensible and just relations between individ- uals or races or nations can be established only by the spread of the spirit of good will, along with the realization of a great fact. I mean the realization of the human fact, the democratic fact, the Christian fact, that one man's degra- dation must mean ultimately not the other man's exaltation, but also his own degradation; that one race's degradation must mean ultimately not the other race's exaltation, but also its own degradation; that one nation's degradation must mean ultimately not the other nation's exaltation, but also its own degradation. Is not this the lesson which we have all got to learn? We here to-day, in this brief meeting, are engaged on this lesson. We are thinking especially of that part of the lesson which providence has emphasized in our corner of the ■wrorld — namely, that neither of the races can be injured without the other's injury, that the real advance of either must redound to the real advance of the other. We are two races set side by side, with the problem before us of living side by side in cooperation and fair dealing in spite of all differences. There have been statesmen, philosophers, and scientists who maintained that this is impossible as a per- manent relation between races so situated and so different. There are many to-day who still hold this opinion. But who can tell the future? One thing we know now, espe- THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OP THE NEGRO 321 daily now in this present time of stress, that cooperation and fair dealing are shown to be the better way. We know that so long as we are actually here side by side the sen- sible way, the human way, the just way, the religious way, is to live not in ill will, but in good will ; not in strife, but in cooperation; not in ignorance and disregard, but in understanding and sympathy. If we follow the right way as we see it now, we may leave the results and the future to God. Let us hope that this meeting, like the preceding meetings, may have a healthy influence in strengthening the public sentiment in favor of good feeling and right dealing. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE NEGRO AND ITS BEARING ON HEALTH PROFESSOR WILLUM H. HOLLOW AY, TALLADEGA COLLEGE, TALLADEGA, ALA. Nothing you say to-day is true about all negroes. As Mr. J. B. Earnest, in his discussion of "The Virginia Ne- gro," points out, it is difficult to find the average negro. There is "none such," and if there were, not everything you say of him would be true. There are negroes and negroes. In the discussion of the religious life of the negro, therefore, one must understand that he represents all shades of belief, belongs to all kinds of churches, and worships in all kinds of ways; his tenets range from new thought to f oot- washing ; his religious expression rises to the height of elaborate ritualism or sinks to the orgies of barbarism. But no matter which form it takes the world pays tribute to the negro as being deeply and instinctively religious. More than any other people, perhaps, he takes his religion seriously. What negro shall we have in mind, then, as we discuss this subject? It is evident, is it not, that we would con- sider it an insult to ask how the religious life of any ad- vanced group of people affects their health? Such a query would either indict the content of their religion or cast a 21 322 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST question on their intelligence. We cannot have in mind, therefore, the more advanced negroes. And since what we say would not be true of the average negro, even if we could find him, it must follow that our discussion contem- plates the negro farthest down — the unreached negro. Keep in mind, therefore, that what we shall say applies to this group, which is, to be sure, the largest group and with whose welfare this Conference is concerned. I stress this because it is the delicate point in all our race discussions. There is nothing the negro craves more than that all men acknowledge and appreciate personal and group differ- ences, and act as though they recognize that all negroes are not bad, as the negroes recognize that all other men are not good. At the first we must attempt a definition of religion and find how it applies to the negro. It is an old controversy, but nearer settlement to-day, I believe, than ever before. Is it a system of belief, expressing itself in a creed or dogma ; or a movement of the emotions, denoting its presence by "rousement" of the feelings ; or a decision of the will, eventu- ating in action? Is it rationalistic, mystic, or idealistic? We haven't time for the controversy, but we know that the first has had little place in the negro's religious life. Dogma has gone little farther than .baptism, and the idealism of the third has even to-day little place in his system. The mysticism and emotionalism of the second have been the strong points of his religious life. This is not strange, for there are two forces that have made for him the groove along which he has traveled. In the first place, he is inheritor of the confusion on this point that has come down through the ages. Religious philosophy prior to his advent here emphasizes the first two — dogma and feeling — and the latter was at its height when he was introduced to the white man's religion. In the second place, his teaching during the slavery regime confined itself merely to the formula of obedience to master and mistress and not to steal the hogs and chickens. Left thus in his ignorance, he sought and found religious expression in the means nearest at hand; turned THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE NEGRO 323 loose at emancipation, he has been left to work out as best he could his religious philosophy. His early religious lead- ers were those who had been brought out of slavery ; strong characters they were, having remarkable insight into spir- itual truth, but mystical withal and keeping alive the qual- ities which were peculiar to the negro and which had given him the power to endure the hardships of the slavery period. His later religious leaders have, for the most part, taken up where the early leaders left off and have found it easier to give the people what they demanded than what they need. The result is that the negro's religion is still largely a matter of feeling. Church service without its appeal to the emotion is tame; sermons without the rousements are nothing more than lectures, and the preacher who cannot bring the shout has missed his collection if not his calling. There is, to be sure, a growing appreciation of intelligent exposition of Scripture and a welcoming of the intellectual, but it must still be accompanied by appeal to the emotions or it fails to reach the negro churchgoer. The logical out- come of this system is that preaching has come to be the main concern of the negro minister. The pulpit is the cen- ter of his religious activities ; Sunday is his day of achieve- ment. He functions fully only when facing a congregation, and his great success is achieved when by devious ways he has led his hearers to the highest pitch of emotional excite^' ment. In considering the negro's religious life and its bearing on health, one must discuss the emotional element in its relation to sex life; for it is here perhaps that the negro meets his strongest foe and his most outstanding criticism. The proverbial immorality of the negro preacher is bound closer to the emotional element in his religion than we are wont to credit. He lives, thinks, and acts in the realm of feeling; his greatest asset is his ability to stir others to the depths of their emotion. Now we are finding that not only has the emotional a large place in religion, but that sexual life plays a large part or maybe is the very root from which religion springs. Krafft and Ebing, in "Psychopathia Sexualis," say: "If man 324 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST were deprived of sexual distinction and the noble enjoy- ment arising therefrom, all poetry and probably all moral tendency would be eliminated from his life. Sexual life is the one mighty factor in the individual and social relations of man which discloses his powers of activity, of acquiring property, of establishing a home, of awakening altruistic sentiments toward the opposite sex and toward his own issue, as well as toward the whole human race. Sex feeling is really the root of all ethics, and no doubt of sestheticism and religion. The sublimest virtues, even sacrifice of self, spring from sexual life, which, however, on account of its sexual power, may easily degenerate into the lowest pas- sion and basest vice." If this is true — and the better psychology seems to prove it — then the sexual excesses of the negro take on new mean- ing. We have seen that by nature the negro is highly emo- tional. Climatic conditions in Africa produced in him what the tropics produce in all tropical people. His life in his new home under slavery fostered the traits which he brought over; and his introduction to the white man's re- ligion gave opportunity for the development and exercise of only one element, the emotional, which is twin brother to the sexual. The church, which was and still is the center and controlling influence of all his activities, having as its #»rimary function preaching, which as an art finds its seat in the imagination, has no doubt helped to intensify the im- moral, which its purpose is to rectify and cure. This is an awful statement to make, I know. But those of us acquainted with the inner side of the negro's religious and church life know that much immorality finds its setting in a religious atmosphere and has its background over against the excitement of the meetinghouse. I have had white ministers tell me that the abandonment of their old camp meetings was due to the evils of this sort as much as to any other cause. And it used to be remarked that more illegitimate children could be traced to the season of the annual revival than any other part of the year. Now, if these things are true, I think we must conclude that the evils which have been laid at the negro's door are closely THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE NEGRO 325 bound up with his religious life. Conditions over which he has had little or no control have stressed only one element in religion which we know has been the stone of stumbling for other people in the world's history as well as for him. The bearing of this fact upon health is far-reaching. We are coming to see that health is, after all, largely a question of good morals; and the moral and ethical are the primary concepts of religion. Reputable doctors tell me that fifty per cent of the men who come under their care show evidences of some form of venereal diseases. Less than four months ago a theological student in a certain seminary was found dead in bed and on examination for the cause the doctors testified that he had contracted, in his early years, the disease which carried him out. Those who knew him and taught him tell me that his ideals were lofty and his life's purpose fixed and of excellent promise; but nature's laws are inexorable, and religion could not set aside their direful consequences. I know another student of ex- cellent family, bright and promising, who stood high in his classes, and the leader in student activities in his college, respected and loved by his teachers ; but one day he showed signs of mental aberration, which grew worse and worse until he had to be sent to the State sanitarium for the insane. Here less than a month later he died. The doctor had the same old story — in the brain a lesion of syphilitic origin. But the race is not so fortunate as to have all of its derelicts die. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. The most damnable sin of our American civilization is found in its social diseases. Recent studies of the army and navy show that sixty-fivp per cent of all applicants for enlistment show presence of venereal diseases. The negro has taken on all that American life has to offer of this sort. Another alarming symptom is the growing number of operations upon negro women. Here, too, the physicians testify that seventy per cent find their cause in sexual ex- cesses, abuses, and venereal diseases. 326 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST I live in the town where are situated the State institu- tions for the blind of both races ; and as I see the hundreds with bent forms, pitiful faces, and sightless eyes, I cannot help asking the old unanswered but bitter question, "Who did sin, this man or his parents?" Another cause of ill health which grows out of the negro's religious life is the length of his religious services. There are few negro churches, rural or urban, where the services do not continue anywhere from two to four hours^ It might be well for the cold, solid New Englander of Jona- than Edwards's time to sit for half a day listening to the expounding of Scripture, but for the emotional negro it is a strain upon the nervous system, a drain upon physical vitality, and, usually lacking in appeal to the intellect, it makes for mental lassitude. No reform is more needed in our churches than at this point. The establishment of well- balanced forms of worship would make for reasonable length of service, besides lessening the possibilities of emo- tional excitement now so prevalent. Akin to this are the ill effects that grow out of the com- mon type of church architecture and its appointments. Overcrowding in buildings where windows are nailed down, or the wooden shutters kept closed in cold weather, where light is inadequate and where the benches are the crude, hand-made type, all make for lowered vitality and easy inroads to disease. The negro's religion has made much of the future life. His slave-time songs embody the best the world has thought and felt on the subject of immortality; and his quaint old prayers scintillate with the glories of freedom. It is no wonder, then, that the present should be ignored for the future, that earth should be given up for heaven. The in- dustrial and economic propaganda of the last twenty-five years has done much to correct this, but signs of it are still prevalent. Doctors find it hard to make their colored patients carry out the simplest rules of health which science now lays down. Flies, mosquitoes, and germs are often laughed out of mind. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE NEGRO 327 and conjuration is more powerful than medical science. Two deaths have come under my knowledge within the past ten days where the doctors could not overcome the supersti- tions of the past. Fatalism and "what is to be will be" still disregard sanitation, hygiene, and medical therapeutics. Now you ask if I hold that religion is responsible for all this, and I answer: "In some cases, yes; in others it is the lack of a well-balanced religion." No one denies that the most effective method of preserving health is through moral teaching, and the primary concept of Christianity is its ethics. Hitch this up with the intellect and let both be charged with the fervor of the emotional, and you have a Christian — mens sana in corpore sano. What are we to do about it? How can we balance the negro's religious life and thus fit him for rendering his quota to our American life ? My program contains one item : shift the present emphasis in negro education! There are many of us who look with alarm upon the almost exclusive emphasis upon the industrial and utilitarian. Public edu- cation in the South and private foundations show tenden- cies to turn the negro schools into cooking centers and can- ning factories. Two kinds of education are growing up, a black and a white, which tend to accent the differences and widen the breach between man and man. The first contem- plates the making of a whole man, while the second contem- plates the making of only a half man. The one supplements its cultural education with vocational activities, aiming thereby to make a life ; the other substitutes for its cultural the industrial pursuits, saying that what you need is a living. What the negro educator fears is that this is going to be worse for the negro's religious life than the one-sided emotionalism of the old system. We know and appreciate the value of the utilitarian in the negro's present state ; but when it is stressed almost exclusively in its relation to the material, and at the expense of the spiritual, we fear for the future of the negro. Everybody now confesses that the negro's religious and moral progress has been nothing like 328 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST commensurate with his material and educational. And yet we are not far-sighted enough to see that the present educa- tional propaganda tends to accentuate and accelerate the dis- parity. The negro needs money, houses, and lands, to be sure, but he needs ideals more. We need none the less of vocational guidance, but more of education that makes for integrity of life, which is health. The negro college must go side by side with the industrial school. The old type of preacher must give way to the newer educated type, trained in college and seminary. If the South could be brought to see this need and a few more Southern men won to the championship of the cause, the next generation would see little need for asking how the negro's religious life affects his health. THE NEGRO CHURCH AS THE GUARDIAN OF PUBLIC HEALTH RICHARD CARROLL, D.D., COLUMBIA, S. C The church that has the Bible as the basis of its service must be vitally interested in public health. It is impossible to read the first books of the Old Testament without being impressed with the multitude of laws established for the guarding of the physical welfare of the people. Turning to the New Testament, we are almost startled at the time and strength Jesus gave to the healing of the sick. So promi- nent was that part of his work that all the world delights to speak of him as the Great Physician. The Bible is a book that exalts the human body, demanding that it be as zeal- ously cared for as the holy temple, for it is the temple of God. Clearly it is a Christian's task, and so the church's task, to be the guardian of public health. Only recently I made an appeal to a church group that the school board might be aroused to have dental inspection of all the pupils in the public school and such treatment given as was necessary. The basis of that appeal was that there is a close relation between bad teeth and dyspepsia, NEGRO CHURCH AS GUARDIAN OF PUBLIC HEALTH 329 between dyspepsia and religious temperament, and between religious temperament and true spirituality of life. The ap- peal was challenged by a minister, who insisted that the pulpit was no place for the discussion of that subject and that only "the gospel" should be preached from that sacred place. He assured us that any other preaching would not be tolerated by the officials of the church. Each year, however, there is an increasing number of ministers who, while they acknowledge it is a Christian duty to hold a funeral, think it infinitely more Christian to pre- vent a funeral. To those who say, "Preach the gospel," say, "By all means let us preach the gospel," the good news of Him who went about doing good. But pause for a moment by the building that marks the site of the village of Nain. Picture again to your mind that scene in the life of the Great Phy- sician. The despair of a broken-hearted mother moved him to action. Two things were accomplished that day : a sor- rowing mother was comforted, a young man was granted a longer lease of life. These were the tokens of a sympathetic heart. This same friend of mankind gave the following promise: "Greater things than these will ye do." And so we have a more modern instance of the lengthening of the lease of life. The babies of New York were dying at a frightful rate in the poorer districts. One of the race of our Saviour, Nathan Strauss, established pure milk stations. A fortune was spent in this kind service. The work has been taken up by others, with the result recorded in the Ohio State Bul- letin of Health: "In New York City a child under five years of age thirty years ago had a life expectancy of forty-one years, while at the present time the expectancy of such a. child is fifty-two years. The increase in life expectancy is therefore approximately eleven years." What Jesus did in, the case of one young man by lengthening the life period is now done in thousands of cases because of the services of those who have been moved by the spirit of sympathy and love. Let us preach more earnestly, more sanely than ever 330 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the gospel of him who healed the sick and who closed his life with the simple command, "As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you." Every grave that is dug for the burial of one who died of a preventable disease is a challenge to the clergyman who stands by that grave and performs the last rite of burial. No matter how careful we are, that event must occur; but it is our duty to defer it to as late a date as possible. In- creasingly ministers are accepting that challenge. But let us recognize frankly that the church is not to become the bureau of health and the minister the public health officer. President Wilson put the matter straight when he said at the meeting of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America recently held in Columbus, "I do not want any church to run the community, but I do want it to help the community run itself." Public health is primarily a community and inter-community problem. In Topeka, Kans., the Federation of Churches initiated a movement which resulted in our having a sanitary survey made and published by Mr. Franz Schneider, of the Russell Sage Foundation. This survey revealed the fact that there was a residence district with a population of 9,000 persons without waterworks or sewers. Repeated efforts to secure this service so vital to public health had met with failure because of the antagonism of the taxpayers. Not until this survey was made and the facts set forth in charts promi- nently displayed were property owners willing to pay the cost of making the necessary improvements. Public opinion is the power back of the law which it enforces. The Church is one of the forces of the community which must accept the responsibility of helping the "com- munity to run itself." The church can help create the pub- lic opinion which will become "the strong conviction of a strong majority," and which will put the health of the com- munity above the temporary prosperity of taxpayers and greed of public grafters. A few types of service which the church may perform will suffice. The first is that which looks to immediate relief. NEGRO CHURCH AS GUARDIAN OF PUBLIC HEALTH 331 This was a marked characteristic of the ministry of Jesus. In his brief period of service he could not train his disciples in details. He could only give the spirit that would in time work out these details. Let us take the concrete case where the church helped. Again I quote statistics relating to Topeka because of my personal knowledge of the situation. Similar facts can be gathered from many cities. In 1913 during the months of May, June, July, and August fifty- three babies died under two years of age. Some would ex- plain these deaths as "visitations of Providence." During the same months of 1914 thirty-four babies died. Why the difference? Note the causes. In 1913 twenty-eight babies died of diarrhoea and enteritis; in 1914 only four died of the same diseases, a difference of twenty-four. How do you account for this? Was God less busy killing babies? (This is stating bluntly what some people put into tradi- tional phraseology.) No. Certain sensible people who had taken seriously the commission of Christ to continue his work formed and maintained a public nursing association. They employed a trained nurse, who with her assistants looked after the sick babies. A milk station was installed in the Third Presbyterian Church. One hundred and eighty- six babies were thus ministered to. This care not only re- duced the death rate, but prevented the enfeeblement which follows the needless illness which, measured by human suf- fering, is often worse than death. Let the Church concern itself with immediate evils and provide what remedy is possible. At the same time let it look to the conditions that bring about illness and death — e. g., greed, poverty, and ignorance. The United States Children's Bureau investigated the causes of death of babies in Johnstown, Pa. "Employment of mothers in heavy work, artificial feeding, poor sanitary conditions, and insufficient earnings of fathers are shown to have an important influence on infant mortality." The infant death rate varied in different parts of the same city. In the poorest sections, where insanitary conditions were at their worst, the rate was 271 per thousand babies, or more than five times that in the better residential