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 ECONOMICS 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF RELIEF 
 
 EFFICIENCY AND RELIEF 
 
 MISERY AND ITS CAUSES 
 
 Standard Library Edition 
 
 SOCIAL FORCES 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF SOCIAL WORK 
 
 THE FAMILY AND SOCIAL WORK 
 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 
 May be obtained through 
 Survey Associates, Incorporated 
 105 east 22d street, new york
 
 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 EDWARD T. DEVINE 
 
 SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1915
 
 Copyright. 1915. by 
 EDWARD T. DEV1NE 
 
 PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO. 
 PHILADELPHIA
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 tl M SANTA BARBARA 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Note 2 
 
 Introduction 3 
 
 I. Infancy 13 
 
 II. Childhood 43 
 
 III. Youth 75 
 
 IV. Maturity: Work 115 
 
 V. Maturity: Home 153 
 
 VI. Late Maturity and Old Age 193 
 
 Appendix: Suggestive Questions 223 
 
 Index 229
 
 NOTE 
 
 This volume contains the substance of a course 
 of lectures delivered in Baltimore in February and 
 March, 191 5, under the auspices of The Social 
 Service Corporation. The course is the first 
 of a series planned for successive years on the 
 general theme of Social Construction. 
 
 Except when obviously inappropriate, the direct 
 form of address has been retained, as well as refer- 
 ences to local conditions by way of illustration. 
 
 My colleague, Miss Brandt, has shared in the 
 preparation of the lectures and of the volume for 
 publication. E. T. D.
 
 INTRODUCTION
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The general theme of the series of lectures intro- 
 duced by this course is Social Construction. I 
 accept the faith which the phrase implies: the 
 faith that we build the social structure; that it is 
 not external or mechanical, but human, spiritual, 
 influenced by our ideals, shaped by our actions. 
 Pragmatist or meliorist, we who preach social con- 
 struction must insist on the fruitfulness of human 
 effort directed toward social betterment. We 
 cannot be pessimists, wringing our hands because 
 progress is impossible; nor yet optimists, with idle 
 or mischievous hands because progress is inevitable. 
 Our faith, rather, with that of William James, is 
 that progress is possible, but not inevitable; that 
 it is dependent upon our efforts. We are the archi- 
 tects and builders of our own well-being and that 
 of our posterity. 
 
 For this introduction to the series it has seemed 
 to me appropriate that we should attempt — not a 
 brilliant presentment of existing evils (we know 
 what they are) and not a thrilling appeal to you to 
 do something about them (the need for that is past 
 in this community), but rather a comprehensive 
 
 5
 
 6 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 outline picture, a sober, unimpassioned, matter-of- 
 fact interpretation of social plans and movements, 
 from which we may see things in perspective, by 
 means of which we may realize how little we have 
 done as yet about some things, how few are the 
 consecrated workers, how limited our vision, how 
 inadequate our practical application of that ad- 
 mirable principle of cooperation so constantly on 
 our lips, how provincial and fragmentary all our 
 philanthropy, even the best of it, how unworthy to 
 be called either charity or justice, if by those noble 
 words we mean what our fathers meant, or what 
 our sons will mean by those or better terms de- 
 scribing the better human relations which are to be. 
 
 There are several possible plans on which such a 
 survey as this might be made. We might con- 
 sider the duties of society with respect to the moral, 
 the mental, and the physical needs of man. We 
 might select the more pressing of our social prob- 
 lems (poverty, sickness, inefficiency, crime, irregu- 
 lar employment) and examine the remedies that 
 have been advocated for them. Or we might study 
 historically the forms of social work which have 
 been devised by various peoples at different times, 
 tracing their development, examining the principles 
 on which they are based, and seeking to discover 
 what lessons they have for us in the United States 
 in the twentieth century. 
 
 Any of these plans would yield profitable results. 
 I have chosen, however, another method of ap-
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 proach, hoping that we may get both unity and pro- 
 portion into our study, and perhaps see some old 
 problems in a new light, if we take for our background 
 the normal individual life, and, following it through 
 from beginning to end, try to determine what are 
 the social conditions and social provisions which are 
 essential at each stage to securing it. 
 
 On this plan we shall interest ourselves in the 
 positive rather than the negative aspect of life, in 
 normal development rather than pathological aber- 
 rations, in healthy participation in organized human 
 activities rather than in waste, pauperism, crim- 
 inality, and degeneracy. We shall never be very 
 far from the abnormal and the subnormal, never 
 quite free from the consciousness of that incessant 
 warfare between beneficent germs and pathogenic 
 germs of which the human body is the choicest 
 battle field, and which has its analogy in spiritual 
 struggle; never able to forget that a normal life 
 is vouchsafed to any of us only as an ideal. 
 
 We shall never find ourselves in that home of the 
 ideal, of which Bernard Shaw writes so eloquently,* 
 where we escape the tyranny of the flesh; where 
 there are no social questions, no political questions, 
 no religious questions — best of all, perhaps, no 
 sanitary questions; where we call our appearance 
 beauty, our emotions love, our sentiments heroism, 
 our aspirations virtue, just as we did on earth; 
 but where there are no hard facts to contradict us, 
 * Man and Superman.
 
 8 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 no ironic contrast of needs with pretensions, no 
 human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance. 
 To be sure, the other name of this idyllic paradise 
 is hell. It is a universal melodrama, a home of 
 delusion ; and we humans, if we analyze our deep- 
 est preferences, will not wish to be translated pre- 
 maturely from this normal, incomplete, but de- 
 veloping life to one of universal melodrama and 
 perpetual romance. 
 
 The normal life rather than abnormalities, pros- 
 perity rather than misery, health rather than dis- 
 ease, will furnish the framework of our discussion. 
 
 "The normal life of man" suggests a fairly defi- 
 nite picture, the same in its essentials however much 
 it may vary as to details. 
 
 We think of a child born, without congenital 
 defects, into a home where it has been lovingly 
 expected and prepared for. We see it carefully, if 
 not always scientifically, tended through its first 
 delicate years, weathering various minor ailments 
 and "children's diseases," though probably with 
 one or more narrow escapes, learning its first lessons 
 in self-control, getting its fundamental ideas of 
 material things and of human relations — in short, 
 entering into its "social heritage." Next comes a 
 happy period made up of school and play and home 
 life, some acquaintance with racial traditions of 
 religion and morality, and more or less acquaintance, 
 through travel and otherwise, with the outside 
 world. We think of the family circle as including
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 the child's father and mother, one or two or three 
 brothers and sisters, a grandmother, at least, to 
 represent the older generation, and some uncles and 
 aunts and cousins to form an intermediate link 
 between the home and the mysterious world. 
 
 Childhood past, — whether at fourteen or sixteen 
 or twelve or ten, — there follows a period of prepara- 
 tion for the responsibilities of manhood and woman- 
 hood, and this is the point where there will probably 
 be the greatest varieties among our mental pictures 
 of a normal life. To some it means a broad general 
 education, followed by professional training, with a 
 year or two in Europe and long summers of recre- 
 ation, bringing the young woman to the age of 
 twenty-three or four or five, and the young man to 
 perhaps twenty-seven or eight. For others it 
 represents a high school and normal course for the 
 girl, and a high school course followed by induction 
 into "business" or a skilled trade for the boy; for 
 others still a brief and superficial commercial or 
 industrial training at the end of grammar school. 
 Even among those whose children go to work, at 
 any kind of job they can get, as soon as the law 
 allows, few would be found to defend the practice. 
 A high school education or its equivalent, with 
 some sort of vocational training, — agricultural, 
 industrial, commercial, or professional, — is fast 
 coming to be part of the American standard of 
 living. 
 
 Arrived at maturity, equipped to earn a living and
 
 10 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 to spend it, we picture the young man and woman 
 marrying, surrounding their children with rather 
 more comforts and advantages than they them- 
 selves had, giving them a longer period for educa- 
 tion. We think of them as living to see their chil- 
 dren established in homes of their own, and their 
 grandchildren growing up; gradually relinquishing 
 active duties to the younger generation, while keep- 
 ing lively interests and a place of usefulness ; their 
 support provided either by savings or by their 
 children's care, and at the end leaving the world, — 
 reluctantly, to be sure, for it has been an agree- 
 able place, — but with a sense of satisfaction, as at 
 the close of a full day of work and wholesome pleas- 
 ure and friendly intercourse. 
 
 There is no place in the picture for blind babies, 
 feeble-minded girls, syphilitic young men, neglected 
 orphans, child workers, ignorant and inefficient 
 men and women, repulsive and lonely old people; 
 there is no place for dependence on charity, for 
 long disabling illness or accident, for prostitution, 
 drunkenness, vice, or habitual crime, for neglect of 
 children or other disregard of natural obligations, 
 for premature age or early death. 
 
 These things all exist, — we are not in heaven, — 
 and we all know that they exist, — we are not in 
 hell, — but they do not occur to us, even to those of 
 us who are most familiar with them, when we are 
 thinking of the normal course of an individual's life 
 from the cradle to the grave. They are abnormali-
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 ties. They are things which interfere with the 
 realization by every individual of a normal life. 
 They are obstacles that we shall have to reckon 
 with in considering by what means the normal life, 
 at each stage of the individual's development, may 
 be assured.
 
 I 
 
 INFANCY
 
 THE BEGINNING OF LIFE 
 The normal life of man falls obviously into seven 
 natural divisions: before birth, infancy, childhood, 
 adolescence, early maturity, full maturity, and old 
 age. It is the poet's number, but not precisely his 
 boundaries, for we are concerned less with those 
 external signs of man's development which Shakes- 
 peare mentions, such as his indigestion, his school 
 books, his oaths, his sword, and his cane, and more 
 with his essential functions and the peculiar prob- 
 lems which his progress through the course of life 
 presents. And so we discover the child not in the 
 nurse's arms, but at the moment of annunciation, 
 when the young wife hears a welcome salutation : 
 
 Hail, highly favored, blessed art thou among 
 women. Fear not. 
 
 And she is ready to answer: 
 
 Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it 
 unto me according to thy word. 
 
 Every woman, in the sacred hour when she knows 
 that she has become the lawful custodian of a new 
 life, a life for whom all things on earth, aye and in 
 heaven and in hell, are possible, may well feel, as 
 Mary of Nazareth felt before her cousin Elizabeth, 
 
 15
 
 16 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 a magnificent exaltation, not unmingled with deep 
 humility. This child which is to be born, it may 
 be in a cramped tenement, in the alley, in the alms- 
 house, even in the stable, shall also be the son of the 
 Most High. 
 
 He hath regarded the low estate of his 
 handmaiden . . . From henceforth all 
 generations shall call me blessed. His mercy 
 is for them that fear him from generation to 
 generation. He hath put down the mighty 
 from their seats and exalted them of low degree. 
 He hath scattered the proud in the imagination 
 of their hearts. He hath filled the hungry 
 with good things: and the rich he hath sent 
 empty away. 
 
 No one else is so sublimely sure of the truth of 
 these strange sayings as the expectant mother. 
 The hope of ultimate justice and good will among 
 men rests upon the constantly repeated miracle 
 of the creation of new lives. If the passing genera- 
 tion of men could to-day be conceived as locked in 
 a life and death struggle with the forces of bar- 
 barism, without the reinforcements for which we 
 are accustomed to look to the coming generation, 
 who would dare be an optimist? Every mother 
 has a right to feel that none can set bounds to the 
 promise of her unborn child. The proud, the 
 mighty, or the rich, who in their wealth, their 
 might, and their pride think otherwise have to 
 reckon with two things beyond their power, stronger
 
 INFANCY 17 
 
 than their pride, not to be touched by their wealth : 
 the unexplored potentialities of a new life, and 
 the unbounded faith inherent in a mother's love. 
 
 To insure a fair start in life for the individual — a 
 normal beginning of the normal life — reliance must 
 be placed chiefly on the individual and the family. 
 Society may, to a limited extent, by conscious effort, 
 determine what kind of children shall be born, and 
 what kind of care they shall receive after birth, 
 but in the main the important services of society 
 at this stage are indirect and advisory: the pro- 
 vision of such education as will make individuals 
 lead clean and wholesome lives and act wisely, 
 when the time comes, about marriage and parent- 
 hood; of such industrial and social conditions as 
 will make it possible for women to bear healthy 
 children without exhaustion; and of such assis- 
 tance, chiefly in the way of advice, as will enable 
 them to care intelligently for their babies after 
 they are born. The selection of parents for the 
 next generation is at present in America, and is 
 likely to continue to be, left to individual choice; 
 and the only satisfactory method that has yet been 
 found for getting babies safely through the first 
 year of life is the strictly individualistic plan of 
 attention to each one by its own mother. 
 
 PARENTAGE 
 There are three distinct sets of problems involved 
 in this one of a normal beginning of life, according
 
 18 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 as they center about (i) parentage, (2) the period 
 before birth, and (3) the life of the infant in the 
 first year or two after birth. 
 
 Heredity is a fact of human life of which not 
 merely the individual in his private relations, but 
 the community in its broader social relations, must 
 take account. Normally like tends to beget like. 
 It is sound human policy to prevent the conception 
 of human beings who are to be cursed from the very 
 origin of life with an irremediable handicap. There 
 is a blight on the blessing in the motherhood of an 
 imbecile child. There is no inalienable right to be 
 the father of tainted, diseased, degenerate off- 
 spring. As to the early steps in this particular 
 policy of social construction, the evidence is all in. 
 Modern science has demonstrated that no feeble- 
 minded mother, no syphilitic mother, no alcoholic 
 mother, and no mother of a child whose father is 
 alcoholic, feeble-minded, or syphilitic, may expect 
 to give birth to a normal child. We cannot say 
 that it never occurs. In the old polytheistic days 
 a human mother sometimes gave birth to a divinity, 
 and there are about equal chances of a similar mir- 
 acle in the bringing forth of health from degeneracy. 
 
 The first step then is clear. Those who are 
 demonstrably unfit for parentage — the imbecile, 
 the incurably insane, the epileptic, and those who 
 suffer from such diseases as directly afflict off- 
 spring — should be firmly and consistently con- 
 trolled. So far as defectives and incurables are
 
 INFANCY 19 
 
 concerned, this should be done preferably in cus- 
 todial institutions, humanely conducted colonies, 
 where the capacities of the patients may be exer- 
 cised for their own good and that of their com- 
 panions; but if not in such institutions, then in 
 some other way, by adequate home supervision 
 when there are sufficient resources for it and suffi- 
 cient guarantee that it will be exercised, by surgi- 
 cal operation in suitable cases, though conserva- 
 tives on this subject would prefer that such opera- 
 tions should be performed, for the present, not as a 
 result of specific legislation, but, like other medical 
 and surgical treatment, only when the health of the 
 patient also justifies it and then on the professional 
 responsibility of the physician in charge. 
 
 To eliminate the ravages of the venereal dis- 
 eases it is necessary that they be brought under 
 public control by means of the program which has 
 been tested with respect to other infectious dis- 
 eases: compulsory notification to the Board of 
 Health of all affected persons known to institutions 
 and to private physicians; free laboratory assist- 
 ance in making Wassermann tests and other aids 
 to diagnosis; a very considerable increase in pro- 
 vision for treatment, both in hospitals and in clin- 
 ics; popular education about the consequences of 
 these diseases to wife — or husband — and child, 
 about their long and insidious course, and the treat- 
 ment essential to cure. 
 
 That unfit marriages should be prevented, and
 
 20 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 also such illegitimate births as would be barred by 
 the same standard, is the foundation-stone of social 
 control. That is only the beginning, but perhaps 
 it may be also the end, of compulsion in the regu- 
 lation of marriages and births. For the state is 
 but one among many agencies of social action. 
 There are many things that can be done through 
 the voluntary principle. The responsibility for 
 wise mating, for improvement of the racial stock 
 through judicious marriage, would better remain 
 where it is for the present — on the parties to the 
 marriage contract, their parents, their spiritual 
 advisers, and their matchmaking friends. Educa- 
 tion is needed; improved facilities in parks and 
 parlors for legitimate courtship are needed; more 
 rational standards of living, in which substantial 
 values and genuine necessities receive more em- 
 phasis and artificial luxuries less; but all these 
 things are to be secured through discussion, through 
 the survival of sensible ideas, through the con- 
 tagion of high ideals, rather than by any form of 
 coercion. A social program does not necessarily 
 mean a program of legislation. 
 
 If we build suitable institutions for the mentally 
 defective, with enough room in them for all who 
 cannot safely be left at large — not necessarily ex- 
 pensive institutions, but safe, clean, equipped with 
 all appropriate means for providing employment, 
 education, recreation, and considerate care; and 
 if we provide adequately for the maintenance of
 
 INFANCY 21 
 
 these institutions, we shall be doing our first large 
 duty. Commitment to such institutions should 
 be compulsory, if necessary, though there is ad- 
 vantage in having also institutions to which access 
 is voluntary, and the guardianship should last as 
 long as the condition lasts, that is, ordinarily, for 
 life. The establishment and adequate maintenance 
 and actual use of such colonies for the feeble- 
 minded would actually eliminate enough prostitu- 
 tion, intemperance, pauperism, crime, and disease 
 to pay for their cost probably many times over. 
 But the financial argument is subordinate to the 
 argument from social construction: it would cut 
 out just so many weak spots in our social founda- 
 tions; it would put an end to an appalling amount 
 of actual misery, actual loss of life and property, 
 actual failure, suffering, and disgrace. 
 
 Closely connected with this subject is the prob- 
 lem of illegitimacy. It is desirable that children 
 shall be born in wedlock. The illegitimate child 
 has less chance than others to be born alive; it 
 has only about half the chances of living through 
 its first year; and in other ways, too well known 
 to need mention, it is handicapped from the outset. 
 The point at which to prevent illegitimate births 
 is in the home and at school, long before they would 
 occur, by the development of the will of the strong 
 and by the protection of the person of the weak. 
 Guarding the mentally defective in the way we have 
 just been considering would do more than any other
 
 22 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 single measure, cutting out at once a very consider- 
 able proportion. Something in the way of deter- 
 rence can be accomplished by prosecution when the 
 girl is under the age of consent, and by fastening 
 responsibility for the child on its father, whether 
 married or not; but these proceedings are effective 
 only in so far as they have the sympathy of public 
 opinion as represented by juries and courts. The 
 repeal of all so-called bastardy laws and the sub- 
 stitution of a simple and humane process by which 
 an unmarried mother may, without any such stigma 
 on her unborn child, secure from its father the 
 means of its support and of care in her own con- 
 finement, would be a very desirable reform. Some- 
 thing can be done, also, to influence the girl at this 
 time and prevent a recurrence of her misfortune, 
 and by far the greatest hope lies in conscious efforts 
 to shield young girls and young men from extra- 
 ordinary temptations. 
 
 So much the law and organized social work can 
 do, but mainly the purification of parenthood, the 
 social insurance of a wholesome birth, depends 
 upon the individual. There is no adequate safe- 
 guard against unfit births except an early acquired 
 ideal of preparation for parenthood: an ideal a- 
 mounting to a passion, strong enough to keep the 
 baser passions in subjection, to hold the strong 
 young men to a purity of life, to a rational use and 
 a normal development of all their youthful powers ; 
 an ideal of motherhood not too remote or too at-
 
 INFANCY 23 
 
 tenuated to exercise a positive influence on the 
 youthful maidens among all the new tendencies and 
 temptations, the strong currents of opinion and 
 emancipating waves of emotion to which they are 
 subjected. Domestic ideals have rivals in our time. 
 They must be exalted the more. We must edu- 
 cate toward them, whatever other ideals we are 
 also ready to recognize. 
 
 ANTE-NATAL LIFE 
 
 After the child has begun its ante-natal life, of 
 healthy parents, united under the sanction of so- 
 ciety, the next stage is comparatively simple. The 
 normal outcome is the birth of a living child; and 
 so powerfully does nature work toward this end 
 that a very moderate amount of attention is usually 
 sufficient to insure it. The problem is further 
 simplified by the fact that the welfare of the child 
 at this stage depends on the welfare and intelli- 
 gence of one individual — its mother — who, if our 
 preliminary conditions have been met, is normal in 
 mind and body and has the good of the child at 
 heart. 
 
 At present, it is true, this ante-natal period ap- 
 pears to be the most dangerous period of life. 
 English and French authorities have estimated 
 that one out of five or six pregnancies end in abor- 
 tion or miscarriage.* The proportion may not be 
 
 * The latest available English estimates, in the Forty- 
 third Annual Report (1913-14) of the Medical Officer of the
 
 24 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 so large in this country, but there can be no doubt 
 that the waste of life in this way is enormous. In 
 addition, there are the children born dead, though 
 at full term, which probably occurs in at least one 
 case out of twenty.* We should consider in this 
 connection also the large number of deaths in the 
 first month of infancy which are attributable to 
 congenital debility, prematurity, convulsions, mal- 
 formations, and injuries at birth. The infant 
 death-rate from congenital causes has been prac- 
 tically unaffected by the measures which have been 
 so extraordinarily successful in cutting down the 
 infant death-rate as a whole in many cities in the 
 last few years, and sanitarians are agreed in urging 
 extensive and thorough provision for ante-natal in- 
 struction as the most important measure to be 
 taken if it is hoped to effect any considerable 
 further reduction in infant mortality. 
 
 A large part of this loss of life before birth, or im- 
 mediately after, is sheer flagrant waste, which 
 would be avoided if the most elementary social 
 policies were in force. Statistical statements on 
 these points must be made guardedly, but the 
 
 Local Government Board (page xxviii), are somewhat lower: 
 a total ante-natal mortality, including still-births, of one 
 hundred and fifty per one thousand births, one-half of 
 which may be ascribed to syphilis. This estimate still makes 
 the ante-natal mortality much higher than the total mor- 
 tality in the first year after birth. 
 
