I .ff^lfc.
 
 American 
 
 Women in 
 
 Civic Work 
 
 BENNETT
 
 v**-^
 
 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK
 
 AMERICAN WOMEN 
 IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 By 
 
 HELEN CHRISTINE BENNETT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1919
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Portions of the sketches which appear in this 
 book have been published serially, principally in 
 the Pictorial Review and the American Maga- 
 zine. With one exception, they are stories of 
 women whom I have met, and whose work I 
 have personally investigated. It has taken 
 something over four years to gather the ma- 
 terial for this little volume. 
 
 At the end of the time I find myself so im- 
 pressed by one fact which has developed from 
 the matter collected, and particularly from ac- 
 quaintance with the women themselves, that I 
 want to record it. In almost every instance 
 they who have done so much for the public wel- 
 fare have stated that they believe themselves 
 selected by a Divine agency for their particular 
 work and accountable to the Divinity for suc- 
 cess or failure. 
 
 Sophie Wright, whose recent death bereft 
 New Orleans of its most useful citizen, said to 
 me: 
 
 *' If God did not help me, and want me to do 
 this thing, how could I, a sickly cripple, accom- 
 plish so much? " and Sophie Wright but put
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 into plain language the feeling that many of 
 the other women indicated in more subtle 
 phraseology. The sense of a power beyond 
 themselves, impelling them onward, was gen- 
 eral. So was a great faith in the efficacy of 
 prayer. As I am neither a religious nor a sen- 
 timental person, the knowledge of this belief, 
 forced upon me after many interviews and 
 visits with the women, had a profound effect. 
 In a day of despair over the lack of idealism in 
 the advance of women, of antagonism to the 
 very phases of work with which this volume 
 deals, — that is, their entrance into public af- 
 fairs, — of suspicion as to motives and ultimate 
 ambitions, the leaders, the women who have 
 achieved success and fame, are working as di- 
 rect agents of God to minister to His people! 
 The simplicity and sincerity with which this 
 belief has been shown have made it impossible 
 to doubt. And to the writer, at least, the 
 thought that the most prominent women of to- 
 day are working not for fame nor glory, nor 
 for the joy of personal expression, but for the 
 service of humanity because they believe that 
 God wants them to, is worthy of consideration. 
 Helen Christine Bennett.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Preface v 
 
 Caroline Bartlett Crane .... 1 
 
 Sophie Wright 47 
 
 Jane Addams 69 
 
 Kate Barnard 91 
 
 Albion Fellows Bacon 115 
 
 Hannah Kent Schoff 139 
 
 Frances A. Kellor 161 
 
 Julia Tutwiler 181 
 
 LucRETiA L. Blankenburg . . . . 207 
 
 Anna Howard Shaw 229 
 
 Ella Flagg Young 253
 
 CAROLINE BAETLETT CRANE
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 
 
 ** If you please, madam, will yon come and 
 look us over and inform us what is wrong so 
 that we may right it, and what is good so that 
 we may continue it? " 
 
 The invitation has gone out from fifty-nine 
 American cities. Their self-chosen instructor 
 is a woman, Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane. In 
 response to their appeal she has called upon 
 them, submitted them to a detailed inspection, 
 praised their merits, criticised their faults and 
 departed leaving behind her specific directions 
 for their guidance. 
 
 Mrs. Crane calls her visits ** sanitary sur- 
 veys." When a city desires her services, it calls 
 upon her as a professional municipal expert 
 and places the keys of the municipality at her 
 disposal. She arrives at an appointed time 
 and personally investigates the water supply, 
 sewers, street sanitation, garbage collection 
 and disposal, milk supply, meat supply, markets, 
 bakeries, food factories, schoolhouses, tene- 
 ments and homes for the poor, almshouses, hos- 
 pital dispensaries and jails, studies the city's 
 
 8
 
 4 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 resources, its system of public health adminis- 
 tration and any other incidentals which occur 
 to her. Then she addresses mass meetings of 
 citizens which are called to hear her, reporting 
 conditions as she finds them and suggesting im- 
 provements. Finally these reports and sugges- 
 tions are incorporated in a printed booklet 
 which serves as a municipal text-book for some 
 years following. 
 
 Some of the cities which have sent for Mrs. 
 Crane have been aroused to the need of her 
 services through the necessity for self-preserva- 
 tion. An epidemic of typhoid, a scourge of fire, 
 or an intolerably bad milk or meat supply, 
 brought to them the realisation of their need 
 for reform. But many cities have aroused 
 themselves to a consciousness of their condition. 
 These have not asked to be corrected because 
 of their deficiencies, but because they are al- 
 ready so far on the road toward progress that 
 they welcome the stimulus of criticism and ad- 
 vice. Both they and Mrs. Crane are working 
 at a comparatively new task. 
 
 It took twenty years' experience to develop 
 Mrs. Crane into what she calls a " professional 
 sanitarian." In 1889 the Eev. Caroline Bart- 
 lett was called to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to min- 
 ister to the spiritual needs of the handful of 
 people who still clung to the remnant of the
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 5 
 
 Unitarian Church left in the city. The Rev. 
 Caroline Bartlett met her new congregation 
 with something like dismay. She had just left 
 her first parish in South Dakota where hardly 
 a member was over forty years of age. Here 
 the faithful remnant included, for the most 
 part, gray-haired men and women. They 
 needed a minister, they explained, for funerals. 
 Small wonder had the young pastor turned 
 and fled to more cheerful surroundings, but she 
 stayed and sorrowfully enough ministered to 
 the funerals. At the same time she started a 
 search for children. There were just four 
 found available among the congregation and 
 three of these were in the same family. But 
 with the four she started a Sunday School. 
 
 It must have been an attractive Sunday 
 School, for soon there were more pupils, and 
 more and more. At the same time the congre- 
 gation increased and under the stimulating in- 
 fluence of their pastor began to hold mid-weekly 
 meetings for the purpose of studying their 
 town. The young pastor saw nothing unusual 
 in their choice of a study. The church was to 
 minister to the needs of the people here and 
 hereafter, and three years of study convinced 
 her that here the people had many needs. So 
 when the congregation grew too big for the 
 little Gothic church and money was found for
 
 6 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 a new one, the church that was planned included 
 features unusual at that time, and not so very 
 common now. 
 
 The new church had a kindergarten, because 
 there was none in the town ; it had a gymnasium 
 for women, a manual training department, a 
 domestic science department. It did not have 
 a library nor a gymnasium for men because 
 these were found in the town, and the church 
 was not starting an institution to rival those in 
 existence, it was filling the people's need. The 
 new church was renamed the People's Church, 
 and with the relinquishing of sectarian boun- 
 daries it grew in numbers and in power. And 
 then just when her people were beginning to 
 feel that their young pastor was their own pe- 
 culiar possession, they had demonstrated to 
 them that she had her own life to live, as well 
 as to help them. 
 
 One New Year's eve a musicale was an- 
 nounced. As usual the church was full to over- 
 flowing. Suddenly the organ overture began to 
 play a wedding march and before the excited 
 congregation could catch breath, their pastor, 
 clad in white, stepped to the altar, met there 
 one of the city's leading physicians, and before 
 anyone could interfere became Mrs. Crane. 
 Kalamazoo talked late that night and went to 
 bed with an uneasy mind. Like the small girl,
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 7 
 
 it was afraid of the " never-again -the- same- 
 ness " supposed to come when a woman enters 
 married life. But Mrs. Crane continued to min- 
 ister to their needs as thoughtfully and as ener- 
 getically as Miss Bartlett had before her. One 
 of her first efforts was to start a class in mar- 
 keting, cooking, housekeeping, nursing and sew- 
 ing, which she herself promptly joined. Now 
 although Mrs. Crane believes that the church 
 should minister to the temporal needs of its 
 people, she also believes that when the need 
 ceases it should turn its energy into new fields. 
 In course of time Kalamazoo awakened to the 
 fact that kindergartens and cooking courses and 
 manual training are excellent things and started 
 to incorporate them in its public schools. Then 
 the People's Church closed its classes in those 
 branches. 
 
 As there was no good, wholesome dining- 
 room for working women, it converted its base- 
 ment into a restaurant where good dinners are 
 served nightly at a cost of about ten cents. 
 The kindergarten was kept for the Sunday 
 service so that parents might leave their chil- 
 dren and attend church — not necessarily the 
 People's Church — upon the Sabbath day. 
 
 When Mrs. Crane found that church work 
 was running smoothly she began to look far- 
 ther. One of the first things she noticed was
 
 8 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 that the alleys and back yards of the business 
 section were very dirty. They were much like 
 the back yards of the average town, but that 
 fact had no weight with Mrs. Crane. Sur- 
 reptitiously she photographed a number of the 
 worst places. Then she called together a num- 
 ber of progressive women from her own and 
 other churches and organised a Civic Improve- 
 ment League. At one of the first meetings 
 there was a lantern exhibition of Kalamazoo 
 alleys and back yards. As picture after picture 
 appeared upon the screen the inhabitants of 
 Kalamazoo squirmed in their seats. Mrs. Crane 
 was merciful and tactful enough to suppress 
 names and localities, and every owner of a yard 
 that was shown made up his mind instantly that 
 no one should ever recognise that yard as his. 
 As a consequence Kalamazoo went through a 
 cleaning period in the next twenty-four hours 
 that put the slides hopelessly out of date. 
 There wasn't a back yard in the town that even 
 faintly resembled them. The Mayor issued a 
 proclamation for an annual cleaning day and 
 proper receptacles for ashes and garbage were 
 provided. Mrs. Crane undertook to see that this 
 effect was permanent. Let *' sanitary " res- 
 taurants, hotels, plumbing establishments look 
 out that their rear entrances were as ** sani- 
 tary " as their front. Mrs. Crane's ever active
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 9 
 
 camera made truthful photos and these were 
 quietly mailed to the transgressors. Usually no 
 other warning was necessary. The back yards 
 of Kalamazoo continued clean. Next, Mrs. 
 Crane noticed that by contrast the streets of 
 the city were woefully dirty. 
 
 After much hard work she induced the mem- 
 bers of the Civic Improvement League to ask 
 the City Council for permission to keep six 
 blocks of the main business section clean for 
 three months, as a demonstration of how the 
 work should be done. The women of the League 
 at once began a study of the street-cleaning sys- 
 tem introduced into New York City by Colonel 
 Waring, and when the Council at last gave a 
 reluctant consent to the experiment they kneiv 
 how the work should be done. When the time 
 drew near it was arranged that the women 
 should act as inspectors, relieving each other, 
 so that none would be overworked, and that 
 their duty would be to follow and supervise the 
 men with their handbrooms and small carts. 
 At the moment of starting the yellow press de- 
 posited a number of reporters armed with 
 cameras in Kalamazoo and the women in- 
 spectors fled in haste. To be sure they gave 
 excuses. One woman found a suddenly sick 
 baby, another unexpected company, a third was 
 really ill. Mrs. Crane listened and said noth-
 
 10 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 ing. She didn't wait to get angry or afraid. 
 She walked out from her home and faced the 
 cameras. And for three months daily she in- 
 spected every one of the six blocks experimented 
 upon — alone. Every night she bathed her ach- 
 ing feet and every morning she got up and set 
 her lips firmly together and went on. 
 
 At the end of three months she had reduced 
 the cost of cleaning those six blocks $3.89 per 
 day. The streets were cleaner than any resi- 
 dent had believed possible and the City Council 
 was only too glad to adopt her methods as its 
 own. The Civic Improvement League made up 
 for its desertion by placing galvanised iron 
 cans upon the street corners and by organising 
 Junior Civic Leagues among school children 
 who promised to help to keep the streets free 
 from rubbish. 
 
 This civic service was undertaken two years 
 after Mrs. Crane had resigned her pastorate 
 on account of a prolonged illness. When she 
 recovered Kalamazoo needed her more than the 
 church did — for the church was doing very well 
 and the city had other weaknesses besides dirty 
 streets. One of the Kalamazoo weaknesses was 
 the administration of charity. Kalamazoo is 
 a middle-sized city. It has outgrown the village 
 stage where everyone knows everyone else, and 
 it has not yet become a great city where
 
 CAKOLINE BAKTLETT CRANE 11 
 
 evil is so obvious that it is a part of 
 the city government to attend to all its mani- 
 festations. The good folk of Kalamazoo hardly 
 realised that they had grown beyond the time 
 when it was well to give to him that asked. As 
 a result, certain noted vagabonds and certain 
 shrewd families with a sharp eye toward mak- 
 ing an easy living were having an excellent 
 time, bountifully supported by the unthinking 
 citizens. Mrs. Crane organised a Charity Or- 
 ganisation Branch of the Civic Improvement 
 League. She asked churches, societies and in- 
 dividuals to direct their funds and appeals for 
 help to this branch. She begged housewives 
 not to feed wanderers, reminding them that in 
 all probability they were helping some desert- 
 ing husband or bad son to more evil ways. She 
 promised to take care of every case referred to 
 her. And she did. She did so well that the city 
 of Kalamazoo decided to contribute fifty dol- 
 lars monthly to the Charity Organisation 
 Branch, " for," said the Mayor, " Mrs. Crane 
 makes it go five times as far as we can." 
 
 This Chai^ty Organisation Branch went to 
 work with a will. It decided to find or to pro- 
 vide work for every self-respecting applicant. 
 It had no trouble in finding work for the women, 
 and it promptly installed a woodyard for men 
 out of work. All the husky tramps who had
 
 12 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 found Kalamazoo a delightful and profitable 
 stopping place promptly left the town. On the 
 road they notified their brother hoboes of the 
 change in Kalamazoo, so that the number of 
 Weary Willies visiting Kalamazoo included 
 only those strays who had missed the warning. 
 The Branch also determined to root out shift- 
 lessness among the poor, a Herculean task. 
 
 '' They must be taught to save," said Mrs. 
 Crane. 
 
 She arranged with a local savings bank for 
 the acceptance of small accounts, from one 
 penny upwards. It was astonishing how those 
 accounts grew. In the eight years since they 
 have been inaugurated sixty-five thousand 
 three hundred and eighty dollars have been de- 
 posited. 
 
 Every penny of this was saved by people who 
 never had known what it meant to put a dollar 
 away for a rainy day. The Branch also waged 
 a war upon deserting husbands. In these cases 
 frequently the discipline was needed by the 
 wife. When a husband deserted from an un- 
 tidy, unattractive home, Mrs. Crane promptly 
 sent a visiting housekeeper to instruct the wife 
 to keep the home attractive. " We will make 
 your husband do what is right if you will do 
 your part," was the nature of the bargain. 
 Stimulated by this promise, and enlightened by
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 13 
 
 the knowledge brought by her instructor, the 
 discouraged woman went to work. 
 
 The Branch also supplies trained nurses to 
 visit homes where a nurse is needed, savings 
 collectors to keep the people awake to the need 
 of putting money into their accounts, and 
 friendly visitors to dispense cheer generally. 
 According to Mrs. Crane's doctrine there are 
 no worthy and unworthy poor. There are just 
 poor. If they do what is wrong they need more 
 than food and clothes and work ; they need guid- 
 ance and advice and discipline. And because 
 they need these they are not sent away, but 
 made to stay and take the help that is offered. 
 All this effort means a good deal of expense. 
 Mrs. Crane has very definite ideas as to ex- 
 pense in charity work. She does not believe in 
 charity balls nor charity fairs nor charity 
 " hold-ups." Contributions to the Charity 
 Branch are from church collections, from the 
 city and from individuals who are philan- 
 thropically inclined. 
 
 There are no pet charities in Kalamazoo and 
 no one society is trying to outdo another — for 
 there is but one. Consequently a little money 
 goes a long way. Nor was all this work accom- 
 plished in Kalamazoo itself. To rid the city of 
 tramps, Mrs. Crane appealed to the railroads, 
 and freight cars through Michigan are strictly
 
 14 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 watched. To prevent mortgaging the goods of 
 the poor at extortionate rates of interest, she 
 started a movement which resulted in a State 
 law making it a felony to charge more than a 
 specified rate of interest upon any chattel mort- 
 gage loan. 
 
 In 1903, as Chairman of the Committee on 
 Household Economics of the Twentieth Century 
 Club of Kalamazoo, Mrs. Crane attempted to 
 secure a speaker on meat inspection. All the 
 officials importuned were busy. They wrote 
 Mrs. Crane kindly letters and regretted their 
 inability to help her out, but they could not come 
 to Kalamazoo. 
 
 The usual thing for a chairman to do upon 
 such an occasion is to read the letters from the 
 officials, to neatly express her own regret at the 
 unfortunate occurrence and to skip that part 
 of the programme. But such a course never 
 suggested itself to Mrs. Crane. Meat was on 
 the programme planned, therefore meat must 
 be talked about. If all the State officials were 
 busy, she would simply have to do it herself. 
 She did not know anything about meats before 
 they came into her own hands, but this fact 
 did not deter her at all. Nor did she hunt up 
 a book and read up on meats. 
 
 " For what," she argued, '* is the use of a 
 book when there are real things to learn from? "
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 15 
 
 So she hunted up all the butchers and abattoirs, 
 and slaughter sheds about Kalamazoo. When 
 she had located seven she invited the wife of 
 the Mayor, and the wife of a former mayor and 
 two men to visit with her. Without sending 
 word of their intentions, the five visited six of 
 the seven slaughter houses in a day and a half. 
 The party started out resolved not to comment 
 or to show any surprise at anything they saw. 
 When they arrived at the first house they were 
 glad of the resolution. Horror and disgust 
 robbed them all of power to speak words ade- 
 quate to meet the conditions. The buildings 
 were old abandoned barns or sheds, unpainted, 
 warped and rotting. Dense black cobwebs cov- 
 ered the ceilings and upper walls, while within 
 six feet of the floors, walls, posts and shelves 
 were caked with blood, grime, grease, mold and 
 putrid flesh. Without pro\dsion for drainage, 
 the floors let through their cracks blood and 
 refuse which there remained, putrefying. The 
 offal of freshly killed animals was fed to those 
 waiting in the pens. Rats abounded. Revolting 
 as these details appeared, they were less dan- 
 gerous than the fact that animals brought to 
 the houses were accepted unquestioningly in 
 any condition, diseased or well, and promptly 
 made away with. 
 Mrs. Crane and her committee returned home,
 
 16 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 literally ill. But the lecture was given to the 
 club. More than that, Mrs. Crane repeated it 
 to the City Council. The members of the Coun- 
 cil were aghast; they promised to remedy con- 
 ditions at once. 
 
 Then the district-attorney found that under 
 the city charter nothing could be done with the 
 slaughter houses as they were outside city 
 limits; it was beyond the city's power even to 
 refuse the entrance of the goods to the city's 
 markets. And the Council regretted its inabil- 
 ity as the State ofiScials had done, and everybody 
 considered the matter ended. That is, except 
 Mrs. Crane. 
 
 She determined to find out whether Kala- 
 mazoo was an exceptional offender in the matter 
 of bad slaughter houses and lack of inspection 
 of animals. So she wrote to the Mayor of 
 Grand Eapids and the Mayor replied that no 
 such conditions existed there. Mrs. Crane had 
 her doubts and went to Grand Rapids. She 
 found the same conditions as in Kalamazoo, 
 and convinced the Mayor that he had been mis- 
 taken. She went to Owosso and Lansing and 
 found things no better. Then she determined 
 to put the matter before the State legislature. 
 It was a year and a half until the legislature 
 met, so she had plenty of time. She sent to 
 every State in the Union for every meat inspec-
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 17 
 
 tion ordinance in existence, then she went to 
 talk to the State Board of Health. The State 
 Board of Health immediately appointed a com- 
 mittee to look into the matter and the com- 
 mittee never was called. Mrs. Crane was on 
 the committee and decided that if anything was 
 to be done she would have to do it. So she 
 sent for more information, to Germany, New 
 Zealand, France, Argentine Eepublic and read 
 everything she received in reply. 
 
 By the time the legislature convened she knew 
 the meat laws in pretty nearly every country 
 on earth and in every State in the Union. She 
 prepared a bill providing that cities in the State 
 could make their own meat inspection ordi- 
 nances. She was a bit afraid of the bill, for 
 although by this time she knew a good deal 
 about meat, she still knew nothing about law. 
 So she took the bill first to a lawyer friend and 
 then to the State attorney-general, and when 
 it had been pronounced constitutional, she man- 
 aged to get the bill introduced. And then she 
 heard that the bill was scheduled to be de- 
 feated. Someone telegraphed Mrs. Crane of this 
 fact. It was at night, but she got out of bed 
 and took a train for Lansing. On the way she 
 worked out a set of reasons for the passage 
 of the bill. When she arrived at Lansing she 
 had these printed. She sat up all night, rushed
 
 18 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 the freshly printed reasons to the capitol and 
 saw them placed on the desk of every legislator. 
 She was given the privilege of the floor, made 
 a speech in favour of the bill and it passed by 
 a comit of sixty-one to sixteen. She went home 
 and drafted a city ordinance which would for- 
 ever do away with filthy slaughter houses and 
 uninspected animal slaughter, had it pronounced 
 constitutional and presented it to the City 
 Council. After several years of strife, during 
 which Mrs. Crane found opposed to her an or- 
 ganised body of local butchers, the City Council 
 accepted and passed it. 
 
 Michigan newspapers had made familiar the 
 name of the woman who knew more about meat 
 and meat inspection than legislators or health 
 officers. And the people of Michigan began to 
 inquire, " Who is Caroline Bartlett Crane? 
 "Where does she come from? " The people of 
 Kalamazoo found that Kalamazoo was becom- 
 ing a favourite stopping-place for visitors. 
 
 The Mayor of Saginaw was the first to ask 
 Mrs. Crane to visit a city outside her own for 
 the purpose of inspection. Mrs. Crane did not 
 care about going. She had her hands pretty 
 full at Kalamazoo. But the Mayor was urgent, 
 and finally Mrs. Crane went. Arrived at Sag- 
 inaw, she visited the local slaughter houses, as- 
 sisted the officials in drafting a meat inspection
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRA^E 19 
 
 ordinance for the city, and addressed a public 
 meeting called by the Mayor. This was her first 
 inspection and she had no idea that it would 
 not be the last. But calls upon her became fre- 
 quent and urgent and in her own State she 
 visited and inspected Big Kapids, Calumet, 
 Hastings and Bay City. 
 
 She was asked to inspect and report on 
 slaughter houses and meat inspection, but work 
 done in Kalamazoo proved a foundation for 
 work that was general. Cities which called 
 Mrs. Crane found that she knew a great deal 
 more than they about problems common to most 
 cities, and Mrs. Crane mastered every new 
 problem by a thorough study not only of all 
 the printed matter available thereon, but as in 
 the case of meat inspection by actual investi- 
 gations of the best and worst concrete exposi- 
 tions to be found. 
 
 Demands for inspection grew, until, harassed 
 for time, Mrs. Crane decided to put a price upon 
 her services, and to formulate a definite pro- 
 fessional plan which she called a " sanitary 
 survey." To-day the cities that call upon her 
 gladly pay for her services, furnish funds for 
 all expenses, a secretary, automobiles, theatres 
 and halls for meetings, official authority to con- 
 duct her investigations and an escort to accom- 
 pany her.
 
 20 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 To the women of the fifty-nine progressive 
 cities must be given much of the credit of the 
 calls for Mrs. Crane. In 1908 the Women's 
 Club of Erie, Pennsylvania, asked her to make 
 a general survey of sanitary conditions. In 
 1910 she received a request for a more extended 
 investigation from the same club, together with 
 the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, 
 the Teachers' Association, the Juvenile City 
 League, and the Erie High School Association. 
 At Nashville, Tennessee, the movement orig- 
 inated with the women of the Tennessee Fed- 
 eration of Women's Clubs, but before Mrs. 
 Crane accepted, the State, City and County 
 Boards of Health, the Mayor and City Council, 
 the Board of Trade, the Centennial Club, the 
 Housekeepers' Club, the Anti-Tuberculosis 
 League, and fifteen additional civic and literary 
 societies had joined in the invitation. In Roch- 
 ester, New York, the Mayor, Chamber of Com- 
 merce, Board of Education, Public Health As- 
 sociation, City Federation of Women's Clubs, 
 Council of Jewish Women, Social Settlement, 
 Children's Aid Society, Humane Society, and 
 Daughters of the American Eevolution joined 
 with the Women's Educational and Industrial 
 Union, and forgetting class, creed and office, 
 asked Mrs. Crane to come and help them go 
 forward. Kentucky and Minnesota went at the
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 21 
 
 thing thoroughly. The Kentucky Board of 
 Health and the State Federation of Women's 
 Clubs combined their resources and secured 
 Mrs. Crane for a five weeks' tour of the State 
 with inspection of the twelve leading cities, 
 while the State of Minnesota a little later, 
 through its State Board of Health, State Fed- 
 eration of Women's Clubs and the Commercial 
 Clubs of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, en- 
 joyed an even more thorough survey, covering 
 the seventeen leading cities and towns and oc- 
 cupying nearly two months. 
 
 In 1913, under auspices of the State Board 
 of Health, State Department of Agriculture and 
 State Federation of Clubs, Mrs. Crane made a 
 survey of thirteen leading cities in the State 
 of Washington. Here, as in her State-wide 
 campaigns, she was sworn in as a State Health 
 Officer during the period of her survey. 
 
 How Mrs. Crane can accomplish so much in 
 so brief a time spent in the field can be under- 
 stood only when one knows her method and 
 also the amount of data gathered by her in ad- 
 vance of her visit. 
 
 In the fall of 1912 Mrs. Crane accepted an 
 invitation to visit and survey the city of Mont- 
 gomery, Alabama. The women of the city had 
 been convinced of the need for Mrs. Crane some 
 two years before and had patiently waited and
 
 22 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 worked all that time for her coming. The male 
 l^opulation proved indifferent, or amused, or 
 openly antagonistic to such a proposition. 
 Montgomery was well able to take care of her- 
 self, why send for an outsider? But the women 
 persisted and after two years the men resigned 
 themselves. The City Commission frankly ad- 
 mitted that they did not care particularly about 
 it. '' But," said the President, *' the women got 
 hot after us and would not let us alone, so we 
 voted one hundred dollars to the fund, and 
 agreed to give Mrs. Crane any help she needed." 
 This vital matter settled, a triumphant invi- 
 tation was dispatched to Mrs. Crane. An an- 
 swer arrived promptly and was read eagerly. 
 Then the women turned to each other in dis- 
 may. For the letter of acceptance contained 
 two startling requests. The first was that an 
 inclosed list of questions should be answered, at 
 once. The second demanded that until her ar- 
 rival, as far as possible, all news of her coming 
 be kept a secret. The committee groaned as 
 they read over the questions. There were more 
 than a hundred! Mrs. Crane wanted to know 
 the acreage, property valuation, tax rate and 
 charter limit on taxation. She asked for a map 
 showing all sewers and sewer outlets, the loca- 
 tion of parks, playgrounds and recreation cen- 
 tres. She inquired the nature of recent bond
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 23 
 
 issues, what they were for, how many had been 
 approved and how many rejected by the people 
 within the last ten years. She asked the bond- 
 ing limit, the method of municipal accounting 
 and reporting, the public utilities owned and 
 operated by the municipality. She wanted the 
 charter date, its home-rule features, its amend- 
 ments. The source and quantity of water, its 
 storage and treatment, its cost, the soil condi- 
 tions, various kinds of street pavements, dairies, 
 abattoirs, markets, bakeries, and the municipal 
 regulations affecting them, housing ordinance, 
 milk and meat inspection ordinances, status of 
 the smoke nuisance, school census and appro- 
 priation, hospital and dispensary equipment, all 
 were the subjects of minute detailed question- 
 ing, and every answer was to be signed by an 
 official in a position to know the facts. 
 
 '* Mrs. Crane will know a lot about Mont- 
 gomery before she sets foot in it," remarked 
 one committee member sagely. 
 
 " Yes," retorted another, " and so will we! " 
 The committee members looked at each other 
 in sudden enlightenment. The education of 
 Montgomery had already begun ! It was hard 
 work to get answers to that list of questions 
 without the general public getting an inkling of 
 what it was all about. The women stole in and 
 out of public offices as quietly as possible, bind-
 
 24 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 ing every official to silence as they secured the 
 necessary information. On the street corners 
 and in private places they whispered confi- 
 dences, always ready to change instantly to 
 some other topic if someone not in the secret 
 happened along. The questions were answered 
 and the reply mailed and Mrs. Crane well on her 
 way before somebody told. Just three days be- 
 fore her arrival the morning paper announced 
 her visit. 
 
 The committee held a wrathful session, but no 
 weak spot could they discover. 
 
 ' ' And, ' ' wailed the youthful president of the 
 City Federation of Women's Clubs, " what will 
 Mrs. Crane think of us? What can I say to 
 her? " 
 
 But when Mrs. Crane stepped from the car 
 on Tuesday morning, November twelfth, she 
 seemed little disturbed by the confession. She 
 looked into the anxious faces of the ten persons 
 who awaited her, a delegation from the Federa- 
 tion of Women's Clubs, several Health Officers, 
 one member of the City Commission, and smiled 
 reassuringly. 
 
 " They haven't had time to clean up much, 
 even if they did get ready for me," she said. 
 ** Now let us get to work." The delegation 
 were aghast. They were prepared to escort 
 Mrs. Crane to her hotel and to wait until she
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 25 
 
 was rested and refreshed. But Mrs. Crane evi- 
 dently was quite ready for business. The Com- 
 missioner of Health handed her the badge 
 which made her for the nonce an authorised 
 City Official, and Mrs. Crane pinned it under 
 the lapel of her coat out of sight but ready in 
 case of emergency. She jumped into a waiting 
 automobile, tucked her baggage in with her and 
 asked to be taken to the city waterworks. 
 
 The survey was on! The machines which 
 were to carry the escort were quickly filled and 
 fell into line behind. Arrived at the water- 
 works, Mrs. Crane inspected them carefully, the 
 wells, the surrounding area, the protection of 
 reservoirs, the sanitary and bacteriologic 
 weekly reports, and satisfied herself that there 
 was no physical connection between the artesian 
 system and the river supply used for commer- 
 cial purposes. She made but few comments and 
 then asked to see the municipal garbage in- 
 cinerator. En route the visiting sanitarian 
 closely observed streets, alleys and back yards, 
 stopping the machines to walk where special 
 scrutiny was needed and asking continually for 
 specific information from the accompanying of- 
 ficials. It was one o'clock when the party 
 stopped for lunch. In the hotel where luncheon 
 was served an association of advertising men 
 were holding a meeting. It had been arranged
 
 26 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 that Mrs. Crane should speak to them. The 
 men welcomed her cordially, and after two 
 hours' inspection, Mrs. Crane congratulated 
 them upon the city water system and the in- 
 cinerator, and asked their co-operation in a 
 plan for progressively ridding the town of the 
 smoke nuisance. Then she returned to the autos 
 and asked to be taken to some of the dairies. 
 By this time the number of machines had in- 
 creased to four and the accompanying escort 
 had grown so large that the cars were crowded. 
 Through the town they ran in line, making quite 
 an imijosing touring expedition, while the un- 
 initiated citizens sursj^eyed the overflowing loads 
 of women in open-eyed wonder. Arrived at the 
 first dairy, men and women alighted and pre- 
 pared to follow Mrs. Crane. 
 
 ** Now keep right with me," urged that lady, 
 " and do not say anything either favourable or 
 otherwise." It was a difficult request to comply 
 with. The women walked sedately over the 
 rough ground into the stables, holding their 
 skirts tightly about them, their eyes fixed on 
 Mrs. Crane. When the visiting sanitarian 
 looked up, seventeen anxious pairs of eyes fol- 
 lowed hers. Armed by their housewifely ex- 
 perience, the women often knew instinctively 
 what was good and what was bad. Silently they 
 observed every cobweb, every fly, every sign of
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 27 
 
 disorder. With respect they listened to Mrs. 
 Crane's conversation with the dairyman, as to 
 the feeding and care of the cattle, and the dis- 
 cussion of temperature requirements, pressure 
 sterilisers, bacterial counts, and butter-fat con- 
 tent with the city milk inspector. They in- 
 spected the watering troughs, the milk house 
 with its separator and cans. They nodded 
 wisely as Mrs. Crane explained the advantages 
 of the excellent partly covered milk pails used, 
 and examined the immaculate cheesecloth and 
 antiseptic absorbent cotton used as strainers. 
 And they smiled with amusement but still more 
 with satisfaction when after minute questioning 
 as to the method of cleansing and steril- 
 ising, Mrs. Crane put her nose into pail after 
 pail. 
 
 '* It's the only way to tell positively," ob- 
 served one matron, breaking her bond of si- 
 lence. 
 
 '* Don't be too hard on us Friday night, 
 madam," called the dairyman after he had ac- 
 cepted an invitation to be present at the mass 
 meeting of citizens, when the results of the 
 survey were to be given. But his radiant smile 
 indicated that he thought he had little to fear. 
 Several other dairies were visited and the visit- 
 ing delegation on the whole was well pleased. 
 The barns were clean, the yards well drained,
 
 28 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 the cattle tuberculin tested, the milk houses and 
 separators screened and w6ll kept. One am- 
 bitious dairyman had screened in his entire 
 stable and had succeeded in keeping the flies in 
 wonderfully well. He listened respectfully 
 while Mrs. Crane gently suggested that the 
 doors be hung with ravelled rope of strips of 
 gunny sacking so that the flies would be brushed 
 off as the cattle entered. The delegation left 
 the dairies with a sense of well-being, and Mrs. 
 Crane announced, 
 
 *' Now I want to see the almshouse." 
 
 *' But the almshouse does not belong to the 
 city," protested the women. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Crane firmly, "it is on 
 city ground and most of the inmates come from 
 the city. I want to see it." 
 
 The county almshouse at Montgomery has a 
 charming location. The autos drew up on a 
 shady lawn across which under great trees the 
 shadows of late afternoon were falling. A pic- 
 turesque though dilapidated red brick building 
 stood at one end and at the side ran a number 
 of little two-room wooden cottages, on whose 
 porches sat men and women. A man sauntered 
 across the grass to extend a welcome. 
 
 " Come right through," he urged; *' right 
 through and see everything. ' ' 
 
 ** You are the superintendent? " the visiting
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 29 
 
 sanitarian asked. '' You work for the 
 county! " 
 
 ** No'm, that is, not exactly. I get 'em " — 
 he indicated by a sweep of his arm the figures 
 on the porches — " by contract. I get thirty- 
 seven and a half cents a day from the county 
 for everyone that's here." 
 
 *' And for that, what do you do? " 
 
 *' Do " — the superintendent seemed puzzled. 
 ** Do, ma'am? Why I feed 'em, I clothe 'em, I 
 bury 'em." 
 
 Silently the delegation filed into the first little 
 cottage. The room on the left was the abode of 
 two old women, one of whom was blind, and of 
 four splendid children, one a girl of thirteen. 
 The children, it was explained, were there only 
 '' temporarily," although they had been there 
 for months. The mother was ill and in the hos- 
 pital, the father had disappeared, and there was 
 no place in the city to send them. The next 
 room was the abode of two men, then absent. 
 Up one rickety pair of steps and down another 
 filed the delegation, finding desperate illness, 
 crudely waited on, idleness and tlie plaintive 
 wish for '' patches to make quilts of," just 
 some more of the " forgotten people " whose 
 cause Mrs. Crane has pleaded up and down the 
 land for years, down to the negro division, 
 which was separated by a board fence from the
 
 30 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 white, and into a cottage where lay a helpless, 
 bedridden, blind mother. One baby just able 
 to toddle sat upon the knee of an elderly woman, 
 one but an infant of a few months lay on the 
 bed. 
 
 '' I've been here three years," moaned the 
 sick woman. 
 
 " What is the matter? " asked Mrs. Crane 
 of the keeper. 
 
 " Syphilis," he replied laconically. 
 
 *' But these children — their father " The 
 
 superintendent shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Born here. You can't help things like 
 that, ma'am, you just can't help it." 
 
 It was a very noisy delegation that wandered 
 back to the machines. The women were explain- 
 ing volubly. The county was responsible for 
 the almshouse, and what the keeper said was 
 true, it ivas difficult to prevent such things — 
 they were always happening in the negro quar- 
 ter of the city. To which Mrs. Crane said 
 simply : 
 
 " And what is to be the future of those chil- 
 dren, born as they are — under county aus- 
 pices? " 
 
 The next morning the delighted occupants of 
 the almshouse found roses, and magazines and 
 patches at their doorways, and the women met 
 with the answer to that question stirring ac-
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 31 
 
 lively in their minds. They would learn how to 
 prevent the birth of such children — and the 
 almshouse should be remodelled. There was no 
 time for discussion. The tour had sprung into 
 prominence upon the front page of the morn- 
 ing paper and the escort of interested men and 
 women grew so large that it had to be curtailed. 
 The permanent escort, including the Commis- 
 sioner of Health and Sanitation with one or 
 more of his assistants, and the President and 
 two members of the City Federation of Wom- 
 en's Clubs rarely left the side of their valued 
 visitor. Thej^ intended to learn. 
 