sections. As to 332 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST wages, the statistics show the death rate of babies to be in inverse proportion to the earnings of the fathers. In families ivhere the fathers earned less than $10 a week the infant mortality rate was 256 per thousand; in cases ivhere fathers earned $25 or more a week the death rate was only 84 per thousand. We see that the industrial problem is a public health problem also. The Church can render no finer service to the community than to develop a partnership with industrial leaders both of capital and labor in maintaining the health and efficiency of present and prospective work- ers. If it is worth while financially for the great insurance companies writing industrial insurance to do this, surely it is worth while spiritually for the church to do it. Another service the Church can render is arousing the public to demand the securing of the very best health of- ficers. There is no greater weakness in the whole disease- preventing program of to-day than here. For two years a number of us studied the problem of the whole-time health officer. A bill was drafted which met the approval of the leading sanitarians of the country and of the officers of the United States Public Health Service. This bill provides for the dividing of the State of Kansas into thirty sanitary dis- tricts, each district to have an all-time health officer who is to be paid a good salary and given definite power backed by the full authority of counties and State. The bill received a good vote in the last legislature, and will be pushed until it or a similar bill is passed. What is the condition to-day? In a time when we know so much about prevention we find it quite the custom in many places to bid off the office of guardian of the public health to the doctor who will do the work for the smallest salary. What a howl and cry would be raised by business men and property holders if it were proposed to secure fire protection by this method ! Is not the health of the people who live in the homes of more importance than the buildings in which they live? The Church must make men think more in terms of human life than in bank accounts. When this is done no community will tolerate conditions which exist in most cities and counties to-day. NEGRO CHURCH AS GUARDIAN OF PUBLIC HEALTH 333 One other phase of this problem needs only to be men- tioned to make clear the task of the Church. I refer to the drink problem, the curse of intemperance. Let me quote from a letter written to Hon. Sam L. Rogers, Director of the Bureau of the Census, Washington, D. C, by the State Reg- istrar of Kansas. This letter is an explanation of the low death rate in Kansas : "Kansas is a prohibition State and has been for a generation, and in Kansas prohibition really pro- hibits. I do not mean by this that there is no alcohol con- sumed in the State, but the absence of the saloon means much to our growing young men and boys who, in the absence of the barroom, find more healthful pastimes than loafing in an alcohol-laden atmosphere, and there is an absence of oppor- tunity to poison the body with the toxins of alcohol which will be sure to show in those organic diseases which are laiown to be affected by alcohol. . . . Another and more important effect of prohibition is that the wage of the laborer or mechanic is not dissipated but goes to supply those necessities of food, clothing, and housing most essen- tial to the well-being of their families and themselves." As has already been stated, public health is primarily a community problem. The Church, having ever in mind the definite function it must perform as the body of Christ, doing what he would do in that community, seeking the building up of the life of the spirit, must determine what method will secure the best result. It is evident that this is not a denominational problem. All are concerned. To make this service effective it must be a united service. Heretofore churches have been afraid to cooperate because of what they might be compelled to give up. This task is not a case of giving up something, but of giving something. What a power the Church has been in temperance campaigns, be- cause it has presented a united front. That same method of warfare will make it possible to alter other conditions which undermine health or cause needless deaths, resulting in countless spiritual catastrophes. Too long the Church has tried to remedy community evils by guerrilla methods. The high-minded preacher has been so stirred by what his pastoral work has revealed that he 334 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST has had to do what he could. As a rule he is unable to meet the counter attack of intrenched vicious forces. Sometimes even his church has arrayed itself against him. These at- tacks have served their purpose. To-day in scores of cities over the country the churches are united for action. The good results following united evangelistic campaigns and temperance fights have revealed such possibilities of union that as never,before the church is being prepared to take up the task of being the guardian of the public health. ThQ recently formed Commission on Federated Movements of the Federal Council is unable to meet the demands made upon it by communities North and South, East and West, which wish to profit by the experiences of other cities. If the Church in any city is to be the body of Christ, we must speed the day when there will be such unity of spirit and unity of action that we can once more speak of the Church in Corinth, the Church in St. Louis, the Church in Atlanta, the Church in New Orleans. Jesus prayed that this might be. In service of mankind, united with him, we will be united with one another, and once more the Great Physician will walk in our midst as we reveal him in his revealing service. THE NEGRO HOME AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, TUSKEGEE, ALA. If we can rely upon statistics, there are in our country more than ten millions of colored people. Fortunately for us, we are unequally divided between the larger cities and towns and country districts, twenty-seven per cent making our homes in the cities and towns, thus leaving seventy- three per cent to the country and its farm lands, where, in my opinion, we are destined to work out our own salvation on a basis of good health and general usefulness. Those of us who have the interest of the race at heart in any large and broad sense believe that the natural and best place for the great bulk of our people is not in the THE NEGRO HOME AND FUTURE OF THE RACE 335 cities nor in the towns, but out on the great farms where already we own 212,507 homes. From 1900 to 1910 there was an increase of more than sixteen per cent in the num- ber of these owned rural homes. It may be interesting to note that out of the 212,507 homes owned, 152,047, or more than seventy-one per cent, were in no way encumbered by debt. In the cities of the South the colored people, according to these same statistics, own 217,942 homes; for the entire South the colored people own one home to every twenty per- sons. It is poor taste to boast ever, and too much boasting in matters of this kind has already been done; but this is not a poor showing for a people who started out not more than fifty years ago with no homes at all. The colored man and his family living in the country districts must be en- couraged to buy more land, to build larger and better homes, to understand that it is a mistake to attempt to rear his children in a home without pictures, without music, without papers, magazines, with little or no consideration for the number of children in his family to be accounted for as to room, place at the table, and the conveniences necessary in building up a happy and substantial family. Here is where the minister and the teacher in the coun- try districts can do and are doing effective work in the pulpit and in the schoolroom, which more than ever is be- coming the social center of the life of the people in the coun- try; but neither the colored preacher nor the teacher can do all that is necessary to be done to bring about a condi- tion of contentment which will make the colored man and woman build more and better homes on the farms than they are now doing. Good roads are a most important factor in giving an impetus for decent homes, and just now many of our South- ern States are taking a deeper interest in building up good roads. To be sure the automobiles have made this a neces- sity; but whatever has done it, the fact that we are going to have good roads is going to play an important part in encouraging the colored people to remain in the country 336 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST and to build up not only the land but the houses. Good roads are already reducing the amount of prejudice which young people, especially, have for country life; good roads will mean the bringing nearer to the people their schools, their Sunday schools, their churches, and their neighbors also. The average colored home in the country at the present sends its children to school for not more than three months out of the twelve, and this is true largely because the roads are not built up and are not kept in good condition for traveling. The average country home sends its children to Sunday school not more than six months out of the twelve for the same reason; the men and the women from these homes attend church only a part of the year because so often the roads are impassable and too little or no atten- tion is paid to the satisfaction which comes to people be- cause they can mingle at church, at school, at Sunday school, and at the homes of their friends. A few years ago I became interested in the women on a large Southern plantation. The plantation had been in one family for nearly eighty years, having been handed down from one son to another ; the people on that plantation during the months of December, January, February, and March could not and did not cross a certain creek because there was no bridge. There was no intercourse between the two sides; the life of the people living on each side of the creek was one of almost miserable isolation, and the owner of that farm used to say: "These people are just like chil- dren ; they are eternally ready to move ; they are never satis- fied; they are so restless." It was many years before he could be made to realize that these people were exactly like all people : they wanted to see and to be with their friends. They needed contact as all other people do, and when long" years since the son of this man took up the place he more readily saw that he owed it to his tenants to build a bridge across the creek so that people could pass back and forth any time they wished. The building of that bridge changed the entire life of the place, and, more than this, it has- THE NEGRO HOME AND FUTURE OF THE RACE 337 changed the very character of the men and women on the plantation. We will increase the number of homes for colored peo- ple in the country districts by increasing their love for the country, remembering that we can increase the love of the people for life in the country by building up the waste places, laying off the roads, building bridges, etc., which will mean longer school terms and more frequent attendance upon church and other religious and social gatherings. A cleaner and more intelligent and practical ministry for the country pulpit is also necessary ; a ministry which, although it can make its congregation imagine that they are walking on golden streets, or drinking milk and eating honey, will also make the congregation see that the cultivation of corn must not be neglected, and that, although milk and honey are very good things when one is in a certain condi- tion, they are not at all the things which one needs when he has to do a full day's work. There must be the training in the schoolroom in matters of cooking, washing, ironing, sewing, sweeping, dusting, cleaning in general, that will bring the school and the home on the same plane, so that the two may work in harmony and not in opposition. We must not forget the social life of the people living in the country districts. Books, music, games, as well as the old picnics, must be encouraged, if the people are to remain in the country districts and build up their homes as they should; and the teacher niust be that sort of teacher who will take an interest" in this side of the life of the com- munity. The course of study in the country schools should never overlook the matter of the selection, preparation, and serving of food. Too much attention must not be paid to the making of candy, cake, etc., but more attention must be paid to the making of bread and the cooking of such vegetables as are easily raised on any land here in the South. Sewing for the girls should not be neglected in the country schools, as every colored girl should be taught to make her own simple garments, at least an ordinary shirt waist suit. 22 338 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST We often hear it said that the South will blossom as a rose. Those of us who live here in the South and who under- stand each other (and many of us do understand each other) know that there is no more beautiful land anywhere, news- papers to the contrary notwithstanding; and we realize that the people of the South are kindly disposed one toward the other and are quick to lend a helping hand and quick to feel each others' burdens. We know that our landscapes are beautiful, that nowhere do the stars shine brighter than right here in our beautiful South ; but this land of ours will never blossom as a rose, in the truest sense of the word, until its colored citizens in a larger number as well as the whites are more comfortably situated and housed. A crop finds it hard to grow in grass and weeds ; so a soul finds it difficult to develop its fullest when it lives in squalor and filth. What is true of the colored people in the country dis- tricts may well be said of them and their homes in the larger cities and towns of the South. To be sure there are many well-to-do colored families all over the South who live in and own well furnished homes sufficiently large and com- fortable, but these are the select few. A larger number of our people in the cities live in neighborhoods unprotected by police supervision, on streets poorly lighted, in houses with only two or three rooms, and are worse off by far, both physically and morally, than their country brother and sister in the same circumstances; for the latter have the air and the sunshine which are quit^ as necessary for the moral life of man as for his physical being. If the authorities of our Southern cities would take into consideration the fact that we are really a part of the body politic and that, although we are a distinct race with perhaps some distinct traits and characteristics, we have many things in common with al} the other citizens of the community, and one of these is a love of family life, a desire and yearning to bring our chil- dren up in a wholesome and clean atmosphere, a growing desire to create for ourselves an ideal which expresses itself more and more in decent living, our homes and the future of our race and of both races would be happier. THE NEGRO HOME AND FUTURE OF THE RACE 339 Colored people of the Southern cities should be encour- aged to build and furnish their homes. Is this quite enough? No, they should be encouraged to build beautiful homes. We are not likely to do this if we know that the sewage will stop just before it reaches the comer of the neighbor- hood in which we live ; we are not likely to do it if we know that the pavements will be built just within a door of ours and suddenly stop. A few days ago I was in a Southern city — in the State of Georgia, I am glad to say. I had never been in that city before. I stopped at the house of a physician. As I went out on the porch the next morning (I reached there at night) , I saw well-paved streets on both sides of the road. I noticed as the day wore on that all of the houses on the opposite street were occupied by white people, and I remarked that it was an unusual sight to see that both streets were equally well kept so far as the city was concerned. This was the answer from my friend: "The white people of this town are fair to the colored peo- ple ; they want the whole city to present a good appearance, and thpy know that one way to do this is to give the colored people as good a sidewalk as they give the whites." We are not likely to build homes, if we know that in our neighbor- hood women of ill fame of our own race are permitted to live and flaunt themselves at will either day or night and that white women of ill fame are forced to remain at our next door ; we are not likely to take an interest in building homes when street lights and city protection are generally wanting. The lack of these conditions brings about unrest, discontent, lack of cooperation, lack of confidence, and finally bitterness and hatred which often end in crime. There is another reason, which may be considered selfish ; but it is better to do some things from a selfish standpoint than not to do them at all. V/here the homes of colored peo- ple are comfortable and clean, there is less disease, less sick- ness, less death, and less danger to others. Disease knows no color line; we meet each other necessarily daily in the kitchen, in the nurseries, on the streets, in the stores, and often in more intimate ways, as trained nurses, chauffeurs, coachmen, etc.; and whatever disease attaches itself to a 340 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST colored person because of lack of decent surroundings is not unlikely to transfer itself to a white person, even though his surroundings may be clean and more comfortable or lux- urious. There is still another side to this question of having decent homes by colored people. Is not the South in need to-day of a larger number of industrious and well-lived peo- ple more than ever before in the history of its development? Every year 225,000 colored people die in the South ; 100,000 of these deaths could be prevented if there were better homes, cleaner streets, proper sewerage, better bathing fa- cilities. Does the South not need these men and women to build its roads, to cultivate its fields, to increase and de- velop its wealth and citizenship ? In the South 450,000 are seriously ill all the time. Does this not work too great a hardship on people who are dependent upon these sick people to fill daily obligations? It is said that colored people pay annually $15,000,000 (or at least somebody pays it for us) for funeral expenses. Would it not be a better thing, a more economical thing, to have this money used for better schools and churches and for the general improvement of the city and State? There is an annual loss to our good and beautiful South of $300,000,000 from disease that, with proper care, more careful and decent living, might just as well be saved. In the South 600,000 colored people will die from tuberculosis alone. No disease depends more upon plenty of room, fresh air, sufficient light and sanitation ; and if for no other reason than this, we need encouragement to select decent localities, to build larger and more comfortable homes, and to improve the localities and homes in which we already live. When children are brought up in closely settled houses with no breathing space, in squalor and dirt, with insuffi- cient light at night and poor sanitary conditions, with little or no water, we need not expect them to cultivate self- respect; we need not expect them to remain at the fireside very long; we may expect them to rapidly fill the jails and reform schools. Is this not an expense to the State and country which might be better invested in a more whole- THE NEGRO HOME AND FUTURE OF THE RACE 341 some and even a more economical way? We would at least save these boys and girls to be better men and women for the future. One is always embarrassed to speak of himself, but it is not in any boastful spirit that I claim that we are a responsive people. We understand well that we have not had the advantages that other citizens of the South have had and that we do not always know what is best to do ; we are a race of people who want to grow and improve. We are growing more and more to believe that there can be only one way, one standard of decent living, and that Jis the standard which the white South sets up for itself. We are trying always to remember that we are part and parcel of the South, that we owe it to her quite as well as any other citizen owes it, to take an interest in all that goes to make it a land to be desired. We want to be strong physically, so that we shall not fail to do our share of the physical labor of the South ; we want to be better educated, so as to have a greater respect for higher moral living; we want to be able to interpret into our own moral life something of the spiritual, that sort of spiritual that will keep us from hating a man just because he happens to be white or because we think he hates us. What sets the American white man above other people at home and abroad is his love of home and family; his devotion in getting for his children the best there is to be gotten ; his desire to make sure that his own town, his own State, his own community, and his own household are grow- ing in every good direction. His self-respect and his self- interest come to him largely because of his surroundings. He knows that his future depends upon this course of pro- cedure; it is just so with the colored people of the South. In the years that are to come we will give back to the South in dollars and cents, in decent men and women, in well-con- ducted schools and churches, in well-balanced citizenship, just in proportion as the South sees to it that we have a chance to be and to do, and as it thinks of us not in terms of aggressive social equality but in terms of men and women with equal desires to build up themselves and the race to which they belong. 