 * This is about the proportion of still-births in New York 
 City at the present time, but it is probable that many still- 
 births are not yet reported.
 
 INFANCY 25 
 
 elimination of intemperance, of the physical dis- 
 ease of syphilis, and the social fact of illegitimacy 
 would certainly eliminate over half the miscarriages, 
 still-births, and abortions, natural and criminal, 
 that occur. For the rest, and for the early deaths 
 after birth, what is mainly needed is such a family 
 budget and such conditions in the home as will give 
 the mother a moderate degree of comfort and rea- 
 sonable freedom from anxiety and overwork; such 
 provision of advice and instruction for her, adapted 
 to her understanding, as will save the embryonic 
 human being from actual violence through her 
 ignorance or carelessness, and bring it to birth in 
 the best possible condition; and such competent 
 attendance at birth as will do away absolutely with 
 all avoidable injuries to mother or child. 
 
 It is astounding how very moderate are the needs 
 of the mother at this time, and how great the re- 
 turn for a slight investment in her comfort. Five 
 hundred French babies whose mothers spent ten 
 days or more in a pre-maternity home before con- 
 finement were found to weigh twelve per cent more, 
 which means that in other ways also they were con- 
 siderably better equipped for life, than five hundred 
 whose mothers, otherwise in much the same cir- 
 cumstances, worked up to the day of confinement. 
 The study recently published by the Children's 
 Bureau shows that in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 
 the infant mortality rate in the poorest families 
 was three times as great as in the families in com-
 
 26 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 fortable circumstances where the father's annual 
 earnings amounted to $1200 or more. It is exceed- 
 ingly important that there should not be overwork 
 of any kind (or over-fatigue through social func- 
 tions or pleasures) at any time during this critical 
 period, and that toward its end there should be a 
 considerable lightening of tasks and responsibility; 
 but, on the other hand, it is not necessary, or even 
 desirable, that the mother should spend the nine 
 months in idleness. Occupations suited to her 
 strength are an advantage. 
 
 The definite instruction of prospective mothers is 
 a social service and a social duty of the first order 
 of importance. There is perhaps no other form 
 of social work which yields larger returns on the 
 modest investment required. It is a service needed 
 by the comfortably well-to-do as by the poor. It 
 can be rendered by a qualified private physician 
 or an experienced mother as well as by a nurse 
 from the Department of Health, but when instruc- 
 tion from natural private sources is lacking, then 
 it should be provided at public expense. Encourag- 
 ing beginnings have been made by governmental 
 agencies and private organizations in various places, 
 and the results which are everywhere apparent 
 after only a brief trial leave no doubt as to the 
 desirability of greatly extending such service. 
 
 The Federal Children's Bureau made the prepara- 
 tion of an authoritative pamphlet on Pre-natal
 
 INFANCY 27 
 
 Care* one of the first claims on the very moderate 
 resources of its first year's appropriation, and this 
 has proved to be one of the popular publications 
 of the government. It is deservedly so, for it is 
 written by a competent mother, simply, clearly, 
 and scientifically, explaining everything in such a 
 way as to inspire confidence in the advice given 
 and to dissipate unnecessary alarms and fears. 
 For the normal American woman who can read and 
 understand simple English and follow simple in- 
 structions nothing could be better. 
 
 There are many mothers, however, who, un- 
 fortunately, can not profit by such instruction as 
 this. For them an organized clinic service, of 
 physicians and of nurses with special aptitude and 
 qualifications, is needed in the cities and towns. 
 In rural districts this work can probably best be 
 done through a district-nursing system. The 
 Budin Foundation in Paris is a classic example of 
 this kind of service, but the New Zealand Society 
 for the Health of Women and Children bids fair to 
 become the best known in America, through the 
 publication, recently, by the Children's Bureau of 
 an account of its methods. The instruction and 
 supervision given by such organizations are not 
 confined to the ante-natal period; their ante-natal 
 work, in fact, is usually an extension backward 
 from milk-stations and visitation of new-born 
 * By Mrs. Max West.
 
 28 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 babies, as the necessity of beginning earlier becomes 
 apparent. 
 
 The New Zealand Society is a private organiza- 
 tion, supervised and subsidized by the government. 
 In the five years after it was organized the infant 
 mortality of the city of Dunedin, where it has its 
 headquarters, a residential city of about sixty 
 thousand inhabitants, was exactly cut in two, and 
 brought to a point considerably lower than that of 
 New Zealand in general, though at the beginning 
 of the period it was already lower than in any 
 American city for which we have credible data. In 
 New York City, among the three thousand moth- 
 ers supervised by the Milk Committee and by the 
 Department of Health in the first year after it took 
 over the pre-natal work of the Committee, the 
 percentage of still-births and of premature births 
 was considerably less than the average for the 
 city, only about half as many babies died during 
 their first month and only four mothers in all, and 
 over ninety per cent of the babies were still being 
 fed entirely from the breast at the end of their 
 first month. 
 
 BIRTH 
 
 Ante-natal care involves, as we have seen, clinics 
 and home visiting. It involves also hospital ac- 
 commodation for complicated cases of pregnancy, 
 and advance supervision of preparations for con- 
 finement, whether under the care of physicians or 
 midwives. The training of midwives and official
 
 INFANCY 29 
 
 recognition of their calling seem to be a present 
 necessity, if not a permanent policy. Ante-natal 
 care incidentally gives an opportunity for personal 
 contact between capable nurses and midwives 
 which should help to increase the efficiency and 
 raise the standards of the practice of midwifery. 
 Related to this is the diminution which may be 
 expected in the number of cases of ophthalmia neo- 
 natorum by instructing mothers to insist that the 
 effective silver drops shall be applied to the eyes 
 immediately after birth; for while it is a reproach 
 to our sanitary standards that this precaution 
 should be necessary, nevertheless it is necessary, 
 and will be necessary until the infectious disease 
 which is responsible for a large part of congenital 
 blindness has become as rare as small-pox, instead 
 of being, as at present, more prevalent than measles. 
 Mainly, however, and inclusive of all the other 
 anticipated results of ante-natal instruction and 
 supervision, is the production of healthier and 
 stronger children and a reduction of the general 
 infant mortality and morbidity. 
 
 At the time of birth the minimum requirement is 
 skilled and prompt attendance in normal confine- 
 ment at home, and prompt and adequate hospital 
 care when there are conditions involving special 
 danger to mother or child, unless the home condi- 
 tions are exceptionally favorable for constant medi- 
 cal and nursing oversight. 
 
 Even for the normal labor of mothers in com- 
 
 3
 
 30 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 fortable economic circumstances the use of the ma- 
 ternity hospital grows apace, for the reason given 
 by Sir Thomas More some centuries ago as to why 
 hospitals were used in his Utopia, simply that they 
 were more comfortable places in which to be sick. 
 The registration of every birth is an essential 
 feature of our social program, but one which we 
 have been exceedingly remiss in recognizing. For 
 lack of an accurate record of births we can only 
 guess about such vital questions as the natural 
 increase of population and the rate of infant mor- 
 tality in most of our cities and states and in the 
 United States as a whole. Child-labor laws, and 
 other legislation involving proof of age or nativity, 
 are creating and increasing popular appreciation 
 of the usefulness of this piece of red tape, as it has 
 probably been regarded by the average native 
 American. In many cities documentary evidence 
 of age is required both to get into school and to get 
 out, if release is desired as early as possible. Birth 
 certificates are frequently needed to establish a 
 right to inheritance or to American citizenship. 
 Of even greater importance to the individual, how- 
 ever, though he may not so readily see it, is the 
 basis an accurate registration of births gives to the 
 sanitarian for studying the fluctuations of infant 
 mortality, that "sensitive index . . . of social 
 welfare and of sanitary administration,"* and the 
 starting-point it furnishes for the operation of a 
 * Newsholme.
 
 INFANCY 31 
 
 systematic supervision of babies. The Census 
 Bureau is working away at this problem, as it is 
 at the registration of deaths. It must be solved 
 chiefly, however, by the local boards of health. 
 There is no reason why every city in the country 
 should not have, within half a dozen years, if it 
 wants it, a record of births that is practically com- 
 plete. Recent tests in New York indicate that 
 ninety-eight or ninety-nine per cent are now prop- 
 erly reported in that city, and if that is possible in 
 New York, with its unparalleled difficulties of 
 varieties in custom and language, it is possible any- 
 where in the country. By acknowledgment of the 
 receipt of certificates, by mailing copies to the 
 parents, by occasional checking-up canvasses of 
 selected blocks and enforcement of penalties against 
 persons found to have been neglectful, an intelli- 
 gent and resourceful Board of Health can success- 
 fully establish the cooperation of physicians, 
 midwives, and parents. 
 
 INFANCY 
 We may now assume that the child whose career 
 we are following is properly registered and launched 
 into infancy. The fundamental problem in this 
 stage is to keep the delicate things alive. The 
 mere business of being a baby, it has been said, 
 ought to be classed as an extra-hazardous occupa- 
 tion. It is far more hazardous than it need be, 
 but, on the other hand, it is far less hazardous than
 
 32 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 it was a few years ago, in certain places where at- 
 tention has been given to removing some of the 
 more obvious dangers. Wherever experiments 
 have been intelligently tried, the results, as in the 
 case of ante-natal care, have been almost theatrical. 
 Reference has been made to the New Zealand 
 city where, in five years, an infant mortality rate 
 which we would be tempted to consider low was 
 actually cut down to half what it had been. Our 
 largest American city can show an improvement 
 almost as encouraging, considering its much less 
 favorable general conditions. There are actually 
 fewer babies dying now every year in New York 
 City than there were in 1870, when the population 
 was only about a third what it is now. Ten years 
 ago in New York City fifteen out of every hundred 
 babies born alive died before they were a year old.* 
 At present this figure has been reduced to less than 
 ten. That means that ninety of every hundred 
 babies now being born may expect to live through 
 their first year, instead of only eighty-five. It 
 means also, what is equally or more important, that 
 these ninety reach their first birthday anniversary 
 in much better condition than the eighty-five ten 
 years ago, and are much more likely to live through 
 their second and third and fourth and succeeding 
 
 * The figure was one hundred and fifty-three per one thou- 
 sand births for the decade 1 896-1905 for Manhattan and 
 Bronx, assuming that ninety per cent of the births were 
 registered at that time; in 1914, when the registration of 
 births was almost complete, the rate was ninety-eight.
 
 INFANCY 33 
 
 years, and not merely to "live through" them, but 
 to "live" them in full health and vigor. It will be 
 harder to save the ninety-first baby, and the ninety- 
 second, ninety-third, ninety-fourth, and ninety- 
 fifth, as they have already done in the far-away 
 little city in the southern seas, but it can probably 
 be done. 
 
 The saving which has been effected in New York 
 and other large cities, in Europe as well as in Amer- 
 ica, has been largely among babies over a month 
 old, and it has been brought about almost entirely 
 by attention to what the sanitarians call "hygienic 
 and dietetic errors." The combined efforts of pri- 
 vate philanthropy and the Department of Health, 
 through milk stations and other educational work, 
 have succeeded in materially reducing the preva- 
 lence of diarrheal diseases, and incidentally, by 
 improved nutrition, increasing the child's resist- 
 ance to pneumonia and other infectious diseases. 
 This has been done by encouraging mothers to 
 nurse their babies, teaching them how to meet 
 their simple but imperative needs of pure air and 
 clean and suitable food with the resources at their 
 command, supplementing these resources when 
 necessary, and furnishing expert counsel in emer- 
 gencies. Improvement in the milk supply and in 
 the water supply and in housing conditions and 
 the general standard of living have also undoubt- 
 edly been factors, operating less directly and over a 
 longer period, but still of fundamental importance.
 
 34 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 By these means fatalities from acute gastroin- 
 testinal diseases have been extraordinarily, and 
 those due to respiratory diseases appreciably, re- 
 duced, and the way has been made clear for further 
 reduction. 
 
 By these means also the gravity of the causes 
 operating at or before birth to produce death in the 
 first month of life has been brought into light; for 
 the mortality from congenital diseases has re- 
 mained practically stationary, while the improve- 
 ment in the other important groups has been going 
 on, until they have ousted diarrheal diseases from 
 the unenviable first place among the causes of 
 infant deaths, and are responsible for forty per 
 cent of the total number. Even here, however, 
 though some of the causes remain obscure, we are 
 already in position to do as much as has been done 
 with respect to the infectious diseases of the diges- 
 tive organs. A large proportion of these deaths in 
 the first days of infancy are due to lack of adequate 
 care before or at birth or immediately after, and 
 to ante-natal infection, and they can be avoided by 
 providing the proper care, and by preventing the 
 infection in such ways as we have indicated. 
 
 It is desirable that the mother should not be over- 
 burdened by physical or mental tasks in the months 
 preceding the child's birth, but a blanket injunction 
 against wage-earning would not yet be warranted, 
 because it seems to be difficult to determine just 
 what forms of employment are injurious and at
 
 INFANCY 35 
 
 what point the injury begins. That a woman 
 should not be employed in a steam laundry or an 
 ordinary factory, or in any other occupation making 
 similar demands on her strength, in the weeks im- 
 mediately before confinement is generally agreed, 
 and legislation to this effect should be extended, 
 even though there is probably no considerable 
 number of American women in danger of subjecting 
 themselves to such risks. It is in the first year of 
 the child's life, however, rather than before its 
 birth, that the problem of the wage-earning mother 
 is the most serious. John Burns once referred, in 
 his picturesque way, to countries "where industries 
 flourish, where mothers labour, and where babies 
 decay"; and it is not an accident that textile 
 workers in England show an infant mortality rate 
 exceeded only by that among miners and unskilled 
 laborers,* nor that Fall River and Lowell, New 
 London and Willimantic have much higher rates 
 than New York and Boston. Any work — pro- 
 fessional, industrial, or unclassified — which inter- 
 feres with the nursing of the child by its mother, 
 either because it exhausts her power or because it 
 keeps her away from home, is condemned from the 
 point of view of the child's welfare. Day nurseries 
 attached to factories in which the work is not ar- 
 duous and the sanitary conditions are good might 
 be a genuine advantage to mother, child, and em- 
 
 * Forty-third Annual Report of the Local Government 
 Board, p. xxix.
 
 36 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 ployer. Day nurseries which receive babies a 
 week or ten days old at seven o'clock in the morn- 
 ing and hand them back to their mothers at seven 
 o'clock at night may well consider whether they 
 are not blindly working against the very thing 
 they have most at heart — the child's welfare. 
 
 Employment of the mother is only one of the 
 factors in home life which has an influence on the 
 survival and the health of babies. All the adverse 
 conditions which go to make up a low standard of 
 living are unfavorable to health at any age, and 
 they are most unfavorable in the delicate and sensi- 
 tive stage of infancy. In any of our cities it is the 
 poorest and most crowded districts in which the 
 babies die fastest — unless it happens, as in New 
 York, that there is some complicating factor, like 
 race, to interfere. It is not possible to pick out the 
 various elements in a low standard of living and 
 determine just what effect each one has on infant 
 mortality, — or on any other social problem, — but 
 the general connection is undeniable. Ignorance 
 and dirt, the baby's worst enemies, are the natural 
 accompaniments of poverty. The Children's Bu- 
 reau found in Johnstown that the infant mortality 
 was five times as great in the poorest ward as in the 
 section containing the homes of the well-to-do; 
 that, in general, it fell as the earnings of husbands 
 rose and the proportion of wage-earning wives de- 
 clined ; that it was considerably lower in dry, clean 
 homes containing a bath-tub, than in damp, dirty
 
 INFANCY 37 
 
 homes with no water-supply in the house; that 
 of the babies who slept at night in a well-ventilated 
 room (nearly half of them did, by the way) only 
 one died in proportion to every six whose mothers 
 carefully kept the windows shut tight; that babies 
 had a better chance to live if their mothers could 
 read some language and could speak English and 
 had been in the United States more than five years 
 — not so much because of the direct and intrinsic 
 advantage to the individual baby of a literate 
 mother who has had the privilege of residence in 
 this country, as because these items, like the bath- 
 tub, happened to be in Johnstown convenient in- 
 dexes to the general economic status of the home. 
 The welfare of the baby, we have tried to em- 
 phasize, depends primarily upon its home, and 
 within the home primarily on its mother, but we 
 must not entirely overlook the contribution of the 
 government, especially the municipal government, 
 toward making the home what it should be and 
 giving the mother an opportunity to meet her obli- 
 gations. Home conditions depend more and more, 
 in our cities, upon general sanitary conditions, 
 which the most intelligent and best-intentioned 
 father of a family can affect only slightly. A 
 minimum standard of housing, with respect to 
 safety, decency, water-supply, and ventilation; 
 an adequate drainage system for all parts of the 
 city; an abundant supply of pure water for drink- 
 ing and household purposes; an efficient street-
 
 38 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 cleaning service; supervision of the milk supply; 
 maintenance of small parks at frequent intervals — 
 these are some of the main features of municipal 
 housekeeping which are prerequisite to family 
 housekeeping of a kind favorable to babies. The 
 local Department of Health has its special responsi- 
 bility for infectious diseases and the opportunity, 
 if taxpayers will furnish the funds, to extend its 
 supervisory and educational work for mothers and 
 children. 
 
 Still another element in the saving of babies and 
 the improvement of the physical basis of the in- 
 dividual's life is further advance in medical knowl- 
 edge of children's diseases and of their causation. 
 All social measures and all individual measures to 
 this end must rest on the teachings of science, and 
 it is the skill and insight of the individual physician 
 that determine again and again whether a particu- 
 lar baby shall live or die. Higher standards of 
 general medical education, the including in the 
 general curriculum of a larger amount of specialized 
 instruction in the diseases of infancy (all groups of 
 medical specialists urge this in regard to their 
 specialities, and rightly) and encouragement of 
 advanced study in this difficult and elusive field, 
 are technical and scientific problems of general 
 social interest. 
 
 Our normal child spends its infancy at home. 
 It does not begin life motherless or fatherless, nor 
 does its mother leave it on a door-step or in the
 
 INFANCY 39 
 
 turning cradle of a hospitable institution on her 
 first day out of the maternity ward. Motherless 
 and fatherless babies are not a part of our normal 
 scheme, and there will be fewer and fewer individ- 
 uals thus handicapped at the outset of life as sound 
 social policies become effective. There may always 
 be a few orphans, but under normal conditions they 
 will be individual problems, — for aunts and grand- 
 mothers and older sisters, mainly, — not social 
 problems for the city department of charities. 
 Provision for foundlings, like the routine adminis- 
 tering of silver nitrate at birth, is a present neces- 
 sity on account of the existence of abnormal con- 
 ditions, which we must use every effort to elimi- 
 nate. As long as it is a necessity, however, we 
 must see that it is done in such a way as to mitigate 
 the handicap of the individual child. There is no 
 reason why the infant mortality rate of foundlings 
 should be one hundred per cent, as it is in some in- 
 stitutions. There seems to be an immense ad- 
 vantage for the baby, and consequently for the 
 state, in small, simple, inexpensive cottages, each 
 in charge of a nurse. There are still greater ad- 
 vantages in persuading unmarried mothers not to 
 relinquish their babies, and in finding them posi- 
 tions where they can work out their own rehabilita- 
 tion. 
 
 THE BIRTH-RATE 
 
 We can hardly leave this review of the social 
 problems surrounding the beginnings of the in-
 
 40 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 dividual life without taking into consideration the 
 phenomenon of the declining birth-rate. 
 
 Whether it is an individual duty to marry and 
 beget children; whether it is a social duty to modify 
 our marriage and courtship traditions so that all 
 of either sex who have the power of fecundity and 
 the desire for children shall have a better oppor- 
 tunity to have them ; whether in the married state 
 the practice of race suicide is an ominous danger; 
 whether it is unfortunate for the race that, gen- 
 erally speaking, an economic line separates the 
 families that have automobiles from those that 
 have perambulators — these are perplexing ques- 
 tions. Some are no doubt accused of race suicide 
 who are really only punished by the sterility of a 
 present or a past disease. Some shrink from pa- 
 renthood because of a false standard of living which, 
 before middle life is past, they may bitterly repent. 
 But, generally speaking again, the heart of man still 
 responds healthily to the words of the Psalmist: 
 
 Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord and 
 the fruit of the womb is his reward. As ar- 
 rows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are 
 children of the youth. Happy is the man that 
 hath his quiver full of them. 
 
 Still, as in primeval times, the normal man longs 
 to see his children's children. That means an over- 
 lapping of the generations which is for the good of 
 all. Just how many children there should be in a 
 "full" quiver is another question. In the good old
 
 INFANCY 41 
 
 colonial days families of eight or ten or twelve were 
 common; and the New England and Virginia 
 churchyards are full of graves of babies and of 
 women worn out by motherhood before they had 
 reached forty. Dr. Alice Hamilton found in Chi- 
 cago, a few years ago, in a study of fifteen hundred 
 families, that the infant death-rate in the large 
 families (of six children or more) was two and a half 
 times as high as it was in the families of moderate 
 size (four children or less) in similar economic cir- 
 cumstances. The recent Johnstown study bears 
 the same testimony; and Sir Arthur Newsholme, 
 in the report already quoted, presents an interest- 
 ing table of "fertility rates" and infant mortality 
 rates for the principal economic classes of England 
 and Wales, which shows that a high fertility rate 
 is accompanied by a high mortality, and vice verst, 
 except among the textile workers, where relatively 
 few babies are born and a large proportion die. 
 