 Mrs. Crane had entered Montgomery at ten 
 minutes past ten Tuesday morning. She left 
 Montgomery on Saturday at the same hour. In 
 the intervening four days she inspected the 
 waterworks, streets, alleys, sewer system, the 
 incinerator, the county almshouse, two public 
 schools for white children, two public schools 
 for coloured children, one High School, the 
 Union slaughter house, five dairies, four fac- 
 tories and one railroad shed (for the smoke nui- 
 sance), six bakeries, the city jail, the county 
 jail, the anti-tuberculosis camp, the hospital for 
 contagious diseases, the city laboratory and 
 free dispensary, six meat markets, four res- 
 taurants, one cold storage plant, two moving- 
 picture shows, one railway station and one
 
 32 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 boarding house, interviewed several city of- 
 ficials, made a study of the administration of 
 the Health Department, was interviewed by sev- 
 eral reporters and made seven speeches before 
 various audiences ! 
 
 The six bakeries visited were a revelation to 
 the women of Montgomery if not to the Com- 
 missioner of Health and Sanitation. 
 
 The front room of one of these fairly glis- 
 tened with cleanliness and, beautifully dec- 
 orated, presented such an inviting appearance 
 that the delegation entered with a feeling that 
 here at least things would be well. But hardly 
 had the women crossed the dividing line be- 
 tween the shop and workrooms than they 
 stopped in horror. Grime, cobwebs and dirt 
 were everywhere, refuse of all kinds filled the 
 corners and ledges. A trap door, partly open, 
 revealed a dark, wet subcellar. It took the 
 united efforts of the Commissioner and an as- 
 sistant to move the heavy barrels which barred 
 this passage, but Mrs. Crane was determined 
 to go down. When she did, accompanied by the 
 most daring members of the party, not even 
 her whispered warning could restrain the 
 women. 
 
 '' Ugh," said one frankly, '' to think I ever 
 ate anything from here." The toilet facilities 
 for the bakers and candy pullers proved both
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 33 
 
 unclean and unsanitary. When as a final 
 query the visiting sanitarian asked a candy 
 maker, 
 
 " And where do you wash your hands! " a 
 hesitation and an involuntary glance at a soiled 
 apron answered sufficiently, and the delegation 
 went forth. Even in the cleanest bakery of all 
 Mrs. Crane's little pocket flashlight revealed 
 families of roaches occupying the closets for 
 raising the dough, and a grimy, gray, dirty 
 mop which ' ' cleaned ' ' the oven floor for baking 
 rye bread. When the women disbanded for the 
 day, they looked at each other hopelessly. 
 
 " Where," demanded one, *' am I to buy 
 bread until I can get this thing stopped? " No 
 one answered. 
 
 The city jail, which the women visited for 
 the first time, proved a fire-trap. Three young 
 white men, about twenty years of age, peered 
 from the grated door of a windowless cell, while 
 Mrs. Crane questioned them. 
 
 '' Locked up on suspicion, ma'am," said one, 
 smiling. 
 
 " But why haven't you chairs'? " asked the 
 visitor. 
 
 '' Laws, ma'am, if we had, we'd be eaten 
 alive if we sat down." 
 
 Mrs. Crane sought the keeper. He denied the 
 charge indignantly.
 
 34 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 '' Well," she said firmly, " I want to go in 
 that cell." 
 
 There was a long wait until the keys were 
 sorted, but at last the cell door swung wide. 
 Mrs. Crane entered. She flashed her pocket 
 lamp over some of the cracks in the wooden 
 wall, and revealed vermin in serried ranks, as 
 close as they could crowd. Then she showed 
 the result to the keeper and the visiting escort. 
 
 City prisoners sentenced to short terms for 
 violating a municipal ordinance appeared clad 
 in stripes, in which they were sent out to work 
 upon the roads, forever branded after one of- 
 fence against the city law, a punishment com- 
 mon in Alabama. 
 
 It was a distinct relief to ride from the 
 gloomy place into the anti-tuberculosis camp 
 with its miniature bungalows, its spotless 
 cleanliness and perfect sanitation. And the 
 women drew a breath of relief as they heard 
 their visitor state, 
 
 " This is the most perfect thing of its kind 
 that I have ever seen. ' ' 
 
 It was in the public schools that the inspect- 
 ing party received enthusiastic welcome. Every 
 teacher knew of Mrs. Crane, and some of those 
 intelligent young women seemed familiar with 
 the evils which Mrs. Crane found, although the 
 visiting party plainly regarded them as some-
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 35- 
 
 thing entirely new. Little boys and girls sat 
 up straight at Mrs. Crane's request, betraying 
 the fact that many pairs of heels failed to reach 
 the floor, a condition working a dire injury to 
 plastic little bodies. Many windows let in light 
 at an angle that must surely damage sensitive 
 eyes. 
 
 Toilets, cellars, furnaces were inspected and 
 many suggestions offered for improvement in 
 ventilation and fire protection. 
 
 " Talk to the Board of Education,'^ begged 
 the teachers; " please do." 
 
 '* You have a large class," observed Mrs. 
 Crane to the teacher of a First Grade in the 
 West End School in the factory district. 
 
 *' It will be much smaller after to-morrow," 
 replied the teacher sadly. 
 
 *' Why? " inquired Mrs. Crane. 
 
 '' Well, you see the compulsory education 
 law requires eight weeks of schooling. To- 
 morrow will end the first eight weeks of the 
 school year. Then a good many of my chil- 
 dren will go back to the cotton mills to return 
 to me again next season." 
 
 Mrs. Crane turned to the listening children. 
 
 ' ' And do you go ? " she asked of a boy near 
 her. He nodded. " And you — and you " 
 
 " And that boy " — it was the teacher's low 
 voice — " is the very brightest of my flock, my
 
 36 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 helper, my right hand. He could go far if he 
 had the chance, but for three years he has gone 
 to the mill." Mrs. Crane turned to the child. 
 
 " How much do you make at the mill? " she 
 asked. 
 
 '' Fifty cents a day, ma'am." 
 
 Now this was no sanitarian's affair — it be- 
 longed to quite a different department in civics, 
 that of child labour. Yet this self -designated 
 " sanitarian " dropped to her knees beside the 
 child, put her arms about him and turned his 
 wondering face towards the accompanying dele- 
 gation. 
 
 '' Ladies," she pleaded, '* here, here is your 
 chance to begin this thing. Fifty cents a day 
 will lift the mortgage from this child's life. 
 His teacher says that of all her boys he is her 
 brightest — her right-hand man. Free him — 
 give him his chance." The tears were running 
 down her cheeks and down the cheeks of the 
 women, while the Commissioner went into the 
 hall to clear his throat. Before they left the 
 room the women had pledged themselves — and 
 the mortgage had been lifted. Through the 
 years to come this child — as but the beginning 
 of their protest against child labour — would be 
 protected. The boy watched them go out — 
 puzzled, unknowing. 
 
 On Friday night a mass meeting of the citi-
 
 CAROLL\E BARTLETT CRANE 37 
 
 zens of Montgomery assembled to hear the re- 
 sults of the survey. Among the audience were 
 the dairymen, the butchers, the bakers, the res- 
 taurant keepers, various city officials and a 
 large representation of school teachers. With 
 unflagging interest they listened while Mrs. 
 Crane talked for over two hours. Tactfully she 
 put her compliments first, and the gratified citi- 
 zens learned that their water supply was ex- 
 cellent, their sewer system and street cleaning 
 good, the refuse collection exceptional. They 
 beamed as they were congratulated upon the 
 remarkably good work done by their Health 
 Officials, their thrifty and unusual system of 
 disposing of street sweepings, on their garbage 
 incinerator, on their good dairies, and on the 
 unsurpassed Union abattoir with its thorough 
 system of meat inspection, even including the 
 microscopic examination of pork. They lis- 
 tened courageously while the speaker revealed 
 the conditions in the bakeries, some of the 
 schoolhouses and the city jail. Then Mrs. 
 Crane told the story of the county almshouse. 
 
 " I seem to see," she said, '' those children, 
 born under county auspices, going into your 
 schools for their eight weeks of study, sent to 
 your county jail like the little fellow of eleven 
 whom I saw there running about the corridor 
 just outside the pens in which you keep your
 
 38 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 desperate criminals — because you have no other 
 place for him and he is supposed to have stolen 
 some sacks — sent through the city jail and put 
 in stripes for the first offence, unwanted, un- 
 loved, discredited, returning to those pens 
 where now your murderers wait their day of 
 doom — w^hat else can I see for them? " 
 
 There were men in that audience as well as 
 women who wept. The sanitarian had vanished 
 and Caroline Bartlett Crane, preacher and 
 pastor, stood there telling her people once more 
 the truth of the Scriptures, " as ye have sown 
 — so shall ye reap." 
 
 The next morning there was a hurried con- 
 ference, the delegation escorted Mrs. Crane to 
 the station, regretfully saw her depart and re- 
 turned to their homes, worn out. The survey 
 was over. 
 
 Directly after her departure there was an 
 outbreak of commendation and protest. Indig- 
 nant bakers rushed into print, while a satisfied 
 restaurant keeper whose place had been warmly 
 praised rubbed his hands in glee and did some 
 judicious advertising. The daily papers de- 
 manded interviews from city officials and the 
 city officials upheld Mrs. Crane bravely, declar- 
 ing that they were glad she had come as they 
 needed public support to effect the changes de- 
 sired. The President of the City Commission
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 39 
 
 authorised the committee of women to continue 
 their inspection of food supplies, the Commis- 
 sioner of Health and Sanitation agreed to ap- 
 point a food inspector, and active women from 
 the Federation of Women's Clubs talked to six 
 clubs, urging them not to buy bread from any 
 bakery in town until the women's committee 
 pronounced it fit to patronise. A committee at 
 once took charge of the little boy who was not 
 to go back to the mill. The President of the 
 County Board of Revenue was appealed to con- 
 cerning the matter of the almshouse, and an 
 active campaign was begun to arouse public sen- 
 timent toward the abolition of the contract sys- 
 tem and to call for a county election to provide 
 funds for the erection and maintenance of a 
 model almshouse when the present contract ex- 
 pires. The little boy of eleven was found to 
 be illegally detained and was removed to a re- 
 formatory. 
 
 All this happened within one month of Mrs. 
 Crane's departure. It is typical of the after- 
 math of her surveys in cities generally. In a 
 few weeks Montgomery citizens read her 
 printed report of her survey, which contained 
 many more minute and technical suggestions 
 than could be given at a two-hour meeting. The 
 practical results of her surveys all over Amer- 
 ica present a sum total of improvement that is
 
 40 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 inspiring. Sometimes she appears as a prophet 
 of warning. In 1910 Mrs. Crane told Erie, 
 Pennsylvania, that it ran the danger of a ter- 
 rible epidemic unless it purified its water sup- 
 ply. In 1911 Erie sorrowfully and publicly ad- 
 mitted the justice of the warning in the face of 
 one hundred and three deaths from typhoid, 
 untold suffering, and a city expense of twelve 
 thousand dollars. At Sea Breeze, Florida, a 
 great hotel owned by the Mayor was ruthlessly 
 condemned by her for lack of proper fire pro- 
 tection and fire escapes. Two weeks later the 
 hotel burned to the ground, the people barely 
 escaping with their lives, some by jumping from 
 the windows. A Rochester school building, the 
 twin of one condemned by Mrs. Crane, was also 
 burned before that active city could put through 
 various improvements upon which it had deter- 
 mined after her visit. At Harrodsburg, Ken- 
 tucky, where an angry official sued Mrs. Crane 
 but afterwards found his case quashed, the con- 
 tract system of caring for the poor was aban- 
 doned and a new almshouse built ; a tuberculosis 
 sanitarium rose at Paducah, and at Valley City, 
 North Dakota, a beautiful new infirmary re- 
 places the old poorhouse. At Albert Lea, Min- 
 nesota, the citizens boast a new municipal hos- 
 pital; at Big Eapids, Michigan, a fine new 
 abattoir. At Rochester, Minnesota, the father
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 41 
 
 of a child in one of the public schools altered a 
 whole classroom to demonstrate Mrs. Crane's 
 system of scientific lighting. While at Mankato, 
 Minnesota, the bakeries, market places, etc., 
 went through a thorough cleaning and scouring 
 to get upon the " white list " suggested by Mrs. 
 Crane, and begged for frequent inspection. 
 
 At Uniontown, Pennsylvania, her condemna- 
 tion of the public water supply caused the State 
 Board of Health to make an independent inves- 
 tigation which confirmed her findings, and fol- 
 lowing which the dangerous conditions on the 
 watershed were promptly eliminated. The 
 almshouse was practically made over on the 
 inside and fire escapes were erected, and a 
 trained nurse was put in charge of the sick. A 
 dangerous schoolhouse was condemned, fire es- 
 capes went up all over the city, and a bad base- 
 ment bakery chose the alternative of building 
 new sanitary quarters rather than be forced out 
 of business by disgusted patrons. The woman 
 who had been most active in securing Mrs. 
 Crane's survey was placed on the City Board 
 of Health. 
 
 Of equal if not of greater value are the more 
 general results. In probably twenty cities per- 
 manent civic leagues have been inaugurated, 
 under various names, to work at various tasks. 
 During the year, after her survey of Kentucky,
 
 42 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 that State secured more advanced health legis-. 
 lation than in all its past history, including 
 thirty thousand dollars annually for a State 
 Bacteriological Laboratory, an annual school for 
 county and city health officials, and a law for- 
 bidding the importation of any but tuberculin- 
 tested cattle. In Minnesota and in Erie, Penn- 
 sylvania, her Minnesota report, a volume of two 
 hundred and forty pages, is being used by the 
 women's clubs as a handbook on sanitation. 
 Health officers and faithful, painstaking officials 
 have found their first public recognition 
 through her keen-eyed vigilance and have gone 
 to work with renewed courage, while careless 
 officials have been awakened to some sense of 
 their grave responsibility. And often for the 
 first time in its history the whole city works 
 together for the common good. Long after she 
 has left them *' her " cities, as she calls them, 
 write to her for advice and help. 
 
 Nor does she neglect her home city. There 
 are school gardens and back yard gardens and 
 public playgrounds in Kalamazoo which owe 
 their existence to her. There are children prop- 
 erly clothed and fed and going to school, who, 
 but for her, would be on the streets ; there are 
 other children who, but for Mrs. Crane, would 
 be side by side with hardened criminals in jail, 
 learning to be good and useful citizens under
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 43 
 
 the leadership of a society girl who has decided 
 to be of use in the world. There are aged and 
 infirm men and women living and dying in com- 
 fort when but for her they would be as she 
 found them, li\dng in quarters indescribable in 
 the almshouses, and dying without a doctor or 
 nurse. There are widows living upon pensions 
 which enable them to care for their children as 
 a mother should, who bless the name of Mrs. 
 Crane. 
 
 .When the Mayor and City Council recently 
 decided to pass a new smoke ordinance, they 
 appealed for advice and help to Mrs. Crane. 
 The work in Kalamazoo goes on. If there were 
 need for further proof of the success of her 
 undertaking it could be found in the fact that 
 all her cities — good, bad, indifferent — like her. 
 "Where there has been ground for praise she 
 has commended, and where she has found cor- 
 rupt administration, neglect, fraud, open viola- 
 tion of the law, she has fearlessly and publicly 
 told the truth as she saw it, and despite the 
 individual resentment of exposed officials the 
 people have believed and have supported her. 
 On her desk daily appears a pile of letters, from 
 individuals, from officials, from societies, in 
 which one question is repeated over and over, 
 '< When are you coming — again? " 
 In the face of this enormous activity, it seems
 
 44 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 almost impossible to believe Mrs. Crane's state- 
 ment that she is, first of all, a home woman. 
 But the statement is true. She steadily refuses 
 to leave her home for more than two months in 
 any one year. Although a happy home means 
 more than good housekeeping, it usually in- 
 cludes it, and Mrs. Crane is a good housekeeper, 
 of the most up-to-date pattern. She uses dust- 
 less dusters and vacuum cleaners and fireless 
 cookers and every other labour-saving invention 
 on the market. She planned her own house and 
 it has every convenience that modem science 
 can devise and closets innumerable. She be- 
 lieves in outdoor sleeping and uses her outdoor 
 sleeping porch through all the year except the 
 three winter months. And she has been house- 
 keeping seventeen years, and in that time has 
 had four maids who were married by her in 
 her own study and left her only to start homes 
 of their own. 
 
 The machinery of Mrs. Crane's household is 
 invisible. The two maids work on an eight- 
 hour schedule, at least one on duty every hour 
 in the day. Every duty is carefully planned 
 and the entire household co-operates. 
 
 When the curtains are drawn at night, Mrs. 
 Crane sits at her piano, her husband in the big 
 chair opposite, following contentedly his fa- 
 vourite selections, then there is apparent that
 
 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 45 
 
 atmosphere that not even the most perfect 
 housekeeping can bring, that deeply spiritual 
 feeling that makes home, because love abides 
 there. 
 
 ** Minister to municipalities " someone has 
 called her, and of all the titles invented to cover 
 her peculiar field of work, this is the one she 
 likes the best. 
 
 " I am still a preacher," she insists. " For- 
 merly I preached from the Bible, to-day I 
 preach from life. What happens in Kalamazoo 
 to-day is of as much moment as that which hap- 
 pened to tribes of wanderers thousands of years 
 ago." 
 
 After all it isn't a question of title but of 
 woman. Caroline Bartlett Crane, sanitarian, 
 municipal expert, or minister to municipalities, 
 or what you will, stands for a new type of com- 
 munity usefulness, a new kind of social service, 
 and for a new concept of the sphere of home 
 for woman.
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 
 
 The room was softly lighted, for the latticed 
 shutters jealously excluded sunbeams and per- 
 mitted only a softened ray to escape them. On 
 the threshold a large, pleasant, capable-looking 
 woman with a hearty handshake gave me greet- 
 ing. A question trembled upon my lips, but 
 before it was uttered the pleasant, capable- 
 looking woman smilingly passed across the room 
 and guided me to an armchair near the window. 
 I looked down. In the softly padded chair 
 depths reclined a tiny figure, scarce larger than 
 a child's. A delicate little hand sought mine, 
 while my question fell awkwardly and hesi- 
 tatingly. 
 
 '' Is this— is this Miss Wright? " 
 
 ** I am Miss Wright, dear," answered a gen- 
 tle voice. *' Won't you sit down? " 
 
 A chair was pushed forward. I sat down, my 
 eyes focused upon the armchair near the win- 
 dow. Sophie Wright lay there ; Sophie Wright, 
 who for twenty years had educated the men and 
 boys of New Orleans in the most wonderful free 
 night school the country has ever known, sup- 
 
 49
 
 50 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 porting her night work with the product of her 
 labour by day; Sophie Wright, who made pos- 
 sible the New Orleans Home for Crippled Chil- 
 dren, who was the foremost woman in the 
 South, and without whose aid no work in service 
 was begun; Sophie Wright, whom a city de- 
 lighted to honour by purchasing through its citi- 
 zens a home for its foremost citizen, and whose 
 name stands for achievement rarely equalled by 
 man or woman. Yet across from me lay this 
 frail body, with tiny hands, the head surmounted 
 by hair as white as snow, the great brown eyes 
 plainly revealing suffering. 
 
 '' You are ill," I stammered. 
 
 ** I am better," she replied gently. *' You 
 know I have never been without suffering." 
 The delicate body and the white hair bore mute 
 testimony to the truth of the statement, to days 
 of pain and nights without rest ; but the wonder- 
 fully spiritual countenance bore as plainly wit- 
 ness to a second truth, that of an indomitable 
 soul, schooled to patience and yet never ceasing 
 to fight for its ends. This woman who was 
 called the first citizen of the South went about 
 her work in a steel harness with the aid of 
 crutches. She was not rich. Until a few years 
 ago she was actually poor, so poor that for 
 every hour of service to her fellows she worked 
 an hour to pay for her own living. Yet despite
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 51 
 
 this double handicap she had at forty-six lived a 
 life so full of accomplishment that you believed 
 when Miss Sophie said: 
 
 *' I did not do those things. Look at me. 
 How could I? It was God, not I." 
 
 Let me tell you her story. Her parents were 
 the impoverished children of impoverished par- 
 ents, ruined in the depression that was the 
 aftermath of the Civil War. When Miss Sophie 
 was a baby of three years she fell, injuring both 
 back and hip so badly that she was incased in 
 plaster and strapped to a chair. Until she was 
 ten this chair was her world ; she could not walk 
 a step. Then slowly she began to walk, and 
 soon she was sent to the nearest school. The 
 way was long, and the little limbs were very 
 feeble. Often she begged to stay at home; but 
 her mother insisted, and day after day she 
 dragged her tired body the long way to the 
 schoolhouse. And the mother-love which 
 prompted even suffering for the sake of joys 
 to come was ere long justified. Miss Sophie 
 learned quickly. In four years she had mas- 
 tered all that the school could give, and her 
 active mind ached for something more to do. 
 Scarcely had she left her eighth grade studies 
 when she decided to have a school of her own, 
 partly for the joy of it and partly for the sake 
 of the income to be realised. In the front room
 
 52 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 of her mother's little cottage she arranged a 
 few borrowed desks and benches, and upon the 
 front door she tacked her sign, " Day School 
 for Girls." Then with a sublime disregard for 
 the effect produced by her youth, her physical 
 condition, her short frock and twin pigtails, she 
 went out to canvass for pupils. The energy and 
 persistence that have helped her win many bat- 
 tles since actually convinced a few mothers that 
 she was able to teach their daughters something 
 that was worth fifty cents a month, and so the 
 famous Sophie Wright School for Girls began. 
 Miss Sophie was very careful about her first 
 pupils. No one who approached eighth grade 
 standards was admitted, for very good reasons; 
 but in two years she found that her pupils were 
 growing up and would soon find her instruction 
 inadequate and leave her. This was not to be 
 thought of. There were twenty pupils now, and 
 her salary was ten dollars a month, a sum not 
 to be lightly considered. Something must be 
 done. There was a normal school in the city 
 which could give her instruction if she could 
 but find a way to pay for it. So she took her 
 crutch and called upon the principal. Somehow 
 she convinced him that she was a very able 
 teacher of mathematics, and that she would be 
 willing to come to him for the low rate of in- 
 struction in other branches. For two years she
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 53 
 
 studied and taught in the normal school in the 
 afternoon and taught her own growing school in 
 the forenoon. Then her own school outgrew 
 her mother's cottage and she went in search of 
 a larger house. She found one that she thought 
 might do. The agent asked one himdred dollars 
 a month for it. With a courage worthy of a 
 financier she signed the lease — and then went 
 out to find one hundred dollars. A professional 
 money lender finally agreed to advance the sum. 
 It took Miss Sophie one year to repay that first 
 hundred at twelve per cent, interest a month, 
 two hundred and twenty dollars in all ; but she 
 did it, borrowed no more, and the school still 
 grew. It was just as she began to feel pros- 
 perous that her opportunity for sersdce came. 
 
 One day after school hours the door bell 
 rang. Miss Sophie answered. At the door 
 stood a sturdy young fellow awkwardly twisting 
 his hat in his hands. Miss Sophie asked him 
 what he wanted. To her surprise he replied, 
 ** An education." 
 
 ** But my school is for girls," she replied, 
 pointing to the sign. 
 
 ** Yes," he said, '* I know, but " 
 
 In a moment he was within, telling his story. 
 He had run away from home to be an acrobat 
 in a circus. The circus was stranded; he was 
 without money and without work. But there
 
 54 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 was a chance for him. In a short time a civil 
 service examination was to be held and a num- 
 ber of positions would be open to the successful 
 applicants. If he could learn a little, he could 
 pass and hope for a place. He did not know 
 where to go and he had seen her sign. She 
 could teach. Would she teach him? Would 
 she? Sophie Wright has never said no to that 
 appeal. She studied a moment and then it was 
 all arranged. As she had to teach in the morn- 
 ing and to study and teach in the afternoon, of 
 course he must come in the evening. That was 
 very easily managed. She looked at the young 
 man with sparkling eyes. She, little, weak and 
 suffering, was actually stronger than this robust 
 fellow. He had come to her for help! And 
 when he faltered, " I cannot pay," she re- 
 plied joyously, ' ' It does not matter. You need 
 help and I can give it. Come." 
 
 He came. Before long a second young man 
 joined him. Miss Sophie did not object. How 
 could she? He needed instruction, too. Before 
 she realised it there had come to her another, 
 and another, until her day school benches were 
 full to overflowing. New Orleans had no night 
 schools. New Orleans boys left the day schools 
 to go into mills and factories. Necessity drove 
 them there. New Orleans received every year 
 thousands of immigrants. There was no place
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 55 
 
 for them to learn English, no place to work for 
 the future, except Miss Sophie's. And to her 
 door there came nightly more and more of them. 
 They came and they stayed — some because they 
 were in earnest and wanted to learn ; some be- 
 cause they had to, for Miss Sophie made them. 
 For with all her gentleness Miss Sophie had 
 no time for triflers. If a boy knocked at her 
 door and asked to learn, he came and he learned. 
 If he grew weary and ran out of her school- 
 room, she followed him promptly. 
 
 ^' Come back," she commanded. '' You asked 
 to come, and someone may have been refused 
 who could have had your place. The room is 
 full. You must keep your place and learn. 
 Come back." 
 
 And strange to say the boy would come back 
 and stay. In this free school where attendance 
 was purely voluntary, discipline was main- 
 tained even if a boy had to be thrashed, and he 
 took the thrashing and stayed and behaved him- 
 self ! It sounds incredible. It is a fact. She 
 managed her boys as a general manages an 
 army. 
 
 *' Why should I let a boy go? " she asked. 
 "It is better to thrash him and make him a 
 man." 
 
 But," I asked, " how could you do it? " 
 
 '* "Well, of course I couldn't have done it if 
 
 <<
 
 56 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 they had not let me," Miss Sophie confessed, 
 *' for they were much stronger than I and I 
 was lame besides. But I had to have discipline, 
 and they respected my thrashings. One of my 
 friends said that I ought to pray when things 
 went wrong. Well, I did pray often after they 
 had all gone and the school was closed. But I 
 could not pray in that schoolroom. Why, some 
 of the boys just came in for a good time and 
 to try to break up the school, and they would 
 have tried to pour ink down my back as I 
 knelt! " 
 
 One young ruffian who entered the school with 
 the avowed intention of studying, began by in- 
 sisting that a smaller boy smoke a cigarette. 
 His victim, afraid, obeyed. Miss Sophie 
 watched. The bully stood over six feet. He 
 had just won a local prize-fight and he believed 
 that he had the school at his mercy. Miss 
 Sophie breathed a little prayer for help. Her 
 sixty boys were watching her. The little fellow 
 could be punished easily, but he was not the 
 real culprit, as both she and the boys knew. 
 Trembling inwardly she summoned the prize- 
 fighter to the platform. He arose, put his hands 
 in his pockets and laughed. 
 
 *' I ain't afraid of you," he shouted and 
 started toward her. As he came she pushed a 
 chair toward him. He fell over it, and as his
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 57 
 
 hands were in his pockets and his position most 
 convenient, Miss Sophie administered the 
 thrashing he deserved while the class waited 
 breathless. When she had finished and let him 
 np he looked at her savagely. 
 
 ''I'd like to kill you! " he said thickly. 
 
 Then Miss Sophie surprised him. " I don't 
 blame you," she said without anger. " Come." 
 She led the way to her office. After a long talk 
 he agreed to forgive her and to let the school 
 alone. But he started to go away, saying, ' ' But 
 I never will come back. ' ' 
 
 Miss Sophie hastened after him. " Come 
 alone," she cried. " I'll find a time. I want 
 to teach you." He came. After some months 
 had passed he re-entered his old class. Miss 
 Sophie later held him as one of her warm 
 friends and admirers, and the State to-day re- 
 gards him as a most promising citizen. 
 
 These troublesome boys were the exceptions. 
 The majority were pitifully eager to learn, and 
 Miss Sophie put more vim into her teaching 
 than into her spanking. She liked it better. 
 The day school became the small end of her 
 business, a means of making money wherewith 
 to run the night school. The time came when 
 the hundred dollar a month house no longer 
 sufficed. The overflow of boys and men filled 
 the halls and stairways. Miss Sophie's per-
 
 58 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 suasive powers and genuine enthusiasm for the 
 work spread to the teachers in her day school, 
 and without hope of compensation they offered 
 to join in her labour. The growth of the night 
 school forced her to seek larger quarters. At 
 last she found a house opposite a park and con- 
 sequently pleasantly located for her girls, but 
 near enough to mills and factories to be within 
 easy reach of many of her boys. The house 
 was for sale and its price was ten thousand 
 dollars. Again Miss Sophie found a money 
 lender to advance the sum, and saddled with 
 this new responsibility she opened her larger 
 school. The prices for her day school had been 
 steadily rising, and the aristocratic mothers of 
 some of her pupils objected strenuously to the 
 night school. The seats occupied by their 
 daughters by day were at night given over to 
 common workmen; it was unusual and undesira- 
 ble. But Miss Sophie refused to consider com- 
 plaints, and here her remarkable qualities as a 
 teacher and organiser held her in good stead. 
 Fastidious mothers might object, but where 
 could they find a teacher to equal Miss Sopliie 
 or a school managed as hers? In time they grew 
 passive if not reconciled, and despite the objec- 
 tions the day school grew and flourished. 
 
 Every penny that could be spared from her 
 modest living and from the help whicli her fam-
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 59 
 
 ily needed, Miss Sophie spent on her boys. It 
 was fourteen years after her first pupil had 
 knocked at her door before she owned half a 
 share in her school building. Then in 1897 came 
 the epidemic of yellow fever. The school closed. 
 Miss Sophie thought for a moment of the in- 
 terest which must be paid, of taxes and repairs 
 and the necessary living expenses. Then she 
 looked at the empty building and forgot all 
 about money. For here was just the place for 
 a bureau of supplies for the stricken families. 
 At once she went out into the blinding sunshine, 
 to the parents of her girls, to her friends, to 
 strangers, collecting what she could. And as 
 soon as her house was filled, out she went again 
 to give to the quarantined, to those afraid to 
 venture forth, to those who hungered, for mills, 
 stores and factories were closed and Famine 
 stalked the streets of the poor. With her 
 worked her teachers, spurred on by the brave 
 little woman beside them, risking contagion, 
 bearing fatigue, enduring without complaint 
 the heat of that awful summer. 
 
 When frost came and the weary women were 
 able to rest, when the city came out from se- 
 clusion and life again looked normal, then Miss 
 Sophie faced her darkest hour. For through 
 all these months the interest had steadily ac- 
 cumulated. The money lender believed that he
 
 60 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 would have to foreclose and there seemed no 
 help. Then a banker of the dty came forward. 
 He had watched Miss Sophie and he believed 
 in her work and in her honesty. He took the 
 loan over, reduced the interest and then volun- 
 teered to increase the amount so that the school 
 could be properly refitted. And before the joy 
 of this announcement had passed, two business 
 men of the city offered to give between them 
 two thousand dollars a year for night school 
 work. Then there began a real school. For 
 nearly fifteen years Miss Sophie had supported 
 her night school single-handed. There were 
 soap boxes for seats and crude benches for desks 
 and dog-eared books that had been carefully 
 handled and repaired until they were scarcely 
 legible. All these were discarded and diction- 
 aries, new books, maps, desks and all the ap- 
 purtenances of up-to-date teaching were pur- 
 chased by Miss Sophie, hurrying from shop to 
 shop with a joy that cannot be put into words. 
 At last her school was as she had dreamed it. 
 When she threw open her renovated, fully 
 equipped building, three hundred men and boys 
 were waiting to enter. Before the year was 
 over there were one thousand. Then the num- 
 ber grew to twelve hundred, to fifteen hundred, 
 and the school was filled to overflowing. 
 
 Girls began to knock at her doors asking ad-
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 61 
 
 mission. The first year that she opened classes 
 for them two hundred attended. The night 
 school was becoming famous. In 1903 three 
 hundred pupils had to be refused admission for 
 lack of room, and this despite the fact that the 
 soap box era had returned and porches, halls 
 and stairs were filled with the overflow. And 
 over all this mass — Austrian, German, Italian, 
 French, Spanish, American — Miss Sophie com- 
 manded. 
 
 The increasing numbers made expenses 
 heavier, but money was forthcoming. Employ- 
 ers in mills, stores and factories found that em- 
 ployees who attended Miss Sophie's school gave 
 more intelligent service. From some of these 
 came contributions ; from some came personal 
 visits and a real interest in the work. 
 
 People in New Orleans fell into the habit of 
 coming to Miss Sophie for help in any philan- 
 thropic undertaking. One day someone brought 
 to her a little orphan boy crippled almost ex- 
 actly as Miss Sophie had been. He was alone, 
 friendless and in want, and there was in all the 
 State no institution to receive him. What could 
 be done! Miss Sophie made that place. She 
 went to the Home for Incurables and asked per- 
 mission to erect as an annex a Home for Crip- 
 pled Children. She found that a cottage prop- 
 erly equipped would cost ten thousand dollars.
 
 62 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Without a thought that that was the very sum 
 which she owed upon her improved school build- 
 ing, she went to work. She enlisted the aid of 
 The King's Daughters, of private individuals, 
 of every organisation in the city which she could 
 persuade to help, and in just one year she had 
 the money, ten thousand dollars; the cottage 
 was being built, and the little boy who was a 
 cripple and all those who were like him had a 
 home. 
 
 The struggle for that ten thousand dollars 
 awoke the people of New Orleans to the worth 
 of the woman in their midst as all her years of 
 service had not done. The New Orleans Pica- 
 yune, a daily paper, had made a practice of pre- 
 senting annually or biennially, as the occasion 
 offered, a loving cup to the person who through 
 the intervening time had given to the com- 
 munity the best service. Miss Sophie's quiet, 
 steady work at the night school had grown so 
 gradually into the life of the city and had for 
 so many years been taken for granted that it 
 had not received much public notice. But the 
 raising of the ten thousand dollars for the Home 
 for Crippled Children focused public attention. 
 The New Orleans Picayune decided to give the 
 cup to Miss Sophie. Miss Sophie's '' boys," 
 some twenty thousand of them in all ranks of 
 life — lawyers, merchants, successful business
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 63 
 
 men, street car conductors, ash collectors, truck 
 drivers — joined in making plans for a celebra- 
 tion of a magnitude never before known. The 
 girls who had been graduated from the day 
 school, and the girls from the night school and 
 their parents and friends lent their aid. The 
 whole city of New Orleans laboured in behalf of 
 the woman who had for so many years laboured 
 for it. New Orleans was awake at last. Some- 
 one had remembered the mortgage on the school, 
 and the people of the city had cried with one 
 voice : 
 
 ''Lift it! " 
 
 Without a word in print, lest the news should 
 travel to Miss Sophie, the women of the city 
 went out to collect the money. It had taken 
 Miss Sophie one year to collect ten thousand 
 dollars. It took the people of New Orleans ex- 
 actly three days to find the exact sum for Miss 
 Sophie. Then the great day came. From noon 
 until late at night, Miss Sophie sat upon the 
 platform they had erected for her, and like a 
 queen received the homage of those who passed 
 before her. The cup was presented, a beautiful 
 thing, made of silver and properly inscribed. 
 Then from out of the crowd a boy lifted to her 
 a second cup, a thing of still greater beauty, 
 a cup of flowers from her boys to her. The 
 silver cup had been presented with a neat
 
 64 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 speech; but the boy who lifted his offering had 
 no words, and she who received it was alike 
 voiceless. Bending down she drew him into 
 her arms and kissed him. Then when all the 
 people could see, someone handed Miss Sophie 
 a note. She looked at it, slipped it in her dress 
 and turned again to the people. She found 
 them smiling, radiant. They knew the contents 
 of that bit of white paper, although Miss Sophie 
 never guessed. Not until she had returned 
 home did she think of the note. She opened it 
 then and sat dazed. It was the check for ten 
 thousand dollars, the check that spelled release 
 from debt and poverty at the hands of a loving 
 people. 
 
 The city of New Orleans having once awak- 
 ened to the worth of its best citizen has never 
 slumbered again. The Board of Education, 
 stimulated by Miss Sophie's efforts, instituted 
 free night schools. These grew until three 
 years ago Miss Sophie felt justified in closing 
 her school with its fifteen hundred pupils, since 
 her boys could find instruction elsewhere. It 
 was twenty-five years since she had opened her 
 door to the stranded circus performer. 
 
 The closing of the night school did not mean 
 idleness. Despite two long and acute illnesses 
 the work of the first citizen of New Orleans 
 went on. Miss Sophie's next step was in behalf
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 65 
 
 of her girls. For a long time her office had been 
 the refuge of boys and girls who had somehow 
 gotten on the wrong track. 
 