342 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST SECRET SOCIETIES AS FACTORS IN THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMICAL LIFE OF THE NEGRO PROFESSOR MONROE N. WORK, TUSKEGEE, ALA. There are among negroes a multitude of secret and beneficial societies. These societies fall into two classes: the old-line societies, such as the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias; and the more purely benevolent societies, as, for example, the True Reformers and the Gali- lean Fishermen. Included under benevolent societies are also the very large number of local sick and death benefit societies. The great number of fraternal and benevolent societies among negroes indicates that they occupy an important place in their social life. With the exception of the old-line societies, all of these have originated with the negro. They have arisen as a result of very fundamental needs. Such, for example, was the origin of the Free African Society, established at Philadelphia in 1787. This was one of the first attempts to form an independent organization among American negroes.. Its organizers were two free persons of color, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen. These two men beheld with sorrow the irreligious and uncivilized state of the people of their complexion and often consulted with each other concerning organizing some kind of religious society. They finally decided that a society should be formed without regard to religious tenets, "provided the persons lived an orderly and sober life, in order to support one an- other in sickness and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children." The persons who joined were charged a small monthly fee. In the course of time the Free African Society took the initiative in all things relative to the welfare of the people of color. The marriage of both slaves and free negroes was much neglected. The Society appointed a committee to regulate the matter of marriages. Another thing that the Society did was to secure a burial place for negroes. In most instances they were forbidden to be buried in the reg- SECRET SOCIETIES AS FACTORS IN SOCIAL LIFE 343 ular graveyards. They were buried on the edge of fields and in unmarked graves. A petition was made to the common council of Philadelphia asking that the potter's field, which was to be leased, be rented to the Free African Society. The petition stated that the Society would pay as much rent for the ground as any other person. The petition was granted. The Free African Society had a profound and important influence on the negro's social life. Out of it grew the first independent negro religious denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The precarious economic condition of free negroes led to the organization of many mutual aid societies in Phila- delphia and in other cities. These societies were very simple in form. A small initiation fee and a small annual payment were charged. There were sick and death benefits. The individual societies were confined to a few members, all personally known to each other. In 1838 there were one hundred of these small societies in Philadelphia, with a mem- bership of 7,448. The amount paid in benefits that year was $14,172. They had on hand funds amounting to $10,143. In 1848 there were in Philadelphia one hundred and six of these societies, with a membership of 8,000. The annual income for seventy-six of these was reported to be $16,814. Aid was rendered to six hundred and eighty-one families. In the cities of the South there were also mutual aid organizations among the free negroes. In Baltimore as far back as 1820 there are records of organizations of little groups of acquaintances and fellow laborers into beneficial societies in order to help one another in sickness and to pro- vide for decent burials. It is estimated that at least twenty- five of these societies had been formed in that city before the Civil War. They were especially exempted from the laws forbidding the meetings of free persons of color. Out of the Baltimore Mutual Aid Society grew at least three national societies : The Good Samaritans, the Nazarites, and the Galilean Fishermen. In one instance a secret society was organized to over- throw slavery. In 1844 a Moses Dickson, who had for years worked on steamboats running from Cincinnati up and down 344 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, determined to do something toward securing the freedom of the slaves. In 1844 he and eleven other free negroes met to form an organization for this purpose. After consulting together they decided to take two years to study over and develop a plan of action. In 1846 the twelve met in St. Louis and organized the Knights of Liberty. The organization having been formed, the men separated wilh the understanding that they were to travel through the South and organize local societies in the different States. Dickson remained at the headquarters in St. Louis. It was agreed that they should spend ten years working slowly and secretly, making their preparations and in extending the organization of the society. At the end of this time, because of changes in conditions both North and South, it was decided to change the plan of operation and do underground railroad work. It was claimed that the Knights of Liberty yearly assisted hundreds of slaves to escape. The emancipation of the slaves having ended the work for which the society had been formed, Mr. Dickson, who had become a minister of the gospel, decided to establish a beneficial order in memory of the original organizers. As a result the Knights and Daughters of Tabor society was established in 1871. In Lexington, Ky., in 1843 the Union Benevolent Society was organized by free negroes. Its purpose was to care for the sick, bury the dead, encourage education and industry among free negroes, and help slaves to freedom. The white people knew of this society and aided it. They knew that the society helped to bury the dead, cared for the sick, and looked after the support of the widows and orphans. In 1852 they permitted a lodge to be organized among the slaves. What the masters did not know was that this so- ciety was actively engaged in assisting slaves to escape and that the underground railroad agents in Kentucky were actively cooperating with it. Benevolent and burial societies, it appears, were also numerous among the slaves. An account of mutual aid so- cieties among slaves in Virginia says that in every city of any size there existed organizations of negroes having as SECRET SOCIETIES AS FACTORS IN SOCIAL LIFE 345 their object the caring for the sick and the burying of the dead. In but few instances did the society exist openly, as the laws of the time concerning negroes were such as to make it impossible for this to be done without serious conse- quences to the participants. The general plan seems to have been to select some one who could read and write and make him the secretary. The meeting place having been selected, the members would come by ones and twos, make their pay- ments to the secretary, and quietly withdraw. The book of the secretary was often kept covered up on the bed. In many of the societies each member was known by number, and in paying simply announced his number. The president of such a society was usually a privileged slave who had the confidence of his or her master and could go and come at will. Thus a form of communication could be kept up be- tween all members. In event of the death of a member pro- vision was made for decent burial, and all the members as far as possible obtained permits to attend the funeral. Here again their plan of getting together was brought into play. In Richmond they would go to the church by ones and twos and there sit as near together as convenient. At the close of the service a line of march would be formed when suf- ficiently far from the church to make it safe to do so. With emancipation there was more or less of a break- up of the social system in which both the slaves and the free negroes had been living. Readjustments took place. The secret and benevolent societies played an important part in this readjustment. Some years ago I had occasion to make a study of a small group of negroes engaged in oyster fish- ing on the Georgia coast. I found that the oldest society in this group, the Christian Progress, had been organized soon after the close of the war by a number of Christian people banding themselves together for mutual help. The next oldest society in this group of oyster negroes dated its organization from Reconstruction days, when there was a military company with a woman's auxiliary attached. The military company passed out of existence, but the woman's auxiliary continued under the name of the Ladies' Branch. 346 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Such societies as I found among the negroes of the Georgia coast multiplied after emancipation in all parts of the South. Their main purposes were to care for the sick and furnish decent burial at death. Almost every one be- came a member of some society. There were societies for the men, for the women, and for the children. In some in- stances the society for the men was the head, while those for the women and children were the branches. In other instances they were entirely independent of each other. Lit- tle or no attention was paid to age or health conditions. The joining fees usually ranged from $1 to $5. The monthly dues were from 10 cents to 50 cents. Some of these local societies had secret features, others had none. The amount paid for sick dues was regulated by the by-laws and ranged from 10 cents to $2 per week. These local organizations, formed by the hundreds in all sections of the South, served a good purpose. They brought the people together and estab- lished friendly intercourse. In the early eighties the operating of negro beneficial societies began to develop into a regular business. This de- velopment was along two lines. The first and earlier was the establishing of national organizations, which retained all of the features of the oldest secret and benevolent so- cieties, but in addition gave much larger insurance benefits. The most notable of these new societies was the True Re- formers, established at Richmond in 1881. The True Re- formers is in many respects the most remarkable negro secret society in the country. It was one of the first to be established with the express purpose of endeavoring to bet- ter the negro's economic conditions. In 1883 it was granted a charter and incorporated as a joint stock company under the name of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers. Th6 capital stock was to be not more than $10,000. The company was to hold real estate not to exceed in value more than $25,000. In 1898 the charter wa& amended and the society was given the right to issue reg- ular insurance policies to its members. The policies based on an age scale ranged from $33 to $1,000. The value of the real estate that could be held by the society was in- SECRET SOCIETIES AS FACTORS IN SOCIAL LIFE 347 creased to the sum of $500,000. In the twenty years from 1881 to 1901 the society paid out in death claims $600,000 and in sick benefits $1,500,000. The membership increased to over 50,000. It is not, however, the remarkable growth in members of the True Reformers or its insurance features which are of the greatest interest to us, but rather the economic by- products of the society. These by-products were a bank, with over $500,000 assets ; a mercantile and industrial asso- ciation, doing an annual business of over $100,000; a weekly newspaper, with a printing department; a hotel accommo- dating 150 guests; an old folks' home; an incorporated build- ing and loan association having as its object the encourage- ment of industry, frugality, and saving among its mem- bers ; and a real estate department which had under its con- trol property of the order with a total value of $400,000. No negro organization of any sort had hitherto made such an ambitious adventure into the field of business endeavor. Through bad management and other causes the True Reformers society suffered reverses. The most of its busi- ness enterprises failed. Nevertheless its by-product experi- ments were great object lessons, teaching negroes that it was possible for them to conduct business enterprises in a large way. This was especially true in the case of the bank. Its establishment and its operation for more than twenty years taught negroes that they could establish and operate banks. As a result, and in spite of inexperience and reverses, they now have fifty. The second line into which, in the eighties, negro benefit societies developed was insurance companies. There were a number of causes which led to the forming of insurance companies operated and controlled by negroes. The people had grown in intelligence. They had made economic prog- ress and were ready to take some form of insurance that would pay them larger sick and death benefits than they were receiving from the mutual aid societies. The negro insurance companies met these demands by paying much higher sick and death benefits than the older societies had been able to pay. This was made possible by increasing the 348 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST membership in a society from twenty-five or fifty persons to several hundred and in some cases several thousand per- sons. About this time white industrial insurance com- panies began to operate extensively among negroes. These companies generally paid negroes smaller amounts than were paid whites for the same premiums. There arose com- petition between the white and negro companies. In order to get the business of white companies the common attempt was to make a rate lower than that charged by the white companies and to pay more benefits. In spite of inexperi- ence, smaller capital, and faulty organization, the negro com- panies have been very largely successful in this competition. In 1900 they had become important enough for the State Legislatures to begin to make laws to control them. The Virginia Legislature passed a law for the express purpose of putting negro insurance companies out of business. The law required companies paying sick and death benefits to pay the State a tax of $200 and one per cent of their gross receipts. This law simply acted as a stimulus to the negro companies and made them hustle more. Thereupon the Leg- islature passed a new law requiring benefit insurance com- panies wishing to continue doing business to deposit in the State treasury the sum of $10,000 as security for the policy- holders. This, it was thought, would certainly get rid of the negro insurance companies. In fact, it is said that the agents of white industrial insurance companies told persons holding policies in the negro companies that their money was lost and that they had better join the white companies. This law, as the previous one, simply acted as a stimulus. Four of the companies individually put up their $10,000. Insurance is now one of the largest fields of business endeavor in which negroes operate. Reports of Insurance Commissioners show that, for the various States of the South, the assets of negro insurance companies are now over $1,500,000. Their annual income is over $2,800,000. They disburse annually $2.vnn OOO. They write annually over $3,000,000 insurance. They now have in force about $26,000,000 insurance. Recently, and as a result of the development of negro fraternal insurance, an old-line in- SECRET SOCIETIES AS FACTORS IN SOCIAL LIFE 349 surance company, the Standard Life, with headquarters at Atlanta, was organized. It began business in 1913. As a preliminary, it was required to deposit $100,000 with the Georgia Insurance Commission. It now has $2,000,000 of insurance in force and is doing business in seven States. In recent years the increase in the number of negro busi- ness and professional men has created a demand for business houses. Negro secret societies have furnished the money with which to erect suitable buildings. In New Orleans the Knights of Pythias erected a $100,000 business building. In Philadelphia the Odd Fellows erected a $100,000 building. At Little Rock, Ark., the Mosaic Templars not long ago dedicated a $60,000 office building and auditorium. The Negro Odd Fellows of Georgia have erected a six-story office building that cost over $100,000. At Washington, D. C, according to reports, a contract was recently let for a $185,000 five-story Masonic Temple, the greater part of which is to be used for business purposes. Last year at Louisville the Knights of Pythias dedicated a $125,000 seven-story office building. Experience has taught the secret societies and insurance companies that attention must be given to health improve- ment. As an example, the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association got out some special health instruc- tions. It has its agents see that efforts are made to improve health conditions of the people among whom they work. The Odd Fellows of Georgia have a health department, the par- ticular function of which is to furnish health information. This is done by means of articles on health published in the Atlanta Independent, the official organ of this order in Geor- gia. When last year the Tuskegee Institute promoted a National Negro Health Week, the most active and efficient cooperators were the secret societies and the insurance com- panies. Let us summarize what secret societies have done for the social and economic life of negroes. We found that during the days of slavery these societies were important factors in the social and economic life of the free negroes and to some extent of the slaves. During the Reconstruction 350 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST period these societies were important factors in the read- justment of the negro to his new conditions. The organiz- ing and operating of these societies has developed leadership and taught the masses to be amenable to this leadership. The national societies have given opportunity for the de- velopment and exercise of political abilities which, because of conditions, are to a large extent excluded from the reg- ular channels of expression. The secret societies have af- forded a means whereby negroes were able to get together large sums of money. The chief value of negro societies and benevolent organi- zations has been that they were schools in which the masses were taught the value and the methods of cooperation. In order for these organizations to succeed they were compelled to enforce upon the masses of the people habits of saving and of system which they would not otherwise have been able or disposed to learn. These societies have contributed in no small degree to both the social and economic develop- ment of the negro. ILL HEALTH, NARCOTICS, AND LAWLESSNESS AMONG NEGROES HON. J. L. SUTTON, NEW ORLEANS, LA. I WAS born and reared in the South with the negro race, and have always felt a great interest in their welfare ; and if there is anything I can do for the uplifting of the race, I will gladly render my services. My subject applies not only to the negro race, but to other races just the same. However, the South is undoubt- edly the home of the negro. Climate and general interest are in their favor. It is known that the cold weather of the North is not favorable to them, and we Southerners feel that there is more interest shown in their behalf in the South than by anybody else. Bishop Thirkield, in an ad- dress on this question, said: "It was a blessing of God that the negro people were brought to the South." ILL HEALTH, NARCOTICS, AND LAWLESSNESS 351 III Health. — As to their ill health in the time of slavery, slave owners made the mistake of looking after their health only, paying very little or no attention to their moral or mental condition, which undoubtedly has much to do with the health of any race, as ill health to-day is traced to un- sanitary surroundings, crowded conditions of their quarters, and lack of knowledge of the care of their bodies. It is acknowledged that the death rate of the negro race of the South is about double that of the white race. Dr. Slinger- land, in an address delivered at the New Orleans University, said that the mortality was thirty out of every thousand of the negro race, while it was only fifteen out of every thou- sand of the white. This should not be the case, as naturally the negro race is strong, robust, and long-lived; for we often find a negro man or woman near the age of a hundred years. Negroes are in their own sphere when doing outside or agricultural work. Therefore, when they come to the cities and are crowded in close quarters, where unsanitary conditions exist, where so many families live in one building, with no preventive measures taken when any member is sick either with a contagious disease or otherwise, their mor- tality goes up. They are also cowed, being afraid of the regulations of the Board of Health, and in certain diseases keep the patients from getting medical treatment in order that they can go out to their work, thus spreading the dis- ease among themselves and ofhers. Tuberculosis, or the white plague, and venereal diseases have made great inroads on the negro race — due principally to the outcome of their ignorance and congested living conditions. I would like to say, however, that great eflfort is being manifested by leading physicians, schools, and universities to eliminate these conditions, and they need our assistance and cooperation more than our criticism. There is a growing class among the race who have joined societies and insurance companies which give them treat- ment in time of sickness and also trained nursing to prevent diseases, and these should make for improvement in their health. When taken out of congested districts, the negro women keep their homes neat and clean ; in fact, the serv- 352 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ants who are taught to care for our homes learn how to keep their own homes neat and clean, and also to follow out our sanitary laws and regulations, applying them to their own homes. I will say just here that the greatest drawback is that the property holders are to blame for the crowds they put in small, unsanitary buildings, often not fit for the habitation of animals, and generally at unreasonable or extortionate rent. It is for the State or city officials to make and enforce such laws and regulations as will compel the property holders to make just provisions for their tenants. These people come home tired and very much in need of a good bath, in order that they may keep themselves clean and, may rest at night, and so find the natural incentives of sober and up- right living. Narcotics. — It is known that the percentage of narcotic users among the negroes is enormously greater than among us. For a long time habit-forming drugs were sold without hindrance by unscrupulous persons for profit, and the negro was naturally the victim. Having once acquired the habit, it has rapidly grown upon them. Since the passing of the modern anti-narcotic laws, however, this to a great degree will tend to die out. Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that the great injury of narcotics to this race should not be left to the law alone to eliminate, but they should be taught in every way its harmful effect and given such treat- ment and assistance as will enable them to abstain from these harmful drugs. The government must declare alcohol a narcotic and treat it as other harmful drugs. Lawlessness. — Crime is the outcome of inheritance, en- vironment, or physical weakness; therefore when we con- sider the negro race's lack of moral training and ignorance their miserable surroundings and common exploitation at the hands of our money or indifference, who can fail to see the connection between these things and their "lawlessness"? Personally, as a race, I do not consider the negro people naturally lawless ; on the contrary, I consider that they are naturally law-abiding and subject to authority. While it is true that there are five negroes to one white person in our ILL HEALTH, NARCOTICS, AND LAWLESSNESS 353 penitentiaries or our jails in the South, j^et they are there not greatly for any great crimes committed, but for such acts as pilfering, house-robbing, and other petty or non- capital offenses. Besides, it is the whites and not the ne- groes that administer the law in the South. That may make a difference in the relative statistics. Seldom is a negro jailed for such crimes as wrecking or holding up a train, bank-robbing, or the like. The negro is tempted to come to the city from agricultural work on the plantation, to which he is mostly fitted, and, finding no employment, gets to drinking or forming other bad habits. Having no money, he commits some crime, which never would have been done if he had been employed in doing proper work. I feel that no man should be permitted to stay in the city who has no employment. This loafing on our streets, living in barrooms, and standing on the streets, waiting the coming of their wives, who are employed as our cooks and bring them baskets of edibles — this is the cause of a large percentage of lawlessness. In my eight years of experience as Chaplain of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and coming personally in contact with the negro, I would say that, as a class, even those who are criminals and serv- ing terms in prison are there from ignorance and not having been properly instructed and cared for. In conversation with owners of large plantations, levee contractors, and railroad men, they tell me they prefer healthy negroes who have served a term in the State Peni- tentiary to any other class of people, as they have been taught to work, have the habit of keeping regular hours, and really do a more honest day's work than the average laborer, which goes to show that it was not the natural man that committed the crime, but the unnatural or ignorant man, and once put in the way of even a little training they show response and improvement. On our State farms the negroes are made trusties, drive our water and bread wagons, look after the stock, and enjoy every trust and every freedom common on large plantations. It is my opinion that the negro race is susceptible of religious training; and 23 354 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST while they may not retain principles as we think they should, they imbibe them more readily than any other class, and I feel that, if the negro race could be rightly educated, taught sanitary laws, given steady work, and trained in the fear of God, ninety-nine per cent of them would be a law- abiding people. THE PLAY LIFE OF NEGRO BOYS AND GIRLS A. M. TRAWICK, SOCIAL SERVICE SECRETARY, INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION Before we answer the question touching the play life of negro boys and girls, we must say a word or two about play in general, and what sort of play a Sociological Congress is authorized to discuss. All men and most animals are endowed by nature with two instincts, the instinct of play and the instinct of gre- gariousness. Both instincts are dormant in the early days of existence, but once awakened, they never die till death claims its due. An individual who refuses to play is a men- ace to society, just as the individual who shuns the compan- ionship of his fellow mortals. The play impulse demands gregariousness and the massing of human beings together is always a stimulus to play. A solitary individual trying to play is hopelessly hobbed, and an aggregate of mortals with- out play is an inert mass incapable of direction or move- ment. The reaction of the play spirit upon the crowd depends entirely upon the leadership of the crowd. Whether it shall be a game to the finish, a lynching, a relief expedition, or a war, depends upon the influence of the leader. So closely related are all these crowd activities that an exercise may be- gin as a game, continue as a lynching, culminate