 There are problems both of race suicide and of 
 overpopulation. It is not desirable that the fami- 
 lies of successful achievement should die out; nor 
 is it desirable that the human race should be per- 
 petuated in the wasteful fashion of fishes and the 
 lower animals. The solution of the problem of 
 race suicide lies in such educational propaganda as 
 we have seen in our generation ; in the exaltation of 
 simpler, healthier ideals; in controlling the dis- 
 eases which produce sterility; in economic re- 
 adjustment of the sexes, following the gradual
 
 42 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 emancipation of woman from antiquated restric- 
 tions. There is no need of organized agitation to 
 prevent an excessive birth-rate. Economic forces 
 are quite as effective in this direction as the welfare 
 of society demands. Private property, family 
 responsibility, educational standards, the adoption 
 by immigrants of the standard of living of their 
 neighbors, and other institutional checks, seem 
 likely to keep population well within the means of 
 subsistence, even within the boundaries of a nor- 
 mal life. The present obstacles to the enjoyment 
 of a normal life which primarily concern us are far 
 within the boundaries of that ultimate pressure of 
 population which justly gave concern to our an- 
 cestors and may, under new conditions, again per- 
 plex future generations.
 
 n 
 
 CHILDHOOD
 
 THE HOME AND THE SCHOOL 
 Babies are chiefly concerned, if we may imagine 
 them as visualizing their own social problem, in 
 remaining alive. The stupendous responsibility 
 for getting safely born and getting a start in life 
 precludes much serious attention to the matters 
 which are to vex them, and us, at a later stage. 
 
 Between infancy and adolescence, however, 
 there lie a dozen years or so which may be called 
 the crucial period in social construction. Child- 
 hood is, above all, for education, as infancy is for 
 physical well-being. The problems of physical 
 well-being indeed persist, but if those of infancy 
 have been met, they are of constantly diminishing 
 seriousness and difficulty. If the child is strong and 
 well at the end of the first year, the nurse may give 
 first place thenceforth to the teacher. The family 
 must still protect, of course, but it becomes from 
 the child's standpoint every day less a shell and 
 more an atmosphere; relatively less a mere guar- 
 antee of existence and relatively more an aid to 
 growth, a training for independent existence; less 
 a nursery and more a seminary; less a trysting- 
 place of the parents alone and more also a "tryst- 
 ing-place of the generations." 
 
 Without dwelling upon the transition from in- 
 4 45
 
 46 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 fancy to childhood, we may proceed directly to a 
 recognition of the large fact that the social problems 
 of childhood and adolescence cluster largely around 
 the school, as those of infancy center in the mother, 
 and those of mature life in industry. The home 
 belongs to no one period. Throughout the normal 
 life of man the home is its natural background — its 
 essential expression. No one period of life monop- 
 olizes it. If the home exists in one sense primarily 
 for the sake of infancy and childhood, it is equally 
 true that without it maturity and old age would 
 be meaningless and incomplete. 
 
 Not, therefore, to minimize the home, but to 
 characterize the particular problems in social con- 
 struction which spring from the needs of child- 
 hood, we place the school for the time being in the 
 foreground. 
 
 When we pass from infancy to childhood, from 
 the home to the school, we cross the boundary into 
 a province in which the responsibility of society is 
 enormously increased. Whether a baby lives or 
 dies depends, after all, under normal conditions, 
 mainly on the baby itself and its mother; and, as 
 we have seen, remaining alive at that stage is the 
 main thing. Whether the child receives an educa- 
 tion, however; whether its health is conserved; 
 whether it is guided into an appropriate vocation 
 and has a reasonable chance for play and for help- 
 ful associations — depend more upon society than 
 upon the narrower family circle. The baby is the
 
 CHILDHOOD 47 
 
 home's treasure, but the child belongs to society 
 from a very early age, and the walls of the most pro- 
 tected family are but a frail barrier against the 
 hundreds of social contacts which mold and in- 
 fluence the child life. 
 
 THE SOCIAL TASK OF EDUCATION 
 Education may be taken as a very broad term 
 for the entire conscious process of passing on from 
 one generation to another the accumulated treas- 
 ures, the acquired capacities, of the race. So con- 
 ceived, it touches every age, but childhood is its 
 special province — the period marked by nature as 
 peculiarly adapted to this process. 
 
 If, as Professor Thompson says,* unlike the 
 beasts that perish, man has a social heritage, handed 
 on from one generation to another, so that we are 
 not dependent upon our biological inheritance 
 alone, it is to childhood that this debt is paid, by 
 the children that the new credit is acquired in 
 trust for the years ahead, in which they are to be 
 the living link between the past with its achieve- 
 ments, and the future with its possibilities. If 
 therefore the social structure is to be sound and 
 suitable, childhood must have its chance, must 
 have time enough to perform its function, must not 
 be cheated of its debt, expected to yield a harvest 
 of figs from a sowing of thistles. 
 
 If we analyze this social task of education from 
 * Heredity.
 
 48 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 our present point of view, one part of it undoubtedly 
 consists in the mere preservation of actual informa- 
 tion. We need not concern ourselves very much 
 about that. The printing-press has solved it. 
 True, there is information which can be preserved 
 and imparted only in other ways, for example, 
 through art. Paintings, sculpture, architecture, 
 music, all tell their own story in a way that descrip- 
 tions of them, even critical studies of them, do not. 
 The hand which can conceive and execute works of 
 art, and the eye which can see and appreciate them, 
 are essential to the preservation of our social heri- 
 tage. Actual and valuable information perishes 
 from the world if as an incident of warfare works of 
 art are destroyed, or if, through the failure of edu- 
 cation, we cease to know their value. Arts of skill 
 might disappear in the same way. But, speaking 
 largely, the next generation is not in serious danger 
 of a dearth of information. Newspapers deluge 
 us with it, books record and elaborate and refine 
 upon it. Research adds to it enormously. Every 
 process of industry turns it out as a by-product. 
 Government is engaged to a great extent in facili- 
 tating its distribution and increasing its amount. 
 Schools have been organized to impart it. We 
 shall not run short of information. 
 
 A second task of education in a policy of social 
 construction is to teach the use of the mind and 
 body. It is of little avail to have a body unless one 
 knows how to use it. Most of us misuse and fail
 
 CHILDHOOD 49 
 
 to use our eyes, our ears, our hands, our backs, our 
 tongues and teeth, our lungs and diaphragms, our 
 legs, our skin. For a million years or so, no doubt, 
 we traveled on all fours, as babies still do, and now 
 nature fails us sometimes when we try to stand up- 
 right. For a million years or so salvation on earth 
 depended on ability to distinguish friend from foe 
 at a great distance. Now, when the objects of our 
 interest and solicitude are nearly always at eighteen 
 inches from the eye instead of a mile, we find our- 
 selves handicapped by an optical instrument fitted 
 for the distant but not for the near vision. We 
 subject ourselves to eye-strain, and have head- 
 aches, curved spines, and ill temper in consequence. 
 
 No other mechanism in the world, we are often 
 assured, is so continuously and flagrantly abused — 
 from ignorance, from obstinacy, from carelessness, 
 from parasitic enemies, from indulgence of its own 
 eccentricities — as the human body. Education 
 for efficiency implies instruction as to these ele- 
 mentary things: not anatomy and physiology, 
 though those are useful; but cleanliness, respect 
 for bodily functions, coordination of muscles, re- 
 pose of nerves. Hygiene in all its branches is the 
 first element in social education. 
 
 But the mind also is useless save as we have 
 learned how to use it. To impart information is 
 no more to give the mastery of the mind than to 
 impart food is to give the mastery of the body. 
 Certain drills are necessary to make the mind rapid
 
 50 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 and accurate. Certain processes are necessary to 
 develop observation and the critical faculty. 
 Other exercises are useful in cultivating the mem- 
 ory and the imagination. But, above all, in a 
 policy of social construction, the educational sys- 
 tem must be successful in planting, watering, and 
 securing increase in the power of forming economic 
 judgments, in the power of estimating values as 
 higher and lower, of comparing rightly future 
 pleasures with those of the present, the permanent 
 with the fleeting, the spiritual with the material. 
 Right reasoning about what can be attained by a 
 given effort, and what the satisfaction thus at- 
 tained is really worth, as compared with other 
 possible results from the same effort — this, I take 
 it, is a prime function of social education. 
 
 One other obvious end of education may be 
 named along with the imparting of information 
 and the development of capacity to use the mind 
 and the body. That is the forming of good physi- 
 cal, mental, and moral habits. The economic 
 reasoning just now referred to is a conscious and 
 sometimes a slow and painful process. But after 
 a while, if the processes of our reasoning are sound, 
 a particular judgment has been formed so clearly, 
 or so often, or is so buttressed by authority, that it 
 is accepted as a moral judgment. It obtains an 
 ethical sanction. The conscious reasoning process 
 is no longer necessary. Time is saved. Effort is 
 saved. Wear and tear of tissue and vital energy
 
 CHILDHOOD 51 
 
 are saved. No doubt honesty was once the best 
 policy. There may be borderlands where it is so 
 still. But for us and our children honesty has 
 ceased to be a policy. It is an instinct, a habit of 
 mind, an economic judgment so often made, so 
 clearly established, so authoritatively attested, 
 that it offends rather than helps us to allude to its 
 material advantages. The farther we can go in 
 this direction of economizing the reasoning process, 
 the more instinctive and immediate right courses of 
 conduct can become, the more we shall be able to 
 extend our field of operations, the more complete 
 will be our conquest of nature, and the more pro- 
 ductive will be the actual expenditure of energy in 
 satisfying the higher and more complex wants. 
 
 This restatement of the elementary aims of 
 education may seem to specialists in the theory of 
 education so obvious as to be trite, or so incomplete 
 as to be fantastic. The school system to the social 
 economist is an instrument like any other of social 
 construction. Education conceived as the means 
 of carrying civilization forward, as the conscious 
 link between the generations of workers and users 
 of wealth, must do at least these things : Pass on the 
 information; make the mind and body fit instru- 
 ments of satisfying the wants of man; encourage 
 those habits and instincts which economize power 
 and promote the social welfare. Put in terms of 
 social problems, the school must aid in preventing 
 poverty by making men more efficient; in prevent-
 
 52 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 ing disease by making men strong and well; in 
 preventing crime by making men law-abiding in 
 spirit and instinctively aware of the rights of others; 
 in preventing violence by inoculating against self- 
 righteousness and brutality. 
 
 Childhood is the time of life in which the school 
 has its great chance. Education, we cannot too 
 often repeat, does not end then. Education, like 
 industry and art and religion and friendly inter- 
 course, is really one of the permanent and serious 
 interests of life, constantly going on under changing 
 forms, until the life of the spirit, whether gradually 
 or suddenly, is lost to our ken. But in childhood 
 there is hardly any rival interest; for play and 
 occupation, art and religion, home life and school 
 life, are in childhood all a part of education. The 
 school, although not exhausting its content, is the 
 institutional embodiment of this idea of education. 
 
 PHYSICAL WELL-BEING 
 Coming more directly to some of the social prob- 
 lems of childhood centering in the school, it is nec- 
 essary to discover and remedy the physical defects 
 of children. Some of these are due to neglect of 
 the pre-natal, natal, or post-natal problems of in- 
 fancy, to overworked and undernourished parents, 
 or to ignorance of the conditions essential to a right 
 start for children. Others may not show them- 
 selves, or may not be remediable, until earlier in- 
 fancy is past. Medical inspection of school chil-
 
 CHILDHOOD 53 
 
 dren to discover and correct such defects is becom- 
 ing so common that any school system which does 
 not provide for it is recognized as antiquated. 
 
 Many schools, I regret to say, are antiquated. 
 Our standards, our common notions of what is the 
 right and reasonable thing, move much faster than 
 our practice, which is dependent on appropria- 
 tions and administrative details and unlucky acci- 
 dents and the slow process of bringing large num- 
 bers of people to understand what is to be done 
 precisely and how precisely to do it. 
 
 Among the common features of medical school 
 inspection and treatment of defects are the removal 
 of adenoids and, when necessary, of tonsils; the 
 correction of astigmatism by carefully fitted glasses 
 — not such as can be picked up cheaply from a ten- 
 cent counter or a peddler's pack, but such as are 
 found by a competent refractionist to be required; 
 the correction of spinal curvature — by a desk ad- 
 justment when that is sufficient, by a mechanical 
 appliance when necessary — and orthopedic cor- 
 rection and treatment of other crippling disabili- 
 ties; the cleaning of scalps; the isolation of in- 
 fectious skin and eye diseases and proper treat- 
 ment of the victims ; the feeding of undernourished 
 children; and the exposure of all to fresh air, but 
 especially open-air classes for those who are anemic 
 and susceptible and so easily poisoned by foul air. 
 Equally justified with such medical inspection is 
 instruction in sex hygiene, very generally and very
 
 54 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 delicately in the schools, very explicitly and very 
 drastically when that is necessary in the home or 
 the doctor's office. The prevention of venereal 
 disease, prostitution, and their consequences in 
 society rests upon the foundation-stone of instruc- 
 tion in childhood. The instruction which provides 
 such a foundation is not instruction in sex pathol- 
 ogy or in the ways of vice. The instruction appro- 
 priate to childhood and potent to make or keep the 
 coming generation secure is instruction in hygiene, 
 which is health, in the ways of health and life, in 
 the wholesome and serene enjoyment which comes 
 from industry, self-restraint, and a social conscience. 
 
 ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY 
 
 The discovery and cure of physical defects and a 
 hygienic culture and discipline have characterized 
 the progress of education in the past decades. The 
 next is to see the transformation of the curriculum 
 in the direction of elasticity, with more recognition 
 of actual existing conditions. A more complete 
 linking of the schools to the future working life 
 of the children is one of the most imperative tasks 
 of the teacher at the present moment. This is to 
 be done not for the sake of industry but for the 
 sake of education; not cheap but valuable labor is 
 its end. It is no business of the schools to furnish 
 cheap and skilful hands for the mills if this means 
 that they are to be exploited by employers. But
 
 CHILDHOOD 55 
 
 the children are, after all, to grow up to be workers: 
 professional, commercial, industrial, agricultural 
 workers. Their school should from the beginning 
 aim to make them efficient and skilful workers. 
 This is not to say that specialization for a life career 
 should begin in the kindergarten. Trade schools and 
 vocational guidance are not for childhood, but for 
 adolescence. A definite relation between the school 
 and the future active life of the child, however, long 
 antedates the trade school. Useful work and ra- 
 tional enjoyment of life are from the beginning the 
 ends in view. Both at long range, which is culture, 
 and at shorter range, which is training, the schools 
 must have the occupations of the community — of 
 the nation and the world also, but more especially 
 of the community — in their mind's eye. Peri- 
 patetic teachers in the home kitchens, perhaps 
 helping to transform the kitchens in a little while 
 to cooperative enterprises, may, for example, be 
 one of the next innovations. 
 
 The cultural or disciplinary processes in the 
 schools are not to be undervalued. It is the whole 
 of the accumulated results of civilization that we 
 are to pass on: its noble pleasures, its visions and 
 ideals. But these things cannot stand alone. 
 They can no longer stand on slavery or serfdom or 
 an unmitigated wage system. They must stand 
 on democracy, political and industrial. The work- 
 ers must come into possession of them, and to this 
 end they must become cooperative capitalists.
 
 56 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 A socialist congressman-elect has recently quoted 
 Lasalle's saying that the proletarian workers and 
 the intellectuals must unite, and has quoted it to 
 disagree, saying that the workers must themselves 
 become intellectual. The workers of the future 
 must be efficient, not under compulsion, but under 
 leadership and direction. They must be able to 
 use their minds no less than their bodies, and neither 
 minds nor bodies in mutilated fragments. 
 
 CIVIC NURTURE 
 Hygienic training for health, then, and economic 
 education for efficiency, are the first two planks in a 
 policy of social education. The third is civic cul- 
 ture, training in self-government and aid in ap- 
 preciating the nature of social relations — social 
 obligations, social rights and duties — the social life 
 in its entirety. This is no more the function of 
 so-called civics courses, dealing with the framework 
 of political government as it happens to exist in a 
 particular community, than of those dealing with 
 other subjects, such as history, literature, and 
 biology. It is a by-product, like ethics, of which 
 it is a part, of nearly all good teaching. If the new 
 conception of government as a democratic coopera- 
 tive enterprise can be planted in the mind, this will 
 help, but society does not consist merely of its 
 courts and legislatures. Failure to recognize this 
 has seemed to me the great weakness of those 
 Junior Republics in which the whole life centers
 
 CHILDHOOD 57 
 
 around the sheriff and the judge. The school 
 must recognize that many a voluntary agency, like 
 a trade union, a savings bank, a chamber of com- 
 merce, a church or synagogue — the family at one 
 extreme and the human brotherhood at the other — 
 all express social relations, and that any one of 
 them, at a given moment, under particular circum- 
 stances, may have greater significance for the in- 
 dividual than the state itself. To be a good citizen 
 is essential. One cannot put it more strongly. 
 But to be a good neighbor, to be a creditor in the 
 community and not a social debtor, to live a full 
 life in all appropriate social relations, is an even 
 higher and more inspiring ideal. 
 
 This social ideal has in it a dynamic element. 
 The school which fits into a sound scheme of social 
 construction is not to pass on a civilization per- 
 fected and unchanged. It is no slavish instrument 
 of things as they are. It assumes a progressive 
 social order and seeks to implant a divine discon- 
 tent, an evolutionary spirit, a germ of that love of 
 liberty and opportunity which has so often de- 
 stroyed the old and outworn to make place for the 
 new. It is conservative only of what continuously 
 stands the acid test of present needs and forward- 
 looking plans. 
 
 ELEMENTARY CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL EDUCATION 
 
 The features, then, of social education are civic 
 
 or social nurture, economic efficiency, and physical
 
 58 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 well-being. Consider some of the very elementary 
 corollaries. 
 
 First there must be room for all the children; 
 and the seats must be where the children are. 
 There should not be seventy thousand children in 
 Texas who have no chance to go to school, nor forty 
 thousand in New York City on half-time, while 
 there are fifty thousand more seats in all the school- 
 houses of the city than there are children to be pro- 
 vided for. A prerequisite for this is such a col- 
 lection of population statistics and interpretation 
 of them as will rightly forecast the location of 
 buildings to meet future needs, and such liberality 
 of expenditure as will actually meet them. A 
 permanent census or registration of all the popula- 
 tion, corrected to date by recording all removals, 
 as well as births and deaths, would be the most 
 satisfactory and economical method of securing 
 such data. All such calculations will be more 
 easily made and more nearly correct after every 
 city has its definite plan, its particular zones for 
 business, for manufacturing, and for residences of 
 different kinds. 
 
 In the commodious and well-placed school-build- 
 ings there must be an abundance of fresh air. In 
 this climate some of them might be built without 
 glass in the windows, like open sleeping porches. 
 The rosy cheeks of healthy children would be their 
 ornament, and joy and zest in work the guarantee 
 stamp of their quality.
 
 CHILDHOOD 59 
 
 The next essential is a course of study, organized, 
 as the New York Committee on School Inquiry 
 puts it,* around human problems, and made simple 
 and elastic enough to permit of differentiation to 
 meet the needs of different nationalities and groups. 
 
 The next is a corps of trained and competent 
 teachers, capable of carrying such a simple and 
 elastic curriculum, of differentiating and adapting 
 it, of criticizing and overhauling it when necessary, 
 of keeping it alive and elastic and discovering from 
 time to time those human problems around which 
 the curriculum is to be organized. Politics has no 
 legitimate place in this selection of teachers, of 
 course. Security of tenure and the easy elimina- 
 tion of demonstrably unfit are of equal importance. 
 Whether the teachers are women or men, adequate 
 pay to justify professional preparation and to meet 
 the increasing competition of other callings is 
 necessary in the interests of the schools. 
 
 Specialized instruction for individuals who are 
 above or below par is quite as justified as average 
 instruction for average children. It is contrary to 
 the interests of society that genius should remain 
 undetected and unencouraged, just as it is wasteful 
 and absurd for backward children and defective 
 children to be treated as if they were not defective 
 or backward. Fit and appropriate opportunity 
 for each according to his needs: the blind and the 
 
 * A Committee of the Board of Estimate and Apportion- 
 ment, 1913.
 
 60 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 deaf, the crippled and nervous, the exceptionally 
 gifted and well prepared, the clear thinkers and 
 the hard workers. To subject all to the same un- 
 differentiated, uniform, mechanically prescribed 
 routine squares neither with efficiency principles 
 nor with common sense. 
 
 Ungraded classes, sufficient in number to give 
 accommodation to all the defective children who 
 are in the schools and cannot be more appropriately 
 removed to institutions, are an obvious advantage 
 to the children in them and to the classes from which 
 they are removed. 
 
 It has been reported that in New York City more 
 than twenty thousand slow children were cared for 
 in so-called "rapid progress classes," in which 
 they have the advantages of skilled teachers and 
 abridged and amended courses of study. Whether 
 there is a place for the other kind of rapid progress 
 classes, with enriched and amended courses of 
 study, not for slow but for bright children, may be 
 a question. But certainly in some way there should 
 be recognition and encouragement of their extra 
 capacities and their more rapid promotion within 
 reasonable limits should be facilitated. 
 
 Perhaps there is danger of exaggerating the im- 
 portance of the school as compared with less or- 
 ganized, less formal influences. There is always 
 danger of taking any human institution too se- 
 riously. Charities and schools especially are all 
 the better for occasional blasts of satire, chaffing
 
 CHILDHOOD 61 
 
 illuminating criticism, which, without either adula- 
 tion or prejudice, helps, as it were, to restore a due 
 sense of proportion. 
 