 " Girls go wrong because they are so very 
 tired," she said, " that it is too much trouble 
 to do right." So her first effort was to estab- 
 lish a home where working girls might spend 
 a carefree vacation. She induced a friend to 
 lend her a cottage and " Rest-a-AVhile," a vaca- 
 tion home for girls, was opened. She went to 
 the Young Women's Christian Association, and 
 opened classes for the girls who wished to go 
 on. She continued her day school, grown to 
 one hundred and fifty pupils, secretly receiving 
 many a free pupil. She insisted that her 
 girls wear uniforms, so that no one would 
 know the rich girl from her less wealthy neigh- 
 bour. 
 
 And in between times, for there were still 
 in between times in this life of activity. Miss 
 Sophie talked to mothers' clubs and lectured 
 in the public schools, always providing that all 
 talks were free. The inmates in the city alms- 
 house and in the Home for Incurables looked 
 forward eagerly to her weekly coming, for she 
 told them the most wonderful stories which, she 
 said quaintly, '' add brightness to their lives." 
 Her ' ' boys ' ' and their families visited and con- 
 sulted her about many things — their sickly chil-
 
 66 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 dren, their financial difficulties. Sometimes a 
 street sweeper who had been in her night school 
 would stop her in the street to chat, and Miss 
 Sophie would always stop gladly. 
 
 She found time to fill the offices of Honorary 
 Vice President of the National Congress of 
 Mothers, of a membership on the Executive 
 Board of the National Federation of Women's 
 Clubs, of the Louisiana Presidency of The 
 King's Daughters, offices gladly given to her in 
 recognition of her lifetime of service. She 
 found time to write two little books, intimate 
 heart-to-heart talks with parents and teachers. 
 She superintended her Home Institute person- 
 ally, and taught there daily. Her one hundred 
 and fifty pupils came lovingly to her to consult 
 her about affairs of great import in their lives, 
 to ask her to join them on excursions and 
 frolics. An unusual honour was the naming of 
 a new high school for her just before her death. 
 The city of New^ Orleans had always named its 
 high schools for men and women who had com- 
 pleted their lifetime. Wlien the Mayor and the 
 Council of the City of New Orleans asked Miss 
 Sophie if the school might be named for her, 
 she assented without a thought of the previous 
 restriction. The announcement was formally 
 made and the people of New Orleans rejoiced, 
 with the exception of a few conservatives who
 
 SOPHIE WRIGHT 67 
 
 trembled at the risk of naming a school for a 
 living person. 
 
 The citizens of New Orleans decided that the 
 objection was absurd, and that as for twenty- 
 five years Miss Sophie had been taking them on 
 trust, asking nothing of them but an oppor- 
 tunity to serve, they could well afford to take 
 her future on trust as well. So the new high 
 school bears the title " Sophie Wright High 
 School for Girls." 
 
 Bereft of Miss Sophie, the city of New Or- 
 leans is having a difficult time to follow her 
 wonderful example. Often a boy came to her 
 and asked, " Miss Sophie, can't you open your 
 school again! " And shortly before her last 
 illness an Italian, who had once been in her 
 classes, determinedly rang her door bell. 
 
 " I come to your school," he announced. 
 
 '' But I haven't any school for men now," 
 she said gently. ' ' You know the city has many 
 schools which take the place of mine. ' ' 
 
 *' Yes," he assented, " I know. I been there. 
 But oh, Miss Sophie, they no care for ma heart 
 like you do! "
 
 JANE ADDAMS
 
 JANE ADDAMS 
 
 It was the great meeting of the National Suf- 
 frage Convention in Philadelphia. Four thou- 
 sand people, mainly women, filled the opera 
 house to its capacity, while hundreds of others 
 desiring to enter blocked the streets about and 
 listened to overflow speakers. There had been 
 brilliant speeches by well-known orators, both 
 men and women; Anna Howard Shaw, Pro- 
 fessor DuBois, Julia Lathrop, had been enthusi- 
 astically received. Late in the session, when the 
 audience was settling down to ennui, President 
 Shaw arose. Without preface she announced 
 the next speaker. Miss Jane Addams. 
 
 In an instant there arose from the crowded 
 house a murmur which swelled to a cheer ; hand- 
 kerchiefs floated high in air, hands were clapped 
 furiously and fast until the echoes sounded in 
 the crowded streets, and for full five minutes 
 there was an ovation the like of which is seldom 
 seen save in well-organised political meetings. 
 Miss Addams raised her hand. At once there 
 was quiet. She began to speak in slow, meas- 
 
 71
 
 72 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 ured tones, without any effort at oratory, but 
 with a gravity that indicated a profound faith 
 in her words. That faith was reflected in the 
 countenances of her hearers. In absolute still- 
 ness the vast audience heard her through. 
 Then as she sat down, once more the cheer 
 arose, the handkerchiefs fluttered and the furi- 
 ous clapping of hands resounded. A newspaper 
 reporter at my elbow, a veteran who has sat 
 through hundreds of such meetings, looked curi- 
 ously at the excited throng. 
 
 " The most popular woman in America," she 
 said decisively. The reporter knew. At the 
 present time Jane Addams of all women stands 
 first in public approval. The women in the 
 audience in Philadelphia represented every 
 State in the Union. However divided they were 
 on other matters, on one they agreed. Miss 
 Addams, more than any other of their distin- 
 guished company, had their loyal support. 
 Scarcely less enthusiastic were the audiences 
 of men and women throughout the country who 
 listened to Jane Addams 's speeches as a dele- 
 gate from the newly formed Progressive Party. 
 Those who approved of women's entrance into 
 politics and those who did not, came to hear 
 Miss Addams. Abroad Miss Addams is recog- 
 nised as the most conspicuous American woman 
 engaged in public work. A Frenchman who
 
 JANE ADDAMS 73 
 
 met Miss Addams during the Paris Exposition, 
 asked her where she lived. 
 
 " In Chicago," she answered. 
 
 *' But where? " he persisted; ** I know Chi- 
 cago a little." 
 
 *' Oh, down by the river," she replied. 
 
 " And do you like it there? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed; I live in a Settlement." The 
 Frenchman failed to understand. Miss Addams 
 mentioned Toynbee Hall in London. The man 
 had not heard of it. Patiently she began to ex- 
 plain the work at Hull House. At the first men- 
 tion of the name the Frenchman brightened. 
 
 ' ' Hull House ! " he exclaimed. ' ' You are 
 Miss Jane Addams of Hull House. I know 
 much about that place." 
 
 Having mentioned Hull House, Jane Addams 
 is explained. Hull House is Jane Addams *s 
 contribution to history, her expression of her- 
 self, her work, her art and her gift to humanity. 
 In her autobiography she tells how the idea of 
 Hull House first came into being. Before she 
 was seven years old she was taken by her father 
 to a neighbouring town. John Addams was a 
 miller and this journey, undertaken for business 
 purposes, led them to a mill in the poorest quar- 
 ter of the little city. Little Jane looked curi- 
 ously at the squalid houses, crowded close to 
 each other.
 
 74 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 '* Why," she inquired, '' do people live in 
 such horrid little houses, so close together! " 
 She listened thoughtfully to the reply and then 
 announced with much firmness : 
 
 " When I grow up I shall, of course, have a 
 large house, but it shall be built not among 
 other large houses but right in the midst of 
 horrid little houses like these." 
 
 Through the years that idea of the '' large 
 house among the horrid little houses " per- 
 sisted. It coloured and directed the final period 
 of her education, and in 1888 it crystallised into 
 a definite determination to open a settlement. 
 In preparation Miss Addams and an old school 
 friend, Miss Eliza Starr, who was travelling 
 with her when the decision was made, visited 
 Toynbee Hall and the People's Palace. In Jan- 
 uary, 1889, she and Miss Starr were in Chicago 
 hunting for a house in which to begin. They 
 found to their joy just what they sought, a 
 large house in the midst of horrid little houses, 
 an old homestead built by a Mr. Charles J. Hull, 
 with little thought that it was to make the name 
 of Hull go down in history. 
 
 Hull House opened in 1889, when Miss 
 Addams was nearly thirty years old. The year 
 preceding its inauguration she spent in an unset- 
 tled mental state, since she had determined to 
 open a house " in a part of the city where many
 
 JANE ADDAMS 75 
 
 primitive and actual needs were found " and 
 she was weary of " preparing for life," a proc- 
 ess which had taken so long that it seemed that 
 she would never actually reach life itself. 
 The years of preparation, however, were none 
 too long. Only a degree of maturity could hope 
 to cope with the problems met at Hull House. 
 
 Her object was twofold. Not only was her 
 ** large house in the midst of the horrid little 
 houses ' ' to extend a helping hand to the dwell- 
 ers about, but it was to reach into the midst 
 of the groups of large houses and draw from 
 them the young women who had much of the 
 preparation for life of which she had wearied, 
 and Httle chance at doing anything to justify 
 it. Hull House was designed not only as a re- 
 lief station for the poor but as a field for work 
 for girls of good families who needed an outlet 
 for activity. This original idea of Hull House 
 is characteristic of Miss Addams's life and be- 
 liefs. Always she stands between and pulls 
 from both sides. Always she refuses to believe 
 that perfect understanding and harmony and 
 the solution of human ills can come in any 
 other way than step by step from people work- 
 ing together. In the early days she believed 
 that all the world was willing if it could but 
 find a way, and to that belief, somewhat modi- 
 fied by experience, she has tenaciously clung,
 
 76 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 refusing to ally herself with labour or capital, 
 trying to hold to a middle course where labour 
 and capital might meet. At a meeting of a club 
 of secularists which she addressed, a voice from 
 the audience called: 
 
 *^ You are all right now, but mark my words, 
 when you are subsidised by the millionaires you 
 will be afraid to talk like this." 
 
 ** I do not intend to be subsidised by million- 
 aires," quickly returned Miss Addams, " nor 
 do I propose to be bullied by workingmen, and 
 I shall state my honest opinion without con- 
 sulting either." To her surprise the radical 
 audience broke into applause. That speech 
 epitomises Miss Addams 's stand at Hull 
 House. 
 
 ** The thing I remember about the early days 
 at Hull House," said a woman who has known 
 the House during all the years of its existence, 
 ** is that no matter who called, nor when. Miss 
 Addams or Miss Starr always opened the door. 
 There were servants in the house, of course, 
 but they never answered. Miss Addams or Miss 
 Starr let you in." The personal attention to 
 the opening of the door represented Hull 
 House's first mission — that of neighbourliness. 
 To be neighbourly to the folk surrounding Hull 
 House required considerable effort as well as a 
 great deal of tact and discrimination. Situated
 
 JANE ADDAMS 77 
 
 in the heart of a foreign district Hull House 
 is equally accessible to a colony of ten thousand 
 Italians, and somewhat smaller settlements of 
 Germans, Polish and Russian Jews. A little 
 farther away but still within reaching distance 
 of settlement activities, are large numbers of 
 Bohemians, Canadian-French, Irish and Irish- 
 Americans. Differences of race and religion as 
 well as of temperament made Miss Addams's 
 task no easy one. But from the first all of 
 these varied groups accepted the new settlement 
 in all sincerity. The vicinity of Hull House 
 knew no snobbishness. Miss Addams and Miss 
 Starr were asked quite as a matter of course, 
 " to wash the new-born babies, to prepare the 
 dead for burial, to nurse the sick and ' to mind 
 the children.' " As sincerely as it was asked 
 of them. Miss Addams and Miss Starr accepted 
 these novel tasks, and the two gentlewomen, 
 reared in ease, found their days filled with the 
 humblest services, performed under conditions 
 blacker than they had imagined. For months 
 these simple services, together with certain so- 
 cial activities, were all that Hull House dared 
 essay. But however beautiful and poetic the 
 literal caring for the sick and ministering to 
 those who mourned, there was more important 
 work to be done. Hull House still administers 
 to these needs in the persons of nurses and
 
 78 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 visiting housekeepers supplied by societies or- 
 ganised since its inception, but local conditions 
 soon made public work for the general welfare 
 imperative. One of the most conspicuous fea- 
 tures of the new Settlement was the filth that 
 surrounded it. Streets and alleys reeked with 
 foul smells arising from piles of decaying rub- 
 bish. Housewives innocently swept the refuse 
 from their kitchens into the gutters as they 
 had in the little villages from whence they came. 
 In the village street the piles of refuse here 
 and there exposed to sun and air might decay 
 and disintegrate without great menace to the 
 inhabitants, but when five families dwelt in one 
 small house and small house crowded against 
 small house and the piles grew to be one con- 
 tinuous layer, the danger of disease was plain. 
 After three summers of breathing air pol- 
 luted by the smell of decaying refuse. Miss 
 Addams grew desperate. For three years she 
 had tried to fight the evil, first by establishing 
 an incinerator at Hull House, and second, by 
 reporting conditions to City Hall, and third, by 
 endeavouring to educate the people of the neigh- 
 bourhood. But Miss Addams 's most vigorous 
 talks to mothers concerning the menace of a de- 
 caying garbage pile failed of effect when the 
 local collector did not appear; pails overflowed 
 and there was no place to put garbage save the
 
 JANE ADDAMS 79 
 
 gutter. In desperation she applied for the job 
 of removing the garbage from the Nineteenth 
 Ward. She did not expect to receive the con- 
 tract, but was rewarded for her persistence 
 when the Mayor of the City appointed her Gar- 
 bage Inspector for the Ward. The salary ac- 
 companying the position was one thousand dol- 
 lars a year. Miss Addams earned it. She was 
 on the streets at six in the morning to see that 
 the men were at work ; she followed the wagons 
 with their malodorous contents to be certain 
 that they were not overfull and that hasty and 
 careless loading did not permit droppings to 
 mark their pathway. She visited the unspeak- 
 able dumps; she prosecuted landlords who 
 failed to provide proper receptacles for gar- 
 bage. She investigated the stables in the dis- 
 trict, and insisted upon prompt removal of their 
 refuse. It was a thoroughly unpleasant busi- 
 ness for that first summer, but the rewards were 
 many. The neighbourhood about Hull House 
 began to look fairly clean. One street in par- 
 ticular marked a veritable triumph. Miss 
 Addams found it apparently unpaved, although 
 the city plans recorded its paving. Tentatively 
 she dug into the dank, unpleasant surface which 
 was composed entirely of refuse, and finding 
 nothing that resembled earth underneath she 
 kept on. At a depth of eighteen inches she
 
 80 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 found the lost paving ! It took a personal visit 
 from the Mayor to convince him that such a 
 thing could be, and then he insisted upon the 
 contractor removing the accumulation. When 
 the long-lost pavement reappeared the residents 
 in the street regarded it with curiosity. The 
 most of them had never seen it ! 
 
 It is impossible to crowd into one short arti- 
 cle the work of twenty-five years at Hull House, 
 but a resume of some of its activities and min- 
 istrations serves to show why Hull House be- 
 came famous, first locally and then nationally 
 as a pioneer in a new kind of settlement work. 
 With the exception of religion there was no hu- 
 man interest that it failed to touch. In a day 
 when kindergartens were unknown it estab- 
 lished one; long before Mrs. Young brought 
 handiwork into the schools of Chicago, Hull 
 House had organised classes in manual train- 
 ing. When recreation centres were not dreamed 
 of Hull House had established various forms 
 of social life adapted to its people. These in- 
 cluded parties for the babies, dances for the 
 young and receptions to the neighbourhood 
 pioneers, — the old folks who had dwelt about 
 Hull House all their lives. True to the spirit 
 of modem social work all these undertakings 
 and many more rested upon investigations. It 
 required no investigation upon the part of Miss
 
 JANE ADDAMS 81 
 
 Addams to convince her that the^ people young 
 and old needed social life, nor that the streets 
 needed cleaning. Daily she had demonstrations 
 of both needs as she walked the filthy streets, 
 and saw through the open windows the young 
 folk carousing in the dance halls, and the deso- 
 late old folk sitting idle in the dreary comers 
 of the squalid tenements. But the enormous 
 activity of Hull House could not be sustained 
 upon Miss Addams 's slender resources. To 
 convince the outsider figures were needed. Con- 
 sequently every undertaking at Hull House was 
 preceded or immediately followed, when the un- 
 dertaking was an emergency, by a thorough in- 
 vestigation. The investigations brought results. 
 They convinced the outsider; they brought 
 funds to Hull House, but more than this, they 
 helped Miss Addams to know her section of 
 Chicago. No one knows Chicago as does Miss 
 Addams. Officials succeed each other, political 
 bosses change and Miss Addams remains. And 
 even if the political bosses do remain, they are 
 able to see but one side. Investigations made 
 at Hull House are impartial and dispassionate, 
 regarding the welfare of humanity as the one 
 end of life. 
 
 With this end in view, they have certain very 
 practical results. One of the first was the estab- 
 lishment of a coffee house, which also sold pre-
 
 82 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 pared foods to the mothers who worked all day 
 in factories, followed by the establishment of a 
 co-operative lodging house for working girls 
 who were homeless or far away from their 
 homes. The latter has grown into the famous 
 " Jane Club," named for Miss Addams, which 
 now possesses an attractive building of its own 
 and carries on various activities independent of 
 the main settlement. A day nursery maintained 
 for sixteen years, afterwards transferred to the 
 United Charities of Chicago, was opened long 
 before a United Charities was thought of. The 
 garbage investigations, already instanced, re- 
 sulted in the cleaning up of some of the filth 
 of the Nineteenth Ward ; the housing investiga- 
 tion into a campaign for ordinances covering 
 the construction of tenements which actually 
 succeeded in having passed by the City Councils 
 a model tenement house code, although to se- 
 cure its enforcement a battle was waged that 
 necessitated the discharge of almost half the 
 inspecting force. An investigation into the sale 
 of cocaine and similar drugs also resulted, after 
 many years, in a new and better law, better 
 enforced, to deal with the evil. Research into 
 the methods used in dealing with recent immi- 
 grants resulted in the establishment of a branch 
 station of the Federal Post-office at Hull House, 
 so that the alien who w^anted to send money
 
 JANE ADDAMS 83 
 
 home to his family might do so without being 
 defrauded. An investigation into the laws gov- 
 erning the work of children led to a campaign 
 resulting in the framing of recommendations 
 which were incorporated in the first factory 
 law of Illinois, and in the passage of subsequent 
 laws affecting the sweatshops and the labour of 
 women. 
 
 Miss Addams did not accomplish all this 
 alone. One of her most successful achievements 
 is that Hull House actually did in a measure 
 fulfil her twofold ambition. Young women who 
 needed work as a means of self-expression did 
 come and reside in the " big house among the 
 horrid little houses." And as the spirit that 
 actuates modern philanthropy grew, both men 
 and women who wanted to do social work, 
 whether as a means of livelihood or as a method 
 of self-expression, or both, drifted naturally to 
 Hull House, as the foremost settlement repre- 
 sentative of the modern spirit. Among them 
 Miss Addams excited the same spirit of al- 
 most passionate devotion shown by the women 
 of the suffrage association. At Hull House 
 Miss Addams was the dynamic force. So in- 
 tense was this personal feeling that the spirits 
 of the residents of the Settlement rose and fell 
 with Miss Addams. 
 
 *' When Miss Addams had a headache," said
 
 84 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 one visitor to Hull House, " the residents went 
 about with hushed voices and soft tread, not 
 that Miss Addams required it, but that they 
 just naturally felt that way. When she recov- 
 ered, everybody was gay." This extreme per- 
 sonal devotion lent itself well to Miss Addams 's 
 sincere desire to forward the cause of Hull 
 House. Work undertaken by the young men 
 and women who were with her proved notable 
 work. Many of the one-time residents of 
 Hull House are now almost as famous as 
 Miss Addams, specialising in some particular 
 line, of which Hull House was the starting 
 point. 
 
 Not only did Miss Addams ally herself with 
 individuals but with any public or semi-public 
 body bound upon the same mission. With the 
 nine other Settlements now existent in Chicago, 
 Hull House imdertook an investigation into the 
 work of the city newsboys ; with the Committee 
 of Fifty it analysed the social value of the sa- 
 loons ; in co-operation with the American Acad- 
 emy of Science it undertook an investigation 
 into infant mortality in its relation to nation- 
 ality. Ahvays true to her theory of working 
 together, Miss Addams has stood ready to join 
 any movement for the common good. Her ap- 
 pointments to special committees and associa- 
 tions for special purposes have been too numer-
 
 JANE ADDAMS 85 
 
 ous to recount. In addition to these she has 
 held in the twenty-five years various public of- 
 fices, beginning with that of Garbage Inspector 
 for the Nineteenth Ward. For some years she 
 was an active member of the Chicago Board of 
 Education. During the Pullman strike she was 
 a conspicuous member of the Convention on In- 
 dustrial Conciliation and arbitration, and during 
 the later teamsters' strike she was again ap- 
 pointed one of the arbitrators. 
 
 From childhood Miss Addams has been an ad- 
 vocate of woman suffrage. John Addams had 
 believed in suffrage; his daughter accepted the 
 belief as a matter of course. When she was 
 aftending Rockford College, she with other en- 
 thusiasts in the cause of woman applied for 
 an opportunity for that college to compete in 
 the intercollegiate oratorical contest of Illinois. 
 Rockford was admitted as the first woman's col- 
 lege to compete and Miss Addams was elected 
 as its orator. When the competition had ended 
 she was accorded fifth place, and returned to 
 find herself disgraced in the eyes of her class- 
 mates because she had failed to make her male 
 competitors yield her first and so failed the 
 cause of woman. In later years she has always 
 been allied with the National Woman's Suf- 
 frage Association in which she has held many 
 offices, retaining that of Vice President for
 
 86 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 years. The introduction of the plank for woman 
 suffrage into the platform of the Progressive 
 Party at the time of its formation is credited 
 largely to her influence, and certainly the mere 
 impetus of her personality and her direct en- 
 trance into political matters has made many 
 who were opposed or indifferent warm sup- 
 porters of the suffrage cause. 
 
 In the early days of the work at Hull House 
 her support of woman suffrage proved a stum- 
 bling-block in neighbourhood work. Many of the 
 foreign-born women failed to understand the 
 suffrage work, as they had come from lands 
 where male suffrage was far from universal 
 and woman suffrage not discussed as a possi- 
 bility. Going fearlessly about to strange tene- 
 ments at any hour of the day or night to nurse 
 the sick or care for the new-born babies was 
 a comprehensible, womanly task, but the women 
 looked askance at Miss Addams's inspection of 
 alleys and streets, her first departure into public 
 matters. 
 
 When this was followed by a housing inves- 
 tigation their disapproval grew, and Miss 
 Addams became accustomed to performing some 
 neighbourly office, such as the bathing of an in- 
 valid, to the accompaniment of a drastic lecture 
 upon her straying into the paths destined to be 
 trodden by men, alone.
 
 JANE ADDAMS 87 
 
 As the years passed this feeling of antag- 
 onism towards the public work was somewhat 
 softened, the second generation of immigrants 
 boldly joining the suffragists. Many of those 
 of the first generation, finding through the 
 trades union the power of having a voice in 
 affairs, also became converts. When Hull 
 House was organised, trades unions among Chi- 
 cago women were rare, but in twenty-five years 
 they have multiplied rapidly, and to them Hull 
 House has always extended a helping hand. 
 The women shirtmakers and the women cloak- 
 makers were organised in the House itself, as 
 was also the Dorcas Federal Labour Union, a 
 united body of representatives from all unions 
 in the city which received women in member- 
 ship. 
 
 A picture of the Hull House, of which Miss 
 Addams is the Head Resident, to-day involves 
 such a number of elements as to be difficult to 
 reduce to words. The original *' big House " 
 has grown into a group of buildings — the Jane 
 Club, before mentioned; the Butler Gallery, 
 which is devoted to exhibits, particularly of 
 pictures and works of art; the Children's 
 House ; the Music School ; the Hull House The- 
 atre; the Boys' Club Building, which contains 
 workshops, where instruction is given in wood, 
 iron, brass, copper and tin, commercial photog-
 
 88 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 raphy, printing, electrical construction and 
 telegraphy; and the Hull House Gymnasium. 
 In these are carried on the most varied activi- 
 ties, not only those indicated by the names of 
 the buildings, but also college extension classes, 
 a summer school and a labour museum. The 
 last is a unique feature. 
 
 One of the difficulties encountered in the work 
 at Hull House was that of the antagonism be- 
 tween the immigrants and their children. The 
 youngsters, picking up American dress, and 
 American customs, fell easily into the habit of 
 despising their parents and of regarding their 
 knowledge as of little worth. While visiting in 
 the neighbourhood Miss Addams came across an 
 Italian woman spinning with the old distaff in 
 her hands. Shortly after there was an exhibit 
 of weaving at Hull House, at which women of 
 various nationalities demonstrated their meth- 
 ods. From this developed the Labour Museum, 
 now a permanent institution, where are kept 
 the primitive instruments upon which the 
 women work, dressed in the garments of their 
 own manufacture, a picturesque and valuable 
 exhibit, since the sons and daughters who come 
 to Hull House have learned to be proud of the 
 skill of mothers who are thus honoured. 
 
 The residents at Hull House now number 
 nearly fifty, and the majority of these are busi-
 
 JANE ADDAMS 89 
 
 ness and professional people who spend only 
 their leisure time in settlement work. In addi- 
 tion to the regular clubs and classes there are 
 always new enterprises on hand, and Hull House 
 varies from month to month and from year to 
 year according to the conditions governing the 
 portion of humanity to which it appeals. Miss 
 Addams, as a figure of national importance, is 
 frequently absent, but Hull House activities go 
 on. Although her personal influence has been 
 one of the main factors in the success of the 
 Settlement, she has also succeeded in making 
 her work independent of her personality. 
 
 During the past five years she has figured in 
 many national undertakings, the most conspicu- 
 ous of these her acceptance of a commission as 
 a delegate in the Progressive Party. And in 
 the midst of this activity she had found time to 
 write. Her books on social topics, '' Democracy 
 and Social Ethics," " Newer Ideals of Peace," 
 " The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," 
 " A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil," and 
 particularly her " Twenty Years at Hull 
 House," are valuable additions to America's 
 literature on social problems. 
 
 Her popularity with her own sex is signifi- 
 cant. For her fame rests not upon mental bril- 
 liancy nor versatility, although she possesses 
 both, but on those twenty-five years of steady
 
 90 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 daily service to the people about her. Because 
 of these she is honoured, and her position 
 among American women to-day is in itself a 
 revelation of the ideals of the present feminist 
 movement.
 
 KATE BARNARD
 
 KATE BARNARD 
 
 This is a melodrama of modern, up-to-date 
 politics. The scene is Oklahoma, the time is 
 the present and the heroine is Kate Barnard. 
 By way of a prologue, a word of explanation. 
 
 Oklahoma is a new State. It is still in its 
 early childhood, for it is but five years old. 
 New States can well be the scenes of strange 
 and unusual activities. They are without prece- 
 dent; their political offices are free from the 
 " dead wood " of family history and of family 
 influence. And so it happens that in the State 
 of Oklahoma (where women do not vote), a 
 woman helped to plan twenty-four of the planks 
 in the constitution, had three of them named for 
 her and created and was elected to the first 
 State office in the world occupied by a woman, 
 simply because she could fill that office, and the 
 new State, without any prejudice or precedent 
 concerning sex to bother it, gladly accepted 
 her. 
 
 This does not mean that life in Oklahoma is 
 free from complexities. Oklahoma is new, but 
 it is the epitome of civilisation. All the virtues 
 
 93
 
 94 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 of older States are there, and all the vices also. 
 Oklahoma imported slums when she imported 
 fireproof buildinp:s. She knows the vice of graft 
 as well as the virtue of compulsory education. 
 She is simply any other State unencumbered 
 by tradition, so that when she moves it is at a 
 pace that keeps her sister States panting with 
 the effort to keep up with her. 
 
 Kate Barnard is the strongest individual 
 force in the State of Oklahoma. Officially she 
 lias been recognised by election to the self- 
 created office of Commissioner of Charities and 
 Corrections, which she filled for two successive 
 terms of four years each, declining to run for 
 a third. 
 
 Ask any politician in Oklahoma who is the 
 best vote-getter in the State; he will answer, 
 ** Kate Barnard." Ask an ordinary citizen who 
 can boast of the greatest personal popularity; 
 he will answer, " Kate Barnard." Ask a 
 workingman or any union of workingmen who 
 is the best friend of labour; they will answer, 
 ** Kate Barnard." At her last election she 
 polled the largest vote in the State, running 
 ahead of her ticket and beating Governor Cruce 
 by 485 votes, and received a majority of 28,798 
 over her Eepublican opponent, while the Gov- 
 ernor received 20,691. 
 
 This State force is thirty years old. She is
 
 KATE BARNARD 95 
 
 a slight little woman, with soft, black hair and 
 sharp, blue eyes. She looks like a sixteen-year- 
 old girl, for her weight at the best of times is 
 not over ninety pounds, and when she has been 
 working hard it is not over eighty. " Eighty- 
 five pounds of dynamite," someone laughingly 
 called her, and the phrase is well put, for every 
 pound of the little woman's body radiates force. 
 All through the State she is called by her first 
 name. " Miss Barnard " is seldom heard, 
 ** Miss Kate " only occasionally; but " Kate," 
 ** Our Kate " and " Oklahoma Kate " are 
 household words. 
 
 Kate came to Oklahoma when she was a girl 
 of twelve. Her mother was dead; her father 
 had lost a great deal of his property and wanted 
 to file a claim for a farm. He placed Kate on 
 the farm and went to the city to make a living. 
 Out in the woods, the Httle girl stayed in a tiny, 
 two-room hut, lonely and half afraid. Her 
 father secured an appointment as postmaster 
 for the country around; but as he was away, 
 Kate was the actual postmistress. She had very 
 little schooling — two or three years in a convent 
 school. In this short time she learned enough 
 to become a teacher in a country school, and 
 with the product of her labour here she studied 
 stenography. She was ambitious, energetic and 
 quick. She progressed rapidly in stenographic
 
 96 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 work uDtil she became a political reporter. At 
 two territorial legislative sessions she was re- 
 porter for the senate, the highest paid position 
 of its kind. 
 
 Then came the year of the World's Fair at 
 St. Louis. Oklahoma wanted to be a State. Ok- 
 lahoma had an exhibit and wanted a boomer to 
 show off that exhibit and to convince every 
 visitor to the Fair that Oklalioma deserved 
 statehood. There were four hundred and 
 ninety-eight men and women in Oklahoma who 
 thought themselves properly equipped for the 
 task. It was assigned to Kate Barnard. She 
 went to St. Louis and boomed Oklahoma in a 
 manner that thoroughly satisfied the Oklaho- 
 mans, but she found time to do several things 
 besides. 
 
 One day the city editor of a St. Louis paper 
 looked up from his desk into the face of a little 
 woman who, without waiting for preliminaries, 
 said abruptly, '' I am Kate Barnard of Okla- 
 homa, and I expect to make a career. I am in- 
 terested in poverty and crime. I want to cure 
 them. Please send me to the slums in St. Louis 
 to look into the matter." 
 
 The editor was highly amused. But there 
 happened to be a reporter in the office who was 
 especially fitted to be the young lady's guide; so 
 he detailed him for the task. The reporter was
 
 KATE BARNARD 97 
 
 a poet, filled with the horror of his new experi- 
 ence in writing u^^ daily the awful happenings 
 of humanity. He guided Miss Kate through 
 the slums and helped her to see that mass of 
 misery with his eyes. What she said went into 
 the paper the next day. It aroused all St. Louis. 
 It brought the discharge of the poet, but it 
 awoke the citizens to righteous indignation. 
 And Miss Kate kept on talking to any reporter 
 who would print a line. She told of the tene- 
 ments she had seen — of their dilapidated state ; 
 of their lack of plumbing, of room, of ventila- 
 tion; of their overcrowding; of the condition of 
 the families within their walls. And then she 
 pointed out that these tenements brought in an 
 income of a million and a half a year to their 
 owners. 
 
 Like most slums, these dilapidated but roomy 
 houses had once been the mansions of the 
 rich, and the ownership was still vested 
 in the families of the former occupants. 
 They indignantly denied Kate's statements 
 and took a slumming tour in order that 
 they might repudiate them. They were amazed 
 at the condition of their property. For 
 years they had been receiving the rents at 
 the hands of agents, without a thought of 
 the property itself. The result was the organ- 
 isation of the East Side Improvement Society,
 
 98 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 the demolishing of many rookeries and the 
 building in their stead of several blocks of mod- 
 ern, sanitary tenement flats. 
 
 After this successful campaign for social bet- 
 terment Miss Barnard again visited the editor, 
 asking him to advise her where she ought to 
 go next. 
 
 *' Why don't you clean up Oklahoma? " he 
 inquired. 
 
 '' Why, we haven't any such places in Okla- 
 homa," indignantly replied Kate. '* I never 
 saw them." 
 
 '' Go home and look," advised the editor. 
 
 Kate returned home. She had boomed Okla- 
 homa in every way, and the territory was well 
 pleased with its representative. But Kate had 
 new ideas. She began to look for slum condi- 
 tions at home. She found them. Then she did 
 what seemed the best thing to do at once — or- 
 ganised a coterie of young girls into a charity 
 association and appealed to people for help. 
 She stacked contributions in her own home, 
 and before long she had her house and yard full 
 of furniture, clothing and food. She and her 
 young friends dressed and put into school three 
 hundred children. By actual count she gave 
 out ten thousand garments to the needy during 
 the first year. But as fast as she gave out gar- 
 ments, more needy came. It seemed an endless
 
 KATE BARNARD 99 
 
 task, and she set to work to find a better plan. 
 She went to a leading business man and asked, 
 *' How much do you pay out monthly for 
 charity? " 
 
 '' Twenty-five dollars." 
 
 ' * How many members are there in the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce? " 
 
 " Two hundred." 
 
 Miss Kate made a rapid calculation. 
 
 '* Well," she said, " you are paying too much. 
 You give me two dollars a month, and I will 
 guarantee to make it go as far as twenty- 
 five." 
 
 He gave her the two dollars. So did several 
 hundred other business men. With their aid 
 and that of the Chamber of Commerce and of 
 the Ministerial Alliance which she pressed into 
 service, she revived a defunct Provident Asso- 
 ciation. She made herself its first matron and 
 spent her winter in literally clothing the naked 
 and burjdng the dead and nursing the sick. She 
 used the newspapers as much as they would 
 allow her. For a time she had an almost daily 
 appeal in The Oklahoma)!. She began to realise 
 how Uttle she knew about charity work and she 
 persuaded The Oklahoman to send her on a trip 
 to secure articles from workers through the 
 country — Jacob Riis, Edwin Markham, Luther 
 Burbank and Jane Addams among them. The
 
 100 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Oklahoman printed these articles, and she came 
 back filled with knowledge and enthusiasm. 
 
 Charity work had convinced Miss Kate that 
 the solution of the wage question would solve 
 many other of her problems. She joined the 
 American Federation of Labour and got permis- 
 sion from Samuel Gompers to organise the un- 
 skilled workmen of Oklahoma City into a union 
 of their own. She saw that work was procured 
 for many of them on public works at a higher 
 wage scale, and demands on her charity bureau 
 became less frequent. All this time she worked 
 for any reform that bettered the condition of 
 the workers. She did not try to work alone. 
 She campaigned after the most noted reformers 
 in every field and she got them. Graham Tay- 
 lor, the celebrated sociologist, helped her with 
 her work against child labour ; Charles R. Hen- 
 derson, Professor of Sociology at the University 
 of Chicago, gave her information ; Edwin Mark- 
 ham wrote a poem for her; Jack London was 
 persuaded to give her a newspaper column; 
 Luther Burbank wrote for her " The Forming 
 of the Human Plant." And all this help was 
 heralded in the daily press and repeated from 
 platforms and pulpits. Statehood was coming. 
 All this was a plan of education on the part of 
 Kate, of education for the coming constitution. 
 She found funds with which to pay the expenses
 
 KATE BARNARD 101 
 
 of experts who could advise as to the different 
 planks. The late Samuel J. Barrows, President 
 of the International Prison Association, trav- 
 elled hundreds of miles to talk on the prison 
 plank. Alexander Johnson, Secretary of the 
 National Charities Conference, drafted the law 
 for the care of the feeble-minded. A. J. Mc- 
 Kelway, of the Russell Sage Foundation, helped 
 on the child labour section. Jacob Riis, Hast- 
 ings Hart and other experts helped. But Kate 
 did not believe in experts alone. She was instru- 
 mental in organising a movement to call to- 
 gether the working class representatives to de- 
 cide upon the various planks. Delegates repre- 
 senting some hundred thousand toilers went to 
 Shawnee, and in convention formulated what 
 were called the twenty-four demands of labour. 
 The work of the experts helped to put these 
 demands into proper shape. Kate approved of 
 them. She campaigned for them. She sent 
 copies of every one of the twenty-four demands 
 to every candidate for delegate to the constitu- 
 tional convention and asked for his support. 
 Neither Republicans nor Democrats liked this 
 high-handed way of telling them what to do. 
 The territory had been a Republican territory. 
 The Republicans decided to ignore the planks 
 and Miss Kate. The Democrats promised to 
 support labour's demands. And when election
 
 102 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 came there were ninety-eight Democrats and 
 twelve Republicans elected, a sweeping victory 
 for labour and for Miss Kate. She attended the 
 constitutional convention. She made speeches 
 in behalf of all twenty-four planks and espe- 
 cially in behalf of three: one against child la- 
 bour, one in favour of compulsory education and 
 one creating the office of Commissioner of Chari- 
 ties and Corrections. The convention named the 
 three '* Kate's planks." They passed the whole 
 twenty-four demands of labour, and the present 
 constitution of Oklahoma, thanks to Miss Kate, 
 is known as the most perfect State constitution 
 in the world. 
 