in war, and shift back to a game again, without the slightest loss in the fun of the thing. Mankind is incurably playful, and men do best which they do as a part of the game. The rule of the game is at the direction of the leader. THE PLAY LIFE OF NEGRO BOYS AND GIRLS 355 These three considerations show the sociological im- portance of play; it is a primitive and inevitable impulse, it is stimulated by group contacts, and it is guided to its proper culmination by qualified leaders. How then shall we answer the previous question, "What are we doing for the play life of negro boys and girls?" At some future session of this Congress some one will be able to answer, "We are doing all .that the needs of negro boys and girls require us to do." At this session, however, we must satisfy ourselves by saying, "We are doing as little as possible." But let us not be too hard on ourselves. It has not been long since we began to give the subject of play for any- body any serious consideration at all. Most of us got along very well without any sociological interference in our play when we were growing up. Given a fair afternoon, a yarn ball, and a home-made bat, we had no difl^culty in get- ting something started. It may have been "one-eyed cat" or it may have been war; but no matter, we had a bully time and came home with a good appetite for supper. Every man was his own umpire, as far as might be, in those good old days, and deciding the question of leadership was as much a part of the game as running the bases. Do our children need municipal petting any more than we did? Times have changed and customs have changed with them. The old town common has retired behind a barbed vdre fence. The school yard from fence to wall is too crowded for hot-ball or deep breathing. The church yard cannot be profaned to the vulgar uses of play. The back yard is reserved for ashes and tin cans or a vegetable gar- den; the front yard is sacred to real estate investments; the streets are full of traffic; the alleys are full of grease. Why are children so bothersome about a place to play? There is the Sunday school picnic, where they can skip the* rope and drop the handkerchief. There is the State fair, the county fair, and every autumn the street fair and the circus. There are moving pictures in every block. What more do children want? 356 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST But, in spite of these concessions, some one a short time ago began to tell us that play was not a waste of time, not a luxurj', but an actual necessity. And we began to believe it, albeit with a kind of hesitation glide. We roped off a corner of our grand and dignified parks, removed some of the "Keep Off the Grass" signs, put in a play leader at fif- teen dollars a month, and let the children loose, while we stood by and smiled at our amiable weakness. The returns in better health, happier homes, and improved morals seemed to justify the investment; on second thought they did justify the outlay; and to-day supervised playgrounds are on the budget, or at least on the conscience, of every progressive city and town in the land. For negroes too? 0, no. Let them work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. If jails and work- houses and reformatories do not make good citizens, minus the vote, of them, what more can we be expected to do?" Negroes pay a considerable amount of taxes, but the tax- payers' money must not be wasted. The city hall people say so themselves, and we good people have put them there to protect our interests. A great many people, both white and colored, do not believe that what is good for children is necessarily good for negro children. They think that play is a reward for work well done; and as negroes never do enough work and never did do it any too well, they are not entitled to the reward. Some negro preachers and school- teachers assume that discipline, toil, and strict decorum are the only marks of progress. They believe that children should be brought up on corn bread, Latin grammar, and "work, for the night is coming." They take themselves with overwhelming seriousness. They should laugh more and stimulate others to laugh with them, the public welfare requiring it. As a race, negroes sing well and dance well, but they have made no distinct contribution to the play-life of nations. It is a matter of no little significance that the negro, while he has been singing his own melodies into the hearts of all nations, has yet no folk-games, no race pageants, no THE PLAY LIFE OF NEGRO BOYS AND GIRLS 357 adequate rhythmic movements to accompany his own music. His games are pitiful imitations. The dance, to the degree he has racialized it, is not among the achievements he is i5roud to claim. He possesses without doubt a latent power of play which only waits the call of a master leader to de- velop into a benefit to the wide world. His children should no longer be deprived of the expression of their fully de- veloped lives, which may be for the more joyous life of all nations. Let us discover, if we may, what Southern cities are do- ing toward supplying negro boys and girls opportunities for their play-life. A few cities include in the playground budget an annual appropriation for the negro population. Nashville has two playgrounds, one of thirty-four acres and one of two acres. During the summer of 1915 the City Park Commission opened playgrounds on the public school yards. School-teachers volunteered to act as play super- visors in these centers. Paid supervisors will be put in the other two centers during the coming summer. At Houston, Tex., playgrounds have been opened on pub- lic school yards during the past two summers. Two young women who were trained for the work at Fisk University acted as leaders and supervisors in this work. Another Fisk graduate. Miss Myrtle Alexander, con- ducted a recreation class for the teachers at the Summer School of Straight University, New Orleans, last summer; and during the winter she has promoted recreation work in that city. Morehouse College and Atlanta University have con- ducted community games on the campus, and have sent out volunteers to supervise play on one or two open places in the city. The Kindergarten Association of Atlanta has done commendable work where opportunity was found. Atlanta also has one public playground for negroes. Students of Paine College and Haines Institute, Augusta, Ga., have conducted orderly play on some vacant spaces of that city. In the same city the Bethlehem House workers have conducted play during the vacation months in one 358 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST playground. Two other playgrounds in Augusta are equipped and supervised by negroes out of their own be- nevolence. At the mining camp of Dolomite, Ala., an attracti\^ schoolhouse has been built and a playground equipped with inexpensive but adequate apparatus for the school children. A school-teacher in Cincinnati has demonstrated what can be done under the trying circumstances of limited space and meager equipment. A narrow alley between two build- ings has been thoroughly cleaned and converted into a playground for relays of classes. Baseball is played in a vacant lot in Augusta under the supervision of a volunteer student director. Among private enterprises, the play- grounds of the Southern Presbyterian Mission in Louis- ville are deserving of highest commendation. The Rev. John Little, Superintendent of the Mission, is heroically striving to meet the needs of his neighborhood. He has utilized the energies of the boys in enlarging the play space and building a bath house. The Bethlehem Houses of the Southern Methadist Church are conducting high-grade work in kindergarten, Boy Scouts, and Camp Fire Girls activi- ties. Some white college men through the Student Y. M. C. A. are conducting clubs and coaching teams for col- ored boys. There are doubtless other illustrations of playground work among colored children ; but after due credit is given, the fact remains that the play life of negro boys and girls is a social need not provided for and but slightly recog- nized. Vast numbers of colored children are entirely out of the reach of any provision for their recreational life. Parks and playgrounds may be reported in some municipal yearbooks, but they may be far removed from the center of negro population. There is a recreation park in a cer- tain city two miles removed from the negroes, so that a . working mother must spend an entire day's wages to get her family to its attractions and home again. It is not a comfort to the social conscience to reflect that in one part of a large city is a play park, beautiful, inviting, and health- THE PLAY LIFE OF NEGRO BOYS AND GIRLS 359 giving, and in another part of the same city children are playing, for want of a better place, in the muck of an open sewer. We are proVid of the one, justly; the other is our social shame. Hosts of negro children throng the streets and alleys and seek the satisfaction of their play instinct in narrow, crowded spaces, in the midst of garbage and ash heaps, in and around washtubs and boiling kettles, under the house with chickens and pigs, playing hide and seek in surface closets, prisoners' base in back-yard clutter, and baseball in quarters so restricted that one could not cuss a cat without getting a mouthful of hair. In the full, free, joyous sense, children of the alley and depot platforms may not be said to play at all. They stand around, forever in somebody's way ; they crouch against old abandoned buildings and retail the idle gossip and worse of idle minds ; they fight a good deal ; and they stoop over the mud or dust of the alleyways rolling bones half a day at a time. They learn quite a bit of the white man's civilization during these years of unjoyous existence. If white boys ap- pear in these environs, it is a signal for war, and stones crowd the already overtaxed atmosphere. The coming of "pore white trash" is the occasion of renewed hostilities be- tween the gingham dog and the calico cat. The air is littered an hour or so with bits of gingham and calico. Thus the small negro child of the alley and back street is prepared for life in our glorious democracy. The chimes from neighboring cathedral spires boom out over his dwell- ings, but not to invite him to the sanctuary. The public library throws its shadows across his shack, but all he re- ceives from that structure is its shadow. The playground for white children is often nearer to his home than it is to the homes of the happy children playing in it, but he calls doodle bugs under the front steps. He has few com- panions or playmates at home, because he has no place for them; and if he goes into the open streets for his games, he is the victim of the unregulated tyranny of the larger boys. Many a negro child thus eats his morsel alone, with no 360 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST companion but his hard-working mother, and nothing to do but to keep out of the way. It was just such a lonely child as this, playing with a yarn ball in his mother's back yard, that started the fire which consumed thirty-six blocks in East Nashville. Many months of weary toil will not be sufficient to restore the loss that child's perfectly harmless but unregulated instinct brought to the city. What provisions have we made for the play of boys and girls in the rural districts? It does not require much time to answer: "Nothing." It is not necessary to add the modi- fying clause, "as yet," for there is neither confession of failure nor promise of amendment in our attitude to the country child. We have always thought of country negroes as a happy, free-hearted folk, even in days of slavery. We picture them in our imagination as a singing, shouting, dancing group, without serious responsibility for to-day or grave concern for to-morrow. They are supposed to find their recreation at county fairs and at circus day in the city. The simple truth is that the life of the colored boys and girls in rural districts is a dreary, uninteresting ex- istence. There is little team play and little, if any, com- petitive sports. The country churches do not make pro- vision for this demand of life, and the country schools leave the children to their own unassisted invention in the mat- ters of play and recreation. Negroes in rural districts are making surprising advancement in farm and home life, but community play has not yet so much as come into ex- istence. This introduces us to the last phase of our discussion. What are the agencies available for advancing the play life of negro boys and girls? We mention first municipal boards and playground commissions. Public parks and playgrounds supported out of the taxpayers' money have been found valuable for white children, and the conclusion is that the city authorities should make parks and playgrounds available for negro children. There is absolutely no argument in equity that would deliberately overlook so large a proportion of our THE PLAY LIFE OF NEGRO BOYS AND GIRLS 361 population as the negroes in Southern cities. We believe it to be good policy and good citizenship to urge the claims of negro children before city commissioners, and to insist upon the same wisdom in locating play spaces for negroes as for white children. Neither city planning nor city beautifying and rebuilding after great disasters can be complete without an equitable consideration of the colored population. We should make larger use of our public school yards, for play has its undoubted educational advantages, and the community has the right to the school yard. This feature of school life can be advanced in both urban and rural dis- tricts with little outlay of money. The negro churches should be urged to give more at- tention to community play than they are doing. They may well do this in the interest of the moral life of young people and because well-conducted community play is an aid in inspiring race loyalty. It may not be possible or desirable always to use church buildings and grounds for actual play, although it is difficult to see how children playing on the lawn can be less adornment of the sacred inclosure of a churchyard than a blackboard advertising next Sunday's sermon. But, at all events, church instruction may be utilized to inspire religious people in the sacred duty of making childhood joyous and happy. Preachers and religious leaders may well ponder these words of Professor Simeon N. Patten: "Whatever unifies mankind, whatever rids men of vice and misery, whatever frees them from fear and want, whatever takes off the pressure of overwork, is religion." If there is anything good in boys' clubs and girls' clubs, boys' corn clubs and girls' tomato clubs, Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, and all similar movements that inject the spirit of play into the midst of useful activities, we should do all in our power to make these benefits available for negro boys and girls. Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls are fostered by national organizations, and to be of great- est value local patrols must be affiliated with the national 362 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST movement. Negro Scouts should be recognized as part of the national movement, without limitation or restriction in their membership. Let us play more with our children. Let us make it possible for all our children to play. Let us release our children from hate and fear, from too much idleness and too much work, from stifled instincts and prejudices. So will we advance the safety and glory of our nation. HOUSING AND COMMUNITY HEALTH AMONG NEGROES F. A. M'KENZIE, PH.D., PRESIDENT OF FISK UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN. I AM not here to repeat what you already know about the importance of health, nor of the significance of proper housing. Why should I remind you of Dr. Ihlder's statement of last year that there is perhaps only one American city pro- viding every house and every cabin with pure water and sanitary closets — namely. Savannah, Ga. ? Why should I quote statistics to show the frightful financial drain upon our nation involved in preventable sickness and death? Why should I remind you of the fact that bad housing is a main cause of these losses, both to the residents in the bad houses and to their neighbors in the good houses? No man of intelligence and conscience needs telling. He is already aware of the facts and stirred with the thought of his obligation to change things. But even in his mind there may be doubts as to the feasibility of get- ting results, and more particularly doubts as to the methods of going about the great undertaking. To this doubter, let me reply: We do know what can be done, and we do know what tremendous gains will follow certain policies and practices. Of course one recognizes the fact that the knowledge essential to secure these gains is not widespread in society. HOUSING AND COMMUNITY HEALTH 363 Results will depend upon popular education through faith- ful leadership. We need, like the servant of Elisha, to have our eyes opened to the host of angels, warrior angels, if you please, who are ready to give us help. The seven thousand who had not bent the knee to the Baal of dis- couragement and disbelief do not as yet know who their fellow believers are. It is for this body to summon them into the temple, there to join their vows that the kingdom coming down out of the heavens may be realized evermore in the cities of men. Let me then suggest a mode of bringing to light and of making effective the leadership now latent in every part of the South. My main suggestion is that this Congress has the best opportunity of any organization or institu- tion to start a widespread effective movement for the im- provement of health through wise housing and sanitation regulations. Popular thought echoes the thought of popu- lar leaders. Unofficial and unselfish leadership is the most potent in the world. The results we have in mind involve primarily publicity, secondly legislation, thirdly law en- forcement. I suggest a committee to concentrate wise opinion, to diffuse sound information, to create public sentiment, to secure effective legislation, and to support adequate executive action. Doubtless there is a wide range of welfare movements that should receive our attention. But we will do well if we can take them up in succession, hammering at each one until that one is attained before going on to the next. Diffused and scattered firing will bring few results. Let me assume that in such a program housing and sani- tation would be the first subject for consideration. Our unit of operation to be effective cannot well be larger than the State, and probably should not be smaller than the State, although some of our most significant work must be done in the counties and cities. I therefore suggest that, after this body has indorsed the general plan here outlined, a committee of active think- ers and active workers, men of broadest and deepest views, 364 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST profound believers in the realization of the kingdom of God on earth, be appointed for each State. This prelimi- nary committee, consisting of probably not more than five, should then be empowered to gather together a State Com- mittee of not to exceed fifty men and women of influence and power, as well as knowledge and conscience. The State Committee would assume charge of the whole movement within the State, and become responsible for the early realization of our objects within that State. They would be empowered to create auxiliary committees for special functions, such as publicity, and still other com- mittees within the counties and cities to bring about har- monious action within those subdivisions. In all that I have said thus far there has been implied the necessity of persuading the public to cooperate in securing the objects desired. Every citizen has a stake in this matter, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the white and the black. No man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself. It is evident not less to you than to me that if our Southern communities are to be cured of their insanitation and ill health the houses of the colored people as well as the white people must be provided with the essentials of decent living and correct sanitation. The colored people must be persuaded, not less than the white people, of the necessity of care and cleanliness. They must be taught to join in the plans for their welfare. Many among them are already convinced, and at work up to the limits of their power. But the great body still needs con- vincing leadership in order to march to the Canaan of bet- ter things. This is not a race problem, but a social prob- lem, which can be solved only by the united efforts of all in the community. Is cooperation by the two races really feasible? I believe it is, and wish to make appeal here for another dem- onstration of the fact. The recent disaster in Nashville, which involved both races in about the same numbers, pic- tured clearly the common qualities of misery and of sym'- pathy, and demonstrated how ready the white race is to HOUSING AND COMMUNITY HEALTH 365 supply relief for the colored as well as for the white. It illustrated by demonstration the possibility of cooperation of the white and the colored in investigation of needs and in distribution of relief. I believe it demonstrated how valuable was the intelligent assistance of colored workers in the handling of a critical situation for their own people. The white and the colored headquarters were at first on opposite sides of the same street, but in the end they were in the same building. Cooperation has minimized the bur- den of poverty which came upon the whole community and has alleviated what otherwise would have been a permanent charge of serious proportions upon that community. I realize that there are strong and critical differences of opinion between members of the two races, but it is my plea that both races should agree to cooperate heartily upon those policies upon which they think alike, leaving other policies for other occasions of discussion and dif- ference. It was my privilege last December to address the Chi- cago Branch of the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People. My auditors were of both races, but preponderantly colored. At that time I ventured to as- sert that there was a large program of welfare projects in which the white people of the country. North and South, were ready to join for the benefit of colored people. I ad- mitted that there are many and serious points upon which there are large differences of opinion as between the races. My plea to them was that we should take up our various issues and problems separately, in order that differences upon some points should not jeopardize the success of other movements upon which there was agreement. That would allow of concentration upon some matters, and yet without prejudice to the rights of opposition upon other times and occasions. I pleaded for conciliation, harmony, and cooperation so far as like ideas made that possible. To-day I make a similar plea. As a white man at the head of a colored school I venture to repeat my belief that in large prq^Dlems affecting all races of men alike, and re- 366 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST quiring uniform solution in order that either race may be provided for and protected, it is not only feasible but essen- tial that cooperation be brought about. If either race could succeed alone, there might be reason for attempting to work alone, and so to provide for the races in succession. But there can be no partial solution. Health for all or danger for all, is the axiomatic phrase to which we must listen. A healthy white race requires a healthy black race. Moreover, since all must be in time provided for, it is economy to provide for all at the beginning of the new era. What the program in its details must be, it is not neces- sary now to inquire. Our premises are substantially all agreed upon. Action is the necessary outcome of those premises. Let this conference proclaim its belief, and de- mand that action be taken. Then let it name five men in each State, put the matter in their hands, and call for a report of work and results next year. The results of such a competition in good works would be that we would soon require an interstate welfare commission to keep some States from securing undue advantages in through traffic to the kingdom of heaven. Biracial cooperation and prompt action cannot fail of immeasurable benefits to every part of the South. WHAT CAN THE CHURCH DO TO PROMOTE GOOD WILL BETWEEN THE RACES? BISHOP GEORGE W. CLINTON, D.D. It is my opinion that if we can once find the causes that underlie race troubles we shall have made substantial head- way in solving the problem which I hope and believe the good people of both races are anxious to have amicably and righteously settled once for all. It has been my earnest desire to ascertain the