 Play belongs with class-room and home life as a 
 serious feature of child life. And not merely regu- 
 lated, organized, artificially stimulated play, but 
 spontaneous, natural, unwatched play. It is a 
 famous playground director who tells of a startling 
 proposition made by a boy at the end of a very big 
 and successful play program — I am not sure that 
 it was not a "pageant": "Now let's have some 
 fun!" What children need in this direction is a 
 place to play, time to play, and health. I have all 
 possible sympathy with the so-called playground 
 movement. It recognizes that city children do not 
 have a place to play, and that modern civilization 
 must, by conscious effort, restore the glorious 
 privileges of which its own cruder stages have 
 robbed the children and the adults. The condi- 
 tions are changed from the old days. Leisure 
 comes now, like employment, to masses of men and 
 of children, and some element of organization is 
 necessary to its profitable use. But we are experi- 
 menting only. Play festivals and pageants, folk- 
 dances and gymnastics, athletic leagues and com- 
 petitive school games, are but interesting experi- 
 ments, full of promise and amply justified so long 
 as we do not fail to leave open the free competition 
 of the street and the open field. 
 
 Health and nurture, through home and school
 
 62 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 and playmates, through religious and moral and 
 social training, through responsible individual 
 direction and through less direct but genuine com- 
 munity action, are the aims of a policy of social 
 construction in normal childhood, as a good hered- 
 ity and physical well-being are the aims at birth 
 and in infancy. I have an idea that in these re- 
 spects those whom we call the poor — the tenement 
 house and alley population in our cities — to-day 
 are rather better off than were the children of the 
 comfortably well-to-do, say fifty years ago. 
 
 All parents and relatives who have a family 
 standing, all family physicians and public health 
 physicians and nurses, all teachers and pastors, all 
 neighbors and associates, all who govern in the 
 community, and all who shape its public opinions, 
 are among the builders of the child life of the na- 
 tion, individually more or less responsible and 
 jointly fully responsible for the death-rate, the 
 incorrigibility rate, the efficiency rate of the chil- 
 dren of the nation. 
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN 
 Among our thirty-one million children* there 
 are a few — something like one hundred and fifty 
 thousand — for whom society has a greater responsi- 
 bility than for the others, a different kind of re- 
 sponsibility, because their parents are dead or 
 unable to provide for them or unfit to do so, and 
 * Total population under sixteen.
 
 CHILDHOOD 63 
 
 this inability or unfitness has been brought to 
 light and clearly established by court action or 
 investigation of some kind which has led to the 
 acceptance of the children in institutions or in fos- 
 ter families under the oversight of child-placing 
 agencies. There are, no doubt, some thousands 
 more for whom parents are really unable or unfit 
 to provide without assistance, but those, we may 
 assume, are in their homes or at school, somewhat 
 neglected, it may be, less fully nourished and less 
 carefully taught and trained, it may be, than their 
 normal life demands, but still sharing in the rising 
 standards of child care in the community, not en- 
 tirely neglected by their parents, and discovered 
 from time to time by relief agencies, by the church, 
 by a settlement, or by a good Samaritan. Of com- 
 plete neglect by everybody, state and church and 
 neighborhood, there are certainly plenty of cases, 
 both in cities and in remote country places. And 
 for such exhortations and proddings and demon- 
 strations as are furnished by child welfare exhibits 
 and like agencies there is abundant need. 
 
 One hundred and fifty thousand children who 
 have been left orphans, or taken away from their 
 parents for any reason, present, however, special 
 problems: the problems most often discussed in 
 conferences of charities when children are under 
 consideration. Dependent children are for the 
 most part in orphan asylums, congregate institu- 
 tions under private or church control of the type
 
 64 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 familiar in all the older states: although, as the 
 Census Bureau tells us in its special report on benev- 
 olent institutions, there is an increasing number of 
 state detention homes where dependent and de- 
 linquent children are cared for pending final dis- 
 position by the juvenile courts; of receiving homes 
 under the conduct of home-finding organizations; 
 of state public schools, intermediary between the 
 orphanage and the reformatory; and of training 
 homes and schools of many kinds which practically 
 are educational institutions. In New York State 
 in 19 10 one hundred and forty-four institutions re- 
 port an average number of two hundred and ten 
 children in each institution, and of these twenty are 
 conducted on what is known as the cottage system. 
 In Maryland there were thirty-three institutions 
 with an average number of seventy-five — two of 
 these thirty-three being on the cottage system. 
 I hope that number has increased since then, as the 
 change in architecture from barracks to cottage, 
 although expensive, represents a determined effort 
 to get away from wholesale methods to retail; 
 from uniformity to individuality; from regimen- 
 tation to something like family informality; from 
 the impossible to the still difficult but not im- 
 possible substitute for a home. 
 
 Aside from the gradual — very gradual — intro- 
 duction of the cottage system, the two marked 
 tendencies to which the census report calls atten- 
 tion are the assumption by some state authority of
 
 CHILDHOOD 65 
 
 supervision over benevolent institutions, including 
 those for children, and the extension of the super- 
 visory care of institutions over children placed by 
 them in family homes or elsewhere. The report 
 calls attention to the close relation between the 
 extension of the cottage system and the emphasis 
 laid in some states on county homes and general 
 state supervision. 
 
 Children's institutions present a number of very 
 serious and very difficult problems, about some of 
 which unhappy controversies have raged, fanned by 
 religious bigotry, and representing, even when free 
 from acrimony or misunderstanding, very sharp 
 and fundamental differences in the theory of social 
 construction. 
 
 The first of these is as to the right of the institu- 
 tion to exist at all. A fairly good case can be made 
 out against it. It is better that children should be 
 kept alive in an institution than left to die of ex- 
 posure and starvation, but the alternative to the 
 institution is frequently not starvation, but care 
 by the mother, or care in a well-selected and care- 
 fully supervised boarding home. What if all the 
 hundred thousand children now in orphan asylums 
 — only one child in every three hundred of the 
 population under sixteen — could be kept with 
 their own mothers, or with relatives, or with foster 
 parents, or even with paid care-takers in a boarding 
 home, at very little more expense than it costs to 
 build and maintain the institutions? These re-
 
 66 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 flections haunt the memory and make uncomfort- 
 able the conscience of all who have ever really seen 
 institutional children. 
 
 In some places institutions seem to be necessary. 
 In New York it is not easy to see how we could 
 entirely displace them. Our conditions are ab- 
 normal and all but impossible. Immigration, con- 
 gestion, religious interests, a great investment in 
 institutional plants, and an existing subsidy system 
 conspire to put what are thought to be insuperable 
 obstacles in the way of any radical substitution of 
 placing and boarding out for institutions, and even 
 make difficult any general substitution of the cot- 
 tage for the congregate system. It seems quixotic 
 to be advocating any change there. Reforms and 
 improvements in the existing system are possible 
 and will surely be made, but there is little prospect 
 of retracing the steps by which that system has 
 been established and intrenched. But seeing it 
 thus in full operation, and recognizing that its 
 permanence there seems probable, I bear my testi- 
 mony in any community not so situated, that it is 
 wasteful of child life, wasteful of educational op- 
 portunities, wasteful of economic efficiency and 
 character, promotive often of a spirit the opposite 
 of law-abiding, and this because it does not give an 
 experience to the child in natural family and neigh- 
 borhood relationships, does not teach the value 
 and use of money in exchange, does not give an 
 opportunity for the development of self-reliance
 
 CHILDHOOD 67 
 
 and self -direction, does not gradually initiate the 
 child into the every-day routine of free citizenship, 
 but necessarily represses his budding individuality, 
 limits and controls the exercise of his judgment as 
 of his body, contracts his vision, mutilates his facul- 
 ties, distorts his sense of values. 
 
 I have recently had occasion to make an inspec- 
 tion of an institution — not a large one, such as you 
 think of as typical of New York, but neverthe- 
 less distinctly an institutional institution. It was 
 sanitary, light, airy, and well built. There were 
 schoolrooms, play-rooms and gymnasium, excellent 
 kitchen, laundry, bakery, and dormitories. There 
 were humane managers and a visiting physician. 
 They had twenty acres of land for gardens and 
 playground, and the kindly personal interest of the 
 members of a large association to which the home 
 bears somewhat informal official relation. 
 
 And yet, under all these favorable conditions, 
 the children were not receiving the physical or the 
 educational or the religious care which is childhood's 
 birthright. Even yet the wasted opportunities 
 in the lives of that hundred children appall and 
 oppress me. Even yet the dull unresponsiveness 
 of that group of children weighs upon me, — though 
 we did not leave them until we had broken through 
 it and made them laugh and their eyes dance over 
 the prospect of a match ball game and other ideas 
 which they could take in and respond to. The 
 four hours of that day spent in their company on
 
 68 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 serious business have lifted for me a little way a 
 curtain behind which there lurk too much dark- 
 ness, too much community neglect, too much in- 
 difference, too much ostrich-like concealment of an 
 age-long, age-unsolved problem. 
 
 Next after the question as to the legitimacy of 
 the institution itself is that of the financial system 
 upon which it is conducted. 
 
 Privately endowed orphan asylums would be the 
 most dangerous of all perpetually endowed institu- 
 tions. An institution which is conducted by the 
 state or the city and supported by taxpayers, being 
 obliged to justify itself from year to year and sub- 
 ject to inspection by a competent state board of 
 charities, is far less apt to fall behind the educa- 
 tional ideals and standards of the community. 
 A small church home, caring for the children in a 
 particular neighborhood, visited by church mem- 
 bers and supported by their contributions, — al- 
 though likely to be inadequately equipped, — may 
 be free from serious abuses. A modest receiving 
 home, in which children are kept for a brief time 
 for observation and study, prior to placement in a 
 foster home, is apt to remain wholesome and home- 
 like by the very constant movement of its meager 
 population, by the non-institutional influences of 
 the larger work of which it is but an incident. 
 
 It is the large institution under private or religi- 
 ous auspices, managed by a self-perpetuating or 
 appointed board, but supported by state or muni-
 
 CHILDHOOD 69 
 
 cipal appropriations, which is most difficult to keep 
 human and educational, to keep within reasonable 
 bounds as to size, or within reasonable bounds as 
 to its subtle influence on state and municipal 
 affairs. The subsidy or contract system continu- 
 ously grows by what it feeds on. It represents an 
 unsound principle of divorcing control from sup- 
 port. One body directs the affairs of the institu- 
 tion; another pays the bills. The result is a divi- 
 sion of responsibility and neglect of the child. 
 In such an institution children are apt to be re- 
 ceived irresponsibly, eagerly, without any due sense 
 of the corresponding obligations. From them go 
 disciplined, in a narrow sense religiously instructed, 
 but still half-educated children. Where the sub- 
 sidy system is not already firmly established it 
 should be shunned, for it is demoralizing and sub- 
 versive of the most elementary child-caring prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The chief defense of the institution, aside from 
 financial economy, in which, for a given number of 
 children, it has an advantage over cottage homes or 
 a boarding system, is in its superiority on the side 
 of religious and moral instruction. In view of the 
 fact that these children are deprived of their nat- 
 ural home influences there is force in the contention 
 that to place them in a state school, organized like 
 the public day schools, without religious instruction, 
 would be unjustified and abnormal. Foster and 
 boarding homes, or at least small cottage institu-
 
 70 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 tions, could largely meet this requirement, how- 
 ever, if we were willing to pay the price. The 
 question, therefore, comes back to that of cost and 
 to our estimate of the value of a natural home life 
 as against an artificial, hot-house environment. 
 
 I make no attack upon any particular type of 
 institution, much less upon those of any particular 
 church. I stand upon the conclusions of the White 
 House Conference of 1909: 
 
 1. Except in unusual circumstances, the 
 home should not be broken up for reasons of 
 poverty, but only for considerations of in- 
 efficiency or immorality. 
 
 2. The most important and valuable philan- 
 thropic work is not the curative, but the pre- 
 ventive. We urge upon all friends of children 
 . . . to improve the conditions surround- 
 ing child life. 
 
 3. As to the children who for sufficient rea- 
 sons must be removed from their own homes, 
 or who have no homes, it is desirable that, if 
 normal in mind and body and not requiring 
 special training, they should be cared for in 
 families whenever practicable. 
 
 4. Institutions should be on the cottage 
 plan. . . . Existing congregate institu- 
 tions should so classify their inmates and 
 segregate them into groups as to secure as 
 many of the benefits of the cottage system 
 as possible, and should look forward to the 
 adoption of the cottage type when new build- 
 ings are constructed.
 
 CHILDHOOD 71 
 
 5. The state should inspect the work of all 
 agencies which care for dependent children. 
 
 6. Educational work of institutions and 
 agencies caring for dependent children should 
 be supervised by state educational authorities. 
 
 7. Complete histories of dependent children 
 and their parents should be recorded for guid- 
 ance of child-caring agencies. 
 
 8. Every needy child should receive proper 
 medical and surgical attention and be instructed 
 in health and hygiene. 
 
 The placing of dependent children in foster 
 homes has its own difficulties, dangers, and abuses. 
 Whether in free foster homes or in boarding homes, 
 placed-out children and the families in which they 
 are placed require supervision, expert, efficient, 
 conscientious, and continuous. If these children 
 are to be protected from exploitation, taught and 
 nurtured as wards of the state should be, to have 
 a chance at the vocation for which they are fitted, 
 to be developed into physically sound, useful citi- 
 zens and neighbors, the state or the placing-out 
 agency must be prepared to meet the expense and 
 do the work required to this end. 
 
 We are justified in accepting in most matters the 
 usual standards of a community in which the chil- 
 dren are placed, provided they are placed in a com- 
 munity which has normally high standards. But 
 through reports and inspections and a readiness 
 to resort, when necessary, to disciplinary measures,
 
 72 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 including the summary removal of children for 
 cause and their replacement as often as is necessary, 
 the enforcement of reasonable standards should be 
 assured. We have at present in the child-caring 
 agencies of the country the great advantage of free 
 competition, a generous rivalry between institu- 
 tions and placing and boarding-out societies or 
 institutions. We are not far enough along to de- 
 cide that either should be abolished. The new and 
 better ones, or the old ones made better, should not 
 suffer on their account. The institutions have an 
 advantage in being able to organize their medical, 
 optical, dental, orthopedic, and other services in 
 ways that would be impracticable for isolated chil- 
 dren, scattered in many families. They can experi- 
 ment with vocational training, trade schools, do- 
 mestic science, and so on, adopting methods which 
 are tried and found satisfactory. They can or- 
 ganize, as it were, the whole life of the child: edu- 
 cational, religious, social; so far at least as the re- 
 sources and limitations of the institution permit. 
 These advantages, which are shared in part by 
 cottage-type and congregate institutions, and in 
 part possessed in superior degree by institutions of 
 the cottage type, have enabled the institutions, 
 when they are progressive in spirit and adequately 
 financed, to make their own contribution to the 
 problem of caring for dependent children. 
 
 While it is deemed desirable that children who 
 must be removed from their own homes, or who
 
 CHILDHOOD 73 
 
 have no homes, should be cared for in families 
 whenever practicable, there are those for whom it 
 is not practicable; there are those who require 
 special physical care or special training; there are 
 those who are not placeable in free homes and for 
 whom boarding homes are not available, or who are 
 in communities where the boarding system is not 
 in operation. Probably the proportions will later 
 be reversed. Whereas three dependent children 
 are now in institutions to one placed in a foster 
 home, there may be one in an institution, prefer- 
 ably on the cottage plan, to three in foster families 
 under proper supervision. At the same time, in- 
 stead of one in every three hundred of the whole 
 population, we may hope, by relief at home and 
 by preventive measures, that not more than one 
 in a thousand of the children under sixteen will 
 have to be cared for outside its own home or that 
 of its relatives or adopted parents. 
 
 Among preventive measures which the White 
 House Conference so emphatically prefers to cura- 
 tive, I would not include public out-door relief 
 or widows' pensions. I would include social in- 
 surance for sickness and widowhood. I would not 
 include help by the state in furnishing school 
 lunches, eyeglasses, clothing, or other personal 
 equipment. I would include the physical examina- 
 tion of children, the visiting of the home, and the 
 enforcement when necessary of natural parental 
 obligations. I believe, in other words, that the
 
 74 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 state should enforce a minimum standard of child 
 care; but that the expense of providing such care 
 should fall on parents and in case of their disability 
 on some insurance fund to which when able they 
 have contributed. I would advocate such a policy 
 of insuring that children's needs are met as will 
 strengthen and not weaken the family bond, de- 
 velop and not undermine the sense of family re- 
 sponsibility and solidarity, insure a fair opportunity 
 for all and hold the individual responsible for mak- 
 ing the most of that opportunity for himself and 
 his family.
 
 Ill 
 
 YOUTH
 
 THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER 
 If childhood is for education, as we all agree, so 
 also, though we may not agree, is youth. The 
 period of adolescence should be used for develop- 
 ment, not for that anticipation of the tasks and 
 pleasures of adult life which means a waste of 
 powers and atrophy of undiscovered ability. The 
 physical transition from boy to man, from girl to 
 woman, must be accompanied by corresponding 
 and harmonious mental and moral changes, if a 
 normal maturity is to be reached; and to ensure 
 this normal development our chief social instru- 
 ment is education — more education and better 
 education: education for economic efficiency, for 
 profitable enjoyment of leisure, for the responsibil- 
 ities of marriage and family life. Indispensable 
 to it are more opportunities and better opportuni- 
 ties for wholesome recreation. Youth demands a 
 positive program of guidance and normal develop- 
 ment, to meet its own needs, and incidentally to 
 prepare for later life. 
 
 There is another side, also. Abnormal tenden- 
 cies manifest themselves in growing boys and 
 girls, and it is exceedingly important that these 
 should receive attention, to the end that they may 
 
 be corrected or repressed or diverted, as the case 
 6 77
 
 78 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 may require. From this point of view the period 
 of adolescence is the critical time in life. As the 
 supreme consideration in infancy is the establish- 
 ment of a sound and vigorous physique, though I 
 would not dispute with those who hold that there 
 may be a place, even in the first year of life, for 
 some germs of mental and moral training; and as 
 in childhood, while, to be sure, the physical prob- 
 lems are still important and the moral habits are 
 being formed, the main concern is to educate the 
 mind; so in youth we may fairly say, without de- 
 preciating the health problems and the mental 
 problems, that the central interest is in the develop- 
 ment of character, that, in fact, it is for their im- 
 mediate or ultimate influence on character — on 
 personality — that we are then interested in health 
 and recreation and training in efficiency. 
 
 SCHOOL ATTENDANCE 
 It was to emphasize the importance of continuing 
 the period devoted to education past childhood, 
 into and through adolescence, that I refrained in 
 discussing the education of children from reference 
 to compulsory school attendance and child-labor 
 laws. That children should go to school needs in 
 America no argument. There are some children 
 who get no systematic schooling, either in public 
 or private schools or at the hands of tutors or gov- 
 ernesses, because they live in remote country dis- 
 tricts or in neglected corners of the city, because
 
 YOUTH 79 
 
 they are sick or crippled, or because their parents or 
 guardians are indifferent or unsympathetic to the 
 notion. Such children are few, however, and 
 their numbers are decreasing. Public opinion 
 everywhere in America recognizes that it is an 
 elementary duty to provide a seat in a school-room 
 for every child and to see that he occupies it with 
 a reasonable degree of regularity for a certain 
 number of weeks each year until he reaches a cer- 
 tain age. 
 
 How long the child is to go to school is a question 
 on which we are less unanimous. There are places 
 where the school term for the year is not more than 
 twelve weeks, and others where it is forty, with an 
 extension of six weeks of modified activities in the 
 summer vacation. Children start to school at 
 three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine years of 
 age, and they leave at ten, eleven, twelve, and thir- 
 teen, as well as at fourteen, eighteen, twenty-two, 
 and thirty. I presume most of us would say, if 
 we were discussing this question with a visitor 
 from Mars or Peru, that in America children go to 
 school until they are fourteen years old, and that by 
 that time they have ordinarily completed what we 
 call our elementary grades. If, however, we should 
 go to the latest census to verify our statement, we 
 should find that among fourteen-year-old children 
 in the United States during the school year 1909-10 
 nineteen in every hundred had had no connection 
 whatever with any kind of school — day or evening,
 
 80 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 public or private, academic or industrial ; and that 
 among the children of Maryland there were twenty- 
 nine such school-less ones in every hundred in- 
 stead of nineteen. We should find that the pro- 
 portion of children in school increases rapidly up 
 to the age of eleven, at which time, in the country 
 as a whole, more than nine out of ten had attended 
 school at some time during the year ; that it remains 
 almost as high at twelve and thirteen; drops down, 
 as we have seen, to eighty-one per cent at fourteen; 
 and then falls rapidly to fifty per cent at sixteen, 
 twenty-three per cent at eighteen, and eight per 
 cent at twenty. We should discover many in- 
 teresting variations among different groups and 
 in different states: that below fourteen, for ex- 
 ample, the children of immigrants show the high- 
 est proportion of school attendance (probably be- 
 cause they live mainly in cities, where schools are 
 thickest), while at fourteen and over the children 
 of native-born parents are more apt to be in school ; 
 that the boys drop out somewhat more rapidly than 
 the girls from twelve to eighteen, but more slowly 
 than the girls after that; that the maximum per- 
 centage of Negroes in school at any age is seventy- 
 three per cent at the age of eleven; and that the 
 percentage of eleven-year-old children (the ones 
 who are most apt everywhere to be in school) who 
 did not attend school in the census year varies in 
 the different states from one in forty-three in Ver- 
 mont to one in three in Louisiana. In other words,
 
 YOUTH 81 
 
 Vermont sends ninety-eight per cent of her chil- 
 dren to school and Louisiana sixty-seven per cent. 
 We should reluctantly conclude that in respect to 
 school attendance our actual accomplishment is 
 much too far from our standard of what is normal. 
 It is some comfort, however, to see that there had 
 been a substantial advance in the ten years between 
 1900 and 1910. Among children ten to fourteen 
 years old, the ages at which school attendance is 
 most general, there were eight more in every 
 hundred going to school in 1910 than there had 
 been in 1900. The improvement was common to 
 all elements of the population and to both sexes; 
 it was most significant among the Negroes. 
 