 Then she became candidate for the position 
 of Commissioner of Charities and Corrections, 
 on the Democratic ticket. She won by twenty- 
 nine thousand majority. The day she stepped 
 into office she silenced the tongues that were 
 accusing her of working for a '' nice fat job " 
 by doing a curious thing. The law had pro- 
 vided two thousand five hundred dollars as a 
 fitting salary for the Commissioner of Charities 
 and Corrections. Kate Barnard said that 
 fifteen hundred dollars was enough! And this 
 is the salary she received during her first term. 
 
 The office into which Kate stepped is no sine- 
 cure. Among her many duties she included the 
 charge of three hundred and twenty-five jails,
 
 KATE BARNARD 103 
 
 poorhouses, orphanages, rescue homes and in- 
 stitutions cahng for children, the deaf, the blind 
 and the insane. She was expected to suggest 
 changes in the material, the equipment and in 
 the management of these institutions both pub- 
 lic and private. The constitution of the State 
 gave her the power to suggest changes, and 
 the courts of Oklahoma decided that she had 
 the power to enforce her suggestions whether 
 in private or public institutions. She was ex- 
 pected to formulate constructive legislation 
 along all these lines. She was officially the 
 *' next friend " to all orphans, all friendless 
 persons, all defectives and delinquent persons, 
 and she was empowered to conduct lawsuits in 
 their behalf and see that they are not defrauded 
 of their property or personal rights. Kate 
 stepped into the office when she was in her 
 twenties. One of the first things she did was 
 to send for her old friend, the St. Louis editor, 
 and make him Assistant Commissioner, a move 
 which showed her wisdom, as his knowledge 
 proved invaluable to her. 
 
 The total appropriation for the office of Com- 
 missioner of Charities and Corrections in 1911 
 was fifteen thousand eight hundred dollars. At 
 the beginning of Kate's term it was still less. 
 Considering this sum, infinitesimal when com- 
 pared with the immense appropriations of older
 
 104 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 States, the work accomplished by the office is 
 marvellous. During her first three years Kate 
 took five hundred children out of the mines and 
 placed them in school despite the efforts of the 
 mine workers to keep them at work. When par- 
 ents were dependent upon the labour of their 
 children, she enforced Oklahoma's excellent 
 compulsory education law — Kate's o^vn — winch 
 provides that the dependent parents of children 
 under sixteen who are attending school shall 
 receive from the State a sum equal to the wages 
 the child would earn during the school term. 
 It may be supposed that in the progressive West 
 child labour is rare. But that is one of the im- 
 ported vices of the new State. Kate had one 
 case of a child whose parents lived at Fort Cobb, 
 Oklahoma. The child was two years old. He 
 picked forty pounds of cotton a day, dragging 
 behind him a sack weighing from five to ten 
 pounds ! Kate rescued him among the five hun- 
 dred. She kept the truant officers on the job 
 until the truant service in Oklahoma has been 
 pronounced the best in the country. 
 
 She was just as diligent in the matter of child 
 labour. The law — again Kate's law — ^provides 
 that no child under fourteen shall be employed 
 in factories, bowling alleys, in poolrooms, bil- 
 liard halls or at anything held by the Commis- 
 sioner of Charities and Corrections to he injuri-
 
 KATE BARNARD 105 
 
 ous to health or morals. Kate's interpretation 
 of that clever little last clause was broad enough 
 to satisfy the most earnest advocate against 
 child labour. The remaining clauses provide 
 that no child under sixteen shall be employed 
 where machinery or acids are used, or goods 
 manufactured for immoral purposes. No girls 
 are allowed to stand at work. No children and 
 no women are allowed in mines. 
 
 Almost as soon as Kate took office she became 
 involved in political warfare. The Speaker of 
 the legislature was unfriendly toward Kate and 
 her legislation. Kate had backed the Speaker 
 with all her might one year before, for he, as 
 president of the constitutional convention, had 
 worked for her three planks in that particular 
 convention. He was elected to the legislature 
 and soon after suffered a change of sentiment. 
 Kate believed that he was blocking her pro- 
 gressive legislation. 
 
 She went to the State Federation of Labour 
 and had it declare him an enemy to the 
 masses in Oklahoma. She announced that she 
 was his friend personally, but she would fight 
 him to the death politically. She challenged 
 him to meet her in debate. He declined. 
 
 The fight became so intense that the Speaker 
 would have been unseated had not the Governor 
 and mutual friends interfered. She performed
 
 106 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 the unheard-of feat of organising the Demo- 
 cratic legislative caucus against her opponent. 
 The Speaker kept his job; but thirty-two of 
 Miss Kate's bills became laws. 
 
 Kate worked hard for a Juvenile Court bill 
 and in its interest visited Judge B. Lindsey in 
 Denver, Judge Mack in Chicago and Judge 
 Bishop in St. Louis. The bill passed. 
 
 There came rumours to Oklahoma that the Ter- 
 ritory 's prisoners, housed in Kansas, were be- 
 ing harshly treated. Kate asked and received 
 authority to make an inspection. Oklahoma had 
 no prisons. It paid the State of Kansas forty 
 cents a day for each convict kept and permitted 
 that State to make whatever it could in addition 
 out of the work of the prisoners. Kate went 
 into that prison. She crept and she crawled 
 through the inky depths of the State coal mine 
 where many of the Oklahoma prisoners were 
 employed. The whisper of her coming spread 
 through the prisoners, and despite the vigilance 
 of her conductors she heard voices about her in 
 the darkness : 
 
 '* Make them show you the water-hole, girl." 
 '* For God's sake see the dungeon." " Don't 
 go away without seeing the crib. ' ' 
 
 She came back to Oklahoma with twelve dis- 
 tinct charges against the prison. Governor 
 Hocb of Kansas indignantly denied her charges
 
 KATE BARNARD 107 
 
 and requested Oklahoma to appoint an investi- 
 gating commission. The commission upheld 
 Kate's charges and added twelve more of their 
 own. Oklahoma took its convicts, six hundred 
 and thirty-eight of them, and brought them 
 home. The men thankfully promised not to try 
 to escape, and they dwelt contentedly in huts 
 and sheds w^hile erecting with their own hands 
 a prison wherein to serve the remainder of their 
 sentences. 
 
 In one tour of inspection Kate visited a 
 county jail. She found there eight boys, rang- 
 ing in age from eleven to fifteen years, in cells 
 with men. She refused to leave the premises 
 until they were segregated. She spent all after- 
 noon pleading with the jailers and declaring the 
 boys must leave. She called the county attorney 
 and the county judge. Four of the boys had 
 never been in jail before; but the county at- 
 torney pronounced them incorrigible. He cited 
 the law which gave the justice of the peace juris- 
 diction over such cases. And then Kate spoke. 
 
 '' After all my efforts to pass a Juvenile 
 Court law," she said, '' I find the richest county 
 in the State unaware that there is one. The 
 law has been in effect for over a year, and it 
 is beyond me why you do not know about it." 
 The boys looked at her in wonder as she settled 
 herself down, declaring that she intended to
 
 108 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 stay until conditions were remedied. And at 
 last an aroused, very sheepish county attorney 
 and several disgruntled officials cleared an up- 
 stairs room and placed the boys in it. 
 
 For a long time the citizens of Oklahoma City 
 have dreamed of pure drinking water. When 
 the city was but a third of its present size, the 
 dream was so vivid that engineers were called 
 there to make complete plans for a good supply 
 and a thorough system of purification. The 
 price of the work, however, made it impossible, 
 and the plans were shelved. During a later ad- 
 ministration the plans were taken from the 
 pigeonholes, politicians passed the word along 
 that there would be something doing ere long 
 in the water line, and the land on both banks 
 of the nearest streams was quietly purchased. 
 A city official owned so much of it that he re- 
 signed his office when the question of water 
 supply came up. But the politicians still re- 
 belled at the price. So they had another en- 
 gineer make a new set of plans. The work en- 
 tailed by these was much cheaper, since no ade- 
 quate system of purification was included. 
 Nothing was said of this fact, however, and the 
 citizens were notified of a one-million-and-a-half 
 bond issue to provide funds. They were to vote 
 for the bond issue on a Tuesday, and it was 
 the preceding Thursday before Kate decided
 
 KATE BARNARD 109 
 
 she would like to look into that water matter. 
 So she asked, as a taxpayer, to be taken to the 
 site for the works and shown the plans. The 
 officials took her there rather reluctantly. She 
 heard all they had to say and then asked, *' And 
 where does the purification come in? " 
 
 At that they laughed and assured her that it 
 made no difference. 
 
 Kate retorted that as far as she could see it 
 made a great deal of difference. The men ar- 
 gued and cajoled, and finally their spokesman 
 said, '' Well, Miss Kate, we don't want to have 
 any trouble with you; but it's too late for all 
 this. Nothing can be done with the bill now." 
 
 Kate's eyes snapped. She is a little woman, 
 but when she is indignant she looks tall. 
 
 '' Well," she retorted, "I'll see about that. 
 I never will allow the people to drink polluted 
 water. ' ' 
 
 Thursday she began her campaign. The pa- 
 pers refused to help her. She sent out hundreds 
 of handbills, headed, in big, black type, with : 
 
 DEATH IN THE WATER 
 
 Underneath was a line announcing a meeting 
 on the proposed bond issue. On Saturday night 
 she held four big, continuous meetings, going 
 from room to room to speak.
 
 110 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 On Sunday morning an official met her in 
 the lobby of her hotel. 
 
 " Miss Barnard," he stated clearly, ** you're 
 no lady." That is a deadly insult in Oklahoma. 
 Two men sprang toward him and thrashed him. 
 
 On Monday bullies were hired to break up 
 Kate's ward meetings. At one she started to 
 speak, when the injured official interrupted 
 her from the floor. A man near would have 
 stopped him ; but Kate called : 
 
 '* Let him speak." 
 
 He began by telling the crowd that Kate knew 
 nothing, and at that statement two burly fel- 
 lows near him took him by his collar and car- 
 ried him out. Threatening letters were sent 
 her. She read them to the meeting. Then the 
 crowd stood up and yelled : 
 
 '' We'll stand by you, Kate." 
 
 ** Well," she stated, " I need money for hall 
 rent. ' ' 
 
 Out on the platform came a rain of dollars 
 and half dollars and bills. On Tuesday she went 
 in an auto from poll to poll. The vote was two 
 to one against the bond issue. Then the 
 council of the city, chastened, appointed a com- 
 mission to see whether they could not combine 
 economy and purity. 
 
 When the time came for re-election, Kate 
 had many enemies. Any good fighter does.
 
 KATE BARNARD 111 
 
 The Democratic party again named her on their 
 ticket. The Republicans nominated the presi- 
 dent of the State suffrage society as her oppo- 
 nent. Kate has never been particularly inter- 
 ested in the matter of suffrage. 
 
 ** I don't consider woman suffrage within the 
 jurisdiction of my office," she said. *' How- 
 ever, if the gallantry of Oklahoma were to grant 
 women the right to vote, you can bet that Kate 
 Barnard would do her best to cast an intelligent 
 vote. But," she adds, " I am more interested 
 in saving the poor, destitute, blind, deaf and 
 insane than in securing the vote for women." 
 
 Kate went out campaigning. But there was 
 little self-glorification in her speeches. They 
 were intended to educate the people to the need 
 for protective legislation. 
 
 " If you want to know what is the matter 
 with this old world, go out into the woods and 
 see how God made it," she advised one audi- 
 ence. " God has nothing to do with our evils. 
 The fault is with our forefathers." 
 
 " Capital, instead of looking into the eye of 
 ' a brother of mine,' wonders ' how much can 
 I get out of him? ' " she said to another. Then 
 she added sadly, *' There is no use getting 
 swelled up over Old Glory when such a condi- 
 tion as this exists in our country." 
 
 While stumping the State, she heard that
 
 112 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 the miners, who had been out of work five 
 months, were in dire straits. At once she called 
 off all speaking dates and scurried across coun- 
 try to them, bringing aid and staying until they 
 were relieved. 
 
 When election came she ran twenty-nine thou- 
 sand ahead of the woman who opposed her. 
 
 Always frail and delicate, the beginning of 
 her second term found her a physical wreck. 
 But she found rest almost impossible. The 
 .work called her and as long as she was able to 
 stand she was at her office. There were days 
 and weeks when this was not possible, times of 
 desperate illness. Yet in the first year of her 
 second term she managed to recover one hun- 
 dred thousand dollars' worth of property for 
 Indian minors. She stood as the '' next 
 friend " to these despoiled children. She is 
 trying to have a new penal law passed which 
 will revolutionise prison methods and a new 
 law providing for scientific hospital care for 
 the insane, instead of the custodial care now 
 in vogue. When illness forces her to be away 
 from her office, she writes to her assistants con- 
 tinually. 
 
 During a troubled time she wrote them: 
 
 '* When temptation comes look into the eye 
 of the helpless orphan from whose side they 
 would tear you with a lasso of gold ; when they
 
 KATE BARNARD 113 
 
 threaten you remember that you can die but 
 once. If they touch a hair of your heads, I 
 will put them into the penitentiary, so help me 
 God!" 
 
 That is no idle promise. Kate can do it and 
 she will. The curtain has not yet run down 
 upon the finale of the play. The end is not yet 
 written. Did melodrama ever present a more 
 thrilling heroine than Kate Barnard at thirty, 
 from her sick-bed defying the powers of dark- 
 ness, her small self a mighty force used only 
 for good in behalf of the weak and unfortunate ?
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 
 
 *' But we can't build that unless we put a 
 window in it," argued the architect with the 
 prospective landlord, '' at least we can't in In- 
 dianapolis." 
 
 '' We can't, eh? " returned the landlord. 
 *' Why can't we? " 
 
 *' Well, you see," explained the architect, 
 ** Mrs. Bacon's tenement-house law " 
 
 '' Mrs. Bacon's law be " But the land- 
 lord stopped suddenly. " Ever see her? " he 
 inquired, smiling. 
 
 ** Yes," assented the architect, his eyes 
 merry and his lips twitching, '' I've seen her." 
 
 '' Well, put in the window. I don't want to 
 fight Mrs. Bacon." 
 
 There are few citizens of Indiana who do. 
 Mrs. Bacon has roused Indiana from a com- 
 fortable and complacent slumber. She has in- 
 duced Indiana to take a strong dose of pre- 
 ventive medicine which does not agree at all 
 with a certain portion of her population, but 
 bids fair to succeed in keeping Indiana per- 
 manently awake to the necessity of more dis- 
 
 117
 
 118 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 agreeable medicine. And Indiana generally 
 approves of the treatment ! 
 
 A few years ago the citizens of Indiana read 
 of the evils of the slum as of a strange tale of 
 far-away cities. Indiana considered herself 
 free from such evils. She has no great cities. 
 Indianapolis, the largest, has a population of 
 two hundred and thirty-four thousand, a mod- 
 est total when compared with the millions of the 
 great cities, Philadelphia, Chicago and New 
 York. Indiana read of slum conditions in these 
 great places with a thrill of horror and a touch 
 of complacency. Indiana was free from slums. 
 And then suddenly upon Indiana's complacent 
 dream broke a voice in warning. 
 
 *' So shall you be fifty years hence. In your 
 country towns are the slums in embryo. In 
 your little cities to-day are the evils which 
 threaten great ones — and more — there are some 
 that are peculiarly your own." 
 
 It is not pleasant to be aroused thus from 
 complacent dreams. Indiana, aroused, sought 
 this prophet. And it found — Mrs. Albion Fel- 
 lows Bacon. 
 
 Mrs. Bacon came without fame and without 
 credentials. She represented no society; she 
 bore no statistics. She appeared before her 
 native State a fragile, tiny woman, with scarce 
 five feet to uphold her dignity, weak, timid and
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 119 
 
 appealing, her one strength in her intensity of 
 purpose. She repeated her message and socie- 
 ties and individuals rushed to her support. In- 
 diana accepted from her hands its first tene- 
 ment-house law — a law which makes slums such 
 as those in our great cities forever impossible 
 in Indiana, and which will wipe out the little 
 plague spots now in existence. And having 
 accepted the law and secured its passage, In- 
 diana named it after its maker. The State is 
 proud of Mrs. Bacon. 
 
 Mrs. Bacon's work began where, according 
 to an old saying, all good work should begin, 
 at home, that is in the city of Evansville, where 
 she resides. For the first ten years of her mar- 
 ried life she was a semi-invalid and her hands 
 were full to overflowing with a husband and 
 four children — including twins. As she grew 
 stronger the consciousness of the world about 
 her own household oppressed her. The daugh- 
 ter of a minister, she had been taught from 
 early childhood that she had a social duty as 
 well as a personal one, and she confesses with 
 the utmost simplicity that all at once she real- 
 ised that she was not visiting the sick, the poor 
 and those in prison as Christ had commanded. 
 So she began in a very humble way to visit the 
 sick in the hospitals and in their homes. Grad- 
 ually she interested her friends and as a result
 
 120 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 a Flower Mission was formed. Following the 
 Flower Mission, she became one of a Visiting 
 Nurse Circle. This circle supplied a nurse in 
 homes too poor to afford one, where the patient 
 could not for some reason be cared for at a 
 hospital. In both these organisations Mrs. 
 Bacon met cases which seemed to her to call 
 for masculine treatment. So she formed a 
 unique circle of men visitors. These men vis- 
 itors made their calls in the evenings. They 
 were business men, and their practical help did 
 wonders in meeting practical problems. A little 
 later Mrs. Bacon helped to organise a Working 
 Girls' Association, of which she later became 
 the president. The Working Girls' Association 
 was a very active organisation. Among other 
 things it fitted up a room in a respectable lodg- 
 ing house for any girl who came to the city and 
 who found herself homeless. It placed signs 
 in the depot telling girls newly arrived in the 
 city where to apply for help; it maintained a 
 lunch room, dormitory, a library and social 
 evenings. Ten years of this kind of work made 
 their impression upon Mrs. Bacon. One day 
 an old woman came to her home to ask for a 
 dollar to help pay the rent. The woman was 
 lame and walked with crutches. 
 
 '' I'm in an awful place," she sighed, *' and 
 I want to move as soon as I can find a. better
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 121 
 
 one. I've been sick ever since I came there on 
 account of tlie smells in the yard. I have to 
 keep my windows shut all the time on ac- 
 count of them. There ain't no sink and no 
 sewer and the people throw everything out into 
 the yard. The people that tends to such things 
 ought to do something about it." 
 
 '' But," said Mrs. Bacon thoughtfully, 
 " there isn't anyone who attends to such 
 things." 
 
 And there was not. Evansville is a city of 
 about seventy thousand inhabitants. It is in the 
 farthest point south in the State, right in the 
 corner next to Kentucky, and it borders upon 
 the Ohio River. And Evansville, like hundreds 
 of other ,cities just growing up, has passed from 
 the village stage, where everybody knows every- 
 body and the community at large acts on every- 
 thing because it is so obvious, into that of the 
 comparatively large city where evils have 
 ceased to be known, because they are farther 
 away, and are not so acute as to demand at- 
 tention. 
 
 Mrs. Bacon talked a little to people whom 
 she met about the housing of the poor, and the 
 people generally shrugged their shoulders and 
 asked : 
 
 '' What do you expect? The poor are so 
 shiftless and dirty. ' '
 
 122 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Mrs. Bacon knew that they were dirty. What 
 she could not understand was how they could 
 be anything else. 
 
 Evansville had sewers and city water. But 
 neither found its way near the homes of the 
 poor. The water supply was invariably a ' ' cis- 
 tern '* in the back yard. Sometimes the '' cis- 
 tern " supplied twenty families, sometimes only 
 three. The cisterns were often barrels sunk 
 about one-third into the ground and occasion- 
 ally having a dilapidated cover. 
 
 These barrels were filled from a fire plug by 
 means of a long hose, or with rain water from 
 the roofs. They were exposed through their 
 defective covers to the dust and dirt of the yard, 
 to cats and dogs and rats which climb or jump 
 over them and occasionally fall in, and, worst 
 of all, to infection through the earth from the 
 outside vaults and surface scum. Water in such 
 *' cisterns " rarely makes anything clean, and 
 when to this is added the fact that often there 
 was not enough water to go around, it is little 
 wonder that the poor were dirty. 
 
 " They look pretty bad, don't they? '* ob- 
 served one woman to Mrs. Bacon as she hung 
 out her line with damp, gray clothes. '' But 
 we have to be sparin ' of the water. ' ' 
 
 When tenements are three and four stories 
 high and there is nothing but a cistern, all the
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 123 
 
 water for washing, cooking and drinking must 
 be carried up those two or three flights of steps, 
 and when there are four little children and days 
 are cold, it was quite a natural result that the 
 poor should be dirty. 
 
 Mrs. Bacon thought that the poor did look 
 shiftless. The yard conditions were bad enough 
 to start with, and the people made them worse 
 by throwing refuse of every kind, dishwater and 
 garbage into the yards. But there was actually 
 no other place to throw the dishwater, and the 
 garbage was collected at such irregular inter- 
 vals that to avoid keeping it in the living-rooms 
 of the family it had to be put into the yards. 
 There was no room for the garbage to remain 
 indefinitely in the living-rooms, as they were 
 fully occupied by the families. 
 
 It seems almost absurd to speak of over- 
 crowding in Evansville. Yet families of six to 
 twelve people were crowded into one room, cook- 
 ing, eating and sleeping, in many places. Some 
 had two rooms or even three, but often the 
 sleeping-room had no window and the air was 
 foul. And these people were not tramps, but 
 labourers and mill workers, who lived in such 
 quarters because they were the only ones which 
 could be secured. 
 
 Added to this Mrs. Bacon found such minor 
 details as leaky roofs, dangerous stairways, and
 
 124 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 entire absence of paint which made clothes, 
 mothers, babies, walls and all a hopeless, sodden 
 gray. In indignation she sought the secretary 
 of the Charity Organisation Society. 
 
 '' Why do not the landlords cut windows in 
 those dark rooms! " she demanded. " Why do 
 they not mend those dangerous stairways and 
 those leaky roofs? Why do they not drain the 
 yards and put in hydrants? " And the secre- 
 tary answered wearily : 
 
 '' They do not have to. The houses bring 
 good rent anyway, and there is no law to require 
 it." 
 
 Mrs. Bacon went home thoughtful. It ap- 
 peared that the poor would keep on being shift- 
 less and dirtier than ever under such condi- 
 tions. And she knew only too well that there 
 was no help. Evansville is a mill town; popu- 
 lation is somewhat transitory, and a respectable 
 workman with even a fair salary had actually 
 no other place to live in than those dangerous, 
 disease-breeding rattletraps. It was evident 
 that the rent paid was sufficient to be worth 
 better quarters. It occurred to Mrs. Bacon that 
 there ought to be '' someone to attend to those 
 things. ' ' 
 
 " But," she confesses, " it never did occur 
 to me for a long while that that ' someone ' was 
 I. The conditions made me literally sick. I
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 125 
 
 used to lie awake at night and see those people. 
 I would see the babies crawling in the filthy 
 yards. I could feel the wind through the 
 cracked walls. But still I never realised that / 
 could do anything about it." 
 
 Then one morning Mrs. Bacon picked up her 
 paper and noticed that a building ordinance was 
 to be introduced in the Council. She wondered 
 if something regarding tenements could go into 
 that ordinance. She knew the Mayor of Evans- 
 ville quite well, and she put on her hat and 
 coat, called on the Mayor and explained her 
 errand. 
 
 '' Couldn't we have something in that build- 
 ing ordinance about tenements! " she con- 
 cluded. 
 
 " Why, yes," said the Mayor heartily. 
 *' Now you go home and write out the sections 
 and we will put them right in." 
 
 Mrs. Bacon walked home rather bewildered. 
 She was to write the sections. How? She sighed 
 over this new and unexpected responsibility. 
 But being a practical person and honestly know- 
 ing nothing of ordinances applying to tenements, 
 she sat the greater part of that day writing let- 
 ters to persons who did know and who would 
 be willing to extend that knowledge. Full of 
 confidence, she sent to New York, Chicago and 
 Lidianapolis for tenement ordinances.
 
 126 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK > 
 
 '* I thought," she admits naively, *' that I 
 would copy a section or two and send them to 
 the Mayor. But when they came they did not 
 fit Evansville." 
 
 To make them fit Mrs. Bacon sat down and 
 worked them over. Then she brought the mat- 
 ter before the Monday Night Club, which was 
 composed of representatives from various chari- 
 table and philanthropic enterprises. Among 
 others was a lawyer and he went over all the 
 sections. Then the sections went to the Council 
 and lay dormant for months. In the meantime 
 the State Conference of Charities met in Evans- 
 ville. Mrs. Bacon went to the conference and 
 spoke to those assembled on " The Homes of 
 the Poor." This was the first speech on hous- 
 ing which the conference had considered. Mrs. 
 Bacon suggested that what was needed was a 
 State law, and as it looked as if the city ordi- 
 nance would never pass, she determined to make 
 the attempt to get it. 
 
 This meant more complete investigation. 
 The Commercial Club and Associated Charities 
 of Indianapolis were already at work on con- 
 ditions in that city. Mrs. Bacon extended her 
 work in Evansville, and took the trolley to vari- 
 ous nearby small towns. To the cities farther 
 away she sent investigators, and every return 
 convinced her that the conditions in Evansville
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 127 
 
 were typical. Reports from Lafayette, South 
 Bend, Richmond, Bloomington, Princeton, Mun- 
 cie, Knightstown and Warsaw contained state- 
 ments of overcrowding, dark rooms, insufficient 
 water supply, lack of sewage, foul air, filth and 
 disease. And no one was '* attending to these 
 things " anywhere. It seemed as if the draft- 
 ing of a State law depended on Mrs. Bacon. So 
 she sent again for information, this time to 
 every State in the Union and to Germany and 
 France. She read books on housing. And with 
 infinite pains she drafted a law, which, she says, 
 ** was not only what the poor needed, but what 
 the public would stand for and the legislature 
 was likely to pass." 
 
 She took her bill to the State Conference of 
 Charities and they indorsed it. Then the secre- 
 tary of the Charity Organisation Society took 
 Mrs. Bacon to the Commercial Club of Indian- 
 apolis. The Commercial Club had assisted in 
 the investigation in that city and they were 
 heartily in sympathy with the bill. After a long 
 discussion they heartily indorsed it, and Mrs. 
 Bacon rejoiced. 
 
 '' Now, if this is what you are looking for, 
 take it as your measure," she proposed. But 
 the Commercial Club protested in alarm. 
 
 " Oh, no; it is your measure. You must take 
 it to the legislature."
 
 128 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 '* I felt," said Mrs. Bacon, in telling of the 
 incident, " as if a brick house had fallen on my 
 head. I had never been inside of a legislature. 
 I knew it as a seething mass of men. I was 
 badly frightened. But I thought, ' I won't be 
 a baby, I'll just do it.' " This was in the fall 
 and Mrs. Bacon had three months to prepare 
 for her ordeal. The presidential campaign was 
 on, but Mrs. Bacon made up her mind to force 
 slum questions uj^on the public. She wrote, she 
 spoke, she designed and even drew cartoons, 
 and she succeeded in getting a great deal of 
 newspaper publicity for the work. She wrote 
 letters to clubs, to individuals, men and women 
 of prominence and influence, to ministers, 
 teachers, politicians and to the one hundred and 
 fifty members of the legislature. She talked 
 with and wrote to those who had a greater 
 knowledge of slum conditions than she. Chief 
 among these were Jacob Riis and Lawrence 
 Veiller. She secured pictures of old houses and 
 of slum alleys, mounted them on nice white 
 cardboard, drew symbolic sketches around the 
 margins and had them all ready to be hung in 
 the legislative halls when January came. The 
 two long lines of white cardboard, with their 
 pictures attached, she called " The State 
 Wash." The bill was proposed and referred 
 to committee. At the hearing Mrs. Bacon told
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 129 
 
 her story. The committee reported the bill fa- 
 vourably and arranged that Mrs. Bacon should 
 address the legislature. Mrs. Bacon spoke for 
 fifteen minutes. 
 
 *' I felt so little," she said. *' The place 
 seemed made for giants." And then the bill 
 came up for its second reading and amend- 
 ments began to fly like bullets on a battle- 
 field. 
 
 The amendments were referred to committee. 
 The committee held its meetings in a long 
 dining-room, with the chairman seated at 
 one end of the table and Mrs. Bacon at 
 the other explaining the effect of each amend- 
 ment. 
 
 The bill dragged from January to March. 
 Four times Mrs. Bacon went to Indianapolis 
 and stayed a week every time. And when the 
 final roll was called, a very excited woman 
 found herself within the railings of the floor 
 itself, walking up and down the aisles with no 
 clear consciousness that she had risen, and none 
 that she was upon forbidden ground. When 
 the count was taken, the bill had won by one 
 vote. 
 
 Then Mrs. Bacon counted on a little rest. 
 But as soon as the bill was signed trouble be- 
 gan. Shortly after its signing the IndianaDolis 
 papers came out with staring headlines.
 
 130 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 MRS. BACON'S BUILDING LAW STOPS 
 FLAT BUILDING IN INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 As a matter of fact, a very elegant apart- 
 ment house then in process of construction had 
 a number of rooms without windows. As tene- 
 ments are most often old houses remodelled, 
 Mrs. Bacon's law wisely provided against dark 
 rooms. The permit for the elegant house was 
 refused and the owners of the house began 
 a suit to test the constitutionality of the law. 
 The courts decided in favour of the law and of 
 Mrs. Bacon. 
 
 In the meantime the city ordinance which had 
 lain dormant had been unearthed and passed. 
 Upon her return to Evansville, Mrs. Bacon 
 found that she had both a State and city law 
 to assist her in rebuilding her own city. But 
 even then, as before, it was " nobody's busi- 
 ness." Evidently more than a law was needed. 
 Mrs. Bacon thought it over and then decided 
 that to enforce the law two direct allies must be 
 secured. The first was a person whose business 
 it should be to see that the law was enforced; 
 the second was the sjnupathy of the public to- 
 wards its enforcement. So she went again to 
 the Council and asked for a building inspector. 
 She visited every councilman personally and at- 
 tended every meeting. And the building in-
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 131 
 
 spector was appointed. The second ally was 
 not so easily secured. But Mrs. Bacon went to 
 work to educate her public through the press 
 and through lectures. She sent for Jacob Riis, 
 and he lectured not only in Evansville but in 
 Indianapolis, Terre Haute and South Bend. 
 For these lectures she had lantern slides made 
 from the '' State Wash." To make these at- 
 tractive she coloured them herself. And under 
 the stimulus of this work Evansville began to 
 clean up. A number of landlords whitewashed 
 and painted and made small improvements. A 
 number of dilapidated tenements actually came 
 down. A few good tenements went up. One 
 of these was named " The Albion," in honour 
 of Mrs. Bacon. And after the appointment of 
 the building inspector no buildings went up 
 which did not comply with the wise provisions 
 of Mrs. Bacon's law. Every building left a por- 
 tion of its lot vacant for light and air; every 
 building had a rear yard and no rear tenement ; 
 every room had a window ; every grown person 
 had at least four hundred cubic feet of air and 
 every child two hundred — a provision intended 
 to prevent fifty persons from occupying a house 
 designed for ten. The new buildings had drain- 
 age and sinks and other necessary adjuncts to 
 cleanliness, as provided. But Mrs. Bacon was 
 not satisfied. The law as passed affected only
 
 132 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 cities of the first clasps. Evansville and Indian- 
 apolis were the only first-class cities in the en- 
 tire State. At the next session of the legisla- 
 ture she and the citizens who were with her, 
 including a representation from the architects 
 of the State, worked to extend the law to all 
 the cities of the State. 
 
 ''It is just like putting large shoes on a 
 baby," urged Mrs. Bacon, " the feet will soon 
 grow into them. ' ' 
 
 Then followed a long and bitter struggle, last- 
 ing the entire session. Slum owners packed the 
 corridors, and a vicious lobby worked persist- 
 ently to defeat the bill. It passed the House 
 triumphantly, by an almost unanimous vote. 
 But the Senate held back its final readings until 
 the last night of its session, and then, after a 
 brave fight, that resulted in victory, that victory 
 was wrested away by the change of one vote. 
 It was a bitter defeat. 
 
 There were two years before the next session 
 of the legislature met. During that time public 
 sentiment in favour of housing reform laws 
 grew apace in Indiana, and Mrs. Bacon " sat up 
 at night and watered it to make it grow." The 
 State Federation of Women's Clubs organised 
 a Committee on Housing and made Mrs. Bacon 
 Chairman. The Indiana Housing Association 
 was organised and made her its Secretary.
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 133 
 
 She went then to the political leaders, and 
 when the bill came up to the legislature the 
 leaders were with her to a man. Even then the 
 slum owners were so busy and came in such 
 numbers that it took another long hard fight 
 to win the law — but the fight was won and the 
 bill passed, a law for the one hundred cities of 
 the State. 
 
 As soon as the first law was safely through 
 the legislature, and its constitutionality de- 
 clared by the courts, Mrs. Bacon started for a 
 rest. She took her older daughter and went East 
 to the Summer Chautauqua and prepared to re- 
 cuperate by taking a course of studies in song 
 writing. For Mrs. Bacon, before she began the 
 serious business of lawmaking, was valued by 
 her family and friends as a talented and enter- 
 taining person. She has published one book of 
 poetry; and many of her verses are found in 
 the current magazines. She has composed a 
 number of songs, but finding that she did not 
 understand music well enough to write them all, 
 she went to Chautauqua. She draws well, paints 
 well and often supplies illustrations for her 
 poems. Her songs are the delight of her 
 friends, and of her children. And then she is, 
 as she says, " very domestic." 
 
 " Any woman who is the mother of twins," 
 she remarks sagely, ** is bound to be domestic."
 
 134 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 And when her neighbours inquire how she finds 
 time for all her activities, she replies per- 
 tinently : 
 
 * * Well, I do not play bridge and I seldom go 
 to matinees." 
 
 But Mrs. Bacon has her strongest ally toward 
 time-saving in the helpfulness of her children. 
 The children understand very well just what 
 their mother is doing. There are but three now, 
 and the three have been with their mother in 
 all of her visits and in all of her investigations 
 when it was possible to take them. Mrs. Bacon 
 believes firmly in training children to citizen- 
 ship. She does not believe in sheltering them 
 from a knowledge of conditions, but in keeping 
 them informed as to conditions and showing 
 that through their work and interest such evils 
 as they meet may be made to disappear. 
 One night, when the tmns were quite small, 
 Mrs. Bacon gave them a little talk upon the 
 things a good citizen must do. She told 
 them how selfish it was to sit in one's com- 
 fortable home and not think of the others 
 whose homes are far from comfortable. The 
 children liked it immensely, and when she 
 had finished Joy turned to her mother 
 quickly. 
 
 " Why, mother," she said happily, *' that's 
 what you are, isn't it — a good citizen? "
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 135 
 
 Decidedly Mrs. Bacon's work is domestic in 
 the finest and sweetest sense of the word. 
 When she goes from her home she carries with 
 her, not only the fruits of her own hours of 
 study with which to move and impress those 
 to whom she carries her message, but every lov- 
 ing help that every member of her family has 
 been able to give to her. 
 
 The successful passage of the first law made 
 Mrs. Bacon known throughout the State. By 
 the time the second had passed she was a recog- 
 nised ' * housing expert ' ' and cities all over the 
 country were asking her to come and help them. 
 When a call came she answered it, giving freely 
 advice and suggestions; but she cannot conduct 
 campaigns for other States, as she is needed to 
 supervise the enforcing of the law at home. The 
 glory of passing laws seems an empty one while 
 the tenements still exist. 
 