chief causes that make race relations in our country a problem and I have concluded that the chief causes are as follows : WHAT CAN THE CHURCH DO 367 The first is a lack of understanding of each other. I have often heard the remark that the Southern white man understands the Negro perfectly, and if left alone will work out by himself a satisfactory solution of all the race problems. Those who make this statement are sincere in the belief that they are stating the whole truth. But I believe a close and thorough investigation of the matter will soon convince them that they are mistaken. I give it as my candid opinion that the present-day white man, North or South, does not understand the present-day Negro, and that he has failed to put forth the proper effort to try to understand him. Prior to the inauguration of the Socio- logical Congress all the movements set in motion by white people for the study of the race question were movements in which white people were the sole promoters and sole actors — for example, such movements as that inaugurated by the late Edgar Gardner Murphy and the study of the race questions by Southern universities, all of which are moving in the right direction and have made for progress, but none of which can thoroughly grasp the situation and provide the ultimate remedy because they have left out the man who is the most important factor in the problem — the Negro himself. The play of Hamlet can never be staged successfully with Hamlet left out. I believe the Southern Sociological Congress will have greater success, because it is pursuing the right course. It is inviting the cooperation of the Negro in the solution of such problems as are common to black and white alike. The second difficulty as I see it is the failure on the part of our white brethren in the Church and elsewhere to fully recognize the changed status in the life, condition, and aspi- rations of the colored people. It seems to delight some of our good white friends to rehearse the pleasant relations and substantial friendships and deeds of kindness that accompanied the relations of the ante-bellum Negi'o and his master, relations which continue to exist among many of them since that time. These same people talk of a "New" South and new conditions and new relations as they affect 368 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST everything except the Negro that has come upon the stage since the events which changed the relations between master and slave. My friends, there is a New Negro just as there is a New South, and this New Negro is an essential part of that New South. It follows that people who deal with this Negro cannot expect to be successful in their dealings if they apply methods w^hich were employed under the old system. Without any desire to discuss or even consider the so-called "social equality" question — a question that has no rightful place in the discussion of race relations on the broad and high plane of justice and equity — I wish to assert that a failure to recognize the changed status in the life, condi- tion, and aspiration of the Negro will result in failure to properly adjust race relations and bring about that good will that is so desirable, and so much to be hoped for among the peoples that God has placed so close together in this pleasant land. A third element which makes the problem of race rela- tions is a lack of the spirit of hearty cooperation in the plans that are best suited to promote good will between races. If race relations are to be changed, especially for the better, and if the Negro is to make any substantial contribution to that change, he must join hands with, and give his hearty cooperation to, the white man. I think I can speak for my people and assure you that they are ready to join hands with the white people in all the efforts and plans set forth by the Sociological Congress. I think the interest and response already shown during these meetings indicate most unmistakably their willingness for coopera- tion. In my own experience in dealing with men I have found that it often happens that where there is apparent wide disagreement in theory- there follows hearty coopera- tion when actual work and some particular service are undertaken. I hope that this Congress will not fail to use to the utmost the capable, earnest, and broad-minded men and women of my race who are willing to do all in their power to promote the welfare of our beloved Southland. A fourth thought is a marked hesitancy on the part of the Church to apply the only remedy that can be depended WHAT CAN THE CHURCH DO 369 upon to promote and perpetuate good will between the races, and that is a practical and faithful application of the reli- gion of Jesus Christ as taught and exemplified by him and by his disciples, and set forth in the Holy Scriptui'es. It is undeniably true that there is still a wide gap between the teachings of Jesus and their practical application by the Church of to-day. Brotherhood does not mean the same among us that it meant to Jesus. It is still hard to make the deed correspond to the profession. So long as the Church hesitates to follow our Lord's example, we need not look for the kingdom to prevail in the world. In my further remarks I shall endeavor to show what the Church can do to promote good will between the races : First, the Church can acquaint itself with the conditions and needs of the people close at hand, and so provide a basis of fact on which to lay its plans for bringing about better race relations. In this day in which the Church is being quickened to a sense of its mission to heathen peoples and is busying itself with the opportunities and claims of for- eign missions, there is danger of neglecting the duties we owe to those who are near us. The challenge of the remote must not make us blind to the opportunities of the imme- diate ; the lure of the distant must not make us heedless of the claims of those who are closest to us. I am very much afraid that the average Church member knows a great deal more about China than he does of the section of his city where the colored people live; his good wife can tell you more about the children of India than she can about the children of the woman who washes her clothes. In all con- science there can be no apology for this kind of ignorance. But the Church can remove it. The Church, once aroused, can be depended upon to get facts without partiality, and to reach conclusions without a prejudice. Second, the Church should emphasize the spiritual worth of every man as the essential thing; that questions of race, color, and the like, while material, are at the same time only incidental and secondary. We must all agree with these words of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst: "When Christ looked 24 370 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST upon a man, the thing that filled up his angle of vision was the man's soul, with everything that the possession of a soul indicates for the years temporal and the ages eternal. You and I are not in the habit of looking upon him in that way, and we are not fit to deal with him, and not compe- tent to do anything substantial for him till we do." Happily we are all agreed that the Negro has a soul, but that is not always the basic assumption in dealing with him. However, the Church can take no other view if it would follow the obvious example of its great Founder. And in this, as in other things, we need not be afraid that his example will lead us to any other result than the consummation of the kingdom of heaven in all the beauty and glory of the promise of God ; for "God is not the author of confusion." He has not put anything in the Negro whose development under his plans will work the least disadvantage to the white man. ". . . Ask not from what land he came, Nor where his youth was nursed; If pure the stream, it matters not The spot from whence it burst; The palace nor the hovel. Nor where his life began — It is not that, but answer me, *Is he, within, a man?' " Third, the Church can promote good will between the races by calling attention to the best side of the Negro, by acquainting itself with all the evidences and signs of true progress made by the race, and by judging the Negro by his best rather than by his worst. We are all familiar with the tendency to look at the worst side of the race and to empha- size our weaknesses and our failings. Many newspapers seem to count it their duty to society to herald abroad this kind of news. If the Church is a messenger of "good news," here is some "good news" — good news about the Negro — that will be news indeed to many of its hearers. The Church has a special commission to promote "peace on earth, good will to men." The spread of good makes peace ; the spread WHAT CAN THE CHURCH DO 371 of evil makes strife — as proof for which witness many a race-riot and lynching. Fourth, the Church can begin and carry forward a defi- nite movement to correct and educate popular sentiment on the matter of race relations. The church has too long allowed the politician and the demagogue to be the molders and educators of popular sentiment on all matters of race relations. Meanwhile it has remained dumb and silent in the presence of the grossest outrages that constitute a con- tinual challenge of its deepest convictions and loudest pro- fessions. Surely the time has come for the Church to con- demn unsparingly the wanton barbarities perpetrated upon Negroes, innocent and guilty, men and women, adults and children — barbarities that have made our country, its lead- ers and their utterances, a by-word and a hissing among the nations, friend and foe alike. But aside from this the Church must take pains to see that a sentiment of justice, fair play, and good will prevails in the ordinary relations and quieter times of life. To do this it must carry on a regular program for the deliberate cultivation of harmony and cooperation between the races. Such a program will take its place along the side of the present programs for temperance and foreign missions and similar endeavors as the Church's contribution to the realization of the democ- racy for which black and white are both fighting upon a foreign shore. In the recommendations that have gone before I have simply attempted to give a practical application to senti- ments that are upon the lips of Christians daily. "Whatso- ever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them." This James declares to be "the royal law." "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." This is the sovereign specific for all the ills of life. "We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." The spirit of these words incorporated into the life of our South will find black and white working together as brothers for the glorious coming of the kingdom of heaven. 372 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST RIGHTING RACIAL WRONGS AND MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE DEAN W. F. TILLETT, D.D., LL.D., VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN. In the many discussions concerning the rights and the wrongs of the Negro race in the South to which I have listened there is one important point that seems to me to have been either overlooked entirely or inadequately pre- sented. I refer to the well-nigh universal tendency of the colored people to direct their thoughts and their complaints almost exclusively to the shortcomings and injustices and wrongs of the white race against them, and the custom of the white race generally to direct their thoughts and com- plaints almost wholly against the shortcomings and sins of the colored people. Now this is in my judgment just the opposite of what should be if the two races are to deal effec- tively with these rights and wrongs. And in speaking thus I am not unmindful of the fact that this charge does not apply to many fair-minded and courageous members of both races. The colored people generally, however, are accustomed to put the emphasis in their complaints and grievances not on the wrongs their people do, but on the wrongs they suffer at the hands of the white race — on their failure to receive the just treatment they are entitled to as American citizens far more than on those sins and crimes of members of their own race which excite the outbursts of passion and violence on the part of the white race that find expression in mob vio- lence and in many other ways. The colored people, again, often complain, and very justly so, that the wages paid their people for their work are wholly inadequate not only to their just deserts but to their imperative needs in living honest and virtuous lives, but they seem to give, for aught that appears to the contrary, but secondary and indifferent con- sideration to the character and quality and honesty of the work done. They complain, and very justly so, as to the unsanitary conditions under which they are, in many places, RACIAL WRONGS AND DEMOCRACY 373 compelled to live — conditions which often make honesty and virtue difficult if not impossible — but they give but sec- ondary and indifferent consideration to the unsanitary way in which their people live where conditions are sanitary, and to the petty acts of dishonesty and sacrifices of virtue chargeable against their people where conditions are entirely favorable to honest and virtuous living. The colored race, again, is in my judgment too much given to thinking about what the government and the nation and Christian people owe them and can and should do for them, rather than what they can and should do for themselves, and what they owe to the government and how they can as a race best serve the nation. But the white people make the same mistake, and are guilty of the same misplacing of emphasis in their com- plaints, in the matter of racial rights and wrongs, which complaints, as I see it, should be directed first of all and most of all not against the shortcomings of the weaker and more dependent race, but upon the shortcomings and wrongs and injustices with which the white people themselves are plainly chargeable. To see that the Negro race shall have justice done them, and that white people who are guilty of mob violence shall be prosecuted and punished, is a duty which the w^hite race owes not only to the colored man, but to itself and to our Christian democracy. When the white man has done this, then let him come out with his strong con- demnation and punishment of the crimes of colored men, recognizing, however, that they are the crimes of those who, though they be themselves Negroes, do not properly repre- sent the Negro race, and for whose crimes the Negroes as a race ought not to be held responsible. Let the white man first insist that the colored people who work for him — the cooks, the washerwomen, the day laborers — be paid fair and adequate living wages and be surrounded by conditions that make honest work and virtuous living not only possible but easy, and then let him demand that these colored workers do more work and better work and that they be clean and honest and virtuous in the lives they live. And, in the same way, I contend that one of the first and most important steps in the cure of race troubles is that the 374 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST colored man's first and loudest and most incessant complaint shall be against those sins and crimes of members of his own race which call forth the vengeance and violence of the white race, and which vengeance and violence do not, alas, content themselves with the punishment of the guilty, but often involve those who are entirely innocent of any wrong. Let the colored man insist, in talking with and to his own peo- ple, that they shall by doing more work and better work and being genuinely honest in their work, make higher wages reasonable and just, and then let him insist that the colored worker be paid better wages. I do not know of anything that will tend more to bring about and maintain pleasant and helpful relations between the white and the colored races than for each race, in considering and discussing the rights and wrongs of the colored man, to place the emphasis upon the shortcomings and sins of his own people. Let each put himself in the other man's place and thus help to right all existing racial wrongs by applying the golden rule to this as to all other relations between human beings. No democracy can be regarded as safe and consistent that allows mobs to put men to death and to go unpunished, no matter what race they belong to. Whatever crimes may call forth a mob, the mob itself, if it go unpunished, is the crime that is absolutely irreconcilable with any and all true democracy. Alas for us if, after making the world safe for democracy, we ourselves have only such a democracy to pre- sent to the world as is itself so weak and unsafe that it can- not or will not prevent men from organizing themselves into mobs that defy the law and put men to death, and these often the innocent as well as the guilty, and then go unpunished. I am myself a democrat in political antecedents and affilia- tions, but I am in favor of making such changes in our State and Federal laws that whenever and wherever State laws and courts fail to arrest and punish mobs that are guilty of crimes, the Federal courts shall at once assume jurisdic- tion. If this can be done, mobs will soon be a thing of the past and this foul blemish upon our American democracy will soon be a thing of the past. X. THE CHURCH EFFICIENT IN SAVING LIFE What of the Church? The Minister as a Health Propagandist The Point of Explosion Between the Spiritual and the Economic The Preacher and Physician Yokefellows in the Health Campaign The Church as the Conserver of Hiunan Life The Country Church and Human Life More Abun- dant The Church Organized for Social Efficiency WHAT OF THE CHURCH? "The problem of how to save the slums is no more difficult than the problem of how to save the people who have moved away from them and are living: in the suburbs, indifferent to the woes of their fellow mortals. The world can be saved if the church does not save it. The question is, Can the church be saved unless it is doing all in its power to save the world?" (Graham Taylor.) "The question is not alone. Can the church save the masses? but. Can the church save itself, except as it gives itself for the saving of the world? The test of the church's vitality is its power to impart life to the dead mass around it. When it ceases to give life it ceases to live. When it shall have hope- lessly cut itself off from the masses it will have dug its own grave, no matter how magnificent that grave may be. Such a church may prosper as a social club, or it may maintain a formal death-in-life exist- ence, but as a church it is worse than a failure, because it has a name to live, and is dead." (Isabella Horton.) THE MINISTER AS A HEALTH PROPAGANDIST CHARLES S. GARDNER, D.D., PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, SOUTH- ERN BAPTIST SEMINARY, LOUISVILLE, KY. Serious illness is a crisis in the individual and family life which offers an opportunity for spiritual ministration; and no faithful minister will neglect it. In the serious and quiet air of the sick room the minister's presence, if he is wise and tactful, is appropriated, and his words of instruc- tion, comfort, and cheer may be of therapeutic value for the body as well as for the spirit. But is that his only rela- tion to the problem of health ? Has he no function to per- form in the modern health crusade, which aims not only to restore but to conserve health ? Does it lie within the scope of his proper activity? Is it his duty to participate in this crusade ? In the first place, let the minister study the attitude of his Master toward disease and health. Is it possible for a student of the life of Jesus to overlook the fact that he was much interested in this matter? Certainly one who takes the Gospels at their face value as records of facts must have it forced upon him that Jesus was much concerned as to the physical well-being of men. Twenty-six of the thirty-seven miracles attributed to him were acts of healing. He saw in sickness, bodily deformity, and nervous disorders evil conditions to be removed, and in their removal a part of his beneficent mission in this world. He used those unfor- tunate conditions as occasions for giving consolation, and mainly for teaching moral and spiritual truth; but evi- dently he regarded a sound mental and physical state as normal and desirable for all men. How can we avoid see- ing that the fight against disease is a part of his program ? Health is clearly one of the interests of the kingdom. We are learning through science that there is a strangely close relation between our bodily and spiritual states. Disease often leads to spiritual dullness and moral failure, and sin often leads to disease. Health of body and soul is the insistent Christian ideal. And not only for the individual, but for the social life. In the glorious vision of the apoc- 378 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST alyptic seer he beheld a city in which ^ew "the tree of life," through which flowed "a pure river of the water of life," from which all "filth" and every "abomination," moral and physical, were excluded. Interpret that vision as you will — as the goal of the world's evolution, or as a purely spiritual order set up in the place of an evil world destroyed by divine power — it is in either case an ideal toward which Christians must strive; and to a man whose heart is pos- sessed by it there is something forever repulsive and impos- sible in filthy streets, in contaminated water, in impure air, in disease-breeding tenements — in everything that is not clean and healthy for the body and the soul. Surely a preacher who can live in a foul and unhealthy city and not lift up his voice in protest against its filth has not learned to love this magnificent vision of the New Jerusalem, how- ever piously he may talk about it. In the second place, the minister should, like other intel- ligent men, ask the question, "Why are people sick?" In the days before there was any scientific knowledge of the causes of disease there was no better answer than to refer it to the inscrutable divine will, or to interpret it as a part of the moral and spiritual discipline of life ordained by the Supreme Ruler of our lives. These answers were not wrong in principle. But merely to say that it is providen- tial is not sufficient under the present knowledge. In the light of science we have come to see that the divine will is not capricious nor wholly incalculable in its action; and with every advance of science the rationale of that will becomes clearer to us. This is a divinely controlled uni- verse; but this does not mean that it is not a universe of order. "All's love, yet all's law." Sickness results from a violation of the laws of life somewhere and by somebody. And to say that God intends and desires men to be sick is tantamount to saying that he intends and desires them to violate the laws of life which are of his own ordination. That is absurd. God simply intends that men shall be sick as a consequence of such violation ; but this, we may surely believe, is because he desires that they shall live according THE MINISTER AS A HEALTH PROPAGANDIST 379 to those laws. The conservation and fulfillment of life is his fundamental and final aim; and disease itself is but a disciplinary method of enforcing the laws that make for life. Disease is merely the natural way of insisting on the duty of health. In the third place, the minister should, as other intelli- gent men, realize that, under the conditions of modern life especially, disease is not by any means a matter of indi- vidual violation of the laws of health alone, but a social concern. It is therefore not a matter of individual ethics alone, but of social righteousness. We are now interde- pendent in a degree that men never were before. A man with a contagious or infectious disease is a menace to pub- lic welfare; dark and dingy tenements, impure food, quack medicines, filthy laundering, unsanitary factories, etc., are methods of money-making whereby one imperils the health of others; while dirty streets and alleys, germ-laden water supplies, etc., are ways by which the community itself menaces the health of all its members. Men do not live unto themselves nor die unto themselves; and we may add that they are not even sick unto themselves. Men are so closely bound together to-day that the question of health is not only a matter for an individual, but for the com- munity, and it cannot therefore lie outside of the proper concern of the minister of the Gospel. As a worker in the enterprise of the kingdom, is he working, as his Master was, that men may "have life, and have it more abun- dantly?" Then he must be interested in promoting health. Is he seeking to induce men to obey divine law? Then he must be concerned as to their obedience to the physical laws of health; for the laws of the human organism, when known, impose a moral obligation to obedience. Is he seek- ing to win men to righteous action toward one another? Then he must sternly rebuke those unrighteous acts by which men imperil one another's health. Is he striving for the establishment of a righteous social order? Then he must be an advocate of community conditions that are not a menace to, but promotive of, the health of the people. 