 ILLITERACY 
 
 The results of this increase in school attendance 
 are seen in the figures for illiteracy. (Persons seem 
 to have been reported as "illiterate" at the last 
 census if they could not write their names.) Among 
 children ten to fourteen years old, the age group 
 which has had the advantage of the latest exten- 
 sion of educational privileges and requirements, 
 there were only four out of a hundred who were 
 "illiterate " ; among white children of native paren- 
 tage there were only two. In each older group of 
 persons the proportion was higher, until at sixty- 
 five and over there were about fifteen in every 
 hundred who could not write, the increase in il- 
 literacy at successive ages taking us back through
 
 82 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 successive gradations of less and less favorable 
 childhood conditions, as far as facilities for educa- 
 tion are concerned. This again is seen most strik- 
 ingly among the Negroes: among the old people 
 three-fourths are reported as illiterate, but the 
 proportion decreases to less than one-fifth among 
 the children ten to fourteen years of age. 
 
 Even in the way of keeping young children in 
 school, therefore, we still have much to do, and 
 serious efforts for those over fourteen are still in 
 the future. The curve of school attendance, which 
 you may imagine as rising from early childhood to 
 the age of eleven, having a narrow apex of only 
 three years from eleven to thirteen, falling at four- 
 teen and then more rapidly, must be considerably 
 modified. It should be filled out and lifted up 
 until it embraces at ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, 
 and fourteen years of age all the children whose 
 education can profitably be carried on in schools — 
 say something like ninety-nine and a half per cent 
 instead of only eighty; and then it should be kept 
 steadily at that same high point through fifteen and 
 sixteen, and after sixteen should not be allowed to 
 descend so precipitately. The "wasted years" 
 between fourteen and sixteen, which are worse 
 than wasted if used for earning, are the most pro- 
 ductive years for development.
 
 YOUTH 83 
 
 CHILD LABOR LAWS 
 
 One aid to keeping children in school is to keep 
 them out of the factories and shops and mines and 
 mills by the uncompromising hand of law, state 
 and federal. Another is to make school so attrac- 
 tive that nothing else can compete with it in in- 
 terest. Child-labor laws cannot be enforced suc- 
 cessfully unless the compulsory education laws 
 harmonize with them, and unless there are schools 
 for all the children involved, and unless the chil- 
 dren want to attend them, or at least their parents 
 want them to do so. 
 
 There are good reasons why children should not 
 go to work. They have been stated so frequently 
 and so well and in so many ways in the last ten 
 years, since the National Child Labor Committee 
 was organized, that it almost seems necessary to 
 apologize for referring to them. We need not, at 
 any rate, try to improve on statements already 
 made. A hundred and thirty years ago an Eng- 
 lish physician,* reporting on an epidemic among 
 the factory children in Manchester, called atten- 
 tion to the physical injury done to young persons 
 through confinement and long-continued labor in 
 the cotton mills, asserting that "the active recrea- 
 tions of childhood and youth are necessary to the 
 growth, the vigour, and the right conformation of 
 
 * Quoted in Hutchins and Harrison: History of Factory 
 Legislation.
 
 84 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 the human body"; and he could not refrain from 
 suggesting, though apparently he felt that it was a 
 little outside his own special territory, "this further 
 important consideration, that the rising generation 
 should not be debarred from all opportunities of 
 instruction at the only season of life in which they 
 can be properly improved." A few years later, 
 summarizing in another connection the dangers of 
 factory work, he refers again to the need of active 
 exercise in youth "to invigorate the system and to 
 fit our species for the employments and for the 
 duties of manhood," and to the importance of not 
 debarring children from all opportunities of educa- 
 tion, and adds: "The untimely labour of the night, 
 and the protracted labour of the day, with respect 
 to children, not only tends to diminish future ex- 
 pectations as to the general sum of life and indus- 
 try, by impairing the strength and destroying the 
 vital stamina of the rising generation, but it too 
 often gives encouragement to idleness, extrava- 
 gance, and profligacy in the parents, who, contrary 
 to the order of nature, subsist by the oppression of 
 their offspring." This last point was made later 
 on by a magistrate testifying before Sir Robert 
 Peel's parliamentary committee in 1816: "If 
 parents were thrown more upon themselves and 
 did not draw a profit from children in their very 
 early years, they might not waste so much of their 
 own time, they would work harder, and probably 
 obtain better wages for better work." Another
 
 YOUTH 85 
 
 witness at the same hearing called attention to the 
 low wages of adult workers as an argument against 
 child labor. 
 
 These arguments, to be sure, were applied chiefly 
 to children under ten, whose right to childhood is 
 happily no longer questioned in America except 
 in isolated instances. We all agree with Robert 
 Owen now that it is "not necessary for children 
 (i. e., not necessary for their good) to be employed 
 under ten years of age in any regular work"; that 
 the "danger of their acquiring vicious habits for 
 want of regular occupation" is negligible, and that, 
 on the contrary, their "habits" are apt to be "good 
 in proportion to the extent of their education." 
 
 Gradually — much too gradually — we have been 
 extending the minimum length of childhood to 
 twelve years, to fourteen years, and now are trying 
 to push it up to sixteen. We have learned more 
 definitely why it should be extended. The bony 
 structure of the body is still plastic and yielding. 
 Important physiological functions are in process of 
 establishment. A large amount of evidence has 
 been accumulated to show the high cost of the piti- 
 ful wages that can be earned in these years: the 
 cost in disease, in accidents, in crime, in inefficient 
 maturity, in demoralized, topsy-turvy relations of 
 parents and children. Boys and girls who work in 
 cotton-mills have about twice as high a death-rate 
 as other boys and girls. Machinery bites off chil- 
 dren's fingers when they are inattentive, as chil-
 
 86 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 dren sometimes are, leaving them "no good for 
 work any more." Children who work are apt to 
 be undersized and anemic. They are found in the 
 juvenile courts out of all proportion to their num- 
 bers, are more inclined to the serious offenses, and 
 very much more apt to become habitual delinquents, 
 so that, inasmuch as the working and the non- 
 working juvenile delinquents come from "the same 
 general level of well-being," it "seems rather dif- 
 ficult," as the Bureau of Labor conservatively puts 
 it, "to escape the conclusion that being at work has 
 something to do with their going wrong."* Chil- 
 dren who go to work at fourteen are earning less at 
 eighteen than those who begin two years later, and 
 there is reason to believe that their wages and the 
 steadiness of their employment compare even more 
 unfavorably at thirty and forty, when they have 
 children of their own. All this new knowledge has 
 had its effect. We do not like to think of children 
 working while grown people are idle, even if they 
 are not in the same family. Miss Cleghorn's re- 
 cent quatrain in the New York Tribune makes us 
 uncomfortable: 
 
 The golf-links lie so near the mill 
 
 That almost every day 
 The laboring children can look out 
 
 And watch the men at play. 
 
 And yet, in actual practice, in the realization of 
 
 our standards, we have not yet attained the very 
 
 * Woman and Child Wage-earners, vol. viii, Sixty-first 
 Congress, Senate Document 645.
 
 YOUTH 87 
 
 reasonable ideal proposed by Dr. Roger S. Tracy a 
 full generation ago:* 
 
 I think, therefore, that eventually the laws 
 will be so framed as to either prevent the em- 
 ployment of children in factories before the 
 age of puberty, or render their employment 
 under that age liable to irregular interruptions, 
 and therefore a well-recognized commercial 
 risk. The age at which they may first be 
 employed will either be fixed arbitrarily at 
 fourteen or fifteen or will be left to the judg- 
 ment of a medical inspector. Between four- 
 teen and twenty the youth is still immature, 
 although capable of considerable endurance, 
 and he or she should not be allowed to work 
 more than eight hours a day at the most. 
 After this age the hours and methods of labor 
 may safely be left to be determined by the law 
 of competition. 
 
 CHILDREN AT WORK 
 And yet, even now, the census investigators of 
 19 10 found nearly two million children engaged in 
 "gainful occupations," more than one in six of the 
 children between ten and sixteen years of age; so 
 many, as Mr. Lewis VV. Hine puts it, with the vivid- 
 ness of one of his photographs, that "the proces- 
 sion . . . would take five years to pass a 
 given point if the children appeared at the rate of 
 one a minute day and night," — and that, too, with- 
 
 * Second Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Sta- 
 tistics, 1879.
 
 88 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 out the children who work in the cranberry bogs 
 of New Jersey, in the fruit and vegetable canneries 
 of New York, in the berry fields of Maryland and 
 Delaware — to mention only a few places where 
 special inquiries have found large numbers of them 
 in seasonal occupations which were not in opera- 
 tion in the month of April, when the census was 
 taken. Three out of four of the children in the 
 procession would come from the farms and dairies 
 and lumber-camps, the ranches and oyster-beds 
 and bee-hives and chicken-coops, which is less 
 idyllic than it may sound. Most of the rest would 
 come from kitchens and nurseries, factories, mills, 
 machine-shops, and stores; quarries and mines; 
 foundries and glass-works and printing-presses and 
 sweat-shops; and from the streets, where they have 
 been selling newspapers, blacking boots, driving 
 grocery wagons, and running to and fro witrt tele- 
 grams and hat-boxes and proof and other things 
 that must be carried quickly from one place to 
 another. There would also be, scattered through 
 the procession, eight postmasters fourteen and fif- 
 teen years old; three hundred and fifty-five little 
 boys ten to thirteen years of age who were laborers 
 on steam railroads; nineteen mail-carriers under 
 fourteen and twenty-one school-teachers, not to 
 mention two "jigger men and jolly men" in the 
 potteries, a stationary engineer in an iron mine, 
 three engineers on boats, four bakers and two baker- 
 esses, one hundred and fifty-one barbers and hair-
 
 YOUTH 89 
 
 dressers, four compositors, three grocers, seven- 
 teen turfmen, five artists and seven photographers, 
 five librarians' assistants, and three "other literary 
 persons," ten music teachers, two surveyors, and 
 one "other scientific person," one sexton, two hun- 
 dred and eleven nurses ("not trained"), and six 
 "religious and charity workers," three of each sex. 
 
 Child labor still exists in America. There are 
 even regularly employed wage-earners not yet ten 
 years old — younger than those of whom I have 
 just spoken. Investigators find them here and 
 there, and there are records of them on the in- 
 dividual schedules filled out by the census enu- 
 merators in 1910, though the tabulators have not 
 bothered to count them up. 
 
 We hoped when the National Child Labor Com- 
 mittee was organized in 1904 that it would be able 
 to accomplish its purpose and go out of existence 
 after ten years if it worked hard. We are greatly 
 disappointed that it has not. A great deal has 
 been accomplished, but, as Dr. Felix Adler, who 
 has been chairman of the Committee since the be- 
 ginning, said at the tenth annual meeting last year: 
 
 Though there is more or less adequate legis- 
 lation in the great majority of the states, there 
 are still enormous obstacles to be surmounted ; 
 indifference is to be turned into ardor, and 
 laws that now lie cold in the statute-book as 
 in a tomb are to be resurrected into the life of 
 enforcement.
 
 90 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 "The unexpected magnitude of child labor," to 
 quote Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay, the first sec- 
 retary of the Committee, "the stubbornness of the 
 interests arrayed in its support — employers' profits, 
 parental selfishness and indifference, and the child's 
 aversion to, or the hopeless inadequacy or ineffec- 
 tiveness of educational opportunities — and the 
 ease with which many forms of child labor eluded 
 any known legislative restraint," have shown that 
 the undertaking is greater than was anticipated. 
 What has been accomplished in the decade, how- 
 ever, justifies the estimate of the present secretary, 
 Mr. Owen R. Lovejoy, that child labor may be 
 completely abolished "within the life of the present 
 generation": 
 
 We now know where child labor exists and 
 in what forms. We know what forces must 
 be opposed in seeking legislation. We have 
 learned the importance of practical education 
 for all children and how to cooperate with 
 educators to promote it. We have been in- 
 strumental in setting on foot the most im- 
 portant public service ever rendered by the 
 Federal Government, in the establishment of 
 the Federal Children's Bureau. We are now 
 at the door of Congress asking our Govern- 
 ment to outlaw traffic among the states in the 
 products of child labor.* 
 
 * The reference is to the Palmer-Owen bill to exclude from 
 inter-State commerce goods in the manufacture of which chil- 
 dren under fourteen had been employed. This bill passed the 
 House of Representatives by a large majority, but did not 
 reach a vote in the Senate in the Sixty-third Congress.
 
 YOUTH 91 
 
 Thirty-six states now have a fourteen-year limit 
 for factories; thirty-four prohibit night work under 
 sixteen years; eighteen require an eight-hour day 
 between fourteen and sixteen; and thirty-six provide 
 for the inspection of factories. 
 
 With all the children shut out of industry to the 
 age of sixteen, — as all girls are in Ohio, — we have 
 discharged our first duty to normal adolescence. 
 The next step is to keep them in school. 
 
 Little children are not critical. They accept 
 school, as they accept their relatives and their 
 backyard and front door-step, as a part of the uni- 
 verse with which they are getting acquainted. By 
 the time they have reached the age of twelve or 
 fourteen, however, their attitude changes. They 
 make comparisons; they become restless; they 
 chafe against restraint and look about for more 
 adequate channels of self-expression and develop- 
 ment; and when the opportunity comes for a 
 change, they welcome it. This is what make this 
 period at once the despair and the opportunity for 
 the educator. 
 
 It has been a popular pastime, and a profitable 
 one, for several years to ask working children why 
 they left school when they did, and the most com- 
 mon answer, aside from the assumption that it 
 was the thing to do as soon as one reached his four- 
 teenth birthday or "graduated" from grammar 
 school, has always been that they were tired of it, 
 or didn't like it; four hundred and twelve out of
 
 92 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 five hundred factory children said definitely that 
 they liked the factory better.* Their reasons for 
 this preference are well summarized by two of them, 
 who explained it thus: 
 
 You never understand what they tells you 
 in school, but you can learn right off to do 
 things in a factory. 
 
 When you works a whole month at school, 
 the teacher she gives you a card to take home, 
 that says how you ain't any good. 
 
 These two comments go to the root of the edu- 
 cator's problem. To-day's young people are prac- 
 tical. They want to make things, to get results, 
 to see the use of whatever they are asked to do in 
 school. They are interested in their school work, 
 apparently, in proportion to the relation which 
 they can see between it and "real life." 
 
 It is on the teaching profession that the main 
 responsibility must rest for solving these educa- 
 tional problems, for "rationalizing" and "democ- 
 ratizing" the public schools and making them as 
 useful to the boys and girls who leave them at 
 sixteen to go into an office or a factory as they have 
 been in the past to those who go on into normal 
 school or college. We may safely leave this re- 
 sponsibility with the educators of the country — 
 half a million of them there are, or more, including 
 those twenty-one under fourteen years of age, 
 
 • Helen M. Todd in McClure's Magazine, April, 1913.
 
 YOUTH 93 
 
 though we ought not perhaps to impose too much 
 responsibility on these infants — if the students of 
 industrial problems do their part in supplying in- 
 formation about the conditions in the various in- 
 dustries and in helping to analyze the various pro- 
 cesses with a view to discovering what is the 
 precise training required for each. 
 
 EDUCATION FOR ADAPTABILITY 
 Education for efficiency is not to be identified 
 with a narrowly specialized "vocational" educa- 
 tion. Too narrowly specialized training may have 
 precisely the opposite result, creating inefficiency 
 instead of efficiency. Processes in any vocation 
 may be completely revolutionized within a few 
 years, or the vocation itself may disappear. Adap- 
 tability to changing conditions becomes, therefore, 
 quite as desirable for the normal man and woman 
 as specialized skill in a particular process. Points 
 of similarity in several different occupations are 
 more numerous and important than appear upon 
 the surface. Quickness, dexterity, skill in making 
 particular combinations, coordination of eye and 
 hand, may be transferred from one kind of factory 
 to another if trade-union regulations or traditional 
 notions of administration do not interfere. 
 
 In addition to the elementary education which 
 childhood receives in the school and the home, there 
 is a more liberal form of education, though it is 
 fundamentally the same — an education suitable for
 
 94 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 more mature youth, the aim of which is to give just 
 this adaptability to changing conditions, a training 
 which is not for a trade but for life, for the indus- 
 trial and economic and moral situations that will 
 arise, for the crises which will come, requiring judg- 
 ment and character. This more liberal education 
 lies at the very foundation of efficiency. Fourteen 
 to sixteen or eighteen are the years for it. It can, 
 no doubt, be imparted in the commercial and trade 
 school, in agricultural courses and domestic science, 
 as well as in history, literature, art, and economics. 
 But that it is distinct from and prior to the choice 
 of a vocation, and must freely include many ele- 
 ments which should not be taken for granted as 
 likely to be picked up incidentally in the course of 
 specialized trade instruction, seems hardly open to 
 question. 
 
 VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE 
 Specialized training for a particular vocation is 
 exceedingly important, to supplement this funda- 
 mental education in adaptability, but it should not 
 begin too early. Probably it should not begin be- 
 fore sixteen. The child who has had an undiffer- 
 entiated general education, as diversified and well 
 rounded as possible, including training of muscles 
 and senses, as well as of reasoning powers and other 
 faculties which we have been in the habit of refer- 
 ring to as "the brain," but without special instruc- 
 tion in the technique of any one trade or calling, may
 
 YOUTH 95 
 
 even turn out to be better equipped to earn a living 
 after sixteen than the one who has been specializ- 
 ing for the two years in a vocation which he se- 
 lected at fourteen. 
 
 Most children could do a number of different 
 things equally well. Most children, also, are ready 
 to choose an occupation at a moment's notice. 
 The younger they are, the easier it is for them to 
 choose. But this is no excuse for narrowing their 
 outlook, restricting their future opportunities, by 
 asking them to choose before they have the basis 
 for doing so wisely. You would not hold your boy 
 to his chosen vocation of fireman or sailor or police- 
 man or baseball player or president of the United 
 States, and direct his studies from this time forth 
 toward that goal. 
 
 Consider how occupations in life are determined. 
 We may have a position waiting for us in our fa- 
 ther's business from the time we are born, in view 
 of which our education is planned from the outset. 
 Crown princes had vocational training long before 
 the phrase was used or the proposition made to — 
 shall I say democratize? — the thing itself. We 
 may have been destined for the ministry and have 
 worked our way painfully through the requisite 
 Latin and Greek and Hebrew, while all our interest 
 was in mathematics and physics, and then, assert- 
 ing independence midway of the college course, have 
 turned out eventually — an electrical engineer. 
 Most of us in America, however, have freer rein
 
 96 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 and can take the path that allures us as soon as we 
 recognize it, within the limitations of our circum- 
 stances. Your young man may then, let us say, 
 after a liberal education, a professional training 
 of some sort, and some reasonably successful years 
 in teaching or the ministry or the law or in business, 
 have found his way to social work. One whom I 
 know had the definite intention, at successive stages 
 of his education, of being a doctor, a minister, and 
 a journalist, and at each stage he was so fortunate 
 as to have had the sympathy and advice of wise 
 representatives of the profession just then at stake 
 who encouraged him to join their ranks. He thinks 
 now that he would not have been a success in any 
 of the three. The probability is that he would have 
 been moderately successful, moderately contented, 
 in any of them. 
 
 There are many students, even in professional 
 schools, who have not yet "found themselves," in 
 spite of the more than average opportunity they 
 have had to do so. The head of a large engineering 
 school is reported, in a recent newspaper article, to 
 have said that at least fifty per cent of the men in 
 that school do not belong there. Sixty per cent 
 of the graduates of a well-known law school stay in 
 clerical positions because they have no real aptitude 
 for the law. Medical schools say that the number 
 of students temperamentally unqualified to become 
 physicians is lamentably large, and seems to be 
 increasing. Normal schools estimate that less
 
 YOUTH 97 
 
 than half of their students have any special teach- 
 ing ability; and fifteen theological schools report 
 that seventy per cent of their enrollment have no 
 marked qualifications for the profession they are 
 preparing to enter. Even in the training schools 
 for social work, although this profession has not 
 yet begun to attract in any considerable numbers 
 persons not naturally adapted to it, we find stu- 
 dents every once in a while whom we are not justi- 
 fied in encouraging to complete the course. 
 
 HOW" JOBS ARE FOUND IN INDUSTRY 
 Boys and girls who leave school to go to work as 
 soon as the law allows are not likely to be more 
 fortunate in their choice of an occupation than 
 young men and women in professional schools. 
 Usually there is not much "choice" involved. 
 They "get a job" in any way they can — through a 
 friend or a brother or sister, by answering adver- 
 tisements, or by applying in response to a sign 
 Boy Wanted or Girl Wanted, no matter for what. 
 Miss Van Kleeck tells of a Hungarian woman 
 who had worked for four years in flower shops as 
 the result of a "negative choice," made by eliminat- 
 ing other occupations:* 
 
 Nor was her enthusiasm great for the trade 
 which she had selected. . . . She went 
 into flower making because she knew that in 
 saleswork the hours were always long and $7.00 
 
 * Artificial Flower Makers, p. 200.
 