 " For years," she says, '' there will be need 
 of a voluntary association to look after the hous- 
 ing in every town. More than that, the land- 
 lords need models. I should like to organise a 
 company to build model tenements and demon- 
 strate that they can be built and run at a profit 
 and still be decent homes. ' ' 
 
 ** Nobody's business " has become her busi- 
 ness. The building inspector calls on her fre- 
 quently and presents plans for new buildings,
 
 136 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 consulting her upon doubtful points of interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 " I know that conditions that have been fifty 
 years in growing cannot be wiped out in a few 
 years with the small force at our command," 
 says Mrs. Bacon, " but when one feels these 
 conditions keenly enough to be driven into this 
 work, it is so hard to be patient. When I see 
 the dreadful old tenements that still stand, I 
 feel that I have done so little." 
 
 But the business men of the town think other- 
 wise. *' Evansville is a changed city," averred 
 one. '' We are actually beginning to have a 
 little of the civic pride so much talked of and 
 so little seen. Before Mrs. Bacon's agitation 
 in favour of good tenements, the old dilapidated 
 houses were everywhere, even on our main 
 street right between the most prosperous stores. 
 In this short time every one of the old tenements 
 on the main street has gone." 
 
 " Now that your law is in effect will you 
 rest? " she was asked. 
 
 " I cannot rest while there is one of those 
 miserable ' homes ' left," she answered. '' I 
 cannot rest while little children live in such 
 places. But if it were for no other reason than 
 for the good of my children, I should have to 
 go on. The town must be safe for them and for 
 all other children as well — that is the duty of a
 
 ALBION FELLOWS BACON 137 
 
 good citizen. And I must train them to be good 
 citizens. But there is a reward in the work 
 itself which ought to recommend it to any 
 woman. At my age so many women find life 
 closing. The children are almost grown, and 
 there are many hours of idleness — hours which 
 were once full to overflowing. Old age seems 
 imminent with nothing more interesting than 
 a secondary interest in life, through the chil- 
 dren. I feel that I am on the threshold of life. 
 The interest of the work is vital, and the work 
 itself is worth while. Every day brings a new 
 outlook and a fresh fund of enthusiasm, and 
 there is no such thing as old age visible upon 
 the horizon." 
 
 There is nothing of the martyr in Mrs. Bacon. 
 Long days of hard work, long, sleepless nights, 
 the strain and fatigue of a legislative session 
 in behalf of those who were " nobody's busi- 
 ness," — all these are more than outweighed by 
 her reward, the gain in life itself. If the people 
 who were nobody's business held it in their 
 power to recompense their deliverer her request 
 would be : 
 
 '' Help me to go on."
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 
 
 How important is a hog? That is the question 
 with which Mrs. Frederic Schoff startled the 
 National Government. The Government is in- 
 terested in hogs. It maintains a department in 
 which experts experiment and labour, and send 
 out information to farmers throughout the land 
 upon the feeding, the raising and the diseases 
 of hogs. Mrs. Schoif thoroughly approves of 
 that department — only 
 
 " Why," she asked, " does the Government 
 think it worth while to maintain a department 
 to train farmers in the care of hogs, and not 
 even consider the subject of training parents 
 to care for their children? " How important is 
 a hog? 
 
 The National Government is subjected to a 
 good many inquiries, but it turned a listening 
 ear to that of Mrs. Schoff. The relative impor- 
 tance of hogs and children is a matter of mo- 
 ment, and Mrs. Schoff is not alone in asking 
 the question. With her are one hundred thou- 
 sand American mothers, eager to hear the an- 
 swer. 
 
 141
 
 142 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 For ten years Mrs. Schoff has been their 
 leader as president of the largest band of organ- 
 ised mothers the world has yet known. 
 
 Mrs. Schoff's personal experience has fitted 
 her for this leadership. She is the mother of 
 seven children. All of the seven are healthy, 
 happy, useful citizens, and the grandchildren, 
 who now complete the family circle, give every 
 evidence of making a similar record. 
 
 Four sons and three daughters make a busy 
 household. Mrs. Schoff had not had time even 
 to think of a public career, up to a certain morn- 
 ing in May, 1899, when she picked up the morn- 
 ing paper and settled herself in the library of 
 her comfortable home in Philadelphia to read. 
 Upon the first page, surmounted by staring 
 headlines, there appeared the story of a fire, a 
 fire started by a little girl of eight years who 
 had succeeded in burning down the house in 
 which she lived. The fire had been started de- 
 liberately; the girl herself admitted the fact. 
 When arrested and brought before the presiding 
 judge, she stated readily that she had started 
 the fire. 
 
 * ' I did it to see the fire burn and the engines 
 run ! ' ' she said. 
 
 The reporters' investigation of the child's his- 
 tory revealed that she had been left orphaned 
 when two years old, and placed in a '^ Home."
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 143 
 
 Recently she had been sent from the " Home " 
 to become a helper and general household 
 drudge in a city boarding house, where her only 
 associates were ignorant servants. Evidently 
 one city editor, at least, regarded the influences 
 surrounding her as of the best, for his account 
 was surmounted by the startling headline, " A 
 Prodigy of Crime." 
 
 Philadelphia citizens who read this were 
 properly shocked at the depravity of one so 
 young. Doubtless, several mothers remembered 
 the diay their Marys set fire to the lace curtains, 
 ** Just for fun," and set the paper aside with 
 a sigh of sympathy for the unfortunate little 
 waif. And there the matter might have rested, 
 had it not happened that the startling head- 
 lines were also read by Mrs. Schoff. 
 
 With growing indignation she followed the 
 account of the ' ' crime, ' ' and found that the pre- 
 siding judge had sent the little prodigy to a 
 reformatory. She put down the paper and 
 looked at her own little girls, who were playing 
 near. Suppose that one of them had set fire to 
 the house, '* to see the fire burn and the en- 
 gines run." What was to become of this child, 
 to be associated with companions whose ways 
 had been proved evil ? Mrs. Schoff decided that 
 the judge who had passed such a sentence ought 
 to be remonstrated with.
 
 144 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 She called in person to plead the child's 
 cause. 
 
 '' But," remonstrated the bewildered judge, 
 " what am I to do with her? I have no other 
 place to send her, and to tell the truth they do 
 not even want her there, because of the serious 
 nature of the offence! " 
 
 Friendless, arrested, tried in the criminal 
 court, and sentenced to the House of Refuge, 
 and only eight years old! Mrs. Schoff went 
 home determined to know more of the law that 
 branded children of tender years as criminals 
 and sent them to reformatories, and still more 
 determined to rescue that little girl. On the 
 morrow she began an investigation of the local 
 conditions. 
 
 At that time, Pennsylvania had two reforma- 
 tories, one in the western part of the State and 
 one in the eastern. In addition, there was a 
 reformatory for boys over fifteen years of age 
 at Huntington. Excluding this, Mrs. Schoff 
 found sixteen hundred children in the two re- 
 formatories, and these included waifs, homeless 
 little ones, and children accused of the most 
 serious crimes. Any magistrate could commit 
 a child to a reformatory upon the parents' state- 
 ment of incorrigibility. The child's side of the 
 case was never heard. Men and women con- 
 tracting second marriages made use of this op-
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 145 
 
 portunity to get rid of their existing families, 
 and the children, innocent and helpless, were 
 sent to associate with boys and girls of sixteen 
 and eighteen years whose records proved with- 
 out a doubt real guilt and immorality. 
 
 Children were tried in the criminal courts, 
 kept waiting in the cages for criminals which 
 also housed men and women steeped in crime. 
 Every day they received lessons never to be for- 
 gotten. There were five hundred children rang- 
 ing in age from six to sixteen years in the 
 Philadelphia County prison, and children in 
 every county prison throughout the State. 
 There were two to three hundred children pass- 
 ing through the city station houses every month. 
 These were sent to prison or freed according to 
 the will of the presiding judge, who was crowded 
 with cases, and possessed no accurate informa- 
 tion which might enable him to judge wisely. 
 Altogether, there were over three thousand 
 children accused of delinquency, among whom, 
 doubtless, were many whose '^ crimes " con- 
 sisted of a curiosity similar to that which longed 
 to " see the fire bum and the engines run." 
 
 Getting the little prodigy of crime out of a 
 reformatory was a small portion of the task 
 which now confronted Mrs. Schoff. If one little 
 girl had been thus condemned, doubtless there 
 were hundreds of others in similar position.
 
 146 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Mrs. Schoff looked over the results of her in- 
 vestigation and knew that she could not do this 
 work alone. She took her facts and presented 
 them to the New Century Club of Philadelphia, 
 of which she is a member. 
 
 Now the New Century Club of Philadelphia 
 is a woman's club, and one of the most conserva- 
 tive clubs known. In 1899 it was a social and 
 not a civic club, and it did not care to concern 
 itself with things outside its own particular in- 
 terests. When Mrs. Schoff presented her facts, 
 the club was shocked — genuinely and sincerely 
 shocked, at the condition of affairs — but the 
 New Century Club had never handled shocking 
 matters, and had gone on very comfortably in its 
 own prescribed path. Mrs. Schoff, having pre- 
 sented her facts, waited. The wisdom of her 
 waiting was shown when in October she was in- 
 vited to form a committee to pursue the investi- 
 gations, and to take such action as was deemed 
 advisable. A committee was formed which 
 agreed to act in conjunction with a similar com- 
 mittee from the Pennsylvania Congress of 
 Mothers. Some of the women, with the horror 
 of the tales ringing in their ears, wanted to 
 proceed at once upon a political campaign, but 
 Mrs. Schoff remonstrated. 
 
 " We do not know enough," she urged. The 
 committee looked at the awful statistics of the
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 147 
 
 numbers of children in reformatories and pris- 
 ons and wondered. Mrs. Schoff went on : 
 
 *' We know that this is all wrong, but how 
 can we make it right? " 
 
 Eager as the women were to rescue the un- 
 fortunate children, whose stories had touched 
 them, the truth of the remonstrance was obvi- 
 ous, and they yielded. Then followed a remark- 
 able winter. This committee of women, hardly 
 one of whom had any experience with public 
 work, set about making themselves familiar 
 with the methods of dealing with helpless, de- 
 pendent and delinquent children throughout the 
 nation. The Philadelphia Bar Association 
 threw open its library, and Mrs. Schoff and her 
 associates pored over the great volumes. As 
 they found the final law in every State, they 
 copied it, until finally a typewritten copy of 
 ^every law of every State was ready for publica- 
 tion. It made a book of four hundred pages. 
 According to the judgment of the committee, 
 Massachusetts, Michigan and Illinois had the 
 best records, so Mrs. Schoff packed her trunk, 
 kissed her own children and went to visit Massa- 
 chusetts, Michigan and Illinois. Illinois, which 
 had just introduced a juvenile court and proba- 
 tion system, made a profound impression. She 
 returned to Philadelphia, deciding that the com- 
 mittee knew enough to begin to work.
 
 148 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 She went personally to the Governor of Penn- 
 sylvania and to various political leaders. These 
 gentlemen appeared shocked and interested. 
 They asked numerous questions and Mrs. Schoff 
 met them at every turn. Finally they all prom- 
 ised hearty support, and with this encourage- 
 ment, she employed a lawyer to draft two bills 
 similar to those in Illinois. These bills pro- 
 vided : 
 
 1. Separate time and place for trial of chil- 
 dren's cases, and no detention of children in 
 police stations. 
 
 2. Probation officers, whose salaries were not 
 to be paid from the public treasury, but who 
 were appointed by the judge. 
 
 3. A house of detention in all cities, of the 
 first and second class, for children awaiting 
 trial. 
 
 4. Boards of visitors for all institutions, to 
 be composed of men and women. 
 
 Nobody paid much attention to the bills, prob- 
 ably doubting the influence of their backers. 
 When a possibility of their passage was sho^vn 
 there rose a storm of opposition. The man- 
 agers of the Eastern House of Eefuge and other 
 agencies organised ostensibly for the protec- 
 tion of children began a war against the bills. 
 In these agencies, as in many '' homes " and 
 institutions for the care of children, the appro-
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 149 
 
 priations depended upon the number of chil- 
 dren — the more children, the better. Under 
 such conditions children, good or bad, are likely 
 to remain in institutions, else how are the man- 
 agers and matrons to make a living? Naturally 
 the open arguments of these office-holders took 
 a more subtle form. 
 
 The press of the State had been intelligently 
 interested in the proposed laws and gave valua- 
 ble aid. Pamphlets prepared by Mrs. Schotf 
 and her fellow-workers were sent to every mem- 
 ber of the legislature and Mrs. Schoff was given 
 several hearings. 
 
 In May, 1901, the bills passed. They provided 
 that no child in Pennsylvania could be tried in 
 criminal courts, that probation officers should 
 be appointed, that detention houses for children 
 awaiting hearing or trial should be provided, 
 and that no magistrate could commit children 
 to reform schools, but that such commitment 
 must be through a Juvenile Court. 
 
 The first Juvenile Court in Pennsylvania was 
 held in Philadelphia, June 14, 1901. Mrs. Schoff 
 was there, and with her two probation officers, 
 who had their salaries guaranteed by the Penn- 
 sylvania Congress of Mothers. The work under 
 the new laws started. The enemies of the bills 
 immediately began a suit against the constitu- 
 tionality of the laws, a suit which pended for
 
 150 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 two years. In those two years Mrs. Schoff at- 
 tended every session of the court, met the pro- 
 bation officers every week and went over every 
 case. She secured the best legal talent and 
 had a new set of laws drawn. Before the old 
 laws were declared unconstitutional, the new 
 laws were passed, but only after a battle royal. 
 The appeal against their constitutionality was 
 carried to the Supreme Court, but the two years' 
 results had demonstrated unquestionably the 
 worth of the measures. The Supreme Court 
 declared the laws constitutional and they still 
 stand. 
 
 Then Mrs. Schoff found a new task awaiting 
 her. Philadelphia has a peculiar judicial sys- 
 tem — the judges rotate. They sit awhile in one 
 court and then move to another, and so on until 
 they have made the rounds. Consequently, the 
 new children's court was presided over by some 
 fifteen judges, coming one after another, each 
 one quite unacquainted with the lads and lassies 
 arraigned before him. One of the offenders 
 might have been a regular, appearing every 
 other month, yet a particular judge might never 
 have seen him. Another occasional offender 
 might have appeared before this same judge a 
 twelvemonth ago, and never have transgressed 
 since. Yet the judge, remembering his appear- 
 ance at the last sitting, naturally concluded him
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 151 
 
 a desperate character. It was obvious that 
 someone must attend court regularly and be- 
 come familiar with every small offender, his 
 surroundings and history. That someone was 
 Mrs. Schoff. For eight years she rarely missed 
 a court morning. Probation officers came and 
 went, judges succeeded each other, but Mrs. 
 Schoff remained. For eight years she met the 
 probation officers each week and went over 
 every case. Only when the probation officers 
 were established, so that their knowledge of the 
 work was sufficient to carry it on, did Mrs. 
 Schoff cease attending court. 
 
 There were six hundred children in Moya- 
 mensing prison in 1900. To-day there is not 
 one. There were three hundred children pass- 
 ing through the station houses, in Philadelphia 
 alone, in that same year. To-day there are but 
 one-half that number arrested and these are 
 held in the House of Detention. Of fifteen hun- 
 dred cases tried in the Juvenile Court in 1908, 
 there were sixty- three where probation was un- 
 successful. But the movement did not stop in 
 Philadelphia. One year after the opening of 
 the Juvenile Court in Philadelphia, a similar 
 court opened in Pittsburg. Now they extend 
 through the State. Nor did the movement stop 
 with the State. 
 
 One year before the little " prodigy of
 
 152 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 crime " started her fire, Mrs. Sclioff was asked 
 to join the National Congress of Mothers, and 
 to become an officer in that organisation. She 
 looked at her own family and hesitated. 
 
 '' I haven't done public work, I do not know 
 enough about it," she said. '' I haven't time." 
 
 '^ But you have seven children of your own," 
 urged her friends. Mrs. Schoff assented dubi- 
 ously. That was just it. The youngest of the 
 seven was just two years old, and the oldest 
 grown. Between the two were the other five, 
 and Mrs. Schoff has confessed since, that not 
 being at all sure how they would all turn out, 
 she felt considerable reluctance to become an 
 officer in such an organisation. However, she 
 was at last persuaded and the children contin- 
 ued to flourish. 
 
 The first year of her membership was a quiet 
 one. Then came the work for the Juvenile Court. 
 As soon as she was convinced of the success 
 of the system, Mrs. Schoff carried the idea to 
 the Congress of Mothers. As a result, other 
 cities and States began to ask her to come and 
 speak to them. The National Congress of 
 Mothers made her first Vice-President, and then 
 President. As the head of this large organisa- 
 tion, numbering seventy thousand mothers 
 throughout the United States, her influence was 
 enormous. At the request of Connecticut,
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 153 
 
 Louisiana and Idaho, she visited and assisted 
 in establishing Juvenile Courts and probation 
 systems in those States. Then she received a 
 unique honour. She was asked to visit Canada 
 to speak on Juvenile Court work. After mak- 
 ing her address, she received an invitation to 
 speak upon the same subject before the Cana- 
 dian Parliament. Mrs. Schoff is the only 
 woman in the history of Canada who has been 
 thus honoured. Both houses adjourned and held 
 a joint session to hear her. As a result, the 
 Canadian Grovernment sent two probation of- 
 ficers to be trained under her direction, and to- 
 day Juvenile Court and probation work is well 
 established in Canada. 
 
 Between attending the sessions of the Juve- 
 nile Court, attending to the wants of her own 
 seven children, and occasionally visiting some 
 other city or State, Mrs. Schoff found her life 
 a busy one. Nevertheless, she found time to 
 think. 
 
 ' ' Whose was the fault when a child of six or 
 seven years appeared in the courtroom*? " One 
 little boy, sad-faced and wet-eyed, was accused 
 of the theft of some lead pipe. The mother, 
 summoned by the probation officer, eyed the 
 child stolidly. 
 
 " I'd be glad if I didn't have no boy at all," 
 she said.
 
 154 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 A tiny little ^irl arrested in the Tenderloin 
 at four o'clock in the morning with a boy no 
 older than herself, presented herself ragged 
 and unkempt before the judge. Her mother did 
 not think it worth while to come to court. Her 
 stepfather was ill. The child did not know the 
 name of her own father. The door of the room 
 in which they lived was never locked; the girl 
 might come and go at any hour. And this boy 
 and girl were but two. Slowly Mrs. Schoff real- 
 ised that the crime of the children was the 
 crime of the parents, and that the crime of 
 the parents, like that of the children, was 
 committed because they knew no better. To 
 assure herself that her theory was just, 
 she formed a committee of five women, all 
 of whom had experience with juvenile offenders, 
 and with them prepared a questionnaire which 
 was sent to the convicts in eight of the largest 
 penitentiaries in the United States. The re- 
 plies of the prisoners strengthened her belief 
 that parents and society had made criminals 
 through a mistaken treatment of childish of- 
 fences. 
 
 The way to cure children, Mrs. Schoff de- 
 cided, was to cure parents, and she set about 
 finding a means to that end. Now when Mrs. 
 Schoff entered the National Congress of Moth- 
 ers, it was a purely national organisation, com-
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 155 
 
 posed of women throughout the United States, 
 who were bound only by large interests. There 
 were no local organisations. The women of the 
 Congress were notable women, women of cul- 
 ture, of ideas and ability, but they represented 
 only one class. 
 
 Mrs. Schoff wanted to work for State and 
 local organisations, to get hold of all mothers, 
 notable and obscure. Beginning with her own 
 State, she wrote to the superintendent of schools 
 in every county in Pennsylvania, personally, 
 asking his co-operation in forming parent- 
 teachers' associations, in connection with the 
 schools of his district. Mothers' clubs, which 
 were flourishing in a few sections and languish- 
 ing in many more, seized at this new organisa- 
 tion. Heretofore every mothers' club had been 
 a single sporadic attempt by a single school. 
 The new organisation offered opportunities for 
 interchange of speakers, ideas and material. 
 Its connection with the Mothers' Congress gave 
 it a central body. New parent-associations were 
 formed throughout the State. 
 
 The idea was carried to other States. Massa- 
 chusetts soon had three thousand parents anx- 
 ious for instruction. Texas brought an equal 
 number, and the State University of Texas rec- 
 ognised the work as so important that it offered 
 to pay for the expense of the local organisation.
 
 156 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Far away California organised with six thou- 
 sand members. 
 
 These associations represented parents of all 
 classes, educated and uneducated, intelligent 
 and uncouth, but they were bound by one com- 
 mon interest, the desire to do something for 
 their children. In schools in the foreign dis- 
 tricts of large cities, the classes organised be- 
 came a matter of pride to the parents. If there 
 was no suitable leader, the National Congress 
 of Mothers furnished one. 
 
 As the associations grew, they applied to the 
 National Congress for material and informa- 
 tion. In response, Mrs. Schoff wrote to edu- 
 cators, physicians and specialists upon children, 
 throughout the country, asking for contribu- 
 tions, in the shape of articles to be read at par- 
 ents' meetings. These articles were printed as 
 leaflets and sent to the various associations. 
 This method of procedure forms a marked con- 
 trast to that of the usual mothers' club, where 
 the women listen to a paper arranged by one of 
 their own number, frequently a method of pro- 
 cedure which might be likened to a * ' blind lead- 
 ing of the blind." 
 
 In organising and helping new groups of par- 
 ents, Mrs. Schoff was tireless. In one year sh6 
 visited many counties in Pennsylvania and thir- 
 teen States in behalf of these associations and
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 157 
 
 Juvenile Court work. And during these years 
 of organisation and of study of varying condi- 
 tions, the question of the relative importance 
 of hogs and children forced itself upon her. 
 
 Following this question came the idea of a 
 Federal Bureau, for the purpose of informing 
 parents as to the physical, mental and moral 
 care of their children — a department to be called 
 ** Home Welfare," or " Department of the 
 Child and Home." Here parents could secure 
 as adequate information about the nutrition and 
 diseases and education of their children as is 
 now given farmers in the care of hogs. Mrs. 
 Schoff carried her scheme to Washington. 
 
 She went first to the Department of Educa- 
 tion, as she felt that the matter really belonged 
 there, but at that time she found the Department 
 restricted in the matter of expenditure and run 
 on the supposition that it was related to schools 
 only. 
 
 So there began another campaign, this time 
 to persuade the Government that education is 
 not confined to schooling. Having proved by 
 actual tests that infant mortality could be re- 
 duced seventy per cent, by education of mothers, 
 convinced that juvenile crime was chiefly the 
 result of parental ignorance, Mrs. Schoif de- 
 manded that the Department extend its work of 
 education to adults in behalf of the children.
 
 158 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 In 1913 she succeeded in having the Commis- 
 sioner of Education, Dr. P. P. Claxton, estab- 
 lish a Home Education Division of the Bureau. 
 Dr. Claxton appointed Mrs. Schoff Director of 
 the new division, a post without salary but giv- 
 ing her the opportunity she longed for, that of 
 putting a part of the government at the service 
 of the parents. In its first year the Home Edu- 
 cation Division secured sixteen hundred women 
 who pledged themselves to co-operate with its 
 efforts in their communities. In that one year 
 it replied to inquiries for help from forty thou- 
 sand mothers! As the inquiries came, Mrs. 
 Schoff was able to classify them and to prepare 
 pamphlets containing only statements author- 
 ised by experts which served to answer certain 
 groups of questions. A simple little leaflet on 
 the care of young babies brought hundreds of 
 letters of appreciation from women who frankly 
 stated that it was their first opportunity to ob- 
 tain free advice from authorities on the bring- 
 ing up of children, although their husbands had 
 long enjoyed a like privilege with regard to 
 crops and cattle. 
 
 Under Mrs. Schoff 's leadership three Inter- 
 national Congresses on the Welfare of the Child 
 have been held in Washington, and invitations 
 to every nation have been issued by the Depart- 
 ment of State. Many countries responded,
 
 HANNAH KENT SCHOFF 159 
 
 China and the Philippine Islands sending of- 
 ficial invitations to Mrs. Schoff to come and 
 establish a similar work for children there. 
 
 As President of the National Congress of 
 Mothers, Mrs. Schoff receives daily numerous 
 appeals for help from all over the country. 
 
 " We know that you are a friend of mothers 
 and children, ' ' is the general tenor of the intro- 
 duction to these letters, and with this in extenu- 
 ation of their appeal they proceed to ask for 
 advice upon almost every conceivable question 
 from the merits of a particular soothing syrup 
 to the most intimate personal problems. Mrs. 
 Schoff answers every letter personally, no 
 matter how trivial the request. She confesses 
 that sometimes the answers are pitifully inade- 
 quate, for it would take a wisdom greater than 
 Solomon's to meet them all, but at least a word 
 of sympathy goes out to the petitioner. 
 
 In the midst of her national interests, Mrs, 
 Schoff never neglects her home city. Two sum- 
 mers ago she visited the Chief of the Bureau of 
 Health. 
 
 '' Dr. Neff," she said, " cannot something 
 be done to save the babies in Philadelphia! " 
 
 " Mrs. Schoff," the Chief said, as he looked 
 up, *' I will start to-morrow if I can find people 
 enough interested to help me out. I've tried 
 and failed. ' '
 
 160 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Mrs. Schoff left the office and went to work. 
 As a result The Philadelphia Alliance for the 
 Care of Babies was formed and began sending 
 out nurses and instruction. But the mothers 
 would not bring their babies to be inspected. 
 Evidently they dreaded the ordeal more than 
 the loss of the baby. 
 
 '' Give prizes for the best babies," suggested 
 Mrs. Schoff. And then the mothers came. 
 
 " We'll make them good mothers if they have 
 to be bribed, ' ' said Mrs. Schoff, laughing. And 
 while she confesses that the ethical standard of 
 the alliance is thus under reproach, she adds : 
 
 " But the babies live! It takes something 
 startling to make many mothers realise that in- 
 stinct does not teach them to be good mothers." 
 
 The little " Prodigy of Crime," who gave^ 
 Mrs. Schoff to the wider field of motherhood, is 
 a grown woman now. She never stayed in the 
 Reformatory, but was given a new trial in a 
 real home. She was graduated from Normal 
 School, and was chosen from six hundred girls 
 in the State to be assistant principal of the 
 school where she is now. 
 
 ' ' And that is what people thought a ' Prodigy 
 of Crime,' " says Mrs. Schoff triumphantly. 
 Then she adds, ' ' That is what ought to happen ; 
 it is just what I should want to happen if it had 
 been my little girl."
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR
 
 FEANCES A. KELLOR 
 
 '' He taka da doll' an' got no teek." The 
 speaker, a short, swarthy Italian, fixed his eyes 
 pleadingly upon the face of the man he was 
 addressing. 
 
 '' How many dollars did you give him! " 
 
 << Eh? " The Italian, bewildered, turned to 
 his two companions. Volubly they began to 
 translate, both talking at once. As the owner 
 of the pleading eyes answered, the babble grew 
 in intensity. It seemed impossible that the 
 young man who stood listening should be able to 
 gather anything from the confusion of sound, 
 but he nodded. 
 
 " I see. You gave him seven dollars and a 
 half for a ticket and you got no ticket and he 
 refuses to return the money." 
 
 The three men assented vigorously, nodding 
 their heads and continuing the babble until 
 again interrupted. 
 
 '' Where do you live? " demanded the young 
 man. 
 
 ^' Leeve? " the first man repeated, — " no 
 leeve, go 'way." 
 
 163
 
 164 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 " When? " There was another babble, fol- 
 lowed by looks of despair, as the young man 
 shook his head ruefully. 
 
 ^' It's twelve o'clock and you go at two," he 
 muttered. " Well, sit down. I'll see Miss 
 Kellor." 
 
 Downcast the three men obeyed. Anxiously 
 they watched the door through which he de- 
 parted. In a few minutes he reappeared, strug- 
 ghng into an overcoat. 
 
 '' Come with me," he ordered. *' I'll get 
 your money." 
 
 The three arose with alacrity, their faces 
 wreathed in smiles. As they passed to the door- 
 way the spokesman hesitated. 
 
 '^ Tell Mees," he said, pointing to the door 
 through which the young man had passed. 
 " T'anks." 
 
 Back of the door a tall, handsome man, also 
 Italian, stood fingering his hat nervously. 
 
 " I know. Lady," he protested. " There is 
 no use goin' 'gainst the law. I been in this 
 country long time. I don't want no trouble, 
 Lady." 
 
 The ^' Lady " looked at him sternly. 
 
 *' You understand, then," she said crisply, 
 " that your advertisements are illegal. You are 
 not a banker. You have no right to receive, hold 
 and transmit money and you must stop doing
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 165 
 
 so and your advertisements must stop at 
 once." 
 
 '^ I bring you the papers so you see my ad 
 is out," protested the culprit. He was dis- 
 missed by a nod and hurried out, muttering 
 something which certainly was not '' t'anks." 
 
 A persistent jingle of the telephone claimed 
 the *' Lady's " immediate attention. 
 
 ' ' How do you know there is work in Florida 
 for these people? " she demanded. " The Gov- 
 ernor said so? Well, don't take the Gov- 
 ernor's word for it, but find out what the work 
 is and how much there is of it and where before 
 you send a single man down." The telephone 
 was replaced and a patient assistant who stood 
 at her elbow presented a paper. 
 
 ^' How about the school in the lumber camp? " 
 
 a There are sixty children," reported the 
 assistant. 
 
 ' ' Sixty children and one teacher ! They must 
 have another at once and more room." 
 
 The visitor who had been permitted to enter 
 listened in bewilderment almost equal to fhat 
 of the Italians. A temple of justice was this 
 small room, where the defrauded were helped 
 to regain their lost possessions, where the de- 
 frauder received his reprimand and possibly 
 was sent to punishment ; an employment bureau 
 where jobs were secured, investigated and guar-
 
 166 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 anteed; a department of education where 
 teachers were decided upon and classrooms de- 
 termined. And all this varied and complicated 
 business was i)resided over by a " Lady." 
 The sign on the front door read 
 
 New York State 
 
 Department of Labour 
 
 Bureau of Industries and Immigration 
 
 and on the inner door 
 
 Frances A. Kellor, Chief Investigator. 
 
 Four years ago there was no Bureau of In- 
 dustries and Immigration. The ticket seller 
 held his seven dollars and a half and refused 
 to surrender either ticket or money. The 
 " banker " advertised his house as a safe de- 
 pository for funds. Companies of men went to 
 Florida or to other places upon rumours of work 
 that was not, and children in camps sat in 
 crowded classrooms or did not sit in classrooms 
 at all. Yet it was no one's business to see that 
 these offences were corrected. But there was 
 Miss Kellor. For many years she has been 
 working in behalf of the immigrant, laying the 
 foundation which makes her a fit guardian for 
 Uncle Sam's new children.
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 167 
 
 When she was but a university student she 
 began a study of Southern })risons and printed 
 a report upon her investigations. It was a dis- 
 mal topic for a very much ahve young woman ; 
 but Miss Kellor found it abounding in interest. 
 The condition of the people in the prisons led 
 her to believe that there was something wrong 
 ^^dth the labour situation, and soon after her 
 graduation she began to study the problem of 
 emplo}Tnent. The College Settlement of New 
 York City gave her a fellowshi]!, and under the 
 auspices of the "Woman's Municipal League she 
 began an investigation of employment agencies. 
 Dressed as an employee she visited several em- 
 ployment offices and endeavoured to become 
 friendly with the girls who sat about the rooms 
 waiting for positions. At first she was unsuc- 
 cessful as her difference in training was obvious, 
 but she soon learned to talk in up-to-date slang 
 about supposed mistresses and her acquaintance 
 flourished. 
 
 The flippant greeting of the office manager, 
 " Well, sis, out of a job? " which at first had 
 sorely tried her dignity, became a matter of 
 course. When she looked too respectable to be 
 a '' girl " in some of the cheaper offices, she 
 became a mistress. Frequently she did not 
 know which she would impersonate until the 
 office door closed behind her.
 
 168 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 The main object of the majority of offices 
 seemed to be to*get as much money out of botli 
 employer and employee as was possible. To 
 this end girls who needed work were forced to 
 register and to pay in advance for any position 
 obtained. In one office the men managers 
 guarded the door and actually prevented any 
 girl who had not paid her fee from departing. 
 If she came in merely to inquire terms she paid 
 for getting out. The lodging houses conducted 
 in connection with the offices furnished further 
 means of extracting money. And there were 
 graver evils. Sometimes these lodging houses 
 and the offices were located in houses of ill- 
 repute and the girls stopping over night sub- 
 jected to the advances and even to the threats 
 of the proprietors. 
 
 American girls fared badly enough under this 
 system; but foreign girls were infinitely worse 
 off. Not understanding the language they fre- 
 quently accepted proposals made to them, not 
 understanding their nature, and then were 
 warned that they had chosen them " of their 
 own free will." Frequently they were sent to 
 work in disorderly houses with no idea of the 
 character of the houses to which they were go- 
 ing. Many offices furnished girls for such 
 houses upon the payment of an extra fee. Girls 
 were sent to men's clubs and to the homes of
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 169 
 
 bachelors and widowers, without any investiga- 
 tion as to the nature of such homes. Sending a 
 foreign girl ignorant of the language and uncer- 
 tain as to where to turn for help to such places 
 was practically to send her to slavery. There 
 was no way out. 
 
 When the investigation was over Miss Kellor 
 compiled the results of her own investigations 
 with those of eight other investigators and pub- 
 lished them in book form. The book was en- 
 titled " Out of Work." It was the first investi- 
 gation of its kind that was general enough and 
 systematic enough to be worth anything to the 
 general public. It proved conclusively that 
 girls, especially foreign girls, were made a part 
 of a deliberate system of exploitation, and this 
 not in single cases but in hundreds. ^' Out of 
 Work " had a profound effect upon people in 
 New York and other large cities where similar 
 abuses might be supposed to exist. Individuals 
 and societies set to work at once to work for 
 some system of licensing boarding and lodging 
 houses, as well as employment offices, that would 
 put a stop to the traffic in immigrant girls. 
 
 Associations in New York, New Jersey and 
 Pennsylvania formed an Inter-Municipal Re- 
 search Committee with which Miss Kellor 
 worked for four years, planning and superin- 
 tending investigations in the cities named and
 
 170 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 endeavouring to standardise similar investiga- 
 tions throughout the country. As the investi- 
 gations showed plainly the need for legislation, 
 the Committee planned and worked for laws 
 that would remedy conditions. When there was 
 need Miss Kellor plunged into a political cam- 
 paign to help elect some candidate who would 
 assist in getting the laws through. Standing in 
 an automobile, she conducted street meetings 
 in behalf of the man who was to help girls out 
 of employment. The result of her efforts in 
 New York City was the improved law of 1906 
 in relation to employment agencies. The law 
 provided for inspectors to see that it was en- 
 forced, and although it has not completely erad- 
 icated the evils that existed, it has mitigated 
 them. Its enforcement through the visits of in- 
 spectors has considerably reduced the number 
 of undesirable agencies by revoking their li- 
 censes, and although a number of agencies which 
 are unlicensed practise secretly, they are un- 
 able to advertise and attract girls as they did 
 formerly. 
 
 After the Probation Commission to which 
 Governor Higgins appointed Miss Kellor a 
 member had finished its work and had been 
 succeeded by a permanent commission. Gov- 
 ernor Hughes made her a member of the Com- 
 mission on Immigration. The members of the
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 171 
 
 Commission made Miss Kellor their Secretary. 
 The Commission was appointed in 1908, and 
 their report was transmitted to the legislature 
 in 1909. It contained a recommendation for the 
 Bureau of Industries and Immigration, of which 
 Miss Kellor became the head. 
 
 New York is the gateway through which 
 three-fourths of the immigrants reach this 
 country. In 1910 five hundred and eighty thou- 
 sand five hundred and seventeen persons were 
 landed at Ellis Island, accepted by the authori- 
 ties and deposited by the Government tug at the 
 landing at Battery Place. Between Battery 
 Place and the surface, elevated and subway lines 
 there is a distance of several rods. Hardly have 
 the men and women shouldered their bundles, 
 gazing in bewilderment at the strange city, when 
 from Battery Place and the surrounding streets 
 there swoop down upon them, like a flock of 
 hawks, hotel runners, cabbies and confidence 
 men. They seize the immigrant's baggage, talk 
 volubly to him, guarantee to take him to his 
 destination or a good hotel, to sell him an ele- 
 vated ticket, to do anything that will secure a 
 dollar's profit. The bewildered immigrant suc- 
 cumbs. He listens to the man who promises so 
 kindly to help him and cheerfully pays a dollar 
 or two, or even five, for a five-cent elevated or 
 subway ticket.
 
 172 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 As soon as the Bureau of Industries and Im- 
 migration was established Miss Kellor began an 
 attempt to stop such fleecing. With the aid of 
 interpreters she provided for the Italian, Polish, 
 German, Yiddish, French and Hungarian press 
 an announcement of the work of the Bureau. 
 The American papers published in these lan- 
 guages gladly printed the notices. Then she 
 sent a similar notice to a number of foreign 
 papers intended to reach the people before they 
 embarked. This notice was printed and re- 
 printed in fifty-seven different dialects. The 
 direct result was that the Bureau was besieged 
 with applicants who had in one way or another 
 been exploited. 
 