380 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Moreover, the minister's work gives him an exceptional opportunity to be an effective health propagandist. How can he preach a full gospel without including health as one of the ideals which he is privileged and obligated to present to the people from the pulpit? To avoid it, he must steer clear of the most vital areas of the Scriptures, both in the Old and the New Testaments. The subject lies right in his path as a preacher. Any real preaching must lead him straight to the heart of the health fight. I am as much opposed as anybody can be to the preach- er's forsaking the gospel to take up civic or scientific topics in the pulpit. To preach the gospel is his business, and there is none greater. But in sticking to the gospel, let him stick to the whole gospel. If I thought that in speaking on the subject of conserving health he had to side-step the gospel, I should say, let him be silent on the subject in the pulpit. But the range of his preaching should be as broad as the Scriptures, and the matter of health certainly lies within that range. What is asked of him is not to quit preaching the gospel, but to preach it in a more practical way. If, as a professor of preaching, I may emphasize what seems to me a serious fault of much preaching, it is its deficiency in practical application. It does not hitch the truth closely enough to the problems of everyday living. We leave it too much to the hearers to find out just what bearing the truth, proclaimed abstractly, has upon the actual relations and activities of the people. And the hearer often fails to discover the connection. We shoot our seventeen-inch guns without taking sufficient care in aim- ing them to hit the spot where the enemy actually is. There is a tremendous explosion and fragments of shell and tons of earth are hurled high into the air, but the enemy goes on unhurt about his business — and to-day that business is too often creating or perpetuating conditions which menace the health of innocent and helpless people. It is not at all necessary for the preacher in perform- ing his duty in this matter to interrupt the course of his preaching and take upon some special day the subject of THE MINISTER AS A HEALTH PROPAGANDIST 381 disease and health, as something unrelated to his regular work. It is perhaps better for him to give attention to this and kindred matters in the regular course of his work. Every now and then he will be discussing aspects of gospel truth which not only can be given this application, but which cannot be preached in its real meaning and best effect without it. The fact that such matters are touched upon in the regular course of preaching will tend to estab- lish in the minds of the people a closer connection between civic duty and religious truth and give a more immediate religious sanction to social obligation than occasional spe- cial treatment would. This method of presentation will inform the people that such duties are integral parts of the program of the kingdom. Preachers speak to more people and speak to them more often and more regularly than any other class of men. They constitute our largest body of trained experts in pub- lic speaking. When as a class they become thoroughly interested in the promotion of any cause, they are a power not lightly to be considered. If we could bring it about that preachers generally would devote themselves to the proclamation of the gospel of health, we should harness to this movement an almost irresistible power. And some day we shall have a pulpit that will more clearly perceive its opportunity, its privilege, and its duty to proclaim pri- vate and public conservation of health as a part of the pro- gram of the kingdom of God on earth. But the minister's opportunity and effectiveness lie not alone in the pulpit. He is a regular visitor among the peo- ple and has the entree to more homes and hearts than any other man except, perhaps, the physician. And he has in his pastoral function the privilege of making private sug- gestions to his people about almost all subjects in which they should be interested. Clearly he may be extremely useful in the development of interest in the matter of health or any other good cause. To my certain knowledge, the pastor often needs some subject of conversation that is of practical value, and about which he can keep up a some- 382 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST what one-sided conversation, when he is visiting in the homes of the people, especially the homes of the poor and uneducated, lest his visit become a dreary bore to himself as well as to those whom he is visiting. It would seem to be in strict line with his pastoral function to talk about health, which is so closely related to the deeper spiritual problems of life and, therefore, to his official ministrations. If he is only equipped with an adequate understanding of the subject, he may make conversation on this subject very helpful in many ways. Might not much pastoral visitation be redeemed from a monotonous inanity by being used in some such ways as I am suggesting? There are the strongest reasons why the pastor, in the pulpit, in his visits, and as a citizen, should be an evan- gelist of health, enlightening the minds and quickening the consciences of the people with respect to this fundamental duty. While he is winning and caring for their souls, he must as a part of this noble task help to banish disease to avert sorrow and untimely death, to weaken the appeal of vice, to increase efficiency both economic and spiritual, and so to crown life with innocent joy and the efficiency of health and happiness. rHE POINT OF EXPLOSION BETWEEN THE SPIRIT- UAL AND THE ECONOMIC FRANK MONROE CROUCH, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY JOINT COM- MISSION ON SOCIAL SERVICE OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY It has been well said that it requires the conjunction of an ethical or spiritual principle with a hard fact to pro- duce any revolution in thought or in conduct, whether indi- vidual or social. Two spiritual principles are regnant. Possibly at bot- tom they are one. They are righteousness and justice. The fact is the fact of economic injustice, or unrighteousness. To understand the conflict which at present obtains between the spiritual principle of righteousness, including THE POINT OF EXPLOSION 383 justice, and the fact of economic injustice, we must turn to the pages of the Old and New Testaments as giving the sources of the discussion. The fundamental conception of Hebrew prophecy, which now after many years has been rightly apprehended as forming the core of the "divine library" which we call the Old Testament, is, in short,, nothing less than the conjunction of righteousness and justice, which finds its "acid test" in Old Testament his- tory in the face of social and economic inequity, which in the eye of the prophet was synoymous with iniquity. The "explosion" occurred in utterances of the prophets them- selves, aside from actual revolution — social or political up- heaval — which as a matter of fact was not infrequently the result of prophetic denunciation of injustice. The revolt against the house of Solomon, which split the once united kingdom, and the later dynastic revolution which overthrew the house of Ahab in favor of the house of Jehu, were both instances of the social explosion. If the principle involved in these two instances and typified in the person of Jeroboam, the first king of Northern Israel, is seen largely mixed with sordid motives, this is but another indi- cation of how difficult it is to draw a line of demarcation between the spiritual and the economic. The fact that these two phases of human life or action are so closely asso- ciated in the thought of the Old Testament constitutes a valid answer to those critics of the modem social effort of organized Christianity who stoutly maintain that the Church is not rightly "concerned with any of these things." The insistence in the New Testament upon this prophetic conjunction of righteousness and justice is perhaps less obvious to the devout mind ; yet a glance at the underlying base and the informing genius of the gospel is sufficient to show that Christianity is indeed interested in the entire life of man, both in this world and in the world to come. The "gospel of the kingdom" is, in short, a gospel of righteous- ness and justice. "Righteousness" is the keyword of the "kingdom," and as translated in our English version really includes "justice" and cannot be properly apprehended. 384 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST unless these two aspects of the same eternal truth are held together. So of the heroes of the faith during the intervening twenty Christian centuries : they have largely been men or women concerned with the reconciliation of righteousness and justice. It needs but the mention of a Francis of Assisi, champion of "God's poor;" a Savonarola, with his vision of a Florence delivered from the despot; of a St. Catherine of Siena, with her dream of an Italy redeemed from oppression and disunity; of a Luther — in his earlier days at least — espousing the cause of the peasants; of Wyclif and his Lollards, denouncing both political and ecclesiastical tyranny ; of a Wesley with his belief in Chris- tian democracy; of a Maurice and a Kingsley, intent on realizing the kingdom of God on earth — to show how through the ages of the Church her great leaders have insisted not only on man's duty to God, but on his duty to his neighbor. To hold these two together is essential: insistence on the first aloi\e results in a formal righteous- ness; emphasis on the second merely ends in an empty humanitarianism. But while the prophetic leaders of the Church have "fol- lowed the gleam" of a Christianized social order, the rank and file of her membership, not to mention her ecclesiasti- cal representatives, have been prone to divorce what God has joined together. Interest in the institution — the Church — as an end in itself, and in so-called personal reli- gion, has closed too many eyes to the truth. The history of recent centuries, since the great cleavage of the Reforma- tion, and even earlier, in the schismatic tendencies within the Church of Rome, has been a process of progressive dif- ferentiation along the lines, and for the purpose, of indi- vidual salvation. The original unity of Christendom has been rent into many fragments, and each group has believed that thus, and thus only, should they be saved. Hair-split- ting distinctions in doctrine and worship have resulted, in only too many instances, in the "seven Churches of Lonely- ville," some of which sing the psalms of David, while others sing David's psalms. THE POINT OF EXPLOSION 385 Against this century-long tendency has recently, thank God, arisen another and counter tendency along the lines and for the purposes of social salvation. The social prob- lem and program are being accepted by an increasing num- ber of churches throughout this country as throughout the world. Justice and righteousness are once more meeting together. Stress is laid no longer upon rightness of serv- ices, but upon rightness of service. The split, if split comes, will be between those who believe that righteousness must square with justice, one's duty to God with one's duty to his neighbor, and those who do not so believe, however they may disguise their lack of saving social faith in their hearts or in their words. This is the new "great divide." Happily there are abundant signs that brethren of many names are not merely substituting one basis of separation for another, but are coming together on a common platform, and in a common effort of human service. This they are doing largely through official affiliations of the social agencies of different communions in a cooperative program, and through the recognition by these respective agencies in their intra-communion effort that social service is not the work of one Church alone, but of all, that it must be truly inter- denominational to be really effective. Yet the task is not simple. The churches are unhappily not yet undivided in their allegiance. Conscientious devo- tion to the older ideals still keeps many back ; personal inter- est is a still more potent factor in preventing the full con- junction of justice and righteousness. Some special inter- ests are still using the Church as a cloak for their selfish purposes — if they are not deliberately controlling it through financial support and official influence. In other words, not only does ecclesiastical and theological prejudice throw a bar in the way of full social cooperation between com- munions, but "business" considerations cause a powerful section of every Church to oppose any thoroughgoing funda- mental social reform and reconstruction. Whoever in the name of the churches ventures to challenge the "system" is denounced or ignored by that section of the Church mem- 25 386 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST bership which draws profit therefrom. This is not to deny that many beneficiaries of the present economic and indus- trial regime not only no longer rest easy under the burden of an apparent social iniquity, but even, in many instances, are casting in their lot, like Moses, with those who are oppressed by Pharaoh and his taskmasters. The churches, then, are still on trial before the world. They cannot truly serve their Lord unless at the same time they at least endeavor to serve their fellow men. If "inter- ested" members of our churches stand in the way, they must be shown the full significance of the gospel for social salvation and the peril of him who opposes its working. The "saving remnant" of those who are intent on yoking righteousness with justice may some day be in the majority: it is for them meanwhile to make straight the highway for their God. But granted that the churches are united, where then is the point of explosion ? It is still at the same focus, though the alignment of forces be shifted. Against a church wholly determined to have and to hold justice and righteousness together would stand a hostile world. What, in the ulti- mate analysis, means the tragic phenomenon of war save the fact or the desire of injustice on one side or the other — perhaps on both? Racial antagonisms, dynastic ambi- tions, religious rivalries, political antipathies have played their part in war past and present. Yet beneath the armed conflicts of yesterday and to-day is seen the red hand of greed. It has been well said that modern war is a function of capitalism. A market, markets, and more markets are the end and aim of war as we know it to-day. Conflicting commercial ambitions have plunged a world in chaos. Eliminate greed, individual, collective, national, and you eliminate the cause of war. If justice obtained on earth, there would be no strife. Yet the horrors of war, though more sensational and more poignant, are not more menacing than the horrors of peace. Death by shrapnel or high explosive or cold steel is no more death, and scarcely more hideous, than death as the result of hazardous and insanitary working conditions, THE POINT OF EXPLOSION 387 poisonous ingredients, unwholesome living conditions, in- adequate wages, and excessive hours of toil, which slowly, perhaps, but surely reduce the mental and physical resist- ance of the worker and his loved ones and thereby make them susceptible to ills that maim and kill. Immediate causes of the horrors of peace need not be multiplied ; spe- cific instances need not be given. But again the under- lying cause of these horrors is greed — the denial of justice, the exploitation of man by his neighbor. Capitalism has but applied the logic of industrial and economic exploitation. Its very perfection of the means of production intensifies a situation as old as history. The speeding up of the entire process of manufacture in the desire for inordinate gains has but revealed what was always present in lesser degree — the denial or ignoring of the humanity of the worker, and the treating of him as a mere tool of industry. So long as one man is compelled to sell his labor to another, however protected he may be by a principle of collective bargaining applied and enforced by labor organization, just so long is justice in jeopardy, and righteousness, in the strict and full sense, impossible. It is as the churches of America and the world come to recognize the fact that the work of the world rests upon a basis of injustice that the point of explosion between the spiritual and the economic is approached. The Church can- not endure half-Christian and half-pagan. It cannot espouse righteousness unless it espouses justice. What- ever and whoever stands in the way of justice stands in the way of righteousness. If the Church or its members draw profit from social inequity, they are drawing profit from iniquity. God has made all men equal in his sight; if man has made them unequal in his sight, upon his head is the blame. How, then, shall we be saved? How shall the Church redeem the world, and incidentally herself? How shall the explosion be averted? Unless the Church be content to withdraw from the arena, unless she relinquish the strug- gle and give herself wholly to an otherworldliness which 388 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST has in other ages been discredited, she cannot evade the issue. Justice must be secured, else the kingdom of God cannot come. Apocalypticism can be no refuge for the church militant. The Church, for one thing, if not first, must reform herself. If she has fondly counted on a righteousness in which justice is not concerned, she must shift her founda- tion. Her leaders and her members alike must be purged of the greed which lies at the base of injustice. Ecclesiasti- cal discipline — the collective pressure upon recalcitrants — may be needed; drastic measures may be indicated. In any event she must make sure that she stands for justice, wholly and without reservation. Then there is the world. The Church can no longer countenance a social order based on exploitation. She must embark on one more crusade. Economic slavery must be abolished. It may mean loss to herself, but she must not fear. Her methods are already indicated by experience, study, and thought. She must show, in the first place, her interest in the economically submerged — not merely the "down and out," not the unemployable and the unemployed alone, but those who are working for scant wages, during long hours, under deleterious conditions also. If she can help these by legislation, let her further, if not initiate, legislation; if through public opinion, let her agitate; if by direct service, individually and collectively, let her serve, whether within her own walls or through the channels of the community life. She may, if need be, at least tem- porarily, become a social engineer, formulating social poli- cies, enunciating social methods, and putting them in opera- tion either independently or cooperatively. But one thing the Church must ever do : she must be a social prophet. The proclamation of the good tidings of justice and righteousness in interchangeable terms is a duty and an opportunity alike to her inexorable. To preach the gospel to the poor, to announce the acceptable day of the Lord, is no less needful than to restore the lame, the deaf, and the blind. Failing this, she has no part with her Mas- ter; so doing, she shall live with them and him. PREACHER AND PHYSICIAN YOKEFELLOWS 389 THE PREACHER AND PHYSICIAN YOKEFELLOWS IN THE HEALTH CAMPAIGN PROFESSOR J. L. KESLER, DEAN OF BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Good health is a fundamental human interest, and one of the final tests of human progress. The real improvement of mankind is measured in terms of better health, clearer heads, and purer hearts. There is no progress without these. The dazzling array of modern discovery and achieve- ment expresses progress only in so far as contribution is made to some one of these forms of human advancement. And the great truth is, that what contributes to one helps the others, so vitally one and complete are life's final inter- ests. The whole big expression of life is wholesomeness. Well-being is being well through and through, life full- orbed and overflowing. It is not my purpose to add a single new phrase of tech- nical knowledge, but to enter a plea for a general practice of what we already know. In other days the mystic urged the "practice of the presence of God." We appeal in the enlightened present for the practice of good health also. We know a great deal now, but all of us do not know it, and few of us practice what we already know. The preacher and the doctor are easily the leading fel- low laborers where this knowledge is most needed. Time was when we looked upon these two as the repositories of rare knowledge of the secrets of life here and hereafter; and on occasion they dealt it out to their wonderstruck fellow mortals. The doctor came to see you, felt your pulse, looked at your tongue, asked you what was the matter — and you told him. He prescribed to the minute when pill or powder should be taken, and went out wrapped in his cloak of mystery, leaving you amazed at his deep knowledge. No effort was made to plant your feet on the road to health where men may walk alone. Or, he may have left the white morphia tablet, soothed nature's cry of warning, and made you a hopeless "patient for life." Fortunately not many of 390 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST these remain among us, though a few may still be at large and unhung. Once the priest handed out the mysteries sparingly from his cloister. Now he has no sacerdotal monopoly of the truth by which souls are made whole. In both cases the vital truths of all life are to be brought out into the open, the wide-open air and sunlight. As the priest of the cloister has given place to the man with a vision and a message, who stands in the market place and by the open road, so the physician with the art of healing and preventive knowl- edge is emerging from the darkness of dog-Latin and help- ing men to live. The common sense of justice in mankind has about de- cided that there should be no private ownership of vital knowledge, no patent remedies, no medical discoveries held behind closed doors. The physician-scientist who would withhold from the public the discovery of a specific for any of the great plagues of the human race would be held little less than a criminal by his professional fellows. There is now no doubt about the safety of knowledge in the hands of the laity. The great truths are, after all, the simplest. The profoundest conclusions of scientific investigation as to health can be applied to many of the great scourges and at the most vital points without the aid of an expert. In these cases every man can at least administer the laws of health for himself. This will be the "safe thing to do till the doctor comes," and will defer his coming. For an example, take malaria. The name covers a multitude of bodily sins, and also reveals the ignorance by which the practice of medicine was so long bound. The common^ ditcher can understand draining away the stagnant water in the marsh by his cabin. And the wayfaring man, though a fool, in the city may comprehend the meaning of over- turned tubs and tin cans in the community drive against the mosquito. The man by the stagnant pool is doing noth- ing, because he has not been caught up by a wide and per- sistent agitation of the matter. He may not be able to handle a microscope as well as a shovel, but the bogie pic- PREACHER AND PHYSICIAN YOKEFELLOWS 391 ture of little animals with poisoned teeth and claws may seize his imagination, and for the same reason that the witch doctor and quack nostrums have held him bound heretofore. Through weary years scientists have been seeking the cause and prevention of typhoid fever. It could have come by no other route. But when the truth emerged from the clouds of mystery, the final dictum of the bacteriologist is simply this: Clean out all stalls and stables once a week, cart the refuse to the open field and spread it in the sun- light, and you will practically drop from the list of diseases typhoid fever and probably infantile paralysis. There is tuberculosis, the silent sapper of human life, which has gone on for centuries unchecked. Even the white monster is at last being held at bay by a common- sense treatment, so simple that it is almost outside the ordi- nary practice of medicine, save for the indispensable need of an early and intelligent diagnosis. And mysterious pellagra, with all its grewsome sugges- tions, seems to be yielding