 98 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 about the maximum wage. She couldn't 
 stand machine operating on account of the 
 noise, and didn't care for dressmaking. She 
 had been watching the newspapers and had 
 seen a great many advertisements for flower 
 makers. Now that she has tried it she thinks 
 it is as good as any other trade. It is better 
 than vest making, for instance, where the girls 
 have to work with men. Still, she says many 
 people think flower making is not a very 
 healthy trade. The doctor had told her that 
 she must leave it if she became anemic. 
 
 Even more casual was a Russian girl's choice :* 
 
 When she left school she decided she would 
 like to get into a department store. So she 
 went up to Sixth Avenue and asked a police- 
 man where the different stores were. He 
 pointed them out to her and she applied as 
 cash girl, salesgirl, stock girl, and so on, but 
 nobody wanted her. As she was walking 
 home down Broadway she noticed a sign out 
 for artificial flower makers. She had heard 
 that girls often worked at this trade. So she 
 , went in and applied for a "situation" and was 
 told to come the next day. 
 
 The interesting experiences of a New York 
 Italian boy in the first three months of his indus- 
 trial career were related by Mr. Winthrop D. Lane 
 in The Survey not long ago:f 
 
 On the last day of last January John Pan- 
 ello, aged fifteen years and five months, grad- 
 
 * P. 201. t Vol. xxix, p. 225, November 23, 1912.
 
 YOUTH 99 
 
 uated from a public grammar school in New 
 York. On the twentieth of February he got 
 his "working papers" from the Board of 
 Health. In school he had been fond of arith- 
 metic, and from childhood had wanted to be- 
 come a bookkeeper. But the class-room had 
 become irksome to him, and his parents, 
 financially comfortable, had just "taken it for 
 granted" that he would go to work after 
 graduation. He received no answer to his 
 first application for a job — that of office boy 
 in a place where he hoped that he might work 
 up to a position as bookkeeper . . . After 
 three weeks of looking for work he got a job 
 as errand boy for a dyeing and cleaning estab- 
 lishment. Five dollars a week were the wages, 
 and tips amounted to a dollar or two extra. 
 At the end of one week the boy who had had 
 the job before came back and John was fired. 
 . . . After a day's hunt he saw a sign, 
 "Boy Wanted," and was taken on by a firm 
 manufacturing ladies' hats. Here he swept the 
 floor, ran errands, and helped to pack. At the 
 end of two weeks ... he left because "a 
 feller who had been there four years was getting 
 only $6.00 a week." 
 
 Before leaving he had been lucky enough to 
 get a promise of a job with a millinery firm. 
 At first his work consisted in "going for stuff 
 to the first floor," then he ran a crimping ma- 
 chine, and next was detailed to "get the cord 
 downstairs for the men who make rugs." 
 After a week and a half of this . . . "an- 
 other feller said 'come along and learn car- 
 pentry,' " so John got a job at loading and un-
 
 100 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 loading wagons for a firm that made wooden 
 boxes. . . . When he learned that the 
 boss was going to move to Staten Island he 
 decided to quit ... He had been with 
 the firm two weeks. 
 
 During the next three weeks John did five 
 different kinds of work for a manufacturer of 
 jewelry and notions. He was making $4.50, 
 but when a man said, "Come along, I've got an 
 office job for you," he quit. The "office job" 
 consisted in acting as shipping clerk, running 
 errands, answering the telephone, and sweep- 
 ing the floor for a manufacturer of artificial 
 flowers. He is still there, getting $5.00 a week. 
 He doesn't think much of the work. "What 
 can I learn there?" he asks. 
 
 In consequence of our growing realization of such 
 conditions as these, there has sprung up in the last 
 ten years a whole series of new educational devices 
 which it would be hopeless to attempt to discuss 
 here. It may suggest the various problems in- 
 volved to enumerate some terms which President 
 Pearse of the State Normal School at Milwaukee 
 undertook to define at the meeting of the National 
 Education Association* last year: 
 
 Manual Training. 
 Industrial Education. 
 Vocational Education. 
 Professional Vocational Education. 
 Commercial Vocational Education. 
 Industrial Vocational Education. 
 
 * Addresses and Proceedings, 1914, pp. 582-586.
 
 YOUTH 101 
 
 Trade Education. 
 Occupational Education. 
 Agricultural Education. 
 Pre- vocational Education. 
 Continuation Education. 
 Non-vocational Continuation Education. 
 Vocational Continuation Education. 
 Continuation Occupational Education. 
 Commercial Continuation Education. 
 Professional Continuation Education. 
 Vocational Guidance. 
 
 Vocational guidance is, properly speaking, a 
 feature of work rather than of education, although 
 it is an educator's and not a foreman's function. 
 Dr. Herman Schneider insists that it should ac- 
 company work and cannot safely precede it. The 
 Cincinnati plan aims to keep young people until 
 eighteen in touch with those who are interested in 
 getting them properly placed by requiring them to 
 come back to the school authorities for a new 
 authorization every time they change positions. 
 By the two-fold policy of bringing the graduates of 
 the grammar school into contact with a wide range 
 of activities when they are ready to feel their way 
 into industry, and requiring them to justify their 
 plans each time they take a new job until they are 
 eighteen, they avoid the pitfalls which lie in any 
 scheme for fitting boys and girls to particular jobs 
 merely by physical examinations or by the tests 
 and methods of experimental psychology. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 102 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 HEALTH 
 
 Early adolescence under normal conditions sees 
 the health problem almost solved, if the death-rate 
 be taken as an index. Deaths from disease in the 
 years between ten and fifteen are comparatively 
 rare. In New York, for example, in 1910, one 
 death occurred from all causes in every four hun- 
 dred of the population of that age, as against one 
 in twenty under five years of age and one in thirty- 
 five in the twenty years from forty-five to sixty- 
 five. After fifteen tuberculosis begins to affect 
 the death-rate more seriously. A large proportion 
 of the comparatively small number of deaths be- 
 tween ten and fifteen, one-ninth or one-eighth of 
 the whole, are due to drowning, injuries from fire- 
 arms, street and railway accidents, homicide, and 
 other external causes. 
 
 But, of course, the death-rate at this age is not a 
 complete index of the health problem. In adoles- 
 cence, as in infancy and childhood, normal, healthy 
 living requires some conscious attention to physical 
 defects and diseases. The teeth require frequent 
 cleaning and prompt treatment of cavities. Free 
 dental clinics have their champions, though I 
 think inexpensive service would be better. Cer- 
 tainly decayed teeth are a neglected source of in- 
 fection, even in this country, in spite of the deserv- 
 edly high reputation of American dental surgery. 
 We should not have to choose between the high
 
 YOUTH 103 
 
 prices charged by skilful dentists, a free dental 
 clinic, or a fraudulent painless dental parlor. A 
 dentist has suggested the advantage of opening, at 
 many convenient places, tooth-cleaning establish- 
 ments, economically equipped but sanitary, in 
 charge of properly instructed young women — there 
 is no special merit perhaps in their being young — 
 where, for twenty-five cents, or at most half a 
 dollar, any customer, we would not have to call 
 them patients, could drop in as he would for a shine 
 or a shave or a haircut, and have the tartar removed 
 and the harmless polish applied. In somewhat the 
 same way for the fitting of glasses a trained re- 
 fractionist, even if not an optical surgeon, may per- 
 form a useful function. By standing out too stiffly 
 for the principle that glasses can be fitted only by 
 one who knows all about the diseases of the eye, 
 or teeth cleaned only by a doctor of dental surgery, 
 the medical profession might easily defeat its own 
 ends and impose upon persons of limited means a 
 disagreeable choice of prohibitive expense, charity, 
 and charlatanism. 
 
 Adenoids may still be present to remove in the 
 adolescent years, or may have come back after 
 earlier treatment. Spinal curvatures and broken 
 arches and organs which do not function properly 
 may still require appropriate remedy. Such con- 
 ditions may be evidence of earlier neglect, or they 
 may have developed after an apparently normal 
 infancy and childhood. Eternal vigilance to de-
 
 104 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 tect them promptly, efficient discipline to correct 
 them definitely, and a not too penurious provision 
 by parents, or, if necessary, by the community, for 
 medical and surgical treatment are the price of 
 normality in adolescence, as in childhood. 
 
 Faults of diet and of physical carriage and habits 
 injurious to health and energy plant the seeds of 
 disease from which the harvest is reaped in later 
 life. Protection from such faults and habits, and 
 persistent instructions in the laws and precepts of 
 normal healthy living, are, therefore, as appropriate 
 as in childhood — perhaps even more essential. 
 For at this adolescent age the mind is capable of 
 receiving and storing up dominant ideals, perma- 
 nent motives, which will color the whole subse- 
 quent life. Even childhood does this, but youth 
 does it more consciously, more rationally, and more 
 firmly. Our health ideal must be social, demo- 
 cratic, positive, associated with vigor and enjoy- 
 ment and fullness of life. To get such a dominant 
 ideal in the back of the minds of the youth of Amer- 
 ica is the most stirring program of social reform. 
 
 Recreation in these years of character forming 
 is essential, not primarily for health, but for more 
 direct and more complex ends. Athletic sports, 
 causing the young men and maidens to put forth 
 their strength, to measure their utmost physical 
 powers with one another or with an ideal bogey, 
 giving them experience with team play in its most 
 developed and subtle forms, guarding them by the
 
 YOUTH 105 
 
 varied attractions of the recreation fields from 
 baser pleasures, have a social value far surpassing 
 their mere health-giving function, though that of 
 itself is not to be despised. 
 
 MENTAL DEFECT 
 
 From the baby's standpoint we found reasons for 
 advocating the segregation and continued custodial 
 care of the mentally defective, who, if at large, 
 might become their fathers and mothers. If by 
 some Bluebird magic we could conjure the unborn 
 babies into a council, we may be sure that, for 
 many reasons, they would choose other than the 
 feeble-minded for parents. 
 
 Both on grounds of fact and of theory, says the 
 British Royal Commission on this subject, there is 
 the highest degree of probability that "feeble- 
 mindedness" is usually spontaneous in origin, 
 that is, not due to influences acting on the parent, 
 and tends strongly to be inherited. If this is so, 
 prevention is not to be expected through such means 
 as lessen sickness and injuries, but rather by such 
 means as prevent this inheritance. It is in the 
 years of adolescence and early maturity that the 
 need for custodial institutional care is greatest, as 
 our laws recognize and the ages of the actual popula- 
 tion of the institutions indicate. In 1910 forty 
 per cent of those in institutions for the feeble- 
 minded were between ten and twenty, nearly thirty 
 per cent between twenty and thirty. Perhaps it
 
 106 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 might be better if these particular proportions were 
 reversed by leaving children under fifteen with 
 their parents when the home conditions are at all 
 favorable, and concentrating, for the present, 
 rather on those from fifteen to thirty or forty. 
 Patients of this kind are, however, happier in their 
 institutional life if they have not, before entering 
 upon it, been corrupted by a taste for drink, dance 
 halls, and other low pleasures. While more than 
 eighty per cent of the insane are in hospitals or 
 asylums, less than ten per cent of the feeble- 
 minded in all are in institutions. In all the South 
 the census reports only six Negroes in special in- 
 stitutions for the feeble-minded in 1910. There is 
 as much need of institutional care for the feeble- 
 minded as for the insane, both from the point of 
 view of the comfort and welfare of the individual 
 and from the point of view of the safety and welfare 
 of society. They are, in a sense, as Dr. Barr points 
 out, a waste product, but one of the great culmina- 
 tions of the nineteenth century, as he also points 
 out, was the utilization of waste products, and it is 
 an example of this that there has been recognition 
 of the true status of the imbecile, his possibilities 
 and his limitations, and that there has been created 
 for him a sphere in which, trained and encouraged 
 in congenial occupation, he may attain to a cer- 
 tain degree of independence, growing to be no longer 
 a menace to society nor altogether a helpless bur- 
 den. Dr. Fernald once estimated that two in a
 
 YOUTH 107 
 
 thousand of the whole population are mentally 
 defective. If in the manner urged by all authorities 
 we can breed that element out of the population, 
 or even half of it, the gain will be beyond calcula- 
 tion. Adolescence is the time of life when it is 
 most important that feeble-mindedness, if it exists, 
 shall be definitely ascertained and appropriately 
 treated. 
 
 JUVENILE DELINQUENCY 
 One of the most important of all social problems 
 in connection with adolescence is that of delin- 
 quency. A certain amount, given a proper setting, 
 safeguards, and antecedents, is altogether normal. 
 What middle-aged citizen does not look back to 
 adolescent escapades which would have come with- 
 in the law if the law had happened to be busy at 
 that particular spot and moment; within at least 
 that degree of disfavor which the French happily 
 call "contraventions," and for which we have no 
 less awkward term than "violation of city ordi- 
 nances?" If there is a citizen who has no such 
 memory, I fear that in his youth he was not looked 
 upon as normal by his contemporaries. Judge 
 Lindsey points out that it is not for the most part 
 courts, not even juvenile courts after they are es- 
 tablished, that deal with delinquents. Parents, 
 teachers, Sunday-school teachers, and neighbors are 
 the real social agencies for dealing with delinquents; 
 for quite literally all healthy normal children, girls
 
 108 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 as well as boys, are likely now and then to trans- 
 gress the rules. If they are fortunate in their try- 
 and-fail experiments, in their gradual adaptation 
 of themselves to their environmental condition, 
 they come into contact with indulgent but firm dis- 
 ciplinarians, parents, teachers, or it may be police- 
 men, who check their wrong actions without caus- 
 ing that deep-seated resentment, that spiritual re- 
 volt against social control, which is the beginning 
 of an anti-social career of crime. 
 
 A large number of offenses are, of course, purely 
 conventional, subject to a necessary condemnation 
 because of the environment in which they occur, 
 but in themselves harmless or even wholly com- 
 mendable when age and need of physical expression 
 are considered. Playing ball is a normal function 
 of youth in a proper place. Driving a bicycle or 
 a motor-cycle or an automobile beyond the speed 
 recognized as desirable on the city streets is quite 
 compatible with a law-abiding spirit if done in an 
 appropriate environment. We need not multiply 
 illustrations. The surprising thing is that young 
 people, on the whole, so naturally cease to be 
 "natural," so normally fit themselves into the "ab- 
 normal" conventions we impose upon them, so 
 readily demonstrate that they are fitted for a social 
 life, better fitted by the complex nature which is 
 their social heritage than for a savage life. 
 
 And so, when it comes to the delinquent boy in a 
 narrower sense, it is as well to recognize that his
 
 YOUTH 109 
 
 early offenses may differ mainly in degree and by 
 accident from the offenses of other boys who are 
 not called delinquent. There is a difference; but, 
 except in the case of the mentally defective, a 
 large proportion of those who are convicted and 
 sent to reformatories, this difference between the 
 delinquent and the normal child is one not difficult, 
 or at least not impossible, to bridge. 
 
 Delinquents before the courts and in reforma- 
 tories very often are found to be subnormal in 
 physical condition, in weight, in strength, in de- 
 velopment, in vitality, in acuteness of senses. It 
 is sometimes because of such disadvantages that 
 they are caught, while their more alert and vigor- 
 ous companions escape. If these more alert and 
 vigorous delinquents escape to the care and custody 
 of indulgent but firm and skilled disciplinarians in 
 the person of their own parents, or others who have 
 influence over them, no harm may come of their 
 having escaped, but rather good. If, however, 
 they escape from their first experiences without 
 warning or arrest, to fall upon other lines, there 
 may be very serious consequences indeed. 
 
 On the whole, it is better for the petty thief, the 
 juvenile law-breaker, to be caught. The one who 
 is taken into custody is reasonably certain in the 
 present state of public opinion — it was not always 
 so — to have his first chance to reform, as a result 
 of warning and paternal counsel. He is only too 
 likely to have his second and third chance — so
 
 110 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 many chances that if he does not profit by them he 
 may come to lose respect for authority and to 
 speculate with adolescent precocity on the curious 
 turns of the wheel by which an all-too-blind justice 
 distributes her penalties and favors. This was 
 especially so in the still so recent dark ages, when 
 youthful and adult criminals were penalized ac- 
 cording to a fixed scale of punishments, rigidly 
 prescribed in the penal codes — so many months or 
 years for one offense and so many for another, 
 regardless of the personal equation, regardless of 
 all the differing traits and circumstances which, 
 rightly understood, give the only basis for deciding 
 what treatment is desirable. It is better for the 
 boy and the girl who go wrong to be caught, but it 
 is well that society, having made the capture, does 
 not itself go wrong. 
 
 The modern social paraphernalia for dealing with 
 juvenile delinquency includes parental schools for 
 truants; kindly but vigilant truant officers, who 
 are not policemen but teachers, as we might say, 
 on scout duty; juvenile courts and courts of do- 
 mestic relations, disciplining mainly parents and 
 translating the corrigibility of the child into the 
 correctional ability of the parent and teacher, of 
 which the boy unwittingly gives evidence; proba- 
 tion officers, men and women, who are sometimes 
 to the judge what the trained nurse is to the physi- 
 cian, and sometimes more like the consulting 
 specialist, to whose professional skill and insight
 
 YOUTH 111 
 
 the regular practitioner gladly defers ; reformatories 
 and industrial schools and colonies for feeble- 
 minded — a series of educational and remedial 
 agencies which, among them, make prisons and 
 jails for young offenders obsolete and discredited, 
 useless and impossible. 
 
 One feature of social construction affecting ju- 
 venile crime is the socialization of police systems, 
 increased emphasis on prevention of crimes, and 
 diminishing emphasis on making a record for ar- 
 rest and convictions. Another is that develop- 
 ment of the school system which provides a greater 
 variety of instruction, and especially that which 
 connects the school with occupational interests and 
 increases the efficiency of workers. Another is the 
 provision, through various voluntary agencies, 
 above all, perhaps, through the Young Men's 
 Christian Associations and similar agencies, of 
 facilities for recreation, for amusement, for the 
 rational use of leisure. Boys' and men's clubs 
 in churches, settlements, and elsewhere serve the 
 purpose of giving a healthy outlet for normal, but 
 too often perverted, instincts — social instincts. 
 
 I speak of boys and men, rather than of girls and 
 women, only because they are more often delin- 
 quent. Of the twenty-five thousand juvenile de- 
 linquents in institutions on January first of the 
 census year, six thousand were females and nine- 
 teen thousand males — more than three times as 
 many. Of a little over fourteen thousand com-
 
 112 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 mitted to institutions in the year 1910, nearly 
 twelve thousand were males. In Maryland in that 
 year more than ten times as many males as females 
 were committed. The most interesting fact in the 
 analysis of the offenses for which these children and 
 youths were committed is that eight hundred and 
 forty of a total of eleven hundred and eighty-two 
 in Maryland, and more than half of the twenty-five 
 thousand in the United States, are in custody for 
 what are called "other offenses," or for "two or 
 more offenses," with no information as to what 
 they are. If that item alone does not lay bare the 
 need for better statistics of delinquency, no elabo- 
 ration of argument would do it. It would be a 
 satisfaction to believe, as the statistics seem to say, 
 that no juveniles were in custody in Maryland for 
 homicide or fraud or rape or violating the liquor 
 law, but there remains the uncomfortable suspicion 
 that that sundry item, containing all the "two or 
 more offenses," may possibly conceal any number 
 of such crimes. That there were one hundred and 
 six who had been convicted of larceny or burglary, 
 twenty-nine of prostitution or allied offenses, and 
 one hundred and ninety-seven of vagrancy, has 
 significance, especially since these are also the 
 largest items of offenses for the United States, al- 
 ways excepting that more than fifty per cent of 
 "other" and compound offenses. 
 
 It is interesting also that in Maryland there was 
 only a single juvenile delinquent who was serving a
 
 YOUTH 113 
 
 fixed sentence of more than three years, while 
 there were over seven hundred such sentences in 
 other states. It is cheerful to reflect that this 
 solitary boy's time will be up before the next cen- 
 sus, if it is not already, as he was in for only six 
 years, and we may hope that he has no successor. 
 All but thirty-five, however, of the juvenile de- 
 linquents of Maryland — including twenty-three 
 who were technically on indeterminate sentence — 
 were committed for the period of their minority, 
 which, I presume, in practice becomes an indeter- 
 minate sentence, so far as confinement within the 
 walls of an institution is concerned, the guardian- 
 ship remaining with the institution unless ter- 
 minated by court order, adoption, or otherwise. 
 
 The time when crimes occur is not a time when 
 society can effectively discharge its full responsi- 
 bility in regard to them. Public intoxication and 
 disorderly conduct show on the police court calen- 
 dars as offenses of middle life and even of old age, 
 but the problem of inebriety — of drunkenness, to 
 use an uglier and no shorter word — is mainly one 
 of youth and early maturity. Larceny, burglary, 
 fraud, assaults, rape, arson, and homicide are com- 
 mitted at all ages, but the determination of char- 
 acter which will show itself from time to time ac- 
 cording to its nature takes place in youth. 
 