 The men and women who brought their griev- 
 ances to her proved the need of some court of 
 appeal. Not only the incoming but the outgo- 
 ing immigrant was represented. Having saved 
 a little money, the immigrant desires to return 
 to bring his family, to visit or to stay at home. 
 In the town in which he works he purchases a 
 ticket and pays for hotel accommodations to a 
 man who solicits his patronage, a '' runner." 
 He is given a button to identify him in New 
 York. On the train is a runner for another 
 hotel. He contrives that the immigrant shall 
 lose the button and carries him off to his own 
 hotel. The first hotel refuses to refund the
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 173 
 
 money paid for accommodations. In a hundred 
 diiferent ways he is bled of dollar after dollar. 
 Sometimes he never finds it out. 
 
 For this transportation situation, Miss Kellor 
 found remedies. Upon her findings she induced 
 one railway line running out of New York to 
 completely reorganise its system of distribu- 
 tion of immigrants. A number of transfer com- 
 panies have stopped their agents from making 
 overcharges upon baggage. A set of regulations 
 for runners from emigrant hotels has been 
 adopted. Under these regulations runners from 
 hotels doing a legitimate business are admitted 
 to the docks where the immigrants land. Upon 
 proof of any violation of the regulations the 
 passes for runners are revoked. The Board of 
 Health has visited fifty-four lodging houses and 
 has drawn up a new set of regulations for these 
 houses as a result. 
 
 The immigrant who begins to work begins to 
 save money, usually to bring his family over to 
 him. This money he deposits in a bank. When 
 he sends money abroad it is usually through 
 this same bank, for he does not understand 
 enough English to fill out the complicated blank 
 necessary to obtain a mail order. For the same 
 reason he seeks a bank conducted by someone 
 who speaks his language. The foreign papers 
 are full of advertisements of private banks
 
 174 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 whose sole business is this with immigrants. 
 In many cases these banks have no legal right 
 to exist. An individual starts a ' ' bank ' ' with- 
 out pass books or receipts, accepts money and 
 disappears. 
 
 Miss Kellor made it a part of her office work 
 to examine these advertisements in foreign 
 newspapers, to look up these '' banks " and find 
 out whether they were incorporated and bonded 
 and to what extent they were liable to their 
 depositors. Since her term as Chief Investi- 
 gator many " banks " have gone out of ex- 
 istence. 
 
 To handle individual cases of abuse in trans- 
 portation, banking or other things Miss Kellor 
 established what she called a Bureau of Adjust- 
 ment. The Bureau acted as a mediator to 
 bring aggrieved parties together and to induce 
 a settlement. It was of the utmost importance 
 to the alien, since it relieved him of the neces- 
 sity of going to law to recover his property. 
 Because of his inability to pay, the immigrant 
 cannot go to a good lawyer and readily falls 
 into the hands of shysters, who promise to col- 
 lect nothing unless successful. 
 
 Many of the incidents are so trivial that the 
 time of the court is wasted, and no court has the 
 time nor patience to unravel the story of the 
 immigrant interwoven as it is with international
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 175 
 
 complication, feuds and personal hatred. But 
 Miss Kellor had. With the utmost patience she 
 unravelled the threads of this tangled skein and 
 found the truth. She had to move quickly, for 
 the alien is a transient and three-fourths of the 
 frauds committed are made in the belief that he 
 will not have time to prosecute. Fortunately 
 Miss Kellor is a graduate of a law school and 
 possesses the legal knowledge required to han- 
 dle many of her cases. In her first year in office 
 she received and adjusted thirty-nine complaints 
 against banks, four against collection agencies, 
 thirty against steamship companies, thirty-one 
 against employment agencies, nine of accidents, 
 one against a benefit society, four on child la- 
 bour, three on contract labour, six on deporta- 
 tion, six on domestic relations, thirty-six against 
 immigrant hotels, six against emigrant societies, 
 four against lawyers, fifty-nine against notaries 
 and two against labour camps. This indicates a 
 busy year for the Bureau of Adjustment. But 
 Miss Kellor has done more than adjust individual 
 cases. Realising that to help one man at a time 
 is a slow method of accomplishing anything in 
 a situation that affects hundreds of thousands, 
 she selected a group of fifty newspapers repre- 
 senting all nationalities, persuaded them to act 
 with her and furnished them with the full facts 
 regarding every case of exploitation or fraud
 
 176 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 that was likely to be widespread. The papers 
 printed the results of her cases and reported 
 fraudulent concerns, hotels and institutions. 
 As a result these places are finding it increas- 
 ingly difficult to do business. The immigrant 
 reads and is warned in time. 
 
 In a short time the Bureau of Adjustment 
 became also a Bureau of Information. Immi- 
 grants who came for help brought friends who 
 wished to know how to learn English ; where to 
 stop in other cities; how to find work; how to 
 find lost relatives and friends; the wisest way 
 to invest their earnings, with especial inquiries 
 as to the worth of real estate, mining stock and 
 government lands. The finding of work proved 
 the most difficult of all these problems. 
 
 In New York State a large number of aliens 
 are employed in quarries, on road work, in can- 
 neries, in public works, camps and in other in- 
 dustries where camp conditions prevail. Miss 
 Kellor located three hundred and sixteen such 
 industries. Many of these she investigated per- 
 sonally. She found one State camp whose 
 largest building, twenty by fifty feet, was set 
 upon the edge of a canal on swampy ground in 
 the midst of mud so deep that she was forced 
 to don rubber boots. This building contained 
 fifty-two bunks in a double tier and had one 
 small stove to heat it and to cook upon. Nearby
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 177 
 
 were shacks set upon the muddy ground, without 
 floors and containing bunks for two or more 
 men. These had no windows, having only holes 
 covered with wooden boards. There was no 
 bathtub. The muddy water of the canal was the 
 only available wash water. Here men lived for 
 months, perhaps for years; and this camp was 
 but one of many similar to it, some being even 
 worse. The State contract provided carefully 
 and specifically for the kind of material used 
 in construction and for rigid inspection as to 
 its quality. It did not mention the workmen. In 
 canneries, quarries and lumber camps the sit- 
 uation is complicated by the presence of women 
 and children. In canneries both mothers and 
 fathers are employed, and the children wander 
 about, neglected by their parents and the State 
 alike. Men, women and children sleep, live and 
 eat in one small shack. Overcrowding, filth and 
 squalor, disease and immorality are the results. 
 It has been impossible in four short years to 
 eradicate such a situation as this; but Miss 
 Kellor has made great headway. In the first 
 place she investigated forty-nine camps where 
 there were children. Where there were no 
 schools, or where school facilities were inade- 
 quate, she wrote to the State superintendents. 
 She also obtained all the names of children ad- 
 mitted to the State and asked the superintend-
 
 178 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 ents to help her to locate them. In some camps 
 she found the managers very willing to assist 
 her. Sometimes the camj) agreed to provide a 
 building if the State would supply teachers. 
 Sometimes it provided vehicles to drive the chil- 
 dren to the nearest school. The matter of ade- 
 quate accommodations requires legislation; so 
 she made a compilation of all laws affecting 
 aliens. Many of the laws were obsolete, defec- 
 tive, forgotten or inapplicable to present condi- 
 tions; but they showed plainly that new ones 
 were necessary. She published these laws in a 
 manual and sent copies to courts, lawyers, or- 
 ganisations and to the consuls who act in behalf 
 of their countrymen. 
 
 She hoped to convince them, as she herself 
 had been convinced, that without revision of 
 laws, the work of an immigration bureau must 
 be limited to assistance of individual cases, a 
 never-ending task. So forcibly did this phase 
 of the work impress her, that in 1913 she re- 
 signed from the New York State Bureau to 
 assume the managing directorship of the Legis- 
 lative Committee of the North American Civic 
 League for Immigrants, a committee which is 
 engaged in investigating the possibilities of 
 governmental action in all matters pertaining to 
 the transportation, employment, education, nat- 
 uralisation and standard of living of the immi-
 
 FRANCES A. KELLOR 179 
 
 grant, at the same time endeavouring to formu- 
 late a domestic immigration policy. 
 
 In 1913 Miss Kellor became a well-known fig- 
 ure in the daily press as the Chairman of the 
 National Progressive Service of the newly 
 formed Progressive Party. Always an active 
 advocate of woman suffrage, she believed that 
 the new political party offered opportunity for 
 the securing of the ballot as well as the reforms 
 for which she was working. The prominence 
 into which this office brought her name has over- 
 shadowed her work on immigration cpiestions. 
 But it is not as a member of a political party, 
 however worthy, that Miss Kellor has demon- 
 strated her value. For years she has guarded 
 the gateway to America, extending a helping 
 hand to those who would adopt a new father- 
 land, endeavouring to see that the alien passing 
 through bears with him untouched his material 
 possessions, and more important still, those 
 high ideals of justice and fair treatment which 
 America means to him.
 
 JULIA TUTWILEB
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 
 
 ** We painted her old horse green." The 
 young man who bore the imposing title of As- 
 sistant Secretary to the Birmingham Chamber 
 of Commerce settled back in his chair and 
 smiled reminiscently. 
 
 " I went to school to her. Choctaw was the 
 horse's name. She had picked him up some- 
 where and kept him, an old, forlorn, wornout 
 specimen, and we painted him from head to 
 hoof. Miss Julia felt awfully hurt about it, 
 but she didn't get mad. The girls in the school 
 were furious and they got at him with linseed 
 oil and sweet oil until he must have been water- 
 proofed for life. But see here," said the young 
 man, suddenly sitting up straight and speaking 
 earnestly, " don't you get any idea that be- 
 cause we played tricks on her, Miss Julia didn't 
 amount to much. Why, I have seen her go out 
 into the wet grass and pick up a weed and bring 
 it into chapel and hold us all spellbound for an 
 hour talking about it. She was a wonderful 
 teacher and she is a great big woman, the big- 
 gest the State has ever known. ' ' 
 
 183
 
 184 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 From all over the State of Alabama comes 
 the echo of that sentiment, ever growing 
 stronger. From Mobile, from Montgomery, 
 from Birmingham, from Livingston, Dotham, 
 Greene Springs, Speigener, Tuscaloosa and a 
 score of other towns which have felt the direct 
 influence of her personality comes the tribute — 
 the biggest woman the State of Alabama has 
 known. Men and women involuntarily raise 
 their heads proudly when her name is men- 
 tioned and exclaim, " Miss Julia? You know 
 Lyman Abbott said publicly that she is Ala- 
 bama's first citizen." 
 
 No appreciation of Dr. Abbott's could have 
 pleased her people more. With pride they point 
 out her achievements and honours. 
 
 Through her the State of Alabama decided 
 to give to its girls the benefits of a higher edu- 
 cation. Through her the University of the 
 State of Alabama opened its doors to women; 
 through her industrial education for boys and 
 girls began. Through her grew the first organ- 
 ised prohibition movement, and under her grew 
 the State's most famous Normal College. From 
 her pen came articles that brought Alabama 
 nation-wide fame, and songs that have been 
 given first place in the public schools and at all 
 public gatherings. For twenty-five years she 
 has worked steadily and persistently to better
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 185 
 
 the conditions for prisoners, succeeding in es- 
 tablishing the first juvenile reform school, in 
 securing prison inspection, prison chaplains and 
 some modification of the still existent prison 
 contract system. 
 
 Julia Tutwiler is seventy-three years old and 
 still working. Within the last two years arti- 
 cles by Miss Julia, urging prison reform and 
 prison night schools, have appeared regularly 
 in one of the Birmingham papers. Not long ago 
 the ladies of the City of Montgomery were 
 startled by an urgent appeal for quilt scraps 
 presented to them through mail and press. Miss 
 Julia was visiting the prisons and she found 
 that the women wanted something to do. If she 
 could collect enough quilt scraps she would 
 start them all at patchwork. AVhen the legis- 
 lature of the State of Alabama was last in 
 session there was no more active lobbyist than 
 Miss Julia. For prison reform and child labour 
 bills she interviewed and pleaded, her energy 
 unflagging, her vitality apparently inex- 
 haustible. 
 
 Visitors from other States looked with curi- 
 osity at the busy little white-haired woman 
 ' ' with the face of a saint, ' ' clad in faded, black 
 skirt, coat of obsolete fashion and a bonnet 
 slipped backwards and sidewise. Evidently this 
 shabby little woman was a person of influence,
 
 186 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 for senators and officials stopped respectfully 
 when she addressed them and listened atten- 
 tively to her earnest words. They could not 
 give her all she wanted ; but there was nothing 
 but love and reverence in their hearts for their 
 first citizen. 
 
 Miss Julia bears upon her shoulders not only 
 the honours accorded her but those given to a 
 great family. There were eleven of the Tut- 
 wiler brothers and sisters, many of whom have 
 added their part to family history; but in this 
 one, the greater daughter of a great father, 
 family gifts have been epitomised. 
 
 Dr. Henry Tutwiler is still lovingly referred 
 to as one of the State's distinguished gentle- 
 men. He was the first to take the degree of 
 M.A. at the University of Virginia, the first pro- 
 fessor of ancient languages at the University of 
 Alabama, the founder and president of the fa- 
 mous high school for boys at Greene Springs, 
 known as the '^ Rugby " of Alabama. A close 
 friend of Thomas Jefferson and a classmate of 
 Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Tutwiler is remembered 
 as one of the finest men of his generation. 
 
 Under his personal tutelage Miss Julia grew 
 up. To broaden her outlook Dr. Tutwiler sent 
 her for two years to a private school in Phila- 
 delphia conducted by a Parisian family, where 
 she mastered the French language. Vassar Col-
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 187 
 
 lege opened at this time, and Miss Julia, with 
 the vision of her life-work already before her, 
 decided to visit there to study the higher order 
 of women's colleges. She stayed at Vassar a 
 year and during the latter part of her visit was 
 given charge of several French and German 
 classes. When she returned to Alabama she 
 taught at Greensboro and at her father's school 
 at Greene Springs. But she was dissatisfied 
 with her education. Alabama was conservative 
 and upheld the traditions of the South with 
 regard to the education of women. There was 
 no place for her to study in her own State, so 
 she went to Lexington, Virginia, where at the 
 Washington and Lee University she studied 
 Greek and Latin and received a teacher's cer- 
 tificate in those branches. Still unsatisfied she 
 went abroad and settled three years in a Ger- 
 man family where she both studied and taught, 
 availing herself of every opportunity to study 
 Germany's progressive methods in education 
 and storing up in her active mind suggestions 
 which she could carry back to her beloved State. 
 During this time she visited the industrial 
 schools, the prisons and reform schools, and 
 managed to pass two rigid German examina- 
 tions, receiving after each a diploma from the 
 Prussian Board of Education. When she re- 
 turned she taught five years in the Tuscaloosa
 
 188 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Female Academy, going abroad during one scho- 
 lastic year to study schools in Paris. She was 
 a young and comparatively inexperienced 
 teacher at that time, but she soon became one 
 of the most popular at the Academy. 
 
 " She was one of the most brilliant women I 
 ever met," testified one of her pupils at the 
 Academy. " She never was pretty, but she had 
 a low, sweet voice and a radiant smile. She 
 never saw a fault if she could help it, and if she 
 did see it no one ever knew she saw it. And sho 
 was always doing the most beautiful things for 
 someone. I remember when one of the pro- 
 fessors, a poor young fellow, lost a child. Miss 
 Julia went quietly to every one of the fifty 
 boarders at school and asked for a contribution 
 of fifty cents to be used for a little tombstone, 
 for the father could not buy one. Of course we 
 all gave the money, much to the happiness of 
 the parents; but no one else save Miss Julia 
 would have thought about it." 
 
 In the fall of 1881 Miss Julia was made co- 
 principal with Dr. Carlos G. Smith of the Liv- 
 ingston Female Academy. The institution was 
 a private one when she entered it ; but one year 
 later the State made an appropriation of two 
 thousand dollars for tuition and five hundred 
 dollars for appliances to be used in adding to 
 the academy a training school for teachers.
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 189 
 
 '* This," says Miss Julia, " was the first and 
 only gift which the women of the State had up 
 to that time received from State or Federal 
 treasury." 
 
 A few years later the name of the Academy 
 was changed to that of the Alabama Normal 
 College and Miss Julia was made the first presi- 
 dent. Then she began the work that laid 
 the foundation for her State-wide fame. The 
 new Normal School was planned by her care- 
 fully, lovingly, the course of study being based 
 upon all that she had learned in America, in 
 Germany, in France. Neglecting none of the 
 academic studies, she managed to introduce 
 something of industrial education, of art and of 
 science, although these things were regarded as 
 innovations, perhaps dangerous for female 
 minds. She mothered her girls as she taught 
 them, studying them individually, gauging ac- 
 curately their gifts and inclinations. Her own 
 salary was five hundred dollars; but she had 
 some personal fortune, and this was spent gen- 
 erously in financing the student years of girls 
 whose parents were unable to keep them at the 
 school longer. No one will ever be able to meas- 
 ure Miss Julia's efforts in behalf of her girls 
 as individuals. For one of her protegees who 
 was possessed of a fine voice. Miss Julia found 
 a foster father and mother in New York City.
 
 190 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 They took the girl abroad and educated her. 
 To-day she is a grand opera singer. Another 
 girl who displayed considerable artistic ability 
 found herself enabled to go to Paris and Rome. 
 Since she has returned she has made a reputa- 
 tion for herself in America. 
 
 When Miss Julia took the Livingston School 
 it was a small academy; but erelong it became 
 the most popular school in the State, and Miss 
 Julia's growing fame drew to it ever-increasing 
 numbers of students. The State enlarged its 
 appropriation to seven thousand dollars, to ten 
 thousand, to fifteen thousand, and still it was 
 insufficient. Miss Julia proved herself not only 
 a good and great teacher, but a thoroughly 
 alert business woman. When the appropria- 
 tion was but two thousand dollars she took hold 
 of the boarding department, ran it so it paid a 
 profit sufficient to furnish the salaries of several 
 extra teachers and filled up the remaining gap 
 in the faculty by doing the work of three her- 
 self. 
 
 Not content with making the school the first 
 in the State, she turned her attention to the 
 town. When she came to Livingston she found 
 a village of some four hundred white people. 
 In this small town were three large and flour- 
 ishing saloons, supported not by the white resi- 
 dents but by the negroes in the country around.
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 191 
 
 Livingston is on the edge of the Black Belt in 
 a black country where there are six thousand 
 negroes. Every Saturday the little town was 
 filled with drunken, roistering negroes who 
 spent for whisky the money that should have 
 clothed and fed their children. Miss Julia was 
 moved by a double purpose. Decidedly this 
 town was no place for her girls ; nor was it right 
 that these black people should waste their earn- 
 ings. The saloons were the cause of the trouble ; 
 the saloons must go. She organised among her 
 students a campaign for prohibition and 
 brought it to the white citizens. It was hotly 
 contested by some of the town's leading men; 
 but she was at last successful and the town of 
 Livingston and its near neighbour, Sumter, were 
 freed from saloons twenty-five years before the 
 prohibition movement became a power in the 
 State. 
 
 Livingston grew as the school grew. Miss 
 Julia grew bolder in making innovations. One 
 year she talked seriously to her girls about the 
 advisability of giving up their expensive grad- 
 uation gowns and taking the money for a trip 
 through surrounding States. The girls listened 
 with respect but with considerable amusement. 
 It was well known that dress was the last con- 
 sideration with Miss Julia. Her pupils tell a 
 story of one morning when she conducted chapel
 
 192 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 exercises with her dress skirt on wrong side 
 out. The school had become co-educational at 
 that time, and try as they might, ripples of mer- 
 riment broke from the assembled students. 
 Much disturbed at the unusual outbreak, Miss 
 Julia stepped forward to inquire the cause ; but 
 one of her teachers intervened. Then, aghast 
 at her thoughtlessness, she retired, rearranged 
 the skirt and returned to her subdued but still 
 amused pupils. The girls decided to try the 
 trip and to let the dresses go, and this was the 
 beginning of a series of trips on which Miss 
 Julia " carried " her pupils. Her knowledge 
 and her genius for imparting it made her a 
 rare guide; but she sorely tried her young 
 charges by her indifference to dress. For one 
 trip she had a new waist and skirt especially 
 made. When the party arrived at Chattanooga 
 some function was to be attended and the girls 
 decided that Miss Julia must wear her new 
 frock. To their dismay they found the carefully 
 packed waist but no skirt. They telegraphed 
 to Livingston to have the skirt sent on and ar- 
 rived at their next stop only to find that the 
 waist, laid away by Miss Julia, had been left 
 in the dresser of their hotel in Chattanooga. 
 The party was on its return journey when the 
 parts were finally brought together. 
 
 Before she had accepted the school at Living-
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 193 
 
 ston Miss Julia's writings had made an impres- 
 sion on the educational world. She was the first 
 woman in Alabama ever requested to write a 
 paper for a State educational convention. She 
 selected for her subject " Trade Schools for 
 Women." The paper described the schools of 
 that kind which she had examined in Paris and 
 urged the opening of similar schools in Ala- 
 bama. It was regarded as a startling and rad- 
 ical demand, and the paper itself is now filed 
 among the " pioneer papers " of Dr. J. L. M. 
 Curry, as the first paper written in the United 
 States which advocated a school of this char- 
 acter. 
 
 In 1878 Miss Julia was selected by the Na- 
 tional Journal of Education to report the edu- 
 cational features of the Paris Exposition. Her 
 prose writings as well as her poems and songs 
 found a ready market, and she was a contrib- 
 utor to various papers and magazines, among 
 them St. Nicholas, Appleton's Weekly, The 
 Churchman, The San Francisco Post and The 
 London Christian World. One of her songs, en- 
 titled '' Alabama," so appealed to the Women's 
 Christian Association of the State that they de- 
 cided to adopt it as their State song, and it was 
 afterwards formally accepted by the govern- 
 ment as the song of the State. Alabama's State 
 patriotism is strong and every school child of
 
 194 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 ten knows and sings Miss Julia's '' Alabama." 
 In her songs as in her other work she laboured 
 for a cause. *' The Star Spangled Banner of 
 Peace," *' Dixie Now " and the *' Southern 
 Yankee Doodle " were Miss Julia's contribu- 
 tion to the movement to awaken national patri- 
 otism and overcome sectional feeling. These 
 too are school songs in the South and their pop- 
 ularity indicates that they must in some meas- 
 ure have accomplished their object. 
 
 Honours which came to Miss Julia were ac- 
 cepted as a State tribute by the citizens of Ala- 
 bama. She was invited to attend three world 
 congresses. In 1893 she was a member of the 
 Congress of Representative Women of the 
 World at Chicago and was appointed to read an 
 article in the Assembly Hall of the Woman's 
 Building. She was made one of the Judges of 
 Liberal Arts at the World's Fair. She was 
 made Secretary for the State in the Interna- 
 tional Congress of Charities and Corrections 
 and one of the Vice-Presidents of the Inter- 
 national Congress of Education. Perhaps the 
 most liighly prized honour of all was that 
 awarded by her own Governor. He selected her 
 as the citizen of most worth to represent 
 Alabama at the casting of the new Liberty 
 Bell. 
 
 In the meanwhile the progress of the school
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 195 
 
 at Livingston was marked. But Miss Julia, 
 once radiantly happy over this gift of greater 
 education to her girls, began to regret that they 
 could go no farther. Many of the young women 
 could not afford to leave the State for university 
 training and yet were obviously fitted to go on. 
 For years she worked to get the University of 
 Alabama to open its doors to her graduates but 
 without avail. Then slowly, reluctantly, those 
 doors did open. Miss Julia had by sheer per- 
 sistence wearied the authorities until they gave 
 her permission to use a vacant cottage on the 
 University grounds. The experiment was re- 
 garded as hazardous by the trustees, faculty and 
 the people at large. It is safe to say that no ten 
 young women who ever matriculated for a col- 
 lege course were as carefully coached on conduct 
 as well as on subjects as the ten young women 
 first sent to the University of Alabama by Miss 
 Julia. At the end of the year the trustees, the 
 faculty and the people at large saw a triumphant 
 Miss Julia and the downfall of their doubts. 
 Her ten girls had won sixty-six per cent, of all 
 the honours given against the competition of sev- 
 eral hundred young men. Their conduct was 
 pronounced irreproachable by the most con- 
 servative of the professors, and they had done 
 all the work of their cottage including their 
 own cooking. In June, 1900, Miss Kose Lew-
 
 196 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 thorn, one of Miss Julia's girls, received 
 the first State de^^'ree ever conferred upon 
 a woman. She also received the honour 
 given to the Senior Class. Of six honours 
 given that year, four were won by young 
 women from the Alabama Normal College. 
 In 1901 two graduates of the University 
 won a place on the Koll of Honour. One 
 was Miss Julia's pupil. The year following the 
 first degree of M.A. ever conferred by the State 
 upon a woman was given to Miss Lila Mac- 
 Mahon, who was prepared for the University at 
 Miss Julia's Normal School. The cause of 
 higher education for women in Alabama was 
 won, and the fame of the teaching that produced 
 such scholars filled the State. The trustees of 
 the University determined to do the thing well 
 while they were about it, and the building which 
 shelters the women students is known as the 
 " Julia S. Tutwiler Annex.'* 
 
 Even with the Normal College and the State 
 University opening their doors to women, Miss 
 Julia did not feel that the opportunities for edu- 
 cation for girls in Alabama were sufficient. Her 
 " pioneer paper " on industrial education had 
 been followed by many others. Many girls 
 would never be students at Normal Colleges or 
 Universities who were nevertheless bright, capa- 
 ble young women and able to progress in a dif-
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 197 
 
 ferent way. From lecture platform and in her 
 writings she preached the necessity of training 
 for the girl who would early enter the home or 
 the industrial world. At her own expense she 
 sent circulars to individuals and clubs all over 
 the State. She went to the legislature to test 
 and improve the sentiment of that body. She 
 succeeded in attracting the best women in 
 Alabama to the project. As one noted club 
 woman remarked, " We took hold of it with a 
 whoop." 
 
 As a result there was passed by the Legisla- 
 ture of 1893 a bill which pro\'ided for the Ala- 
 bama Girls' Industrial School. The name was 
 afterwards changed to the Alabama Girls' Tech- 
 nical Institute, and the school, founded in 1896, 
 is a State institution. Miss Julia was offered 
 the presidency, but she declined. Four hundred 
 and fifty girls are now at Montevallo. Every- 
 thing that an up-to-date school of the most ex- 
 pensive type can boast is theirs, the free gift 
 of the State. There is a campus of thirtj'' acres, 
 with basket-ball, tennis and croquet grounds. 
 There are fine buildings, a chapel, a dormitory, 
 a library, laboratories, a gjnunasium, an in- 
 firmary, a kitchen, a laundry, a power house and 
 a dairy. There are a farm and a truck garden. 
 The only cost to the young women who attend 
 the Institute is for board and incidentals, and
 
 198 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 the expense is so small that the school is meet- 
 ing the need which Miss Julia felt, that of pro- 
 viding a sensible education for the girl who is 
 not an academic scholar. There is academic 
 instruction of the best kind ; but in addition the 
 girls learn the science of home-making and the 
 relative value and prices of foods. They study- 
 fuels and combustion, marketing, sewing, mil- 
 linery, gardening, farming, dairying, tomato 
 canning and strawberry culture. For the girl 
 who wants basiness training there are courses 
 in telegraphy, bookkeeping, shorthand and type- 
 writing. For the girl of gifts there are music, 
 the fine arts, and manual training. Few States 
 have equalled this remarkable institution of 
 which Alabama may justly be proud. The little 
 woman who wrote the " Pioneer Paper " and 
 who worked so hard to secure industrial educa- 
 tion has not been forgotten. Among the stu- 
 dents there has been organised a '' Julia S. Tut- 
 wiler Club, ' ' which, emulating its inspirer, pro- 
 vides a scholarship yearly for some girl trying 
 to better her condition. 
 
 " She never stopped to consider herself," 
 said one of her former pupils. " She was for 
 the boy and girl, black and white, good and 
 bad." 
 
 Because the girl who was struggling onward 
 needed help Miss Julia gave it ; but through all
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 199 
 
 the years in which she built up the great educa- 
 tional institutions for women she worked as well 
 for the girl who failed. Boys had not seemed 
 to need her much in the onward struggle, but 
 here among the failures they needed her sorely. 
 Away back in the days when she taught in the 
 Female Academy at Tuscaloosa she began her 
 work with prisoners. There were no reform 
 schools for wayward children in those days, and 
 the most of the prisoners were really boys and 
 girls about the age of those in her classes at the 
 Academy. Miss Julia had visited the prisons 
 in Germany and intended to investigate those 
 of her own State. But she was unable to resist 
 the immediate appeal of the unfortunates with 
 whom she came in contact. On Sundays she 
 gathered as many of her fellow-teachers as she 
 could and went to visit the convicts, her Bible 
 under her arm, reading, instructing, consoling, 
 aiding. She persuaded the Bible houses to 
 give her copies of the New Testament and 
 finally secured one for every cell she visited. 
 Before school and after, whenever her hap- 
 pier work could spare her, she was at the 
 prisons. 
 
 It was a common thing for a girl student to 
 meet her on the street hurrying to school and 
 inquire severely. 
 
 Miss Julia, have you had any break- 
 
 ((
 
 200 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 fast? " To which frequently Miss Julia was 
 forced to make embarrassed and apologetic 
 response, 
 
 '* Law, honey, I've been so busy I've just for- 
 gotten all about it." 
 
 There was a county jail at Livingston, and 
 when Miss Julia went there her work went on. 
 On Sunday she would see her flock safely to 
 church and then steal out to visit and conduct 
 services in the jail itself. When she became 
 convinced that to really help she must have 
 State-wide knowledge of conditions to secure 
 remedial legislation she left her flourishing col- 
 lege for week-ends and visited jails and prisons 
 throughout the State. 
 
 She persuaded the railroads that her investi- 
 gations were worth -while and secured a pass 
 which permitted her to board any train in the 
 State at any place. As Livingston is not on 
 a main line, Miss Julia frequently left the Nor- 
 mal College on Friday afternoon, walked down 
 three miles of railroad track to the main line 
 crossing and then patiently waited for the first 
 main-line train which slowed np. No train 
 stopped there ; but a switch made slow running 
 necessary, and as the engineer slowed down 
 Miss Julia clutched the hand rail of the rear car 
 and swung herself aboard, terrifying the con- 
 ductors and brakemen, who expected her to be
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 201 
 
 killed and remonstrated vainly with her con- 
 cerning her recklessness. For years she 
 adopted this as her programme, while the train- 
 men were in despair, but unhurt and smiling 
 she went on to the convict prisons and camps 
 near Birmingham, where thousands of the 
 Alabama prisoners are sent to work in the 
 mines. 
 
 What she found there was enough to dis- 
 hearten the bravest. The majority of Alabama 
 prisoners were then and are still hired out by 
 the State to private employers. There is no 
 discrimination made as to the nature of the 
 crime. Eed-handed murderers and professional 
 burglars are rented out side by side with youths 
 who in a spirit of fun stole a ride on a freight 
 car. Together they work in mines where life is 
 in constant danger. Miss Julia tells a pitiful 
 story of two boys who were travelling with a 
 small show and who were accidentally left be- 
 hind when the company left Birmingham. The 
 boys consulted and decided that they would 
 '' beat " their way. They boarded a freight 
 train and were arrested at a town named Jas- 
 par. When taken before the Justice they 
 begged to be allowed to remain in jail until they 
 could communicate with their friends. The 
 Justice refused and sent them, in company with 
 other offenders, to the Banner Mine. It was
 
 202 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 at noon of that very day that the explosion oc- 
 curred wliich is national history, and the 
 two lads were among those literally blown to 
 pieces. 
 
 As a source of income the State prizes con- 
 vict labour, and the man who happens to be pres- 
 ident of the convict commission is rated not by 
 the number of men who are returned to society 
 as better citizens for their discipline but by the 
 number of dollars turned into the State 
 treasury. 
 
 There is so much left to be desired for Ala- 
 bama that it is difficult to realise that conditions 
 are better than in the days when Miss Julia 
 began her work. But there are certain specific 
 improvements that can be traced to her efforts. 
 Among these is the Boj's' Reformatory at East- 
 lake, Birmingham, known as the Alabama Indus- 
 trial School. Miss Julia was the first to go to 
 the Governor and legislature with the plans for 
 such an institution and when she failed there 
 to take her hopes to the State Federation of 
 Women's Clubs. The women listened and were 
 convinced. They founded the school with their 
 own money, and although the State is now con- 
 tributing to its support, they still help to sus- 
 tain and to manage it. 
 
 For twenty-five years Miss Julia worked as 
 Superintendent of the Prison and Jail Depart-
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 203 
 
 ment of the Alabama Women's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union. Her reports to the Union show 
 the concrete results of her many years of labour, 
 results which the world is unlikely to see. They 
 include a chaplain secured for one prison, a hos- 
 pital established in another, a convict camp 
 made sanitary and a prison inspection law 
 passed. For years Miss Julia worked to estab- 
 lish night schools for the convicts and at last 
 she succeeded. The legislature passed a bill 
 providing for a number of night schools and 
 they were accordingly started. At once they 
 proved popular with the prisoners. 
 
 For eight or ten years the night school work 
 kept on. At the State farm at Speigener, at the 
 Pratt mines, at Coalburg and at various other 
 Xilaces night schools flourished. Then suddenly 
 they ceased. An official in power omitted to 
 specify night schools in his agreement with the 
 contractors for prison labour. All the years of 
 labour on Miss Julia's part seemed suddenly 
 futile. Nevertheless she began again. As with 
 her girls, the effort in behalf of all never les- 
 sened her interest in an individual, and her per- 
 sonal ministrations among the prisoners gained 
 for her at the instance of Bishop Fitzgerald the 
 sobriquet ' ' The Angel of the Stockade. ' ' When 
 she retired from Normal College the State de- 
 cided to make her President Emeritus and to
 
 204 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 continue the salary which she had been re- 
 ceiving. 
 
 '* Well," said Miss Julia, '' as long as the 
 State pays me a salary I must earn it." So she 
 planned a year of work for the prisoners and 
 faithfully went from city to city, visiting the 
 prisons, speaking to clubs and associations and 
 endeavouring in every way to better conditions. 
 After a year the State discontinued the salary 
 despite an indignant popular protest; but the 
 work went on. Miss Julia was taken ill, but she 
 wrote constantly for the papers and magazines, 
 and the women of the United Daughters of the 
 Confederacy, moved by new admiration for her 
 magnanimity, founded a Julia S. Tutwiler 
 Scholarship at the State University. 
 
 There are many influences now working in 
 behalf of Alabama prisoners. There is a new 
 State prison inspector who is doing good work. 
 There are associations which are endeavouring 
 to put an end to the contract system, and one 
 great company employing five hundred convicts 
 has voluntarily refused to contract for prison 
 labour. The twenty-five years of patient, quiet 
 work are somewhat obscured by these more re- 
 cent dramatic events; but Miss Julia rejoices. 
 Not for glory nor for honour has she toiled, al- 
 though both are hers, but for the great end, with 
 no thought of self. In the words of her own
 
 JULIA TUTWILER 205 
 
 State song is her life best typified, except that 
 in all eyes save hers the little given — is much. 
 
 Little, little can I give thee, 
 
 Alabama, Mother mine, 
 
 But that little — hand, brain, spirit, 
 
 All I have and am are thine. 
 
 Take, oh, take the gift and giver. 
 
 Take and serve thyself with me; 
 
 Alabama, Alabama, 
 
 I will e'er be true to thee."
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 
 
 The Mayor of Philadelphia is Rudolph Blanken- 
 burg. Lucretia Blankenburg is his wife. There- 
 fore Philadelphia, the *' boss-ridden," the 
 '' corrupt and contented," the " slothful "; 
 Philadelphia, the " home of unscrupulous poli- 
 ticians," the " delight of the grafter," holds 
 her head proudly, repudiates all her former 
 titles and invites America to witness her refor- 
 mation. 
 
 Philadelphia has been paying Rudolph Blan- 
 kenburg for his services a little less than a year. 
 It has been receiving the services of both the 
 Blankenburgs for nearly forty. Slowly, pains- 
 takingly and unfalteringly this man and woman 
 have worked half a lifetime for civic righteous- 
 ness, unrecognised, unrewarded, unknown to the 
 great body of citizens. Then suddenly the mis- 
 governed people wearied of their rulers, wearied 
 of the black morass of political defilement, of 
 shameful epithets thrown at them by sister 
 cities and looked for a leader to better things. 
 They found him at his self-appointed task, gave 
 him recognition and the highest office in their 
 
 209
 
 210 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 power, and then sat back amazed to find that 
 instead of one they had secured two public 
 servants, both of whom approached their work 
 with a deep sense of its obligation, both of whom 
 entered with eagerness upon the task before 
 them, both of whom were well fitted to straighten 
 out the difficulties besetting the hitherto " worst 
 governed city in America." 
 