to a simple common-sense diet well known to the old black mammy cook in the South fifty years ago. The experiments conducted by the United States Public Health Service in Mississippi and other Southern States, under the direction of Dr. Goldberger, demonstrate pretty clearly that pellagra is a ''nutritional disease," and that the balanced ration is both cure and prevention. A safe conclusion of the whole matter is "that the farm that has a good cow, a pea patch, and a hencoop will not have pellagra on it." The JouvTial of the Amencan Medical Association declares that 7,500 Americans will die of this disease in the current year — and they will die more from lack of knowledge than from poverty. Oral hygiene is a rather recent arrival as a health study for the multitudes. It is declared by those who know that the unclean mouth, with the resultant diseased gums and teeth, is the prolific cause of serious stomach, heart, and kidney troubles, rheumatism, and a contributing cause of pneumonia, which heads the list in the annual death rate. 392 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Consider the death rate of infants — one in five up to one year of age. If this slaughter of the innocents were of young domestic animals and prevention v^^ere as simple, it would soon be a matter of common knowledge and the death roll would drop. While hookworm cannot be handled without medical treatment, yet it also, with a few lessons on cause and cure, would at an early day be placed on the retired list of worn- out pests. As much can be said of other forms of human ill. We who are here are perhaps informed, but the people over the wide rural stretches do not know. Many of them do not read the papers; and if they did there is still lacking the personal touch. Why should not the physicians and pas- tors of communities and counties get together, and indorse and lead campaigns of enlightenment like this? Shall the doctor hesitate because typhoid fever furnishes his summer harvest? Or the preacher hold off because he cannot come down from his high place as a preacher of the gospel ? Such little fellows will never do it. Only big men can be used in a large way anywhere. Many of our doctors are lead- ing the way to put themselves out of a job apparently. But a discerning public will see to it that the laborer is worthy of his hire and that the hire is worthy of the laborer. The preacher and doctor are the most influential and most beloved men in the community, in the rural districts especially. They hold the key to the situation. During his visits the pastor can greatly help, not by suggesting to the dear sister a better remedy than the doctor is using (Such a preacher ought to be unfrocked without a trial) ; but around the fireside he can be an evangel of good health conditions in the homes of the people and in the com- munity. He can do much incidentally by making announce- ments of public health meetings and by urging his people to attend them. If he does not preach directly on a public health theme, he can give it at least in broken doses. I once knew a pastor who cleaned up the back lots in the neighborhood by the skillful use of an illustration. PREACHER AND PHYSICIAN YOKEFELLOWS 393 Not long since a beloved pastor while urging the need of the preaching of the pure gospel facetiously remarked that this gospel did not consist in health campaigns, "swat- ting the fly," and so forth. One of these Sunday mornings he will call his people to prayer in behalf of a young mem- ber at the point of death from typhoid fever, and from the sacred desk will call for help for the afflicted family. A few days later the same preacher will conduct the funeral of that young person, and in pure gospel parlance will dis- course on the mysterious ways of Providence and lament the loss of this young life in the service of the kingdom. But in the big pure gospel he preaches there is no place for helping to prevent the untimely death! O the pure gospel, the pure gospel, in thy name how many things — have been left out! A pastor has buried a large family, one by one, of the brightest and best of his flock, all victims of tuberculosis. After turning away from the contemplation of this loss, why could he not with heavenly propriety preach a whole sermon, from a text that fell from the Master's own lips, followed by an appeal for a county or state-wide effort to check the ravages of this destroyer of useful human life? But why driven to the delivery of a message due years ago? In a recent paper before the Medical Society of Chicago, Dr. Albert H. Burr, of that city, declared that "women live longer than men, and for the reason that men, as a rule, are tobacco users, whereas women are not." Many men are "doomed to a drug slavery that spells premature senility and race degeneracy." Can we longer treat this matter as a joke, and leave it in the hands of cranks and extremists? Is there not, after all, in it a question of health ahd physical morality? Surely the wise pastor can help the boys and young men to a safe course through the labyrinth of popular and habit-forming indulgences. The "social evil" is no longer a matter for the police- man and recorder's court. It comes into the field of the doc- tor and of every benevolent friend of mankind. It mothers the disease whose name is legion, and leaves in its wake 394 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST an awful brood of physical, mental, and moral distresses and sorrows. "Social hygiene" comprehends well a task which challenges every resource of medicine and religion. It would be a splendid thing to have a neighborhood doctor or specialist to speak to his people on special occa- sions. But be sure he is able to speak on the simple things — simple living, fresh air, sunlight and flowers, the tonic effect of God's great out of doors. Why cannot the pastor see the need of a mothers' meet- ing as of vital importance along with the missionary or ladies' aid society? What more inviting field for "going about doing good" has any other living man? Final success in this campaign in the South depends, in a large measure, upon the negro preacher. We neglect a lower type, or backward race, at our peril. The attempt to ignore or leave them behind, in health or morals, fails utterly, and results in our retaining them as dangerous neighbors. The policy outlined by Cain's selfish question can never succeed in a social world. The colored public, so far, has taken very little stock in the doctors of their race, but the preacher still holds that "fretful realm in awe." The politician does not hesitate to use him when he can ; why should not the health worker find in him a useful and willing helper in what has hitherto been a hopeless task? But here is my final appeal. It must, after all, be seen as a great moral issue and have the great moral forces behind it. The preacher is beginning to see that spiritual health and bodily well-being are in some way intricately connected. As he looks more deeply into life, he discerns that many human delinquencies are determined by some physical defect, that there is a "physiological basis of morals." This is in no sense to take the place of personal faith and personal piety. Right here many are stumbling, just as for years they stumbled over the temperance ques- tion. Scientific temperance was not of the pith of "the gospel." The moment the great question became a moral issue nation-wide victories were made possible. Nothing THE CHURCH AS CONSERVER OF HUMAN LIFE 395 great in public welfare can be accomplished until it becomes a great issue, and it can never become a really great issue until it becomes a great moral issue. It must be no sham battle. When the preacher and the doctor, science and religion, sense and goodness join hands, victory will be won, and won by putting light and knowledge where dis- ease and sin now hold their divided reign. From these altered conditions will come a new earth and the possibili- ties of a richer heaven. The doctor and preacher are natural yokefellows; the emphasis of one may be on the bodies, of men and that of the other on their souls. Neither knows where body and soul meet. Side by side they labor, each consecrated to the saving of all there is to save in men, and in this beau- tiful fellowship they go on together to where the gates open at the end of the way. THE CHURCH AS THE CONSERVER OF HUMAN LIFE FATHER JOHN D. FOULKES, S.J., PRESIDENT JESUIT COLLEGE, NEW ORLEANS, LA. All educated men and women know too well what nations thought of human life before the coming of Christ. The slave, according to pagan ideas, was not a man, but a thing. Hence when sickness or old age rendered him use- less he was put to death or left to die of hunger. Finding that the beasts of the circus cost too much to feed, Caligula gave orders to cast slaves before them to serve as food. For the amusement of the populace the laws sanctioned the terrible gladiatorial combats. To celebrate his victory over the Dacians, Trajan gave, during twenty-three days, pub- lic games, where ten thousand gladiators and eleven thou- sand wild animals were engaged in slaughtering each other. Similar combats cost yearly the lives of thirty thousand men. At Athens, as well as in Egypt, the man who wanted bread and would beg for it was punishable with death, according to the law. Father and husband were but master 396 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST and despot in pre-Christian times. In him the right of life and death was guaranteed by law. At Rome when a child was bom he was laid at the feet of the father. If the latter took him up into his arms, he was permitted to live ; if not, the helpless infant was strangled or thrown into the public sewer, or exposed on the public squares and there left to die of hunger. But what a change when the Church brought Christian civilization into the world! It began on the day that the apostle Peter, invested with power, wrought his first con- versions. By him the church proclaimed that the slave has the same origin, the same nature, and the same destiny as his master. "There is neither Jew nor Greek," says St. Paul, "there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Jesus Christ." Under the inspiration of the Church, taught by her views and example, governments emancipated their slaves; nothing was omitted to improve the condition of those unfortunate creatures, and they were treated as brothers and sisters of their mas- ters. On the first day of January, A.D. 404, when the city of Rome was celebrating the inauguration of its new Con- suls, a Christian monk named Telemachus, who had come from the East, suddenly appeared on the arena of the Coliseum. He threw himself between the gladiators to separate them. Then, addressing the spectators, he ex- claimed: "We celebrate to-day the octave of the coming of the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, upon earth ; cease, therefore, these inhuman games, invented by pagan cruelty." At these words a dreadful tumult arose in the amphitheater. The exasperated populace threw itself upon Telemachus and tore him to pieces. The very next day the Emperor Hono- rius suppressed gladiatorial combats. The poor, the unfor- tunate, and all the disinherited children of fortune saw the assurance of a change in their fate on the day when the Church began to teach the doctrine of Christ. The poor, the sick, abandoned children, the aged, all the victims of suffering were surrounded by tender solicitude ; institutions of charity and many religious orders were founded to alle- THE CHURCH AS CONSERVER OF HUMAN LIFE 397 viate the numberless ills that afflict humanity. Woman was made the companion of man, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; she resumed at the domestic hearth the place of honor which belongs to her, there to reign through love, as the husband reigns through authority. Through the teach- ing of the Church, children have become the objects of much solicitude. For them refuges, asylums, orphanages, and hospitals have been founded. How the Church did strive and how she does strive to be the conserver of human life! She had her Nosocomia for the sick, her Brephotrophia for foundlings; her Orphanotrophia for orphans; her Ptochia for the poor who were unable to work ; her Gerontochia for the aged, her Henodochia for poor or infirm pilgrims. She it was who established the first Hotel-Dieu (God's Hostelry) in France. It was her monasteries of monks and convents of sisters that built our first infirmaries, sanitariums, and hospitals. We can recall only a few of these great brother- hoods and sisterhoods of the past : The Knights of St. John the Baptist, the Teutonic Order (developed out of the field hospital under the walls of Acre), the Knights of Rhodes, the Knights of Malta, the Hospitalers of St. John of Jeru- salem, of the Holy Ghost, of St. Joseph. The famous Lon- don hospital, St. Bartholomew's, was a product of the Church (A.D. 1112) and was confiscated by Henry VHI. In 1215 Peter, Bishop of Winchester, established St. Thomas in London, still extant. In looking over documents relative to Scottish and Irish Catholic hospitals of the Middle Ages, it may be interesting to remark that sanitation was a prime factor in their architecture. The form of the hospital was generally similar to that of the church; the nave formed the common room, the beds were placed in the transepts, and the whole was screened oflf from the eastern end of the building, where was the chapel. The hospitals were in charge of a warder or master, superintendent in our day, assisted by nurses. This was their first rule: "Dogs and fools and female scolds must be kept away from the patient, lest he be worried." Care was taken to secure the best loca- tion, the bank of a river being preferred. The Hotel-Dieu 398 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST at Paris was on the Seine, Santo Spirito at Rome on the Tiber, St. Francis at Prague on the Moldau, the hospitals at Mainz and Constance on the Rhine, that at Ratisbon on the Danube. In England the Church usually built her hos- pitals outside the city walls for the express purpose of pro- viding better air for the inmates and of preventing the spread of infectious and contagious diseases of all kinds. The first hospital ever erected in America was that of the Purissima Concepcion in Mexico City. The great Cortez founded it in his will "for the graces and mercies God had bestowed on him in permitting him to discover and conquer New Spain." This foundation was made about 1524. It still exists. The year 1639 saw Canada's first Hotel-Dieu, established at Sillery and later transferred to Quebec. There are at present eighty-seven hospitals in Canada under the control and direction of various Catholic religious com- munities. The first hospital established by private benef- icence in the United States was our own Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Jean Louis, a Catholic sailor, left 12,000 livres for its foundation. It was destroyed by the hurri- cane of 1779. The new charity hospital (San Carlos) was founded in 1780 and endowed by the Catholic Spaniard Don Andres de Almonester y Rosas and became our City Hos- pital in 1811. Still in charge of the Sisters of Charity, it is one of the most important hospitals in the country, receiving annually over eight thousand patients. There are now more than four hundred Catholic hospitals in the United States, caring for about half a million patients annually. The modern battle field has been the occasion of bringing out in new strength of beauty the spirit of self- sacrifice which animates the hospital orders of the Catholic Church, the conserver of human life. The services ren- dered by the sisters to the wounded and dying are con- spicuous proof of that Christian charity by which the Church from the beginning has striven by all possible means to alleviate human suffering. The hospital of to-day owes much to scientific progress, generous endowment, and wise administration ; but none of these can serve as a sub- COUNTRY CHURCH AND LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 399 stitute for the unselfish work of the men and women who minister to the sick as to the person of Christ himself. The Catholic Church stands out as the conserver of human life with the teaching of God: "Increase and mul- tiply and let the earth be filled." Her moral code forbids race suicide and calls it homicide. She asserts that it is never lawful directly to kill the innocent. She looks upon the fetus as a human being with a human soul, which, as is commonly held by her theologians, is infused into it by God at the moment of conception. Craniotomy she never allows where the child is still living. She strives ever to realize in her life the teaching of her founder, Christ, as promulgated in the parable of the good Samaritan. Even when she sees them in the embryonic state she is ever mindful of her Master's injunction, ''Suffer the little chil- dren to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND HUMAN LIFE MORE ABUNDANT REV. J. A. HORNBECK, DALLAS, TEX. "Th^ Little Brown Church in the Vale" has once more touched a responsive, sympathetic chord in many hearts. The country's contribution of men and women who have become leaders in towns and cities, in every department of life, reads like a romance. The country produces men of loftiest type and women that are modest, courageous, and pure in heart and life. The program for the country church may be expressed in five brief statements: 1. Preaching the gospel. 2. Em- ploying every member in Cliristlike work. 3. Ministering effectively to every side of man's nature. 4. Developing the financial and spiritual resources of the church. 5. Dis- covering workers, training and placing them. This pro- gram lays stress on the forgiveness of sins, and on health and power over disease. 400 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST They tell us the country church is dying. Who cares? The landowners, the bankers, the merchants, the lawyers, the doctors, the railroad men, the real estate men, the teach- ers, the laboring men, every humanitarian, everybody should care. The true prosperity and moral worth of every com- munity in the country stands in a fixed relation to the pros- perity and spirituality of the Church. THE IDEAL COUNTRY CHURCH "The idealist is ofttimes a failure and the practical man a fool," but the practical man who lives by the power of an ideal is a success. The desk man has created his ideal for the country church. The city man, from a Pullman win- dow, has solved, or thinks he has solved, the country church's problems. These ideals are only the fringe on the great rural church movement. They have put the country church problems on the blackboard, but the problem must be solved by men who are country-minded and know the country. SOME DEFECTS OF THE COUNTRY CHURCH We may have defects and not know them. I have found churches dying that did not know the disease that was sapping their lives. The first defect is inefficient equip- ment. The old-fashioned church, one room, barn-roofed, we find surrounded by costly modern residences, modern barns, modern machinery, and on Sunday a score of auto- mobiles. The church house should be the best house and the best-equipped house in the community. It should be constructed to meet present-day demands. The high school building that stands near by the church house has not less than five rooms. The church house should have the equip- ment equivalent to the public school building. A second defect is inadequate financial support. I know a pastor whose wife sold her piano in order that debts could be paid — debts made with the expectation of being paid from a salary that was never paid. The Church people did not keep faith with their pledges. The promotion of the Master's kingdom stands in a fixed relation to men, money, and service. COUNTRY CHURCH AND LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 4G1 The country preacher should have a living wage. What constitutes a living wage? An income that would reasona- bly satisfy the wants of the body, the intellect, and a reasonable ambition for improvement. The minimum sal- ary in the country should not be less than $1,000 and a manse, a cow, and horse. The Church could well afford this. A preacher that cannot be trusted with the care of a horse and cow cannot be trusted with the care of the Church. The Every-Member Canvass should be the method of rais- ing the pastor's salary. The facts stare us in the face. The country churches are without system and are not giving , commensurately with their ability nor in proportion to the way they are spending money for selfish indulgence. For a pastor to want while the people have plenty is inconsist- ent with the gospel he preaches. I once was young, but now I am old, yet I have never seen a church dying from over- paying the pastor or giving to benevolences. The third defect is an inefficient, untrained minister serving the country churches. This comes from several causes. The rural minister is improperly educated, the sub- ject-matter taught him has been away from the country. The weakness of the college and seminary lies in the fact that they have no country program. The average professor is not country-minded. He may have been reared in the country, but the country now is not the country they knew. From the time a young man is taken under the care for the ministry until his graduation from the seminary every fin- ger of hope points to the city pulpit, and there are very few country preachers from choice. The country preacher generally keeps his ear to the ground to hear a call from the city, and keeps both hands outstretched to catch the call. The country people want men to live out in the open with them. They are tired of absent treatment, having the preacher to come out of the town or city to the church he serves. The country asks for service that costs, the cost of self-renunciation, the cost of human energy, the cost of the divine sacrifice. The country has opportunities that 26 402 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST ghould appeal to every minister of Jesus Christ. Through intimate relation with every home and by living in every heart in his pastorate, he can render a matchless service and reap an imperial reward. THE MAN THE COUNTRY NEEDS First, preachers of vision that can see the needs and understand the country people. Second, practical men for pastors, men who can get results. Third, original men who can make and execute a program that will make glad the city of God. Fourth, progressive men, aggressive men, who do not hesitate to break with old ideas and traditional re- ligions when they no longer meet the cry of human need, men who can grow a crop of ideas. Fifth, trained men who come to their work with knowledge and power, who have thought long and deeply on the problems of human life, men who can hammer ou'^ a campaign for public welfare, constructive men, persistent men. The rural pastor should be a community man and have acquaintance with the scientific methods of farming. Con- servation should be his big word — the conservation not only of all the good in our churches and social orders, but of the soil's fertility also, against the plunderers and rob- bers of the generations to come. The soil is the world's endowment. The rural pastor should know how to organize his pas- torate into social centers, not to think and preach so much about the golden streets and the angel songs, but the golden opportunities now and here to make men care-free and happy. The ultimate aim should be to teach the kingdom of God and have a worth-while religion. POINTS OF CONTACT The country pastor and church should have an eye on the boys' corn and pig clubs and the girls' canning and economic clubs. The boys' clubs have worked wonders. The Governor of our great State did not think it an insig- nificant task to address the boys of Hill County on the sub- COUNTRY CHURCH AND LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 403 ject of pigs. A member of a com club in Rusk County, by scientific methods in farming, produced 117 bushels of corn on one acre of ground, while his father, in the open field, raised 15 bushels per acre. Near Athens, La., a boy has given direction to reclaiming worn-out soil that is now producing above 50 bushels of com per acre. These boys' clubs are the key to a better farm income. There is need of the girls' economic clubs. Every normal girl looks for- ward to the time when she will have the care of her own home. It takes but little touch of intelligence and industry to have from the farm, by understanding the methods of canning, an "abundance the year round. The country church cannot be indifferent nor ignorant in these things. Boys especially are controlled by the gang spirit. They may meet at the crossroads to plan raids on orchards and melon patches, or they may meet in the church house with the pastor or on the athletic field. The church and pastor should give direction to the sports, pastimes, recreations, and