 There are qualities which are permanently in- 
 herent in the germ plasm. We are considering here, 
 however, that individual character, whether in-
 
 114 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 herited or acquired, which belongs to the individ- 
 ual in his normal progress from his own cradle to 
 that of his grandchildren, the particular set of 
 traits which he actually exhibits in his relations 
 with his fellows, in his career in the flesh. These 
 traits may, indeed, be what a biologist might call 
 body-characters, a fortuitous and transitory pos- 
 session of the particular individual, rather than de- 
 terminant-bearing chromosomes of the cell nucleus, 
 carried along by the individual merely as a trustee 
 of his racial stock, or they may be the more ephem- 
 eral but surely not unimportant qualities which 
 belong to the individual himself, gained not from 
 his inheritance, but from his education and envi- 
 ronment. We are not concerned at this stage with 
 concealed defects of seed plasm, but with the man 
 himself, body and living spirit, as he lives among us. 
 Of this man we may say with confidence that 
 whether he is to be temperate or intemperate, shift- 
 less or energetic, a deserter or a steady and re- 
 sponsible family man, a drone or a worker, a crim- 
 inal or a law-abiding member of society, a parasite 
 or a self-dependent, surplus-producing creditor of 
 society, an exploiter or a socialized captain of in- 
 dustry, — if his abilities give him this alternative, — 
 all this depends largely on the educational in- 
 fluences, conscious and unconscious, brought to 
 bear upon him in the formative period of life. As 
 the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. It is an irri- 
 tatingly trite and a profoundly true saying.
 
 IV 
 
 MATURITY: 
 
 WORK
 
 STAGES OF THE NORMAL LIFE 
 Man's normal life, though it has its crises, is not 
 sharply divided into census age-periods. We have 
 refrained from setting precise boundaries to its 
 stages of development, adopting words in ordinary 
 use in their popular sense to suggest them. In- 
 dividuals differ widely both in physical and in social 
 development, some passing earlier and some later 
 from infancy to childhood, from childhood into 
 adolescence, and from youth to maturity. 
 
 Infancy seems to begin definitely enough with 
 birth, but even there we have had to push the 
 boundary back to grandparents and remote an- 
 cestors, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, in another 
 sense, long ago advised. We closed that first chap- 
 ter at about the time of the first birthday anniver- 
 sary. Childhood then begins at the point when 
 education in its broadest sense begins to assume 
 greater importance than food. 
 
 Adolescence is the period of growing up, i. e., from 
 children into men and women. Babies and chil- 
 dren "grow"; boys and girls "grow up." The 
 physiological transition begins to be apparent at 
 different ages in different races and climates and in 
 different individuals, and the time required for the 
 process varies. Physiologists are inclined to place 
 
 117
 
 118 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 it farther along than eighteen and twenty-one, the 
 years at which we have been in the habit of consid- 
 ering that youths and maidens come of age, as the 
 changes are not completely established, stability 
 and equilibrium not entirely assured, until a few 
 years later, — perhaps at about twenty-five. The 
 tendency in education and in economic relations is 
 in the direction of making the "social" period of 
 adolescence coterminous with the physiological. 
 
 By maturity we mean the point at which the 
 individual has arrived at full growth and develop- 
 ment — by natural process, as the Latin word sug- 
 gests — not the maturity into which children are 
 forced when set to work to support the family, or to 
 assume other burdens and responsibilities which 
 properly belong to adult life. An adult is a person 
 who has grown up. It is the past participle of 
 adolescere, and this word adolescere is akin to alere, 
 which means "to nourish." So the past participle 
 adult may be taken socially to mean, as it should, 
 both grown up and nourished. 
 
 The stages of development merge gently into one 
 another in the individual life, as in larger groups. 
 If boys still think proudly, on their twenty-first 
 birthday, that now they have arrived at man's 
 full estate, there are almost sure to be several oc- 
 casions after that when they will doubt their claim 
 to the title, or to which, at any rate, they will look 
 back from the heights of fifty or sixty with wonder 
 that so crude and unbalanced a youngster had been
 
 MATURITY 119 
 
 allowed such freedom. This is not necessarily 
 proof, however, that his family or society showed 
 poor judgment in leaving him at large. There has 
 to be a period of learning by experience, however 
 careful and wise the preparation which has been 
 given. A girl's eighteenth birthday does not ordi- 
 narily mean much more to her than her sixteenth 
 or nineteenth, unless she happens to be an heiress. 
 Probably to the average girl the twentieth, when she 
 "passes out of her teens," seems more significant, 
 both to her, eagerly looking ahead, and to her 
 family and friends, to whom she seems to be hurry- 
 ing on unnecessarily. The milestone into "middle 
 age" is even more moveable. Nowadays a woman 
 may say to herself at forty, "I suppose after this I 
 shall be middle-aged," but she does not take any 
 steps to announce it in her dress or her activities, 
 and she probably says it again, with similar results, 
 at forty-five and fifty and — who shall say how long? 
 As for old age, in the traditional acceptance of that 
 term, both men and women have repudiated it. 
 
 The period of life which we are now to consider 
 begins, then, at the end of youth, when the young 
 man and the young woman, brought to the thresh- 
 old of maturity — of body, mind, and soul — by the 
 affectionate, sympathetic, and intelligent nurture 
 of the family and the state, is ready to assume the 
 toga virilis, to become an active participant in the 
 economic and social and political life of the com- 
 munity, no longer primarily a consumer and a
 
 120 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 beneficiary, but henceforth producer as well as 
 consumer, contributor as well as beneficiary. If 
 the conditions which we have found to be neces- 
 sary for normal infancy, childhood, and youth have 
 been met, our normal population arrives at man- 
 hood in physical vigor, untainted by disease, by in- 
 dulgence in vice and idleness, unweakened by over- 
 work, with minds and muscles and ideals trained 
 for efficient work and efficient home life. 
 
 THE ADULT POPULATION 
 The first time you look at the chart of the popu- 
 lation of this country by ages you will be surprised. 
 What will puzzle you is that there are more chil- 
 dren two years old than one, and that there are 
 about as many alive at twenty, at twenty-five, and 
 even at thirty as there were at one and two and five. 
 We know that a lot of the babies did not live to be 
 a year old, that there were many deaths before five, 
 and some — though a smaller number — at every 
 year afterward. 
 
 What an extraordinary pyramid this is — or 
 rather a pyramid on top of a prism — which does not 
 begin to show any effect from deaths until nearly 
 middle age! The explanation is, of course, simple 
 — immigration. 
 
 If you take the pyramid of native-born only, it 
 tapers off normally enough, fewer at every age than 
 in the group below; in our whole population, how- 
 ever, in the years of childhood, adolescence, and
 
 MATURITY 121 
 
 early maturity the deaths are compensated, mathe- 
 matically speaking, by the arrival of immigrants. 
 The net result is that we have actually at twenty, 
 and very nearly at thirty, as large a population 
 as at one, and even after forty it does not taper ofT 
 as rapidly as it would if we did not have ready- 
 made boys and girls, ready-made men and women, 
 coming in all the time. 
 
 Because of immigration, then, we have, especially 
 in the northern cities, an abnormally constituted 
 population. This helps to solve some problems and 
 makes easier in certain respects the task of social 
 construction. It makes our civilization richer by 
 the content of the varied racial and national con- 
 tributions. It makes society industrially more 
 productive because of the excess at the working 
 ages. The ebb and flow of steerage passage to the 
 Mediterranean help to furnish an elastic labor 
 supply as well as to solve the problem of "cheap 
 labor," speaking from the point of view of those who 
 consider cheap labor desirable. But immigration 
 adds also to our problems of crime, of exploitation, 
 and of maladjustment. Recent immigrants are 
 more easily sweated, crowded, underpaid, de- 
 frauded. They make necessary much work by the 
 government simply because of their misunderstand- 
 ings and mistakes, and because of our mistakes and 
 misunderstandings of them.
 
 122 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 PERMANENT REGISTRATION 
 Taking our population as it is, the first serious 
 task of social construction is to make it possible to 
 know more about it. 
 
 Our national count we make once in ten years, 
 with supplementary studies from time to time car- 
 ried out by the permanent census bureau which 
 our government now boasts. Thus we have de- 
 cided that it is not a sin to be counted at regular, 
 not too frequent, intervals. It was not always so. 
 You remember how it was in the days of David 
 and Joab, as the story is told in Samuel and in 
 Chronicles. In his old age David was tempted by 
 Satan to have the number of his people counted. 
 He told Joab to have it done. Joab was much aston- 
 ished. "Now the Lord thy God," he said, "add 
 unto the people, how many soever they may be, a 
 hundred fold, and they will all be there just the 
 same, whether you count them or not — no fewer and 
 no more. Why do you want them numbered ?" His 
 idea seems to have been that it was fighting edge 
 and a good cause and the Lord's sanction — not 
 numbers — that counted. Nevertheless, David's 
 word prevailed. After nine months and twenty 
 days Joab got the census taken, finding that there 
 were eight hundred thousand valiant men in the 
 armies of Israel and five hundred thousand in those 
 of Judah. Chronicles makes it a round million 
 instead of Samuel's eight hundred thousand, but
 
 MATURITY 123 
 
 that comes nearer than some current official counts 
 and estimates of the size of armies. 
 
 As soon as it was done David's heart smote him 
 and he knew that he had sinned greatly and done a 
 great iniquity and had been very foolish. When he 
 had his choice of three penalties, seven years of 
 famine, or to flee before his enemies three months, 
 or a three days' pestilence, he chose the last — as 
 any modern king would have done — and seventy 
 thousand perished. And then David bethought 
 himself — as any modern king might not have done 
 — to take the blame on himself, and said: "I was 
 responsible for that census. What have these 
 sheep done?" And so he made a sacrifice and was 
 forgiven. 
 
 When the suggestion is made that the time has 
 now come when we in this country should all be 
 officially registered, with our finger-prints, and with 
 a constantly corrected address, every birth, every 
 removal, and every death being reported under 
 penalty of the law, the proposal is apt to be greeted 
 perhaps much as the king's impious proposal was 
 greeted by Joab. We of free English traditions, 
 with our touchiness as to personal liberty, are apt 
 to feel that any public record, even of the fact of 
 our existence and where we are, much more what 
 whorls our finger-tips may please to sport, is a 
 gross infringement of inalienable prerogatives. 
 
 Yet it is so, that the basis of a sound compre- 
 hensive policy of social construction demands more
 
 124 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 certainty than we now have — demands a general 
 registration of the whole population, stationary and 
 shifting, native and immigrant, sick and well, 
 feeble-minded and strong-minded, criminal and 
 law-abiding, new-born and moribund, legitimate 
 and illegitimate, of school age and of fighting age, 
 rural and urban, industrial and professional, infant, 
 child, youth, and adult. 
 
 We already have various kinds of registration 
 under federal, state, municipal, or voluntary aus- 
 pices: such as registration for voting, registration 
 by charitable agencies, the school census, and the 
 registration of land titles. One can easily count 
 more than fifty different registrations, each affect- 
 ing a very considerable part of the population, and 
 overlapping one another in a most extraordinary 
 degree. Replacing some of these and perfecting 
 all of them, there should be one complete official 
 registration of the entire population, accessible to 
 all who have legitimate occasion to consult it, 
 serving the purposes of health, education, police, 
 election inspectors, tax assessors, county clerks and 
 sheriffs and other public officials, and also such 
 voluntary agencies — churches, lodges, charitable 
 societies, tradesmen and others — as have occasion 
 to know the whereabouts and the family relation- 
 ships of their customers or applicants or members, 
 as the case may be. 
 
 Several countries in Europe have some such 
 complete and constantly corrected registration of
 
 MATURITY 125 
 
 the whole population. It has shown its utility in 
 war; and, what is more to the point, it has con- 
 tinuously shown its value for more than a genera- 
 tion in peace. Beginning with any federal census 
 year, when the whereabouts and the social status of 
 the whole population are known, it would only be 
 necessary to distribute the original enumerators' 
 schedules to some local census authority, probably 
 the health department, and for the latter (after 
 transferring the information presumably to 5 x 8 
 cards) to provide for keeping up the record by in- 
 corporating the reports of births and deaths, al- 
 ready required, and securing reports of removals 
 as they occur. If a finger-print accompanied 
 every registration, and each person were supplied 
 with an identification card containing his name, 
 date of birth, and finger-print, the system would be 
 complete. 
 
 The operation of election laws would be simpli- 
 fied by a complete, constantly corrected, regis- 
 tration; thousands of persons arrested for petty 
 offenses, now thrown into jail, could be allowed to 
 go until the time set for the hearing, for they could 
 always be found when wanted if they failed to 
 appear. School attendance, school planning, the 
 enforcement of child-labor laws, would all be simpli- 
 fied. No honest man would have anything to lose 
 by such a registration. Homeless, irresponsible 
 people might not get the full benefit of it, but all 
 would reap advantages innumerable from the wiser
 
 126 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 plans which could be based upon it. If those who 
 do not at first like the idea will let it sink in, digest 
 it by thinking about it in relation to social prob- 
 lems, they may come to realize how harmless it is, 
 how fair it is, how democratic it is, how much less 
 expensive than it seems at first sight because of the 
 other registrations it would save or simplify, how 
 much it would contribute to a policy of social con- 
 struction. It is a problem of maturity in the sense 
 that heads of families would be responsible for the 
 registration, voters would have to authorize it, 
 able administrators would have to work out the 
 details of it, and it takes a somewhat maturely 
 social-minded citizen to consent to it. 
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF MATURITY 
 The two big universal normal interests of both 
 men and women in the early years of maturity are 
 work and home. They are in a sense rivals. We 
 have been regaled by the conceit of a wife's suit for 
 separation based on the alienation of affections by a 
 defendant called the day's work. There are other 
 important interests, of course, for all: participa- 
 tion in political life, for example, or church activi- 
 ties, or going to lectures. But for most of us such 
 activities do not compare in immediacy of interest 
 with our activities as workers and as heads of fami- 
 lies. These other interests are absorbed in the two 
 great interests, or incidental and subordinate to 
 them, even when they are fully recognized and 
 appreciated.
 
 MATURITY 127 
 
 Work is popular in America. The necessity 
 which pushes us is not external, but internal and 
 welcome. We hardly have a "leisure class" at all 
 of rich or aristocratic idlers, in spite of the best 
 efforts of "society reporters" ; and at the other end 
 nearly every one can earn a living and is willing 
 enough to do so. Ninety-seven per cent of the men 
 between twenty-one and forty-five years of age 
 were reported by the census in 1910 as "engaged in 
 gainful occupations," and over one-fourth of the 
 women. 
 
 As we have already seen, a great many of them 
 had not waited for the age of twenty-one before 
 going to work. Some of them began at ten and 
 even earlier. Between sixteen and twenty-one, 
 four-fifths of the young men and two-fifths of the 
 girls were employed — eighty per cent and forty per 
 cent, respectively; a larger proportion, that is, of 
 the girls under twenty-one than of the women over 
 that age. Young women in the early twenties 
 have a way of transferring their big normal per- 
 manent interest from work to home; young men 
 have also, but their best way of showing the in- 
 terest in their home is to take more rather than less 
 interest in their work. 
 
 The proportion of idle men does not vary ap- 
 preciably in different parts of the country, the lar- 
 gest number being five per hundred in Vermont, 
 North and South Dakota, and the District of Co- 
 lumbia, and the fewest (2.2 to 2.5 per cent) being
 
 128 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 found in Mississippi and Alabama, South Caro- 
 lina, Wyoming, and Rhode Island. The most in- 
 dustrious population of women — although it may 
 be better to use strictly the language of the census, 
 since housewives, who are not included among those 
 engaged in gainful occupations, are well known to 
 be the most industrious of women — the largest 
 proportion of women gainfully employed are in 
 South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and other 
 southern states. This is explained by the large 
 number of Negro women, nearly all of whom are 
 reported as employed. In Massachusetts thirty- 
 nine per cent of the women from twenty-one to 
 forty-five were gainfully employed, and by contrast 
 only about fifteen per cent in West Virginia, Okla- 
 homa, Idaho, and New Mexico. 
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED 
 
 It is the usual thing, then, as well as the normal 
 thing, for American men in the first half of their 
 mature years to be employed — sufficiently, at any 
 rate, to be counted among the workers by the cen- 
 sus enumerators. Not all of them, however, are 
 employed steadily, or as much as they would like 
 to be, and there are some abnormally situated in- 
 dividuals who either do not work at all or who are 
 seriously underemployed. 
 
 Some of these are quite normal, after all. They 
 are still "pursuing" that coy creature, an educa- 
 tion; or they are taking a year off for travel and
 
 MATURITY 129 
 
 recreation; or they are, here and there in rare in- 
 stances, deliberately leading the life of a scholar or 
 an amateur of some art or devoting themselves to 
 the service of the public in some way or other, the 
 only difference between them and many others 
 being that their useful activity is not brought into 
 the market. It may be said in the same way that 
 the great majority of the "unemployed" women 
 are so only technically, being in fact economic pro- 
 ducers, or performing even more valuable economic 
 functions than production in the strict sense, by 
 their management of whatever income is brought 
 into the home. Since the values which women in 
 the home add to the goods we consume, and the 
 services they render, do not pass through a market 
 they do not receive a money valuation. 
 
 Among the abnormally unemployed are first the 
 really idle rich: those who are not dependent on 
 their own exertions, who would answer to one part 
 of the definition of vagrancy — that they are with- 
 out regular employment — even if not to the other 
 — that they are without visible means of support; 
 who, in consequence of their natural tastes or the 
 character of their education, prefer indolence or 
 morbid pleasures to rational activity. Happily 
 these are few, and the application of better methods 
 of education to the children of the rich will gradu- 
 ally eliminate most of them. 
 
 More numerous, unhappily, are those who are 
 not able to do anything for which the world is
 
 130 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 willing to pay, or who are not able to make con- 
 nections with an employer who could use their 
 services. Those who are unemployed because they 
 are unemployable, through physical or mental de- 
 fect or illness, or lack of training and guidance, we 
 may hope to see reduced to a mere handful, and 
 no social problem, after we have done even for 
 one generation the things which we have seen to 
 be essential to normal childhood and youth. 
 Voluntary and compulsory industrial and farm 
 colonies, with work in shops and work on the land, 
 will be among the necessary means of bringing 
 about a reduction in the number of unemployable. 
 For the really degenerate, unteachable, and un- 
 responsive to discipline there is nothing for it ex- 
 cept segregation, — employment at public cost 
 under direction, — but we must approach that solu- 
 tion with patience and minds open to the evidence 
 which is slowly accumulating. 
 
 The unemployable are thus separable by careful 
 scrutiny into two wholly distinct groups of (i) 
 subnormal, unteachably inefficient, and (2) those 
 who with opportunity and instruction can become 
 employable. 
 
 But, besides all these, there is in almost all parts 
 of our country, in good times as well as in periods 
 of depression, a very considerable number of em- 
 ployable, capable persons in need of work who are 
 not actually employed. Among the causes of this 
 unsatisfactory failure to make use of usable labor
 
 MATURITY 131 
 
 force are immigration and migration from place to 
 place within the country, fluctuations in the de- 
 mand for certain commodities and services, the 
 seasonal character of certain occupations, the vari- 
 able fortunes of particular employers, especially of 
 large employing corporations, the absence of ade- 
 quate agencies for diffusing reliable information 
 about conditions in the labor market, and the lack 
 of a satisfactory system for classifying workmen and 
 work according to their essential abilities and re- 
 quirements, respectively, rather than according to 
 superficial and accidental characteristics. 
 
 Whether or not the labor force of the entire 
 country, viewed as an undifferentiated abstraction, 
 is more or less than is needed, or exactly the amount 
 that is needed, to perform the work which at a 
 given moment is waiting to be done, — the work 
 being viewed also as an undifferentiated abstrac- 
 tion, — is a question of pure academic' speculation, 
 such a problem as would have delighted the me- 
 diaeval schoolmen. 
 
 The labor force of the country cannot in reality 
 be looked upon as one huge office staff or factory 
 force or industrial army which can be assigned and 
 distributed, according to the aptitudes of the work- 
 ers, on the one hand, and the demands of the work, 
 on the other, by some competent directing genius. 
 Nor is the work to be done one huge comprehensive 
 enterprise, like the Panama Canal, which can be 
 planned from a central office with no regard to any-
 
 132 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 thing except efficiency and an economical applica- 
 tion of the labor force and plant. 
 
 An infinite number of influences takes the place 
 of the directing genius, counteracting, compensat- 
 ing, supplementing, correcting, and limiting one 
 another in an infinite variety of ways, with the 
 result that the industry of the country, taken as a 
 whole, seems more like an exceedingly sensitive 
 living organism than like a department store or a 
 canal contract. 
 
 These various influences, however, have not yet 
 succeeded in bringing about as much of an adjust- 
 ment as is desirable. There are certain communi- 
 ties, especially the large cities, in which there is 
 some surplus labor most of the time, while in other 
 communities at the same time there may be an 
 urgent demand for both skilled and unskilled labor. 
 In periods of depression, such as the present win- 
 ter, the unemployed gather in the cities, swelling 
 this surplus to serious proportions. 
 
 REMEDIAL MEASURES 
 To bring about some sort of adjustment at such 
 times some immediate relief measures are neces- 
 sary. One of them is an expansion of the work of 
 the ordinary relief agencies. Prompt and liberal 
 relief in cases of actual distress is appropriate at 
 all times, but especially in times when distress is 
 augmented by unemployment. Carefully man- 
 aged loan funds — pawnshops, chattel loan socie-
 
 MATURITY 133 
 
 ties, and even loans on personal character without 
 any material security — are a valuable means of 
 helping those who do not often or easily bring them- 
 selves to apply to charitable agencies. Special 
 benefit features in trade unions, including loans to 
 be repaid, with or without interest, are especially 
 helpful in such emergencies. Employment at 
 modest, but not too modest, wages in community 
 workshops for the making of bandages, cobbling of 
 shoes, and carpentry jobs, and the more thorough 
 cleaning of streets under the direction of the regu- 
 lar municipal authorities, are illustrations of bene- 
 ficial emergency measures. They have their 
 drawbacks and weak spots that need watching, 
 but they do lighten the hardships of the unem- 
 ployed and interfere in the least imaginable degree 
 with the resumption of that kind of industry which 
 prosperity ushers in. Such emergency measures 
 may meet the immediate need, but something more 
 wide-reaching and permanent is needed also. 
 