 When Mr. Blankenburg was elected, his wife 
 said: 
 
 * * If he needs my help he shall have it. I hope 
 to aid him much in the four years that are 
 ahead. It is a great and serious task that is 
 before us, and one that will necessitate many 
 hours of thought and labour. ' ' 
 
 In the months that have passed since the 
 Mayor entered upon his duties she has made 
 her word good. She has helped at every 
 turn, so efficiently that certain wiseacres smile 
 when her name is mentioned and say know- 
 ingly: 
 
 " Mrs. Blankenburg? Oh, yes, of course she 
 is the real Mayor of Philadelphia." 
 
 The wiseacres are wrong. Rudolph Blanken- 
 burg is a man quite capable of handling a man's 
 job, even the difficult task of giving a graft- 
 ridden city an honest, progressive business ad- 
 ministration. The Mayor of Philadelphia is the 
 man whom the people elected, but he himself
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 211 
 
 will admit that the city has also acquired a 
 Mayoress, a Mayor's right hand, a person whose 
 companionship he values even on official jour- 
 neys, whose counsel he respects, whose civic 
 work is as worthy of commendation as his 
 own. 
 
 '' Usually," said Mrs. Blankenburg, *' we 
 divide the speechmaking. Mr. Blankenburg is 
 always being called upon for conventions, pub- 
 lic school openings, bazaars and the like. Some- 
 times he speaks and sometimes I do. One 
 Blankenburg is enough for one evening. Only 
 once have we spoken from the same plat- 
 form. ' ' 
 
 In the same way they have been working for 
 forty years, " dividing " the civic duties or oc- 
 casionally joining forces to batter down some 
 persistent obstacle in their path or to obtain 
 some much-desired end. 
 
 When Mrs. Blankenburg was chairman of the 
 Committee on Education of the New Century 
 Club she was working hard to get kindergartens 
 into the public school system. To do this she 
 wanted to have Miss Anna Hallowell elected a 
 member of the Board of Education. Miss Hal- 
 lowell was president of an association organ- 
 ised to foster kindergartens, knew all about kin- 
 dergartens and might be counted on to convert 
 the Board. But opposing Miss Hallowell as a
 
 212 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 candidate for the position was a man. Men were 
 preferred to women on the Board of Education, 
 and the man stood a good chance of winning 
 the election. Mr. Blankenburg knew the man, 
 and having himself first been converted to the 
 idea of kindergartens, so used his persuasive 
 powers upon his friend that the man withdrew 
 his candidacy. Miss Hallowell was elected, and 
 kindergartens became a part of the public school 
 system. 
 
 It is impossible to write of one of the Blanken- 
 burgs without constantly, referring to the other. 
 When lives are united not only by mutual af- 
 fection, but also by mutual work and mutual 
 interests, they are too closely interwoven to 
 permit detailed individual analysis. As the nov- 
 elists say, " there is a strong thread of romance 
 running through their lives, ' ' a real romance of 
 a real attraction. They are no longer young; 
 the Mayor will be seventy his next birthday, and 
 his wife is a few years younger. But the ro- 
 mance lives. 
 
 Mrs. Blankenburg 's maiden name was Lu- 
 cretia Longshore. That in itself involves a 
 story, for she was named for Lucretia Mott, 
 one of the pioneer woman suffragists, and one 
 of the band of Friends to whom Philadelphia 
 owes its sobriquet, " the Quaker City." Lu- 
 cretia Mott was her mother's intimate friend.
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 213 
 
 The mother herself was one of those brave 
 women who dared public opinion in behalf of 
 her convictions. While conservative Philadel- 
 phia shook its head in horrified disapproval, 
 Dr. Hannah E. Longshore hung out her sign — 
 the first woman physician in that city. Accord- 
 ing to the social custom of the day, she was 
 snubbed, ostracised, openly laughed at and sub- 
 jected to all the persecutions great and petty 
 which come to pioneers in a new field of thought. 
 Her daughter, naturally, grew up a suffragist. 
 When she was a young girl, a German youth 
 of twenty-two came to the city with letters of 
 introduction to her family. At once he became 
 a welcome visitor. When he had made a start 
 in the new country he and Lucretia Longshore 
 were married. Three daughters were born to 
 the young couple; but none lived to maturity. 
 After the grief following their death had soft- 
 ened, the Blankenburgs endeavoured to fill the 
 vacant place. They adopted a daughter. 
 
 It was at the time of the Centennial Exposi- 
 tion that the Blankenburgs began their public 
 work. The exposition had called for assistance 
 from all public-spirited citizens and there 
 seemed much to be done when it ended. The 
 Blankenburg business of manufacturing bed- 
 quilts, spreads and yarn was doing splendidly, 
 and its head, unlike the average money-maker,
 
 214 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 thought he could discern equally important du- 
 ties elsewhere. Mrs. Blankenburg began by 
 joining a woman's club. 
 
 A woman who belonged to a club was a some- 
 what remarkable person in those days. Wom- 
 en's clubs were few and the majority of those 
 in existence were given over to literary and 
 musical events and to the study of Shakespeare 
 and Browning. A committee of the New Cen- 
 tury Club, of which Mrs. Blankenburg was a 
 member, interested themselves in starting night 
 classes in instruction for working women, did 
 not think of regarding their work as a civic 
 movement. 
 
 Mrs. Blankenburg looked surprised when 
 questioned about it. 
 
 " Why, I suppose that was civic work," she 
 said, " but I never thought of it in that way. 
 Of course everybody copied from us. The 
 Y. W. C. A., and afterwards the public schools 
 and various church organisations, took up the 
 same work, following our example and urged 
 by us as individuals, but we never called the 
 work ' civic ' in the beginning." 
 
 The beginning consisted of three or four 
 classes held in the building of the New Century 
 Club. Mrs. Blankenburg had studied bookkeep- 
 ing and she became the teacher in that depart- 
 ment. She also assisted in planning the cooking
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 215 
 
 class of which she is justly proud. Mrs. Eorer 
 is the star pupil. 
 
 One of Mrs. Blankenburg's pupils in the 
 bookkeeping class was a little woman who kept 
 a store and sold cigars and shoes. She did not 
 do well at the bookkeeping; in fact she failed 
 so utterly that Mrs. Blankenburg asked her 
 gently if she did not think she had better give 
 the class up. 
 
 '' I know I shall never learn," said the 
 woman, '* but can't I just come and sit in the 
 class? It is my only opportunity to get into 
 society. ' ' 
 
 The pathetic little speech set Mrs. Blanken- 
 burg thinking. If this woman's chances for 
 social intercourse were so limited, there must be 
 hundreds of others similarly situated and some- 
 thing ought to be done. 
 
 She talked over the problem with a co-worker, 
 Mrs. Eliza S. Turner, and Mrs. Turner brought 
 the matter before the other Club members. 
 After much discussion there was formed as an 
 adjunct to the New Century Club of New 
 Century Guild, an organisation to be composed 
 of working women, to be fostered and helped 
 by the parent association until it could stand 
 alone. 
 
 To Mrs. Blankenburg fell the difficult task of 
 trying to finance the new organisation. The
 
 216 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 members bought two houses on Arch Street, a 
 decaying residence section. Mrs. Blankenburg 
 tried to rent one at a sufficient profit to enable 
 the club to carry the other. 
 
 " And I had a perfectly awful time doing it," 
 she admitted. " I never knew how dreadful 
 tenants could be. ' ' 
 
 In course of time the decayed residence dis- 
 trict became a flourishing business section. The 
 houses were sold at a profit, and just at this 
 time an endowment of twenty thousand dollars 
 came to the guild. To-day the New Century 
 Guild, with twelve hundred members, a charm- 
 ing club-house which it owms, a library, rest 
 rooms, an assembly hall and a restaurant for 
 noonday lunches, is one of the most important 
 clubs in the city and almost independent of its 
 founders. 
 
 " Of course we still help the new things 
 along," said Mrs. Blankenburg. " For in- 
 stance, I have just been down to the opening 
 of the new dining-room and I do anything I 
 can. But the Guild is really independent and 
 a wonderfully successful organisation." 
 
 A great deal of Mrs. Blankenburg 's work has 
 been directly in behalf of women. One of her 
 first efforts was to get a representation of 
 women on the Board of Education. She suc- 
 ceeded in having Miss Anna Hallowell elected,
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 217 
 
 and later Mrs. Mary Mumford, and Philadelphia 
 schools benefited by the work of these two edu- 
 cational experts. In 1895 a committee of the 
 Pennsylvania Woman's Suffrage Association, 
 of which Mrs. Blankenburg was President, se- 
 cured a law which provided that a married 
 woman who contributed to the support of her 
 children should have an equal right to the cus- 
 tody and care of the minor children. Before 
 this time the enlightened State of Pennsylvania 
 gave this right to the mother only when the 
 father had been proved a drunkard or worthless 
 or had failed to provide for his family. For 
 years she has been working for the passage of 
 a law which will protect a childless widow 
 equally with a childless widower. As the law 
 now stands a childless widow inherits one-half 
 the personal estate and the use of one-half the 
 real estate of her deceased husband, while the 
 childless widower gets all the personal and the 
 use of all the real estate. 
 
 Addressing members of a legislature is usu- 
 ally an event in the life of a woman who has 
 had that honour. To Mrs. Blankenburg it is 
 part of the year 's work. 
 
 " I have addressed legislatures — ^well, I do 
 not know how many times. I have held four 
 different meetings in the hall of the House in 
 behalf of laws for women, and I have spoken
 
 218 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 often in both House and Senate. I have spoken 
 at Congress, too, when we had hearings on bills. 
 I always speak from the standpoint of the 
 housekeeper; I have no other. I am not a col- 
 lege woman. Few colleges were open to women 
 in my day; so mine is purely the home view- 
 point." 
 
 Mrs. Blankenburg was one of the committee 
 of women who inaugurated the system of police 
 matrons in Philadelphia. The committee was 
 a voluntary one; it had no authority and re- 
 ceived no compensation. It did have the en- 
 tree to station houses and it equipped the first 
 matron's department. Through its efforts four 
 police matrons were appointed as an experi- 
 ment. The four matrons were greatly assisted 
 by the committee members. They visited the 
 stations frequently, found clothing, homes and 
 jobs for some of the unfortunate women and 
 generally made the innovation so successful that 
 the police matron became a part of the police 
 system. There was much other miscellaneous 
 civic work. 
 
 ** You know I have seldom been a leader in 
 things," confided Mrs. Blankenburg, *' but I am 
 often on committees and work hard helping to 
 push things along." 
 
 All Philadelphia knows that. I was a re- 
 porter on a Philadelphia newspaper in 1907 and
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 219 
 
 shortly after my entrance into the fourth estate, 
 a fellow-reporter drew me aside. 
 
 " I'll give you a tip," she said. " Whenever 
 you are out of news, go up and spend an hour 
 with Mrs. Blankenburg. She will always see 
 you and she is always doing something for the 
 good of the town, and if she hasn't any news of 
 herself she knows somebody else who is doing 
 something, too. I can always get a column of 
 news there." 
 
 As a member of the Woman's Health Pro- 
 tective Association, Mrs. Blankenburg ably as- 
 sisted in '' pushing along " movements to se- 
 cure trolley fenders, vestibules on trolley cars 
 and sand filtration of water. 
 
 In 1903 Mrs. Blankenburg opened an active 
 campaign against the smoke nuisance. Phila- 
 delphia had city ordinances and State laws. 
 But Philadelphia continued to be smoky and 
 dirty. Mrs. Blankenburg organised a commit- 
 tee to try to persuade the offenders to stop. 
 The committee did everything it could up to 
 the point of the defective legislation. It per- 
 suaded and coaxed and forced, and Philadelphia 
 began to be cleaner. In her own district Mrs. 
 Blankenburg got up a petition, secured the sig- 
 natures of several hundred householders and 
 sent it to the offending firms. One firm imme- 
 diately changed its fuel and put in smoke con-
 
 220 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 sumers ; a second reduced the number of smoke- 
 stacks. In order to raise money to continue the 
 campaign and to carry it to Harrisburg for 
 better laws on the smoke nuisance, Mrs. 
 Blankenburg sent out a printed notice asking 
 for contributions. The notice did not bear her 
 name; but the answers were sent to her as 
 chairman of the committee. On opening one 
 she read ; 
 
 '' I will contribute to your fund if you will 
 agree to join me in a movement to suppress 
 that pestiferous nuisance, Eudolph Blanken- 
 burg." She declined the contribution, but she 
 continued to work to abate the nuisance until 
 her husband's term in office brought about an 
 enforcement of the smoke laws. 
 
 Eudolph Blankenburg has become a " pestif- 
 erous nuisance " indeed to the politicians. 
 While his wife worked steadily at her task, he 
 was busily engaged at his. During the Eussian 
 famine he helped to collect the shipload of pro- 
 visions which Philadelphia sent to the starving 
 people. The Mayor of the city asked him to 
 supervise the taking of the ship to its destina- 
 tion; but he refused unless he was allowed to 
 pay his oivn expenses. This concession made, 
 he followed the shipload over the frozen steppes 
 to the very homes of the needy. 
 
 He helped to plan the Philadelphia Charity
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 221 
 
 Organisation. He was an active member of the 
 German Citizens' Relief Committee at the time 
 of the Johnstown floods. He worked for the 
 refugees from the San Francisco earthquake. 
 Whenever the city needed a man who could be 
 counted upon to give both time and money to 
 a needy cause, it appointed Rudolph Blanken- 
 burg and he accepted, always providing that he 
 pay his own expenses. At home he studied the 
 money-lenders. He opened offices in the Betz 
 Building and sat there four or five hours daily, 
 attending to the complaints of men and women 
 who had been fleeced. In four years he relieved 
 two thousand one hundred cases at his own ex- 
 pense. He was elected County Commissioner 
 and he executed his duties, but sent his salary 
 to the City Trust funds, providing that it be 
 divided between certain city pension lists. He 
 worked hard politically as a progressive in his 
 party, travelling at his own expense and asking 
 no recompense in money or in office. A poli- 
 tician who wanted to run things on a business 
 basis, who cared not for dollars nor preference, 
 who was stubbornly and persistently honest and 
 incapable of compromise! No wonder he was 
 found more ** pestiferous " than the smoke 
 nuisance. 
 
 Nor had Mrs. Blankenburg been politically 
 idle. She is a member of the Good Citizens'
 
 222 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Club. She was a mombor of the Woman's City 
 Party during its lifetime and she worked hard 
 in this connection. In her own district she is 
 a member of the Tenth Ward Woman's City 
 Improvement Society, and if the residents of 
 the Tenth Ward are still in ignorance as to the 
 vital facts concerning their ward and city it is 
 not the fault of Mrs. Blankenburg. Very pains- 
 takingly and carefully she wrote a series of 
 Civic Bulletins labelled: " Do You Know the 
 Tenth Ward! " " City Housekeeping," '' City 
 Fathers," etc. These bulletins are little 
 primers. They ask every conceivable question 
 about the ward and the city — how many 
 voters there are, how many schools, how 
 many churches, what are the methods of city 
 government, the powers vested in the mayor 
 and council. They are in the simplest English 
 and delivered to every householder as a budget 
 of valuable information. 
 
 When Mr. Blankenburg was nominated, the 
 women of Philadelphia rallied at once to his 
 support. For the first time in the history of the 
 city, women formed active political committees 
 which raised campaign funds, held meetings 
 and conducted house to house canvasses in his 
 behalf. 
 
 " When they did that," said Mrs. Blanken- 
 burg, ' ' I felt that I ought to step aside and keep
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 223 
 
 quiet. But of course they met with me often 
 and I helped some." 
 
 It was the queerest election campaign Phila- 
 delphia has ever known. In a ward meeting 
 where Mr. Blankenburg's opponent was in the 
 ascendency, a woman suddenly rose. She was 
 poorly dressed, and the people assembled stared 
 as she began to speak. It was a pitiful story 
 of a hunted woman, hunted by one of those 
 fiends in human form, the loan shark, until 
 everything had gone and life itself seemed not 
 worth the struggle. And then came help — help 
 in the form of a man, just, wise and tender. He 
 had lifted her out of her despondency, had 
 helped her to her feet, had given her courage, 
 had righted her wrong. He was Rudolph 
 Blankenburg. With tears streaming down her 
 worn cheeks, she besought them to vote for him, 
 this man who without reward or profit had 
 saved her and thousands like her. The hall was 
 very silent as she finished, and the opposition 
 let the speech remain unanswered. 
 
 One day a woman appeared at both the Men's 
 and Women's Campaign Headquarters. Each 
 time she took from her purse five hundred one- 
 dollar bills. 
 
 *' For Mr. Blankenburg's election," she said, 
 " and with every bill there goes a prayer." 
 She refused to give her name.
 
 224 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Children in the schools formed Blankenburg 
 Clubs, with the slogan, " For good govern- 
 ment.'* When election day came there seemed 
 a slim chance of winning. Mrs. Blankenburg 
 sat all evening in her favourite rocker, inter- 
 ested but not excited in the returns over the tele- 
 phone. Her chief concern was lest her husband 
 should come home alone. 
 
 He came at three o 'clock and he had two thou- 
 sand men with him. He stopped a moment to 
 tell her the news, and then he drew her to the 
 doorway while he made a speech. 
 
 ' ' It was the women and children of this city 
 who elected me, ' ' he said. 
 
 Since then the life of the Blankenburgs has 
 been busier than ever. The Mayor has had his 
 job and has tackled it with energy and enthusi- 
 asm. Mrs. Blankenburg has been made a vice- 
 president of the Patrons' Section of the Na- 
 tional Education Association and First Vice- 
 President of the General Federation of Wom- 
 en's Clubs. In addition she has the cares inci- 
 dent to the administration. 
 
 At first she was deluged with letters asking 
 for positions. When the people found that she 
 had no positions to give, they began asking as- 
 sistance. One man wanted her to see that the 
 Mayor stopped the boys in his neighbourhood 
 from playing ball on Sundays. Several asked
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 225 
 
 her assistance in selecting wives, and one asked 
 for help in burying a dead cat. There are hun- 
 dreds of these senseless letters, and then there 
 are a great many requests for interviews and 
 innumerable telephone calls. 
 
 *' People all want to come and tell me their 
 troubles," she said; '^ and when I can I let 
 them. Many are in earnest, and I can help. 
 But it does take time." 
 
 There are almost daily complaints about City 
 Hall. One woman employee who wanted her 
 room changed wrote about it and then confi- 
 dently told her fellows it would be done, as she 
 had written to Mrs. Blankenburg. 
 
 " Those things I send promptly to the City 
 Hall departments," said Mrs. Blankenburg in 
 referring to the matter, '' unless they are con- 
 fidential, and then I pay no attention to them. 
 I do not meddle at all in City Hall. ' ' 
 
 Despite the years given to public service the 
 Blankenburg business and the Blankenburg 
 fortune have increased. But there has been lit- 
 tle change in the home. The Quaker touch is 
 plainly seen in its comfortable, unostentatious 
 furnishings. Mrs. Blankenburg manages her 
 own household affairs, plans her dinners and is 
 quite capable of cooking them and of making 
 her own frocks. The household is not troubled 
 by social ambitions.
 
 226 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 " I never gave a tea in my life," declared 
 Mrs. Blankenburg. " I really detest those 
 stand-up-and-get-acquainted affairs. Of course 
 it is worth while to meet somebody who has 
 done something in the world. I love dinner 
 parties where interesting people meet to discuss 
 the really important things of life." 
 
 '' You never see the Mayor without her any- 
 where except in his office," is a general and 
 satisfied comment. Of course she is with him — 
 because he wants her there. When I last called 
 to see her, the Mayor came in very hot and 
 tired. 
 
 " Thee knows I have to go out again to- 
 night," he reminded her. '' I am to crown a 
 queen. Thee had better come with me. Else the 
 queen and I may elope. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Blankenburg smiled. 
 
 li There is a carnival in West Philadelphia," 
 she explained. 
 
 The Mayor went out but returned shortly. 
 Some repair work was being done in the dining- 
 room and parlours, and his wife had prepared a 
 table for dinner in the little study where we sat. 
 The Mayor sat down, apologised for the neces- 
 sity of eating in my presence, and then returned 
 to his point anxiously. 
 
 " Now will thee go with me to-night? " he 
 queried.
 
 LUCRETIA L. BLANKENBURG 227 
 
 The thermometer stood at 92°. Mrs. Blanken- 
 burg had superintended workmen, arranged 
 meals in a disrupted household, tried to help a 
 young woman to sell some oil paintings, re- 
 ceived me and given me the help I asked for, 
 and doubtless done a score of things besides; 
 but she looked up radiant. 
 
 '< Why, of course I will go," she answered, 
 " if thee wants me." She rose and sat down 
 close by the little table. I went away with the 
 picture fast in my memory. 
 
 Together they are fighting the good fight. 
 The next years must bring great changes for 
 Philadelphia with the Blankenburgs at the helm. 
 Perhaps at the end even the unconverted fac- 
 tion will admit the sincerity of the Blankenburg 
 motto : 
 
 " It is better to serve the people than to ex- 
 ploit them."
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW
 
 ANNA HOWAED SHAW 
 
 She wants to be a policeman, and she says that 
 she thinks she has fairly earned the place. She 
 has her own political platform, one which is 
 strictly non-partisan. And if the eighty thou- 
 sand women of whom she is the chosen leader 
 should acquire the ballot, she may yet reach the 
 summit of her ambition. Should she succeed, 
 the force will have every reason to welcome to 
 its number the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw. 
 
 Miss Shaw is a self-made woman. The sixty- 
 odd years which have given her dignity and wis- 
 dom mark a history that abounds in romantic 
 interest. And you may go back even farther 
 than sixty years to find the spirit which has 
 animated Miss Shaw manifested in her an- 
 cestors. Miss Shaw's grandmother was an 
 Englishwoman, a Unitarian. She was required 
 by law to pay tithes to the Church of England, 
 and she would not. She sat in her doorway, 
 defiantly knitting and denouncing the unjust 
 law while her household goods were auctioned 
 every year in the street. 
 
 Miss Shaw is also English bom. She came 
 
 231
 
 232 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 to America when four years old, the family set- 
 tling in Massachusetts. Eight years later they 
 joined the pioneers journeying westward and 
 decided to stop in Michigan. There in the 
 depth of the Michigan woods they built a log 
 cabin and lined the walls of it, for warmth, with 
 old copies of the New York Independent. 
 There were no schools, no books and no papers 
 in the settlement, but Miss Shaw's father was 
 a scholar and Miss Shaw inherited his studious 
 tendencies. She was always indifferent to 
 housework and, whenever she could, stole away 
 with a book or a paper or anything printed, to 
 the woods to study. 
 
 There were wolves in the woods, as Anna well 
 knew. Nevertheless she ran away at every op- 
 portunity. One day after such an escapade, 
 her father spoke seriously to her. She had 
 found an especially interesting book and had 
 stayed away from morning until nightfall. 
 
 " A girl who will run away to the woods and 
 stay all day to read," said Mr. Shaw sternly, 
 * ' is of no account. Your place is at home help- 
 ing your mother. I suppose we shall never be 
 able to do anything with you; you are the one 
 black sheep of the whole family." 
 
 The twelve-year-old girl started up, deeply 
 hurt. 
 
 *' Some day you will take all that back," she
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 233 
 
 declared, her eyes flashing. '^ I am going to 
 study and study and some day I shall go to 
 college, and when I am through I shall make 
 money — lots of money. I shall be worth ten 
 thousand dollars!" Then she stopped, sud- 
 denly afraid of her own words. 
 
 " I wonder if a woman ever was worth ten 
 thousand dollars," she thought guiltily. 
 '' Well, now I'll have to do it." 
 
 Mr. Shaw, however, was unimpressed. Hd 
 sent the ambitious student to bed supperless, 
 and shook his head mournfully over his wicked 
 little daughter. 
 
 At fifteen years of age she had learned enough 
 to become a teacher. The salary was two dol- 
 lars a week, payable at any time the community 
 found convenient. At one time Anna decided 
 that the struggle was useless, that she never 
 would save enough to go to college and that 
 she would forget her ambitions and become a 
 tailoress. But she reconsidered the matter and 
 kept on. At last she had saved eighteen dollars. 
 It came very slowly, especially as the first 
 year's salary was a whole year late. This was 
 owing to the fact that the school-teachers could 
 not be paid until the dog tax was collected! 
 With that precious eighteen dollars she started 
 for Albion College. 
 
 It was all she had. Her father and mother,
 
 234 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 impressed by her desire for an education, had 
 planned to send her to the University of Michi- 
 gan, but just before the time for her to go, she 
 decided that she ought to become a preacher. 
 The presiding elder of a local church offered 
 her an opportunity to talk from his pulpit. Her 
 first sermon proved such a successful one that 
 he invited her to preach in every pulpit in his 
 circuit and the next year she was licensed as a 
 local preacher by the regular district confer- 
 ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her 
 ambition to go to college became one to grad- 
 uate from a school of theology, and this change 
 in plan met with strong opposition on the part 
 of her parents. When she refused to give up 
 preaching her father and mother told her that 
 they would do nothing whatever to assist her in 
 her college course. 
 
 During the years at Albion she continued her 
 preaching, although it added but little to her 
 uncertain income, — Miss Shaw says that she 
 never knew until church was out whether she 
 would be paid with a bouquet of flowers or a 
 greenback. Somehow or other she managed to 
 continue her work until she was ready for Bos- 
 ton University. 
 
 The years at Albion had been hard enough, 
 but those in Boston were still harder. Money 
 did not go very far in Boston. Miss Shaw lee-
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 235 
 
 tured wherever she could induce people to pay 
 her and preached as often as she could find a 
 pulpit vacant. But she earned only enough 
 money to keep her in an attic without fire. She 
 studied in bed to keep warm and watched her 
 breath make frosty clouds upon the air as she 
 recited her lessons. Her shoes began to go 
 and she could not get new ones. Finally she 
 actually began to suffer for the necessities of 
 life. 
 
 One day she crept up the stairs of the Uni- 
 versity and found herself too weak to reach 
 the recitation-room. She sat down upon the 
 steps and rested her head against the wall. The 
 Superintendent of the Missionary Society came 
 by and exclaimed in wonder at her. Too weak 
 to be proud, Miss Shaw told why she was sitting 
 there. 
 
 '' Too much work and too little food," she 
 said wearily. 
 
 '' But why," asked the superintendent, '' do 
 you work so hard ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' One must live, ' ' replied Miss Shaw. A day 
 later the superintendent proposed that Miss 
 Shaw abandon her irregular work, as she had 
 a position to offer her. 
 
 *' It will pay," she said, '' five dollars a 
 week." This was about the sum Miss Shaw 
 had been ekeing out in various directions, and
 
 236 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 delighted to obtain regular employment she 
 readily accepted. 
 
 " But what must I do? " she asked. 
 
 '' You are to promise not to speak in public 
 or to do any extra work during the remainder 
 of the college year," said the superintendent. 
 It was not difficult for Miss Shaw to promise 
 to faithfully earn her five dollars, and pro- 
 foundly grateful for the kindness that made it 
 possible, she asked the name of her benefactor, 
 but the superintendent refused to disclose it. 
 And although the sum paid weekly was a ' ' sal- 
 ary " Miss Shaw accepted it as a loan, and when 
 better days came repaid it through the medium 
 of the superintendent in order that it might 
 help some other tired and discouraged student. 
 
 It was while she was a theological student at 
 Boston University that she obtained her first 
 pastorate ; this was at the Methodist Church at 
 Hingham, Massachusetts. Her second was at 
 Dennis, Massachusetts, where she filled the 
 Methodist and Congregational pulpits for six 
 years. During her third year at the University 
 she became the warm friend of Mrs. Persis 
 Addy, a widow. Mrs. Addy persuaded Miss 
 Shaw to leave her attic and come to her home, 
 agreeing to permit her to preserve her inde- 
 pendence by paying board. At the close of the 
 course Mrs. Addy planned to take Miss Shaw
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 237 
 
 abroad, but died just before her graduation. 
 When her will was read it was found that she 
 had left the young student fifteen hundred dol- 
 lars to take the trip, and Miss Shaw decided 
 to go. 
 
 Mrs. Addy's father advised her to deposit 
 the money in the bank of which he was president 
 and to borrow a sufficient amount to go to Eu- 
 rope and then repay it little by little from her 
 work on her return. As an incentive to saving, 
 this sounded like a good plan. Miss Shaw ac- 
 cepted the offer, and still has the two bonds 
 which she bought then with the fifteen hundred 
 dollars. The interest on them has paid the 
 travelling expenses of a half-dozen trips to Eu- 
 rope which she has taken since she bought them. 
 
 After the four years at Boston University 
 and a successful graduation, Miss Shaw ex- 
 pected to be ordained and to begin her work 
 as a regular pastor. She applied for ordination 
 to the church which appealed to her most, the 
 Methodist Episcopal; but the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church did not want her because she was 
 a woman. They deliberated the matter for 
 some time, while Miss Shaw waited and smarted 
 over the injustice done her. One of the min- 
 isters at the conference knew Miss Shaw well. 
 He had been glad to have her supply his place 
 during an extended illness. The young woman
 
 238 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 had pleased his congregation. Moreover, she 
 had refused to accept any salary for her 
 services, turning the whole amount over to him 
 when he recovered, and this desijite the fact that 
 she was forced to drive a long distance to take 
 his place. The minister felt grateful — ^but after 
 all she was a woman and he did not approve 
 of women as ministers of the gospel. So he 
 voted against her ordination. When the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church decided that Miss Shaw 
 could not be ordained, she turned to the Meth- 
 odist Protestant Church and at last was made a 
 regularly ordained pastor. She secured a pas- 
 torate and was a great success as a preacher. 
 Her pastoral duties were more difficult. She 
 wanted to extend her field of work among the 
 working peojole and she found that they were 
 hard to reach. 
 
 ** I found," she said, *' that if I went among 
 the people with the Bible or with a tract in my 
 hand I could do nothing with them. They 
 simply would not listen." 
 
 In the face of this discouraging fact Miss 
 Shaw did some hard thinking. She had la- 
 boured for years to be able to minister and now 
 she could not, for her people would not hear. 
 Finally she decided that if she could help them 
 they might listen, and she went back to the Uni- 
 versity and started upon four years more of
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 239 
 
 study, this time for a physician's degree. She 
 kept her pastorate and managed to complete 
 her course. She is probably the first woman 
 in this country to receive both theological and 
 medical degrees. Then she went to the people 
 she desired to help as a medical missionary. 
 
 '' Then," she says happily, " every door 
 opened to me and I could get to the people who 
 were susceptible to influence." With a case 
 of medicines, she was a successful pastor. She 
 was particularly interested in immoral women, 
 and it was with them in mind that she studied to 
 be a doctor, because she believed that in no 
 other way than through a knowledge of medi- 
 cine could she get at them. But her work 
 among them was ' ' simply like being at the bot- 
 tom of a precipice taking away the dead bodies 
 of the people who fell over instead of being at 
 the top and preventing them from falling." 
 Miss Shaw reasoned that financial independence 
 was what these women needed. She felt that 
 the basis of financial independence and of every 
 other principle of life was freedom, and that 
 the first thing necessary was to remedy the po- 
 litical subjection of women so that they would 
 be in a position politically to help themselves. 
 Miss Shaw began to speak for suffrage so- 
 cieties. 
 
 At once she demonstrated that she was a re-
 
 240 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 markable speaker and calls for her services be- 
 gan to come from far and near. Her pastoral 
 duties prevented her acceptance of many of 
 these calls, and these refusals made her con- 
 sider her own position seriously. She was hold- 
 ing a little country charge and had very little 
 chance of holding anything else. The prejudice 
 against women preachers was a bar to advance- 
 ment. Young men, no better equipped than her- 
 gelf, were being called to large churches while 
 she was left to vegetate. The ten thousand 
 dollars which she had promised to make seemed 
 very remote indeed unless some miracle hap- 
 pened, or unless she entered some work that 
 gave promise of a future. So she entered the 
 suffrage work. 
 
 She could not give free lectures, for she had 
 her living to earn, but she did not anticipate 
 adding much toward that promised ten thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 The suffrage society received her upon those 
 terms and in a very short time she became 
 known as one of their ablest speakers. At one 
 meeting in San Francisco five thousand people 
 stood before the doors of the hall in which she 
 was to speak, waiting for admission. She had 
 always been an active temperance worker, and 
 she was able to combine with her suffrage work 
 her activities in the Woman's Christian Tern-
 
 ANNA HOWAKD SHAW , 241 
 
 perance Union. Her success accomplislied what 
 all her years of persistent work had failed to 
 accomphsh — it convinced her father. He 
 walked twelve miles to hear her preach one 
 sermon, and when he heard her preach the 
 seimon at the Woman 's Congress at the Colmn- 
 bian Exposition, he told her that it was the hap- 
 piest day of his life. For years she was the 
 friend and co-worker of Susan B. Anthony, and 
 when Miss Anthony died she named Miss Shaw 
 as her successor to the presidency of the Na- 
 tional Woman's Suffrage Association. 
 
 At the time Miss Shaw became president of 
 the national association, the ballot had been 
 granted to women in only four States, and the 
 suffragists engineered about one campaign in 
 ten years. Now they engineer practically ten 
 campaigns in one year and there are nine States 
 in which women may vote. 
 
 During Miss Shaw's presidency, the main of- 
 fices of the Association have been moved from 
 Warren, Ohio, to New York City. The Asso- 
 ciation has grown from seventeen thousand to 
 sixty-five thousand paid members. The litera- 
 ture department has increased from the sales 
 of thirteen hundred dollars a year to thirteen 
 thousand dollars a year. A department devoted 
 entirely to press work has been created. It fur- 
 nishes material for all of the leading press syn-
 
 242 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 dicates in the United States, for foreign syn- 
 dicates, and sends articles to hundreds of papers 
 around the country. Miss Shaw is modest 
 about these achievements. " They only indi- 
 cate the growth of the movement within the last 
 few years," she says, '' and our movement has 
 only grown in proportion to similar movements 
 in European countries." 
 
 As the head of the executive work of the as- 
 sociation. Miss Shaw spends a good deal of time 
 in her office as well as on the lecture platform, 
 but she always goes into the field when cam- 
 paigns are pending. The Association superin- 
 tends much of the legislative work of the cam- 
 paigns: it sends speakers and articles and also 
 money. Miss Shaw personally raises a large 
 part of the money. " I beg it," she says. 
 
 One of the original features of her lectures is 
 her question box. At the beginning she invites 
 her hearers to write questions and to send them 
 to the box to be answered. Her knowledge of 
 the Constitution of the United States has never 
 been found wanting in answer to the most 
 searching questions; neither has she failed to 
 reply to the anxious mother who queried as 
 to the care of her baby during an attack of 
 croup. 
 
 Miss Shaw has been the recipient of many 
 honours. She was the first woman to preach in
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 243 
 
 Denmark, or in Norway, or in the cities of Ber- 
 lin and Amsterdam, and the first woman to 
 preach as an ordained minister in an orthodox 
 church in England. After a lengthy conference 
 she was invited to speak from the pulpit of the 
 Established Church of Sweden, and here, too, 
 she was the pioneer of her sex. The aisles of 
 the Gustaf Vasse in Stockholm were packed and 
 the building failed to accommodate the crowd 
 which gathered to hear her. At the Interna- 
 tional Convention of the Woman's Suffrage Al- 
 liance, held in Sweden, the entire assemblage 
 rose as she entered, in honour of her presence. 
 
 People marked her white hair in the recent 
 suffrage parade in New York City. She walked 
 the course from Fifty-ninth Street to Union 
 Square with a step as light as that of any girl. 
 Then she made six speeches from the various 
 stands, only stopping when nightfall broke up 
 the meeting. 
 
 During the long, hard years of study and the 
 long, hard years of work. Miss Shaw confesses 
 that she still found time to dream. For twenty 
 years she dreamed of a home. It is quite usual 
 to hear anti-suffrage orators announce that suf- 
 fragists do not desire homes, that they are 
 never in their homes, and that their only desire 
 is to get away from the home. Nevertheless, 
 Miss Shaw, without any excuse in the shape of
 
 244 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 a husband and babies, wanted a home. And 
 her dream took a distinct form. AVhen she had 
 accumulated a part of the ten thousand dollars 
 she sought a real-estate agent. 
 
 *' I want," she said, " land on a high hill 
 overlooking boulders with trees growing among 
 them, with a stream of water and a ruined mon- 
 astery. ' ' 
 
 The agent regarded her dubiously. 
 
 " You won't get anything like that this side 
 of Paradise," he said. 
 