economic training of the boys and girls, giving to all a religious purpose. There comes a time in the lives of boys when they naturally shun saints and girls. The tactful pas- tor can at this period grip the boys' confidence and type his life. HOW DO YOU DO? — IN THE COUNTRY The rural pastor should cooperate with the physician in keeping people out of heaven. Preventive medicine is a modern impressive term. More than one hundred years ago, on the brow of a long, dark night, a star appeared. Dr. Jenner with his cowpox vaccine. In 1876 Dr. Koch made plain the cause of the great white plague. In 1881 the great biologist announced his protective vaccine against splenic fever. The same man in 1885 prevented the develop- ment of rabies. The bands of night were broken and the doors of preventive medicine swung wide open. Ten years later came the antitoxin treatment for diphtheria. This made a new epoch in a new world of preventive medicine. Then came the discovery of disease carriers. Because men died to make certain this discovery thousands live to-day. 404 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST The mission of Jesus Christ was not alone to save men in heaven, but to give them life here and life more abundantly. The pastor in the country has a supreme opportunity with the physician in the war on disease, superstition, patent medicine, and quackery. IS THE COUNTRY CHURCH DEMOCRATIC? We need a reform in the administration of the rural church. One or two men dictate the policy of the average country church. The members do not know why or how things are done. I have been in churches where I was told they had never had a congregational meeting and years had passed without a meeting of the official boards or the sac- rament of the Lord's Supper being administered. The rural people believe in Christianity, they believe in the Protestant Church, they are free from a thousand city isms. Masses believe in a real conversion, a real heaven and hell. They are easy to reach, and now is the time. THE CHURCH ORGANIZED FOR SOCIAL EFFICIENCY WARREN H. WILSON, D.D., NEW YORK CITY The social efficiency of the country church is measured by the acute and narrow crisis which confronts the farmer ; for the farmer is the dominant social type in the country. Indeed, the reason why country church work is socialized is generally the fact that the Church has to depend upon only one economic type. Everything in the country church is colored by its dependence on agriculture and upon the working farmer. Now, the luorking farmer is a dominant type. The country church has to be so organized as to control and command the most free-moving, independent people in the world. The farmer has stayed in the country when others have gone to town, mainly because he likes to command, control, own, and manage. It is a mistake to suppose that farmers are money-makers. If they were, they would be in CHURCH ORGANIZED FOR SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 405 the town. They are in the country in spite of their recog- nition of the small money income from farming, because they want to be independent and own their homes, their cattle, their household, and their other properties. The Church must be able to suggest and to impart such impulses as to make farmers able to govern themselves. The farmer cannot be commanded: he must be hypnotized. He must be made to command himself. Therefore the Church must be rich in all kinds of suggestive and imitative material. It must be a very active organization in order that the farmer may learn by doing; for what he does teaches him- self, and he will usually learn from no other. Preaching should follow practice, not precede it. Most country churches have nothing but preaching, and their influence is limited by that fact. Again, country people are suffering great injustice. The farmer may be compared to an old man, and rich, whom all his relatives rob. When people speak of the "old farm- er," they mean by this that agriculture is the most ancient occupation of all, and they covertly mean that all the mid- dlemen and those that wear store clothes live in the villages and the cities at the expense of the country dwellers. The country church must solve the problem of economic and social justice, and the minister must be wise — he and his fellow officers must be able to detect the spurious proposals from genuine remedies. The farmer often hears volumi- nous talk, and at times as he listens to agitators he breaks out in violent proposals which do no good, but often do harm. Meantime the problem of rural injustice has to be stated as precisely as by a chemical formula, and the Church ought to be possessed of this secret. Agricultural cooperation in Europe has successfully solved the problem of farm justice. We need to state this solution and adapt its principles to our needs. The country church should have the formula of justice to-day, as the Church has in all ages of the world been an oracle of righteousness. The schools of the prophets in Old Testament times were the founders of democratic justice, and the little independent 406 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST church in the country should concern itself with the needs of the farm renter and with the mortgage of the farm debtor, with securing an income for the farmer's wife and an allowance for the farmer's son. The third outstanding fact that controls life in the coun- try is superstition. I use this term to cover a host of mis- beliefs and wrong philosophies which arise out of the limited habitat, the intercourse with nature, and the tra- ditionalism which are essential to country life. Here we have the man of our stock face to face with original chaos. Every day he handles inorganic matter. He deals with mystery every night; he looks into the void every morning and every evening. It is not to be wondered at that he exalts the unusual and the extraordinary almost to the point of seeing miracles. Nor are we to be surprised that he "farms by the moon," as the phrase is; for farming is so absorbing that the man who does it can think of noth- ing else. If he does, he will fail as a farmer. He there- fore watches the weather, the moon, the sun, the stars, the black dull earth, and the wild creatures; and the effect of that upon his mind is to make him exalt miracles, trust in signs, and magnify the forces of mystery. Then, he has to live by tradition, by the mere nature of his craft. It cannot be done otherwise. Farming is a matter of more than one generation. No man can learn it in a lifetime; so that all the bad misbeliefs stay by and become traditions more binding than the learning of colleges. I heard of a church in Tennessee that has four congre- gations worshiping in one meetinghouse. I venture that there were not more than a hundred members distributed between all these four societies; but the diversities which separate them are compounded of the narrowing circum- stances of the country, of the country tradition, and of the forces and scruples of a people whose minds are not en- larged by varying and enriching contacts with many peo- ple. Now the Church in the country must be so organized as to deliver the forces of learning, education, science, criticism, and literature upon the rural mind. It mast be CHURCH ORGANIZED FOR SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 407 an outpost against superstition. It does not need so much to increase religion as to train it, to bring the test of proof and of pragmatic sanction to the surging and swelling tide of prayer, fear, and emotion, which rises out of the life of man in his struggle with nature. The organization which I commend in this situation is very simple. What the country needs is just what the churches all have, at least the responsible churches; and I have no use for any others in the country. I belong to a responsible church myself. It is one of a dozen which might be commended to country people. Any one of those denominations is advocated as much as another in the remedy which I will propose. It is very simple. The coun- try church ought to worship every Sabbath day. It ought to have a resident minister educated in the college and the university and in the seminary. It ought to train its peo- ple in giving to the great causes of Christendom. It should cultivate in them the habits of community service and it should take part in the missionary work by which the whole world is to be evangelized. In other words, the leading Protestant denominations are to-day great socialized or- ganizations. The gospel of organization, in which they agree, is the very thing the country church needs. With- out this central type of organization there can be no excep- tional efficiency. Unless a church is a church of such type as responsible Christian people usually believe in, there can be no parish houses, farmers' institutes, play festivals, or other unusual social efficiencies. The gospel, the Sabbath, the college, the budget system of benevolences, and the mis- sionary conquest of the world are the ganglion center of a church's work. The Church exists to evangelize and to Christianize the world. Country churches are not so organ- ized. They are organized for argument and difference, for dogmatical clash, and for keeping the people apart. Now you ask me how this organization shall be estab- lished. It seems to me this is the business of the leading Protestant denominations, and I would add Catholic as well, for I have no church preference in the cause I am 408 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST presenting. I am interested only that the Church be organ- ized for social efficiency. It cannot be done without the driving forces of a great denomination. In my own church we are going about it point by point, church by church, minister by minister, salary by salary, dollar by dollar. In dependent territory where there are many people and small incomes we build a mission station with a man who has given his life to the work of the Church as a whole, and he goes where he is sent. We keep him, as we expect to main- tain any man, for at least five years in a place, in order that he may accomplish some effective social work. We take in a locality those churches which have promise of social effectiveness, whether they are poor or whether they are rich, and promote them as mission stations or as self- supporting congregations, and we expect to get results. I believe this is the only way the thing can be done. If the great denominations which center in the cities and are blessed with the gifts of rich men, and with the conse- crated talents of educated and choice people, will not under- take to redeem the country, then these mighty forces of wealth, learning, and privilege, which center in cities, will continue to rob the open country. Social efficiency centers in the cities and in the State and National governments. These forces are responsible, as the colleges are respon- sible, for establishing strong men in the country. The set- tled pastor living from five to ten years in the country neighborhood and maintaining a church, as Christian peo- ple know how to maintain the Church, is the solution of the problem of social efficiency in the country. XI. OEGANIZATION Organization of the Congress Oonstitution and By-Laws of the Southern Socio- Officers Index to Subjects Index to Speakers, Writers, and Officers ORGANIZATION OF THE CONGRESS OFFICERS President Bishop Theodore D. Bratton, Jackson, Miss. First Vice President Rabbi Morris Newfleld, Birmingham, Ala. Second Vice President Hon. Albert S. Johnstone, Columbia, S, C. Treasurer Dr. Edwin C. Dinvriddie, Washington, D. C. Educational Secretary J. E. McCulloch, Waahlnpton, D. C. BOARD OF GOVERNORS Dr. W. D. Weatherford, Chairman Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Joseph C. Logan, Secretary Atlanta, Ga. Dr. James H. Dillard Charlottesrille,' Va. Prof. J. A. C. Chandler Richmond, Va. Mr. J. B. Blades Newbern, N. C. STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEEMEN Mr. O. L. Steele Alabama Dr. A. C. Miller Arkansas Dr. E. C. Dinwiddie District of Columbia Prof. J. M. Farr Florida Dr. C. B. Wilmer Georgia Miss Frances Ingram Kentucky Hon. W. O. Hart Louisiana Miss Elizabeth Gilman Maryland Mr. J. R. Bingham Mississippi Dr. J. J. Bernard Missouri Prof. E. C. Branson North Carolina Dr. W. D. Matthews Oklahoma Dr. A. T. Jamison South Carolina Mr. W. R. Cole Tennessee Dean J. L. Kesler Texas Prof. Jackson Davis Virginia Prof. E. H. Vickers West Virginia STATE SECRETARIES Alabama Prof. J. L. Sibley Arkansas Mr. J. A. Presson District of Columbia Mr. W. L. Radcliff Florida -Mr. Marcus C. Fagg Georgia Prof. J. P. Faulkner Kentucky Prof. J. Virgil Chapman Louisiana Prof. W. O. Scroggs Maryland . , Dr. Richard W. Hogue Mississippi Prof. H. O. Pate Missouri Dr. George B. Mangold North Carolina Judge Gilbert T. Stephenson Oklahoma Prof. J. W. Jent. South Carolina ^ Mis. Thomas S. Silcox Tennessee Mr. C. C. Menzler Texas P. of . A. Caswell Ellis Virginia Dr. J. T. Mastin West Virgin!.. Miss Viola McKinney CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS OF THE CONGRESS PURPOSE AND MEMBERSHIP The purpose of the Southern Sociological Congress is to study and improve the social, civic, and moral conditions in the South. Its membership shall be composed of all per- sons interested in its work who shall register their names and pay the annual fee. The memberships shall be of the following classes: Active members, $3 per year; sustain- ing members, $10 per year; extension members, $25 per year; and life members, $100. Any person paying any of these fees shall receive a copy of the proceedings and any other publications of the Congress. Delegates to the Con- gress may be appointed by the Governor of each State coop- erating with it, by Mayors of cities in these States, and by organizations and institutions engaged in social service, and, upon payment of the membership fees, shall be entitled to all privileges. MEETINGS The Southern Sociological Congress shall meet once each year, at such time and place as may be designated by the Governing Board. There shall be a local committee in each city having a meeting of the Congress, and it shall be the duty of this committee to provide any necessary funds and make all local arrangements for the meeting satisfactory to the Governing Board. OFFICERS The officers of the Southern Sociolog-ical Congress shall be a President, First and Second Vice Presidents, an Edu- cational Secretary, an Executive Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Corresponding Secretary for each State. All of these officers shall be elected or authorized annually by the Con- gress, upon nomination of the Committee on Organization. COMMITTEES The standing committees shall be an Executive Com- mittee; a Governing Board; a committee on each subject which it is proposed to discuss at the next meeting of the 412 DEMOCRACY IN EARNEST Congnress, to be appointed by the Committee on Organiza- tion; and a committee to be composed of the Chairmen of these standing committees, whose duty it shall be to report a social program before the close of the Congress, and to which committee all resolutions shall be referred without debate. The Executive Committee shall consist of the President, the Treasurer, one member from each Southern State, to be elected annually by the Congress, together with the Gov- erning Board of the Congress. This Committee shall be presided over by the President of the Congress, who shall call them together at such time or times as he may deem advisable. Five members shall constitute a quorum. The Governing Board shall consist of five members chosen for reasons of executive capacity, and who shall, so far as reasonably possible, live within such convenient trav- eling distance of some central point as will enable them to meet at least four times a year. It shall have power to transact all necessary business in the interim between the meetings of the Congress, or of the Executive Committee, and shall have within the limits set by the Congress author- ity over all officers and committees of the Congress. It may appoint from its own membership, and outside, sub- committees to attend to matters of detail. This Board shall have its own Chairman. The Board shall be divided into three branches elected for three years each. Three mem- bers shall constitute a quorum for any meeting properly called with sufficient notice to all the members. The Presi- dent and Treasurer shall be ex officio members of this Board. A Committee on Organization shall be appointed by the President at the opening session. Its duty shall be to select topics for discussion and nominate officers and committees for the following Congress. DUTIES OF OFFICERS The President shall be the chief executive officer and Chairman of the Executive Committee. In the event of a vacancy in the office of President, it shall be filled by the CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS OF THE CONGRESS 413 First Vice President; and in the event of a vacancy in the office of First Vice President, it shall be filled by the Second Vice President. The Educational Secretary shall outline plans of work and methods of procedure; shall edit the publications and spread the gospel of the organization by travel and speech ; and shall guide the Congress in its task of social and spir- itual leadership in the South; all this under the authority and direction of the Congress and of the Governing Board. The Executive Secretary shall conduct the correspon- dence of the Congress with officers, committees, and others under the direction of the President. He shall distribute the announcements and programs and keep a correct roll of members. He shall receive all membership fees and proceeds of sales of literature and pay the same promptly to the Treasurer. He shall receive such compensation and allow- ance for expenses as may be fixed by the Governing Board, and shall perform such other duties as shall be ordered by the Governing Board. The Treasurer shall receive and disburse all moneys of the Congress. All disbursements shall be made only upon the order of the Executive Secretary approved by the Presi- dent or by some member of the Governing Board to be named by the President. The Corresponding Secretaries shall endeavor to stimu- late interest in the Congress in their respective States, and shall render annual reports to the Educational Secretary as to social, civic, and economic progress within the said States. PROGRAM AND PROCEDURE The program of each annual meeting shall be arranged by the President in consultation with the Chairman of each standing committee, and it shall be submitted to the Gov- erning Board for its approval. All papers shall first be pre- sented to that Board before they are read to the Congress. These by-laws may be amended by a majority vote at any meeting of the Congress, provided that all amendments shall first be submitted to the Executive Committee. INDEX TO SUBJECTS A PAGE Abolition of Poverty, The 281 Alcohol's Health Toll 297 America — Peacemaker or Pacemaker? 76 America's Answer to the German Challenge 54 C Call from the Firing Line, The 48 Causes, Consequences, and Cure of Mob Violence 191 Challenge to the New Chivalry, A 26 Child and Heredity, The 269 Church as the Conserver of Human Life, The 395 Church Organized for Socal Efficiency, The 404 Country Church and Human Life More Abundant, The 399 Constitution and By-Laws of the Congress 411 Creed and a Crusade, A 208 Cry of the Children, The 244 D Duty of Southern Labor During the War, The. .. 219 E E}volution of the Trained Nurse, The 117 F Fight Against Tuberculosis, The 155 G Great Commandment, The 16 Great Enemy of Labor, The 296 Greetings from President Wilson 11 H Healthgrams 88 Housing and Community Health Among Negroes 362 Housing in Preventing Disease 125 I 111 Plealth, Narcotics, and Lawlessness Among Negroes 350 Introductory Statement at Race Relations Section 319 K Keeping the Soldier Fit to Fight 174 L Labor Values Destroyed by Disease 211 Labor's Challenge to Democracy 229 Letter from Hon. W. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor 2G9 M Maintaining a Proper Bacteriological and Chemical Standard for Drinking Water 113 Marriage Health Certificate, The 107 Minister as a Health Propagandist, The 377 Mo'b Violence — An Enemy of Both Races 186 INDEX TO SUBJECTS 415 PAGB Modern Orphanage in the South, The 245 Moral Alms of the War, The 73 Moral Causes of the War, The 62 Mortality from Cancer in the Southern States 15& N Necessitj of America's Part in the War, The 4? Negro Church as the Guardian of Public Health, The 82ff Negro Home and the Future of the Race, The 334 New Era, The 28a O Objective of the Congress, The IJ Open Door to Industry on the Basis of Efficiency, An 234 P Peril of Venereal Diseases, The 168 Play Life of Negro Boys and Girls, The 354 Point of Explosion Between the Spiritual and the Economic, The 382 Policemen as Welfare Workers 290 Preacher and Physician Yokefellows in the Health Campaign, The 389 Present Task of the Southern Sociological Congress, The 23 Prevalence and Prevention of Malaria 151 Prevention of Blindness, The 139 Problem of War and the Program of the League to Enforce Peace, The 79 Program of the Congress, The 12 Protection Against Bad Air 132 R Race Distinctions Versus Race Discriminations 201 Religious Life of the Negro and Its Bearing on Health, The. . . 321 Responsibility for Health in Public Schools ' 257 Righting Racial Wrongs and Making Democracy Safe 372 S School as a Focus of Disease, The 251 Secret Societies as Factors in the Social and Economic Life of the Negro 342 Social Program of the Congress, The 318 Sociological Aspects of the Alcoholic Problem 305 Some Evils of Self-Medication 102 Some Objections to the Pee System in the Practice of Medicine 95 Some Phases of the World-Wide Prohibition Movement and Its Relation to Christian Citizenship 316 State as the Guardian of Public Health 89 T Task of Good Citizenship, The 15- Teaching Health in the Public Schools 262" Treatment of the Insane Outside of Hospitals 145- V Value of the Social Worker to the Community at Large, The. . . 284 Vitalizing the Law 181 W What Can the Church Do to Promote Good Will Between the Races? 366 What of the Church? 376 Work for the Handicapped 287 INDEX TO SPEAKERS, WRITERS AND OFFICERS PAGE AxsOTi, Dr. Stockton 54 Bernard, Dr. J. J 410 Bingham, J. B 410 Bishop, Dr. Charles M 191 Blades, J. B 410 Branson, Prof. E. C 410 Bratton, Bishop Theo. D..234, 410 Brooks, Dr. Samuel P 15 Brough, Gov. C. H 13 Carroll, Dr. Richard 328 Chandler, Prof. J. A. C. . . . • 410 Chapman, Prof. J. Virgil... 410 Cherrington, Ernest H. . . ... ^14 Clinton, Bishop George W.. . . 6bb Coffee, Rabbi Rudolph 1 281 Cole, W. R flO Creel, Dr. R. H 125 Cromer, Dr. George B 4d Crothers, Dr. T. D 305 Crouch, Frank Monroe ^»^ Davis, Prof. Jackson 410 Dillard, Dr. James H 319, 410 Dinwiddie, Dr. Edwin C 410 Dowling, Dr. Oscar 12, 107 Dyer, Dr. Isadore 102 Ellis, Prof. A. Caswell 410 Fagg, Marcus C 410 Farr, Prof. J. M 410 Faulkner, Prof. J. P 262, 410 Foulkes, Father John D 395 Fox, Dr. J. H 145 Gardner, Dr. Charles S 377 Geisel, Dr. Carolyn 297 Gilman, Miss Elizabeth. .287, 410 Godbold, E 251 Harris, Dr. Seale 89 Hart, Hon. W. 410 Hatfield, Dr. Charles J 155 Hoffman, Dr. Frederick L 158 Hogue, Rev. Richard W..269, 410 HoUey, Mrs. Helena 257 Holloway, Prof. W. H 321 Hombeck, Rev. J. A, 399 Hyer, Dr. Robert S 95 Ingram, Miss Frances 410 Jamison, Dr. A. T 410 Jent, Prof. J. W 410 Johnson, Hon. Albert 48 Johnstone, Hon. A. S 23, 410 Johnson, Major Bascom 174 PAGE Kesler, Dean J. L 389, 410 Kesler, Dr. M. L 245 Klingberg, Prof. Frank, J. . . 79 Logan, Joseph C 410 Ljmch, Rev. Frederick 73 McCulloch, J. E 13, 26, 410 Macfarland, Rev. Chas, S 62 McKenzie, Dr. F. A 362 McKinney, Miss Viola 410 Mangold, Dr. George B 410 Mastin, Dr. J. T 410 Matthews, Dr. W. D 410 Menzler, C. C 410 Miller, Dr. A. C 410 Morrison, Hon. Frank 229 Morse, Dr. Josiah 211 Moton, Pres. Robert Russa. . 219 Newfield, Rabbi Morris 410 Pate, Prof. H. 410 Patterson, Chas, H 284 Presson, J. A 410 Radcliff, W. L 410 Ramsey, D. Hiden 290 Ray, Hon. John E 139 Riddle, Miss Mary M 117 Saville, Charles 132 Scherer, Dr. Jas. A. B 43 Scroggs, Prof. W. 185, 410 Seemann, Dr. W. H 113 Sibley, Prof. L. L 410 Silcox, Mrs. Thomas S 410 Snow, Dr. William F 168 Steele, O. L 410 Stephenson, Judge G. T..201, 410 Sutton, Hon J. L 350 Tillett, Dean W. F 372 Trawick, A. M 354 Turner, Judge W. B 181 Vickers, Prof. E. H 410 Von Ezdorf, Dr. R. H 151 Washington, Mrs. Booker. . . 334 Weatherford, Dr. W. D 410 Wilmer, Dr. C. B 410 Wilson, Dr. Warr«n H 404 Wilson, President Woodrow. . 11 Wilson, Hon. W. B 209 Winslow, C. E. A. 134 Work, Prof. Monroe N 342 Zueblin, Charles 76 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below APR 1 1947 APR 9 195C "^^ FEB 1 Hi 6lS7f apro 0V"Sl''*'iUK1994 J97? ur B1985 Form L-B 2;;m-:,' 43(3203) UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES I llllfllllllllllllllll|lllll|ll|imr,,,i 3 1158 01015 4234 lir qniiTHFR"; r^r--. AA 000 802 079 %^