 '* Well," retorted Miss Shaw, '' then I will 
 wait until I get to Paradise to get it." 
 
 But at the end of a year of search the agent 
 telegraphed : ' ' Come ; I Ve got your land. ' ' 
 
 Miss Shaw hastened to inspect it and found 
 the hill, the boulders and the stream, and agreed 
 to dispense with the monastery. But she was 
 dismayed to find that in order to get her hill, 
 boulders, trees and stream she would have to 
 purchase twenty-three acres at a price which 
 represented every dollar she possessed. All 
 night she sat up and went over the figures, only 
 to come again and again to the same conclusion. 
 If she bought the view, she would not have a 
 penny left with which to build the home ! Morn- 
 ing found her determined to spend every penny 
 she had and to get the view. So she bought the 
 twenty-three acres. She reserved eight and set
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 245 
 
 to work to sell the remainder, succeeding so 
 well that in less than a year she was ready to 
 build Alnwick Lodge. 
 
 Alnwick Lodge is more than a house ; it is a 
 direct reflex of its builder and mistress. It is 
 a distinctly original home. Outside it looks like 
 a substantial dwelling of Colonial type with 
 rough-plastered, biscuit-coloured walls and 
 white trimmings. But the instant the visitor 
 steps over the threshold the originality is ap- 
 parent. In this home the front of the building 
 is the back and the back is the front. 
 
 '' You see," explains Miss Shaw, " the maid 
 always likes to see the road and the passers-by. 
 So we put the kitchen at the front. The rear, 
 which looks over the boulders and brook, is 
 more interesting to me ; so I have put the great 
 porch there. ' ' 
 
 The house has two distinct interests. One is 
 its perfect convenience in housekeeping ap- 
 pointments. Any anti-suffragist who is using 
 the anti-home argument will be utterly put to 
 rout after one visit to Alnwick Lodge. In the 
 first place there are numerous windows. All 
 the radiators are under windows, and under 
 windows which are placed so that they catch 
 the prevailing winds. The result is a cool house 
 in summer and a warm one in winter. All walls 
 are painted in biscuit colour and all ceilings
 
 246 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 white. All the windows are large, extending 
 close to the floor and ceiling. There is an 
 abundance of light at night as well as by day. 
 In the great living-room, which occupies one- 
 half of the ground floor, there are lights in the 
 ceiling at every corner, as well as the central 
 chandelier. The door between the dining-room 
 and pantry is half glass. The pantry itself, 
 unlike the usual dark closet, has a large window 
 and is supplied with a sink and hot and cold 
 water. Both the pantry and kitchen have great 
 closets. The kitchen boasts a small vine-covered 
 porch which was designed by Miss Shaw, not 
 for buckets and pails, but for the maid to enter- 
 tain her company ! The basement is well floored 
 and well lighted, with an up-to-date laundry in- 
 stalled, and in the basement is also the water- 
 tank. This water-tank occupies its unique posi- 
 tion because of Miss Shaw's logical reasoning. 
 Tanks are usually on the roof — ^because of the 
 stupidity of builders. The water has to be 
 pumped up anyway, and a tank on the roof 
 freezes in cold weather. Then it may leak, and 
 if it leaks it ruins ceilings and walls ; a basement 
 tank may leak and hurt nothing. All of this is 
 so sensible that you wonder that tanks are ever 
 placed on roofs. The kitchen and basement con- 
 tain more of Miss Shaw's handiwork than any 
 other portion of the house.
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 247 
 
 ** I do not claim to be an excellent house- 
 keeper," she says, " but I can handle wood." 
 
 Back in that Michigan forest she learned to 
 fell trees, and at sixty-odd she still fells trees, 
 for exercise and recreation. She cuts her own 
 kindlings and her logs for grate-fires. She puts 
 up shelves, preserve-closets and racks as well as 
 an expert carpenter. Her latest addition to her 
 kitchen is a fireless cooker, which she built ac- 
 cording to scientific principles and wliich she 
 says works well. 
 
 The stairway to the second floor is Miss 
 Shaw's pride. 
 
 '' Not a stairway in a hundred," she asserts, 
 '' has a low enough tread." This stair has 
 broad, low steps. It was secured only after a 
 hard battle with the architect, who wanted the 
 steps deeper, claiming that low ones were not 
 architecturally correct. 
 
 " Well," said Miss Shaw at last, '' low steps 
 are hygienic, and if you make these broad, I will 
 cut off that curlicue you have at the bottom, 
 myself." At this proposed mutilation of the 
 curved rail of his Colonial stairway the archi- 
 tect surrendered. 
 
 There is a sun-parlour halfway to the second 
 floor, known as " The Children's Corner," 
 where little visitors may play without disturb- 
 ing their elders on either floor. The bathroom
 
 248 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 windows are another unusual feature. These 
 are high in the wall, so high that no one can see 
 in, and the light can never be too strong. There- 
 fore, neither blinds nor curtains are needed. 
 None of the bedroom closets have doors, be- 
 cause they are more sanitary when the air has 
 access to them. As no brooms are used in the 
 house, they do not get dusty. All bedroom win- 
 dows are made so low that you may lie in bed 
 and look out to the " view." There are two 
 outdoor sleeping-porches opening from the bed- 
 rooms. 
 
 With all this the house is not large nor elab- 
 orate; but it is the work of a woman who un- 
 derstands housekeeping and the minimising of 
 labour as well as the securing of comfort. 
 
 But this is only one of the interests which 
 Ahiwick Lodge holds. The second lies in its 
 furnishings and in its activities. Although the 
 house is but seven years old, the path across 
 the fields from the station at Moylan, Pennsyl- 
 vania, is well worn by the steps of hundreds of 
 visitors. Women who have laboured long in the 
 cause of woman's suffrage come to the friendly 
 living-room, almost as to a shrine. For here is 
 Miss Susan Anthony's favourite chair and her 
 footstool. In a corner is her old bookcase. 
 Mrs. Lucy Reid Anthony's chair, over one hun- 
 dred years old, stands near Miss Susan's. In
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 249 
 
 the dining-room is the silver tea-service pre- 
 sented to Miss Anthony by the Woman's Po- 
 litical Equality Club of Rochester. On the side- 
 board and in the china-closet are numerous 
 pieces presented to Miss Shaw or to Miss An- 
 thony, representing every State in the country 
 and every nation in the world. 
 
 And upstairs, in what is known as the friend's 
 room — there is no '' guest " room — the walls 
 are lined with the friendly faces of the women 
 who have devoted their lives to the cause of 
 suffrage. Alice and Phoebe Gary, Anna Dick- 
 inson, Frances Wright, Anna Ella Carroll, 
 Elizabeth Smith Miller, Margaret Bright Lucas, 
 Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Charlotte 
 Bronte, Julia Ward Howe — all these and many 
 more look down upon the ' ' friend ' ' who sleeps 
 there — a force well calculated to win a convert 
 to the ** cause." 
 
 And although the home is so young, it has 
 seen many frolics. Even professional suffrage 
 workers have time for merrymaking. There 
 have been times when twenty-four cots in the 
 big attic were not enough to hold the friends 
 who thronged the house. And Miss Shaw has 
 married one of her young friends beneath her 
 roof, and hopes to marry another erelong, act- 
 ing as minister, friend and hostess at one time. 
 
 ** A place for us all to be happy in," says
 
 250 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Miss Shaw contentedly; " it was for that I built 
 it. Men and women in public life find it hard 
 to withdraw when age makes it wise for them 
 to do so. Often they hang on and as their fol- 
 lowers turn to younger leaders, they grow 
 bitter, deeming the world ungrateful. Or if 
 they do stop they know not what to do. I have 
 insured myself against unhappiness. I have 
 built my new interest while the old still calls 
 me, and there I shall be happy when I can be 
 active no longer. ' ' 
 
 It is a curious circumstance that hardly any- 
 one calls Miss Shaw ' ' Doctor. ' ' She has earned 
 the title twice; but to the great majority of her 
 friends and adherents she is " Miss " Shaw. 
 Many do not know that she has a legitimate 
 right to the title. Perhaps they will when she 
 gets to the police force. Despite her words 
 about retiring to Alnwick Lodge, she is at pres- 
 ent an exceedingly active person. With the 
 same practical foresight which planned the com- 
 forts of her home, she has gotten ready her 
 political platform and published it, so as to fa- 
 miliarise the public with it in advance in order 
 that it may know what she stands for. Among 
 her planks are the popular election of Senators ; 
 reciprocity with Canada; the tariff revision 
 downwards; a national child-labour law; a law 
 regulating the hours of work for women; a uni-
 
 ANNA HOWARD SHAW 251 
 
 versal marriage law; economy in naval and mili- 
 tary expenditures; reformed civil service re- 
 form; absolute voidity for elections where cor- 
 ruption is proved; all bills for the national 
 good; none that would benefit a State, district 
 or individual at the expense of others. 
 
 Senators and representatives, Miss Shaw be- 
 lieves, are too local in their interests. They 
 lobby in behalf of a small group of people in- 
 stead of in the interest of the country as a whole. 
 She believes that uniform divorce and marriage 
 laws are absolutely necessary, and she also 
 adds: 
 
 " The universal marriage law should forbid 
 all marriages between people who are under 
 eighteen years of age and should require proof 
 of the physical, mental and moral fitness of both 
 parties before the ceremony is performed." 
 
 She is also a strong believer in the establish- 
 ment of universal peace, which she says almost 
 all women would advocate. 
 
 She firmly believes in democracy, and from 
 the first has been one of the women to make a 
 stand for suffrage for all women, instead of a 
 restricted suffrage in favour of moneyed women 
 who are property owners. 
 
 And, although there are many suffragists 
 who would accept the concession of a vote for 
 taxpaying women as an opening wedge for the
 
 252 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 greater concession of votes for all women, Miss 
 Shaw has sturdily opposed any acceptance of 
 such halfway measures. " We want," she says, 
 " all women to vote," and if we do, it will mean 
 a real republic for the first time in the history 
 of the country. 
 
 To the usual masculine objections to woman 
 suffrage. Miss Shaw's alert mind and ready wit 
 give pointed answers. 
 
 ' * You men say that we will neglect our fami- 
 lies if we vote," she said to one male audience. 
 ' ' You state that we will grow coarse and not be 
 attractive to you; you say that we will always 
 cast our ballot wrongly. Very well ! Does the 
 government demand of a man, when he starts 
 to vote, that he shall promise not to neglect his 
 family, that he will stay attractive to the other 
 sex and always cast his vote right? " 
 
 Her platform shows a mind alert and active, 
 conversant with everyday national problems 
 and looking, as she claims to look, toward the 
 benefit of the country as a whole, rather than 
 special legislation in favour of one class.
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 
 
 When the news of the election of Mrs. Ella 
 Flagg Young to the superintendency of the 
 schools of the city of Chicago flashed across 
 the country there followed a sensation. A 
 woman superintendent was a thing unknown in 
 history. That one should have been elected in 
 a city the size of Chicago marked a radical step 
 from educational tradition. The daily press 
 was busy for a week explaining in detail the 
 answer to the prevalent question " How did it 
 ever happen? " The answer contained two 
 theories and the circumstances seemed to war- 
 rant a faith in either. For three months Chi- 
 cago had been in a state of civil war regarding 
 the election of a superintendent of education. 
 Theoretically the election rested with the Board 
 of Education, the members of which were im- 
 partial citizens selected for their office because 
 of their ability to see things from an unbiased 
 point of view. In reality the situation was one 
 common in great cities; the superintendency 
 was not a matter of the Board of Education but 
 of a political factional fight. So fiercely did the 
 
 255
 
 256 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 battle rage that the inert citizens awoke to listen 
 to the mud- slinging and wrangling between the 
 factions interested. After three months of war- 
 fare the Board of Education began to be un- 
 easy. There didn't seem to be any likelihood 
 of either side winning out, and the Board occu- 
 pied an unenviable position. As a private 
 matter it was all very well to have a few po- 
 litical interests, but as a Board it had a certain 
 standard of dignity to maintain and it was be- 
 ginning to appear slightly ridiculous. It de- 
 cided to elect a superintendent. The wrangling 
 and mud-slinging had succeeded in reducing the 
 candidates for the position to six, five men and 
 one woman. The Board invited the six to come 
 before it and state their qualifications for of- 
 fice. Politeness is supposed to give ladies pref- 
 ence in such matters, but evidently the Chicago 
 Board of Education lacked training in the finer 
 courtesies. The candidates appeared before the 
 Board in alphabetical order and Mrs. Young 
 was heard last. The Board was hot, tired, un- 
 comfortable and puzzled. Mrs. Young came be- 
 fore it cool, calm and collected. She began to 
 speak, not of herself but of the schools of the 
 city of Chicago, what they were and what she 
 believed they could be. In a short time the hot, 
 tired, uneasy men were listening. A little later 
 they hung on her words. It was two hours be-
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 257 
 
 fore she finished, and when she did the men were 
 no longer uneasy. They had found a woman to 
 take the problem off their hands. Where they 
 had speculated she knew. She knew their prob- 
 lem and she sympathised ; she knew the dissen- 
 sion in the teaching force and she outlined the 
 remedy. The Board asked no question which 
 she could not answer. And her earnestness car- 
 ried conviction that she would do what she 
 promised. Because of the impression she made 
 upon them they elected her. 
 
 The other explanation is shorter. The poli- 
 ticians, unable to agree, permitted the Board 
 of Education to elect Mrs. Young as the least 
 offensive compromise candidate, and one not 
 likely to trouble them. According to conviction 
 the members of the inquiring public accepted 
 one explanation or the other and promptly 
 asked a second question : 
 
 '' Who is Mrs. Young? " 
 
 The educational world knew Mrs. Young well. 
 But outside Chicago the general public knew 
 very little of her. Her long history in Chicago 
 schools had up to this time been free from dra- 
 matic episode and like many other worthy 
 people she escaped public notice by doing the 
 thing before her with all her might and avoid- 
 ing side issues. 
 
 It is fifty-two years since she entered the Chi-
 
 258 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 cago school system. Handicapped by ill-health, 
 she had been educated at home by her mother, 
 who in her belief that her daughter would not 
 live to maturity sought to shield her from con- 
 tact with life. Before she was seventeen, how- 
 ever, the death of her parents forced her into 
 the world, and at that early age she was ap- 
 pointed to a grade teachership in the Foster 
 School. In eight months she was promoted to 
 be Head Assistant of the Grammar department 
 in the same school. One year and a half later 
 a School of Practice was opened in connection 
 with the Chicago Normal School. At twenty 
 Ella Flagg was its first principal. The remark- 
 able appointment of a girl of twenty as head 
 of a school intended as a model for study on 
 the part of teachers in training indicates the 
 unusual teaching ability which Mrs. Young pos- 
 sesses. Six years later, in 1871, she became a 
 teacher in one of the City High Schools. In 
 1874 she was called to the Normal School as 
 teacher of mathematics. From 1886 to 1887 she 
 returned to the elementary schools, acting as 
 principal of grammar schools. In the latter 
 year she was elected district superintendent, 
 and in this office she served twelve years. At 
 the end of this time she took her first decisive 
 step toward independence in educational meth- 
 ods. Very abruptly she resigned her superin-
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 259 
 
 tendency, stating that under existing conditions 
 district superintendents were mere figureheads 
 "without authority or opportunity for real edu- 
 cational work. Her resignation caused a mild 
 flutter in educational circles, but hardly had it 
 been made public when President Harper of 
 the University of Chicago offered her a full 
 professorship in the University. 
 
 '' But I haven't a Doctor's degree," said Mrs. 
 Young. 
 
 ^' It's the woman I want, not the degree," 
 retorted the President. 
 
 Mrs. Young refused. Years before, when 
 principals' examinations had been instituted as 
 a part of the city requirements for certificate, 
 she as acting principal was entitled to receive 
 a similar certificate on the basis of experience. 
 She declined, was the first woman to take the 
 examination and received the certificate in the 
 regulation way. Likewise she declined to serve 
 the University of Chicago as a professor until 
 she had obtained her degree. She did consent 
 to serve in the meantime as Associate Profes- 
 sorial Lecturer. While she served a year in 
 this capacity she studied, and at the close of 
 the year she passed her examinations, received 
 the degree of doctor of philosophy and accepted 
 a professorship in the Department of Educa- 
 tion. She stayed at the University four years.
 
 260 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 She was an inspiring teacher and she employed 
 unique methods in dealing with the young men 
 and women. Always she believed in fostering 
 the social side of the University life, and while 
 there she instituted the innovation of serving 
 tea and cake during class. When she resigned 
 her professorship in 1904 it was to travel 
 abroad and study further. By this time a num- 
 ber of people were interested in her remarkable 
 career and several offered to finance her trip. 
 Like the principal's certificate and the pro- 
 fessorship, these offers were declined. Mrs. 
 Young preferred first and last to pay her own 
 way. During her absence she visited schools 
 in France, Germany, Switzerland and England. 
 The schools of Chicago missed her. While she 
 was away, in August, 1905, she was appointed 
 principal of the Chicago Normal School, and 
 she returned to assume that position. 
 
 It was while she was at the Normal School 
 that the city generally seemed to awaken to 
 some realisation of her power as an educator. 
 The Normal School was not remarkable when 
 she became its manager, but in a short time it 
 began to improve, and in four years it had 
 grown into the progressive Teachers' College 
 it is to-day. From the Normal College she was 
 called to the superintendency. 
 
 This summarises her regular work, the work
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 261 
 
 for which the city paid her. It is impossible 
 to summarise the other work which Mrs. Young 
 undertook, the unpaid work outside city juris- 
 diction which has made her such a power with 
 the teaching force. Always she has been a 
 leader among the teachers. She was the first 
 president of the Schoolmistresses' Club of Il- 
 linois, through which she met not only Chicago 
 teachers but teachers from small towns through- 
 out the State, who came to the meetings in 
 search of help in their work. In 1889 she was 
 appointed by the Governor as a member of the 
 State Board of Education, and she held this 
 office for twenty-five years, reappointed by suc- 
 cessive Governors. It was only when her du- 
 ties as superintendent of schools for Chicago 
 prevented her from attending the State board 
 meetings that she resigned. It is said that she 
 organised an odd club of superintendents, and 
 other officials, who met at her residence to dis- 
 cuss educational problems, and it is certain that 
 whether organised or not, many gatherings of 
 this kind were held in her home, where Mrs. 
 Young welcomed them, and true to her belief 
 in socialising educational matters, served re- 
 freshments. About 1902 a band of teachers 
 who had worked under her and with her organ- 
 ised the Ella Flagg Young Club, named in her 
 honour.
 
 262 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 The position of superintendent of schools in 
 the city of Chicago is no sinecure. The total 
 value of the school property in the year in which 
 Mrs. Young took office was forty-two million 
 three hundred sixty thousand seven hundred and 
 thirty-eight dollars. The annual expenditures 
 totalled over twelve million. There were six 
 thousand two hundred and ninety-six teachers, 
 five hundred and thirty- four of whom were men. 
 The schools numbered two hundred and sixty- 
 seven and the pupils two hundred and ninety 
 thousand. 
 
 In addition the Board of Education and the 
 teaching body were divided by the most serious 
 dissensions. Education was suffering from lack 
 of attention while its directors engaged in civil 
 war. 
 
 It was shortly after her appointment to office, 
 while she was still adjusting these warring fac- 
 tions, that I visited Chicago. I had an appoint- 
 ment to see Mrs. Young and I waited her arrival 
 in the anteroom of the superintendent's office. 
 After half an hour the door opened. Straight 
 through the doorway, looking neither to the 
 right nor left, shot a gray-haired, small woman, 
 clad in a dark tailored suit. It was impossible 
 to observe more, for so quickly did she move 
 that in a moment she was through the crowd 
 and in her private sanctum. There was another
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 263 
 
 wait and then I was shown in. Mrs. Young- 
 looked up from a batch of letters she was 
 signing. 
 
 " Won't you sit down? " she said. I sat. 
 She looked up at me inquiringly, but I sat per- 
 sistently silent until she put down her pen, 
 smiled and said : 
 
 '' You wanted to interview me, didn't you! 
 Well, I warn you I'm not a bit good at being 
 interviewed. I can't talk. Why don't you in- 
 terview Mrs. Henrotin or one of the women who 
 can tell interesting things 1 ' ' 
 
 '* The main reason," I retorted, '' is that I 
 don't want to interview anybody but you." 
 
 ' ' Well, ' ' she said resignedly, ' ' can you make 
 it short? " 
 
 I took out a list of fourteen questions I 
 wanted to ask and her face brightened. About 
 halfway through a member of the Board of 
 Education called Mrs. Young to decide a point 
 at a committee meeting. She went, returned in 
 five minutes and continued answering questions. 
 A second call took her away ten minutes. She 
 came back looking distinctly worried. 
 
 " You see how busy I am," she said apolo- 
 getically, " and," she added whimsically, '' I 
 am sixty-four years old. ' ' 
 
 I knew her age, but I had not thought of it. 
 The main impression she had made on me from
 
 264 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 her entrance through the door until the end of 
 the interview was of a small intensely dynamic 
 body. It is almost impossible to connect age 
 with anything dynamic. Some writer, in dilat- 
 ing upon her able school management, has 
 stated that she has '* eliminated the sex ele- 
 ment." It is perhaps true that the superin- 
 tendent's office in Chicago is not so overwhelm- 
 ingly feminine as the usual superintendent's 
 office is so overwhelmingly masculine, — Mrs. 
 Young may have removed the offence of sex 
 emphasis, but personally Mrs. Young is neither 
 masculine nor neutral; she is distinctly fem- 
 inine, and the impression of her womanhood was 
 only secondary to the impression of her dynamic 
 force. The effect of this feminine quality is 
 seen in the results of her work in its attention 
 to small but pertinent detail as well as to larger 
 issues. 
 
 In one year after her taking office the press 
 all over the country was commenting upon the 
 change wrought in Chicago school matters. 
 Between the former superintendent and the 
 teaching force there had been a serious breach 
 which completely hampered all school manage- 
 ment. Between the Board of Education and 
 the teachers was another breach, so that the 
 teachers as a whole were restless, dissatisfied 
 and unhappy. At the end of that first year
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 265 
 
 warring factions had become passive. An in- 
 quiry among the teachers throughout the city 
 established the superintendent's popularity. 
 
 '* Look at us," said one earnest woman. 
 " Can't you see that we are happy in our 
 work? " 
 
 " You ought to be among us now," remarked 
 one of the members of the Board of Education 
 to a former colleague. " Trouble? Not a bit 
 of it. We don't know the meaning of the word 
 without looking in a dictionary." 
 
 It is noteworthy that Mrs. Young accom- 
 plished this without taking sides. Having as- 
 sumed office she began work for the children of 
 Chicago. In the war that had preceded her the 
 children had been overshadowed. Mrs. Young 
 rescued them from the darkness and set them 
 in the light. Somewhat shamefacedly educators 
 realised that their business was first of all the 
 schools, and conscience-stricken they set to 
 work. These are some of the things Mrs. Young 
 did for the children during her first year. 
 
 She found a system of artificial ventilation 
 in school buildings which succeeded in produc- 
 ing foul air. The system forbade the opening 
 of windows. Mrs. Young ordered them opened 
 from top and bottom and the rooms aired. 
 
 She organised fresh-air classes for pupils 
 who needed an extra amount of oxygen, but she
 
 266 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 forbade the mention of disease in connection 
 with these special classes. 
 
 She selected ten songs to be known as Chi- 
 cago's school songs. These were taught to 
 every school child in the city, so that at any 
 gathering of schools the children met singing 
 the same songs, a common possession. 
 
 She revised the course of study. Far from 
 being autocratic about this most important 
 work, she called to her her superintendents, 
 group of principals and Normal School teach- 
 ers, and a group of the actual teachers of grade 
 children to plan with her the most practical 
 course to be devised. In the revised course of 
 study two things were marked. The first was 
 the introduction of handwork to be taught in 
 every grade, and in Teachers' College. The 
 second was a course to be taught in the elemen- 
 tary schools to be known as " Chicago." This 
 course was to make the children intelligent 
 about their own city. It included local geog- 
 raphy, industries, history, method of govern- 
 ment and some idea of the political situation. 
 Whenever possible, Mrs. Young advocated illus- 
 trating this course by visits through the city. 
 
 So much for the children. For the teachers 
 of Chicago that first year did the following: 
 
 The salaries of the elementary teachers were 
 raised. The salaries of High School teachers
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 267 
 
 were raised. The maximum salary for prin- 
 cipals was raised. Teachers who were absent 
 because of illness had been paid their salaries 
 less their substitutes' pay for two weeks. Mrs. 
 Young made the two weeks, ten. To every 
 school which needed it she gave a clerk to han- 
 dle mechanical work, correspondence, reports, 
 etc., thus relieving the principal and permitting 
 her to give her time to the work for which she 
 was appointed, the supervision of the teaching. 
 She arranged that every large school should 
 have an extra teacher to supplement the teach- 
 ing force. She had a swimming pool installed 
 in Teachers' College. She opened her office 
 door to the teaching force of the city, inviting 
 them to come to discuss with her any subject of 
 interest to teacher, schools or pupils. 
 
 Towards the end of Mrs. Young's first year 
 of superintendency the teachers of the city of 
 Chicago planned to give a reception to com- 
 memorate the occasion. Men and women vied 
 with each other in making the affair a success. 
 The teaching force as a whole, six thousand 
 strong, entered into the event with an enthusi- 
 asm that resulted in a demonstration the lik6 
 of which Chicago nor any other city has seen. 
 The Auditorium Theatre, where the reception 
 was held, seats some four thousand five hundred 
 people. On the night of the reception seven
 
 268 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 thousand people crowded into the building and 
 then the doors were shut to exclude hundreds 
 more. In the centre of the great auditorium 
 a dais had been erected, and as the orchestra 
 struck up a stirring march two hundred and 
 fifty teachers, representing every public school 
 in the city, marched from the main entrance to 
 the dais. In their hands they held long bands 
 of ribbon, and holding these they lined the way 
 Mrs. Young must pass, acting as a guard to 
 keep the audience from pressing toward her. 
 Between these ribbon guards marched two hun- 
 dred schoolgirls, each bearing a long-stemmed 
 American Beauty rose. At a signal they turned 
 and, holding the roses high, formed an arched 
 bower. Through that aisle crowned with flow- 
 ers came Mrs. Young alone. In silence the 
 spectators watched her until she mounted the 
 dais. Then as the orchestra struck up " Il- 
 linois," thousands of handkerchiefs were tossed 
 into the air, and led by the children the mighty 
 throng broke into song. 
 
 " When you heard our city calling, 
 
 Mrs. Young, Mrs. Young! 
 
 When our hope was slowly falling, 
 
 Mrs, Young, Mrs. Young! 
 
 When our fate was poised anew. 
 
 When for justice we would sue, 
 
 Then our eyes were turned to you, 
 
 Mrs. Young, Mrs. Young!"
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 269 
 
 There was no speechmaking. On the dais she 
 stood listening, listening to the spontaneous ac- 
 knowledgment of her years of service, her face 
 illumined and radiant. 
 
 In that same month, the month of June, 1"910, 
 there was a meeting of the National Education 
 Association at Boston. When Mrs. Young first 
 attended a meeting of the National Education 
 Association it was in Ogdensburg. At Ogdens- 
 burg Mrs. Young sat in the gallery and looked 
 down on an organisation of men carrying on 
 business for the promoting of education. 
 Women were not then permitted upon the floor 
 of the National Education Association meetings 
 and in them they had no active part. Women 
 were at that time merely teachers ; no principal- 
 ship was ever conferred except upon a man. 
 But by the time of the Boston convention mat- 
 ters had changed. Women had become princi- 
 pals, and good principals ; women had even be- 
 come assistant superintendents. Women on the 
 teaching force outnumbered the men about ten 
 to one, and yet true to old traditions men still 
 held control of the offices of the Association. 
 June, 1910, marked a revolution in the Asso- 
 ciation. To the astonishment of the public and 
 the utter surprise of the majority of men in the 
 Association, Mrs. Young was elected presi- 
 dent by a vote of two to one, from the
 
 270 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 floor, defeating the man who was the official 
 nominee. 
 
 The educational world had now given Mrs. 
 Young all it had to offer. She was at the same 
 time head of the school system in the second 
 largest city in the country and of the largest 
 association of teachers and educators. The 
 skeptical public waited for the usual develop- 
 ment. For when men or women reach the 
 zenith in any profession it has become quite cus- 
 tomary for them to spend the greater portion of 
 their time not in actual service but in telling 
 other people how they did it. Mrs. Young 
 proved an exception. Not only did she continue 
 to devote her time to the schools of Chicago, 
 but the representatives of the press who called 
 at her office found it increasingly difficult to see 
 her. Finally she adopted a definite policy with 
 regard to interviews. 
 
 '* My time belongs to the city of Chicago," 
 she said firmly. '' I have no time for papers 
 nor for magazines. The only information I will 
 give personally is that which is due to the peo- 
 ple of the city and such statements will always 
 be given to the daily press." 
 
 And inter\dewers who want other informa- 
 tion get it elsewhere. Mrs. Young is busy. 
 
 In the four years that have followed the 
 climax of that first Mrs. Young's glory has in
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 271 
 
 no wise diminished. There is nothing that her 
 world can offer her ; she can but hold what she 
 has attained. She is sustaining well the record 
 of her first year. In addition to the changes 
 mentioned she established two years' vocational 
 work in High Schools and has planned pre- 
 vocational work for backward children in the 
 grades. She instituted a two-year commercial 
 course in High Schools. She placed a kinder- 
 garten in almost every school. She extended 
 manual training and domestic science so that 
 every child could be instructed in these arts. 
 She introduced a custom of employing skilled 
 workers, both men and women, to teach trades 
 and technical subjects in night schools, the tech- 
 nical departments of High Schools, and the 
 handicraft departments of the elementary 
 schools. She introduced women deans into 
 High Schools. She organised teachers and 
 principals into councils to discuss school man- 
 agement and courses of study. She arranged 
 financial matters so that principals, when or- 
 dering supplies, might be intelligent as to the 
 expenditure of their appropriation. She con- 
 tinued uninfluenced by any agency to weigh 
 women and men in the same balance and to 
 mete out rewards proportionately. This was 
 such a new thing in educational circles that 
 the sudden prominence of women in Chicago
 
 272 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 school matters evoked some comment. But in- 
 vestigation into causes showed that Mrs. Young 
 had not become a partisan of her sex. She had 
 simply given justice, and the balance of power 
 had so long been swayed by men to men that 
 justice to women in the teaching profession was 
 a novelty. 
 
 It so happened that some six months after 
 Mrs. Young's appointment to the superintend- 
 ency I was in Illinois visiting. In one of the 
 smaller towns I met a man of influence politi- 
 cally who, despite the distance between, kept an 
 active attention on Chicago matters. Somewhat 
 curiously I asked what he thought of Mrs. 
 Young. He chuckled a bit ruefully. 
 
 " Oh, Ella Young," he said. '' We never ex- 
 pected to elect her. We did it at the last minute 
 because we couldn't get our man. We compro- 
 mised on her, expecting to shelve her in a year. 
 And now," he added, smiling broadly, albeit 
 with some chagrin, '' we've got her and we've 
 got to keep her, I guess. We never supposed 
 she could do it. ' ' 
 
 Had '' they " supposed it, the powers that 
 suffered her to become a compromise candidate, 
 Mrs. Young would never have occupied the su- 
 perintendency. Even after her successful term 
 in office they decided to oust her. In the summer 
 of 1913 Mrs. Young found matters so difficult
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 273 
 
 that she offered her resignation. The Board of 
 Education refused it, despite the fact that the 
 immediate cause of Mrs. Young's action was 
 an effort on the part of certain members of the 
 Board to dictate the selection of text-books, a 
 prerogative which belonged to the superin- 
 tendent. The Board refused to accept a resig- 
 nation, but in December, 1913, at the time 
 of her re-election, there was waged a battle 
 that no one besides Cliicago politicians was 
 able to understand. Mrs. Young had made 
 a record as superintendent that had set a pace 
 for educators throughout the nation; Mrs. 
 Young had faithfully filled every requirement 
 of her office. Yet with the whole country hon- 
 ouring her, with Chicago schools recognised as 
 among the most progressive in the land, with 
 the body of teachers devoted to her, willing to 
 work with her and for her, the men " who ex- 
 pected to shelve her in a year " made the at- 
 tempt. Despite them, she was re-elected, but 
 under such conditions that she felt it impera- 
 tive that she send in her resignation. The day 
 that her resignation went in the women of Chi- 
 cago rose. Women counted little in the city 
 when Mrs. Young entered office, but in the year 
 of her re-election they had the franchise, — and 
 political power. The teaching force is composed 
 mainly of women and it stayed loyal to Mrs.
 
 274 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 Young. Added to this were the women's clubs, 
 the settlements and last but not least the moth- 
 ers of the children in the schools. 
 
 These newly enfranchised citizens did not 
 mince matters. The Women's Association of 
 Commerce, one of the first women's organisa- 
 tions to protest against the removal of Mrs. 
 Young, stated publicly that ' ' it believed that by 
 her removal the Board of Education, servants 
 of the people, had betrayed a public trust and 
 that Chicago men and women stood humiliated 
 before the world. 
 
 '' It believed that a great wrong had been 
 committed against children, parents, teachers 
 of Chicago, against the whole educational sys- 
 tem of America ; against a great woman. 
 
 '' It believed that as Chicago is the vortical 
 centre of social and industrial unrest, so is it 
 the dynamic centre of forces constructing the 
 new human era, that it shall be untainted by 
 vicious politics when men and women shall be 
 poUtically, socially, industrially and commer- 
 cially equal. 
 
 " It believed that passive acceptance of the 
 deposition of Mrs. Young was collusion with 
 the destructive forces of society that would 
 forever delay the establishment of a new era 
 among us ; that passive acceptance was betrayal 
 of the trust of all the world.
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 275 
 
 ** No middle course was there for us to tread. 
 Either we were aligned with progress or we 
 were aligned with ignorance and retrogression. 
 By our creed we had proclaimed our intellectual 
 and moral standards. We believed, we said, 
 that with women lay the solution of our great 
 civic, industrial and political problems. Here 
 was occasion to test the integrity of our creed. 
 Were we not organised for service not re- 
 stricted to a small coterie, to the community, 
 not even to America? 
 
 " And in conformity to our tenets, the Asso- 
 ciation protested against the removal of Mrs. 
 Young. ' ' 
 
 The Women's Association of Commerce 
 voiced the sentiments of the women of the city. 
 Mrs. Young's removal was not a personal mat- 
 ter. It represented the injustice that had been 
 meted out for centuries by men to the women 
 they governed. And the women who had the 
 vote declined longer to accept injustice. A Com- 
 mittee representing the spirit of all the organ- 
 ised women in the city waited on the Mayor. 
 Meetings were held, the daily press contained 
 columns of protest. ^ Mrs. Young's resignation 
 was not accepted. Listead, all the necessary 
 steps toward making her re-acceptance of office 
 an affair concerning which there could not be 
 the least doubt were taken by a chastened and
 
 276 AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK 
 
 humbled Board of Education. The politicians 
 of Chicago were beaten by a woman, and by 
 a woman nearly seventy years of age, whom 
 they had coolly calculated could be " shelved *' 
 without trouble. 
 
 At sixty-nine Mrs. Young shows no sign of 
 weakness. Both mind and body are alert and 
 vigorous. Daily she administers the school af- 
 fairs of Chicago with as sure a touch and as 
 firm as when she entered office. 
 
 Almost all her life Mrs. Young has been a 
 public servant. As such her career has been 
 frank and open, without a suggestion of per- 
 sonal ambition. The offices she has occupied 
 have sought her, and the woman has always 
 been bigger than the office, even to the superin- 
 tendency. But the private life of Mrs. Young, 
 and her real personality as an indi\4dual, are 
 difficult to analyse, since in all individual mat- 
 ters she is as reserved as she is frank in matters 
 of public concern. Commenting on this re- 
 serve, a friend of twenty-five years, Dr. J. Rose 
 Colby, says : 
 
 *' In the midst of her half public and public 
 life is her personal life as a human being, rich 
 in all the ties but one that make the fulness of 
 life, and holding them all with a loyalty as rare 
 as even her devotion to her work has been. . . . 
 All the great relationships of life except parent-
 
 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG 277 
 
 hood have shaped this woman and informed her 
 vision. Nay, though actual parenthood has not 
 come to her, yet the mother heart was her en- 
 dowment, and whoever has seen her with chil- 
 dren or heard her talk of them, knows that one 
 of the forces that have given her power and 
 wisdom as a teacher and a guide of teachers is 
 the deep seat of motherliness of her. . . . 
 
 " Her power to make friends and her capacity 
 for friendship have enriched her own life and 
 the lives of others. And she adds a charm of 
 high spirits of banter, and of humour to her 
 serious intercourse with friends."
 
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