 A series of efficient employment bureaus through- 
 out the country, organized to supply accurate in- 
 formation about conditions and to analyze em- 
 ployees and positions, with facilities for intercom- 
 munication and publicity, could do a great deal 
 toward matching up the unemployed with oppor- 
 tunities for work, and should be established. 
 
 The problem is not entirely, however, a problem 
 of matching up in this way. On the whole, it may 
 be that we have about as much mobility of labor as
 
 134 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 is desirable. "Labor" seems to find a way to flow 
 around very freely. Greater discrimination as to 
 the direction it should take would be a gain, and 
 this the employment bureau can help to supply. 
 Absolute fluidity of the labor force, however, 
 though theoretically desirable from the point of 
 view of the labor market considered an abstract 
 and isolated phenomenon, is hardly a goal to pro- 
 pose for our efforts. There are social advantages — 
 economic, too, in the long run — in a certain degree 
 of stability of population. Theoretically, the 
 Baltimore operators on men's clothing who are 
 thrown out of work in their dull season in Sep- 
 tember might find work at their own trade in Chi- 
 cago, where this industry is at its height at that 
 time; or some of the Washington lumbermen and 
 loggers who are idle in January might be welcome 
 just then in Maine. Probably individuals here 
 and there do make such changes to decided ad- 
 vantage. But that several thousand, in each of 
 many trades, should do so regularly every year, 
 between all the important manufacturing centers 
 of the country, whether they migrated back and 
 forth as families or individuals, would hardly be 
 feasible, and would be demoralizing if it were. The 
 chief service of employment bureaus probably lies 
 in making adjustments of workers to jobs in their 
 own locality, between different plants in the same 
 industry, and between industries needing workmen 
 of similar qualifications.
 
 MATURITY 135 
 
 Unemployment insurance, for which a demand 
 has become articulate this winter, makes for stabil- 
 ity of labor, and it can probably best be organized, 
 as it has been in England, in connection with a 
 national or state system of employment bureaus, 
 since through these bureaus there will always be 
 reliable information as to whether there is or is not 
 employment to be had and whether, therefore, the 
 insured is or is not entitled to an out-of-work bene- 
 fit. 
 
 SEASONAL TRADES 
 
 Among the conspicuously seasonal industries, 
 some are necessarily of this character, and it is 
 difficult to see how they can be made more regular. 
 Canning and preserving, for instance, to consider 
 only certain manufacturing pursuits, must be done 
 when the fruits and vegetables are ripe. It is not 
 surprising that only thirteen per cent as many per- 
 sons were employed at this work in January as in 
 September, and that most of these thirteen per 
 cent were probably not identical with the Sep- 
 tember employees in the same industry, as they 
 were mainly occupied with fish and oysters. Sugar 
 and molasses must be made when the beets and 
 sugar-cane are ready and when the sap runs in the 
 maple trees. Logs must come out of the woods 
 when streams are open. Rice must be cleaned and 
 polished after the crop is in. Less than half as 
 many people are making artificial ice in January 
 as in July. Bricks should not be laid in freezing
 
 136 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 weather, and building operations are affected, 
 though not entirely determined, by weather con- 
 ditions. The building trades are seasonal, but 
 are subject to most erratic fluctuations, depending 
 upon general prosperity, housing laws, the money 
 market, real estate speculation, and the foresight 
 of builders. 
 
 Other seasonal industries owe their irregularity 
 to fashion, to the prevailing desire, for example, 
 which seems the one fixed principle of fashion, for 
 an entire change in the style of clothing at least 
 twice a year, and to other habits and customs 
 against which the economist and the hygienist may 
 rail and which subtle psychologists only can ade- 
 quately expound. Manufacturers must wait until 
 styles have been decided upon and then they must 
 get out their samples and early stocks in time for 
 the opening of the retail season. And so only two- 
 fifths of the maximum force employed in making 
 straw hats is needed in July, in which seemingly 
 untimely month the felt-hat makers are entering 
 on their busy season. Confectionery is at the 
 height of its season in November; "statuary and 
 art goods" in September — both no doubt to be 
 forehanded for the Christmas trade. The number 
 of persons employed in providing some of the per- 
 manent and fundamental needs of human life — 
 such as bread, boots and shoes, hosiery and knit 
 goods, coffins, firearms and ammunition, printing 
 and publishing and steel pens, silk goods and cotton
 
 MATURITY 137 
 
 goods — does not vary greatly from month to month 
 in the aggregate, though even among these indus- 
 tries individual establishments no doubt see serious 
 fluctuations. 
 
 Irregularity in those seasonal trades in which 
 the disturbances are due to fashion and custom 
 might, within narrow limits, be influenced by educa- 
 tion; but it is not a high social ideal that would 
 adapt man to industry rather than industry to 
 man, and so if it satisfies, as it seems to, an ine- 
 radicable and not very much modifiable want of 
 man to wear the uncomfortable stiff felt hat in 
 January, and the inadequate stiff straw hat in 
 August, we shall have to say, as we say of seed-time 
 and harvest, that it is a question of planning to 
 meet things as they are. 
 
 Within narrow limits again something can be 
 done by governments — national, state, and munici- 
 pal — to carry on public construction of various 
 kinds at such times and in such ways as to com- 
 pensate the more extreme fluctuations of ordinary 
 trade conditions. But if very much were at- 
 tempted in this direction, an impossible burden of 
 expense would be added to taxes, for governments 
 in industry, after all, are subject to much the same 
 conditions of weather and finance as private in- 
 vestors. 
 
 The chief hope of a better adjustment in essen- 
 tially seasonal trades lies in that more flexible 
 adaptability in the worker which has already been
 
 138 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 urged on educational grounds, and which stands 
 him in good stead in the ups and downs of pros- 
 perity in his particular occupation; and in deliber- 
 ate preparation by individual workers in seasonal 
 trades for an alternative supplementary trade whose 
 seasons may be expected to dovetail. In this 
 direction vocational guides and employment bu- 
 reaus can help. 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF INDUSTRY 
 Industry itself should shoulder the responsibility 
 for bringing order out of the chaos of unemploy- 
 ment, irregular employment, underemployment, 
 and employment at tasks for which the worker is 
 adapted neither by nature nor by training. There 
 is altogether too much waste — pecuniary and hu- 
 man waste — in the existing maladjustments. 
 Mayor Mitchell recognized the reasonableness of 
 this demand when he made up his committee on 
 unemployment this winter largely of the officers and 
 directors of large industrial, railway, and banking 
 corporations, instead of social workers and ladies 
 at large. Judge Gary, of the steel corporation, 
 is its chairman, and other men of large responsi- 
 bilities in industry are associated with him. They 
 have been expressly asked to consider not only 
 relief workshops and bundle days, loan funds and 
 relief funds, but also such large, more permanent, 
 and more serious questions as the lessening of 
 seasonal and irregular employment or adequate
 
 MATURITY 139 
 
 preparation for it, unemployment insurance, and 
 the distribution of labor under ordinary conditions. 
 I do not know how far they will get with these 
 larger aspects of their problem, but it is something, 
 at least, that the public is coming to expect in- 
 vestors, directors, and officers of corporations 
 which employ the great bulk of the industrial work- 
 ers to give the same close and continuous and effec- 
 tive attention to labor problems and their results 
 as they have presumably given to financial policies 
 and their results. 
 
 WORKING CONDITIONS 
 
 Fortunately, however, for all of us as consumers, 
 most of us as workers are, after all, at work most of 
 the time, and social construction concerns itself 
 inevitably even more with the conditions of work 
 than with those of enforced idleness. 
 
 Of child labor we have already said enough. We 
 will have none of it. As to the employment of 
 older girls and boys, we have also said as much as 
 is necessary, perhaps, but builders of the social 
 structure will have to give this subject their very 
 earnest consideration. From fourteen to twenty 
 work should not crowd out education. The one 
 should dovetail into the other, so that the health, 
 the character, and the future life-long efficiency of 
 the young people will have adequate safeguards. 
 In a rational social organization the work will be 
 done by adults, not by adolescents; by the grown
 
 140 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 up, not by the growing up. Of course, keeping 
 children and youths out of work is not enough. 
 The main thing is to prepare them for work later 
 on and for life. 
 
 Women in industry also need special protection 
 and the kind of liberty that rests upon a solid basis 
 of physiology and anatomy, of racial security and 
 welfare, of consideration for the interests of the 
 family and of children yet unborn, rather than the 
 negative and dangerous kind of liberty which em- 
 ployers and their lawyers sometimes invoke in 
 behalf of women — the unlimited liberty of indi- 
 vidual contract. Laws limiting the total number 
 of hours of women's work in a day and in a week, 
 restricting their employment at night and in physi- 
 cally injurious occupations, represent a sober con- 
 sensus of public opinion originating largely with 
 women ; created, sustained, and justified by women ; 
 but accepted also by competent medical au- 
 thority, by lawmakers and courts, mostly repre- 
 sented by men. It is a subject which does not in- 
 volve disputed issues of suffrage or feminism, save 
 as some may think that women as voters might be 
 able to push such measures more vigorously. The 
 principle has certainly been established already that 
 it does not contravene the constitution or the rights 
 of individuals to protect women in their own in- 
 terests and in the common interest from night work, 
 injurious work, and overwork.
 
 MATURITY 141 
 
 ACCIDENTS 
 Another problem still unsolved, but now receiv- 
 ing very active consideration, is that of compensa- 
 tion for deaths and injuries to workmen in the 
 course of their occupation. To a far greater extent 
 than was just or reasonable we have in the past 
 thrown the cost and hardships of such industrial 
 injuries on the injured workmen and their families. 
 They have had their chance at a lawsuit for dam- 
 ages, but they have had to show that the employer 
 was liable — was responsible for the accident by some 
 personal fault or negligence on his part. If the 
 injured or killed workman was contributorily negli- 
 gent, or if a fellow employee was negligent, or if it 
 was due to an ordinary risk of the trade which the 
 employee was supposed to know about, he might 
 get nothing at all, even though disabled for life. 
 Such barbarous laws and practices survived here 
 long after they were changed or abolished in other 
 civilized countries, but of late there has swept over 
 the country a realization of their injustice and 
 iniquity which has led to the gradual introduction 
 of a new principle. Compensation, reasonable in 
 amount but immediate, and assured, generally, from 
 some sort of insurance fund, previously collected by 
 law, is taking the place of employer's liability at 
 law. The successful introduction of the compensa- 
 tion-insurance principle in place of the liability 
 
 principle, making the financial burden of deaths 
 10
 
 142 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 and injuries a charge on the industry to be dis- 
 tributed to consumers, instead of a charge on the 
 families of the workers, is a clear triumph of elemen- 
 tary justice over artificial law, of the cooperative 
 over the exploitive principle. It is as an incident 
 of such legislation that "safety first" and "boost- 
 ing for safety" campaigns have been inaugurated. 
 Factory inspection by the state is all very well and 
 is necessary, but constant self-inspection by officers, 
 superintendents, foremen, and operatives is the 
 only kind of inspection that will prevent accidents. 
 If the insurance rate which a given establishment 
 has to pay is fixed by an association of which that 
 establishment is a member, and fixed according to 
 the actual risk, as determined by safety devices 
 and efficiency of management, the safety devices 
 will be installed and the management will tend to 
 become efficient. 
 
 THE WORKING DAY 
 Whether laws should directly prescribe maximum 
 hours of labor for adult men is an open question. 
 Probably the prevailing sentiment is against it, 
 on the ground that through trade unions and vol- 
 untary agreements the long day can be shortened 
 and the short day maintained. There are advan- 
 tages in the voluntary principle, as we have seen 
 in other connections, when it works. If it fails to 
 work, — if under the voluntary principle men are 
 continuously and outrageously overworked so that
 
 MATURITY 143 
 
 their working life is reduced, their power to main- 
 tain a home and family life impaired, their leisure 
 destroyed or poisoned by fatigue toxins until they 
 have no capacity to use their free time ; if standards 
 are fixed by a cheap boarding-house contingent of 
 unmarried immigrants or by any native stock so 
 demoralized and exploitable that self-respecting 
 workingmen who have families to support in de- 
 cency and comfort cannot compete with them, — 
 then a fair case may be made out for a limitation of 
 the voluntary principle and the establishment of a 
 maximum working day by law. This has already 
 been done to a large extent as far as employment on 
 public work is concerned, even to some extent when 
 this is done by private contract. 
 
 Whether law is needed to establish and maintain 
 a minimum standard as to overwork, or whether 
 this can be left to the operation of free contract 
 between employers and employees, is a question for 
 evidence. In one industry it may be necessary and 
 in another not. However sincere our preference 
 for non-interference, we are coming to have a 
 stronger preference for conserving life and health 
 and character, and those managers of industrial 
 enterprises who prefer to keep their management in 
 their own hands will do so most easily by seeing to 
 it that the hours are reasonable according to 
 present standards of what reasonable hours are. 
 
 Science has come to the support of human wel- 
 fare once more in this very connection by a more
 
 144 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 thorough investigation of physiological effects of 
 fatigue. It has been discovered that there is a 
 fatigue toxin, an actual poisoning substance manu- 
 factured in the blood when there is prolonged mus- 
 cular exertion or strain or severe nervous tension. 
 We may hope that science will stop there and not 
 produce an antitoxin, for it is disturbing to think 
 what some manufacturers might be tempted to do 
 if they had an anti-fatigue toxin which could be 
 hypodermically administered at the end of the 
 eighth or tenth hour. If there were nothing but 
 physiology, that might be all right. We might 
 imagine the work being done by half as many work- 
 ers, working all the time, their fatigue germs 
 slaughtered as fast as they appear. But there are 
 other things. Leisure is needed, not merely to 
 counteract fatigue germs by the germicide of rest, 
 but also to enable a man to get acquainted with his 
 children and to round out his life. A reasonable 
 amount of fatigue, quickly compensated, is bene- 
 ficial and not pathological, but industry is to be so 
 organized in the day of sound social construction as 
 to keep all workers well within the safety line. 
 
 SANITARY CONDITIONS 
 Industry should be carried on also under sani- 
 tary conditions. Light and air and occasional 
 relaxation from severe strain, such as speeding pro- 
 cesses impose, are as elementary as freedom from 
 unnecessary accidents or a too prolonged working 

 
 MATURITY 145 
 
 day. Sanitary conveniences should be supplied 
 voluntarily by owners and managers, compulsorily 
 if necessary. Running water for drinking and 
 washing, soap and clean towels, a sufficient number 
 of clean and decently protected closets, such ar- 
 rangement of benches, when workers sit at their 
 work, or of places to stand, when they stand, as will 
 prevent breathing or coughing into the faces of one 
 another, are coming to be among the essentials of 
 the standard of factory conditions. 
 
 There are certain occupations, such as those in- 
 volving the use of lead and of phosphorus, and those 
 which are carried on under atmospheric pressure, 
 in which there is an extraordinarily high risk of 
 poisoning or other physical injury. The utmost 
 protection against exposure to such risks, and rea- 
 sonable compensation for such injuries and infec- 
 tions as cannot be or are not prevented, is in line 
 with the spirit of compensation laws and safety 
 campaigns. 
 
 HOME MANUFACTURE 
 Industry is good, and family life in the home is 
 good, but under modern urban conditions they do 
 not belong together. In the old days, before the 
 industrial revolution of the eighteenth century, in- 
 dustry was ordinarily carried on in the home. 
 There were no factories or factory towns. There 
 were no mill hands or mill bosses. There was no 
 steam or electric power. There were no railways
 
 146 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 or steamboats, now an integral part of our indus- 
 trial system. For this change we need not go back 
 to some remote age about which we know only 
 through legend and inference, but no further than 
 to the time of Franklin and Washington, or even 
 later. There are those still alive who belonged for 
 a time to that smokeless, noiseless era when indus- 
 tries were mainly carried on within the domestic 
 circle, although for its completeness we must travel 
 farther back, to the time when all had a fixed status 
 and freedom of contract had no meaning, or a very 
 different meaning from that which modern English 
 and American law has given it. Those times are 
 long since gone; but we have not yet adjusted our 
 laws, practices, and ideas to the conditions resulting 
 from the industrial revolution — or the successive 
 industrial revolutions, for there have been many, 
 so many that perhaps we shall some day in a better 
 perspective see that they are stages in a gradual 
 evolution. 
 
 The broad fact is that the modern home is no 
 place for manufacture. When materials are given 
 out to be made up, for example, in New York 
 tenements, the result is that the family is virtually 
 deprived of the meager space for which a relatively 
 high rent has been paid as a home. The manu- 
 facturer may save rent by this species of very dis- 
 tinct exploitation, and that may cheapen the goods 
 to the consumer, though again it may not. What 
 is especially objectionable about it is that the in-
 
 MATURITY 147 
 
 dustry virtually escapes that frequent and rigid 
 inspection on which the health, safety, and comfort 
 of workers depend. The enforcement of child 
 labor laws, of restriction on the hours of employ- 
 ment, of sanitary regulations, are practicable in 
 factories, but in tenements or other dwellings any 
 such inspection and enforcement are so difficult and 
 expensive as to be impracticable. If, therefore, 
 we are to have standards at all for the protection of 
 workers, it is virtually necessary to establish the 
 principle, which at first seems rather repugnant to 
 us, as an invasion of private affairs, that manufac- 
 turing — such industries as cigar-making, garment- 
 making, candy-making, and nut-picking — shall not 
 be carried on in private dwellings, or at least in 
 rooms ordinarily used as bedrooms, kitchens, or for 
 other domestic purposes. 
 
 MINIMUM WAGE 
 Society has gone so far in regulating working 
 conditions as to take an official and controlling in- 
 terest in fixing the age at which the youth may be- 
 gin work, the hours during which women may 
 work, the light and air and sanitary conditions to 
 which workers are entitled while at work, the pro- 
 tection against accidents from machinery or other 
 foreseeable causes, and compensation for such acci- 
 dents as do occur. It is a question of fixing certain 
 minimum standards corresponding to the accepted
 
 148 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 ideals of the community as to what is right and 
 decent and reasonable in these respects. 
 
 The mind of man, of socially minded man, when 
 it begins working on problems of this kind, presses 
 steadily forward from one point to another until at 
 last it reaches the central kernel of the matter. 
 That central kernel in industry is not hours, or 
 danger from accidents, or sanitary conditions, but 
 the daily or weekly wage. Shall we then attempt 
 to fix wages, as well as hours and safety and sani- 
 tary conditions? The subject has recently been in- 
 vestigated by several state commissions, and is 
 now under consideration by others. Australia 
 began fixing wages in sweated industries nearly 
 twenty years ago, and England has recently fol- 
 lowed suit, taking up one industry after another — 
 chain-making, paper-box making, lace-making, 
 tailoring, mining, and others. The ordinary pro- 
 cedure is to create wage boards on which employers 
 and employees are represented, to inquire into the 
 wages actually paid and their adequacy to sustain 
 life and a reasonable standard of health, comfort, 
 and welfare. In England and in Australia these 
 findings, when approved by competent authority, 
 are binding in the industry and in the district cov- 
 ered by the inquiry. 
 
 Oregon has enacted a similar law, and its con- 
 stitutionality is now being tested. Massachusetts 
 has proceeded more cautiously by providing for an 
 investigation of alleged sweated industries and the
 
 MATURITY 149 
 
 publication of the findings of the commission, not 
 making it, however, legally binding on any particu- 
 lar employer. The idea is that when the facts are 
 fully known and officially attested, public opinion 
 will compel the payment of a voluntary minimum 
 wage sufficient to provide for a reasonable standard 
 of living among the wage-earners concerned. 
 
 The chief arguments against minimum wage 
 legislation are: (i) That it is better to leave the 
 issue of wages to voluntary bargaining, trusting to 
 trade unions to protect the interests of workers, lest 
 the minimum wage tend to become the average or 
 standard or even the maximum wage ; and (2) that 
 to forbid employers to pay less than a certain 
 amount — say nine dollars a week — is to throw 
 out of employment altogether those whose services 
 are not worth that amount. Neither of these argu- 
 ments need detain us long here, interested as we 
 are in fostering the normal life. Those whose ser- 
 vices are worth less than the low minimum likely 
 to be fixed by any such law should be out of em- 
 ployment, either receiving a training which will 
 make them worth more, or, if unteachable and sub- 
 normal, then cared for on some plan which will keep 
 them properly occupied under direction in a hospital 
 or colony appropriate to their particular need. 
 I think the responsibility for supporting subnormal 
 persons who cannot earn a low minimum wage 
 should be definitely assumed, if necessary, by the 
 state, until they can be graduated into self-support.
 
 150 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 The operation of minimum wage laws elsewhere 
 does not justify the apprehension that the mini- 
 mum wage tends to become the standard. Some- 
 times such a tendency is apparent, but usually the 
 influences determining the wage contract operate 
 freely above the plane fixed by the law. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 
 
 All these matters affecting wages and the con- 
 ditions of industry, and many others which we 
 cannot discuss, involve what are known as indus- 
 trial relations, i.e. the relations between employer 
 and wage-earner. Those relations are sometimes 
 disturbed by strikes or lock-outs, and they are 
 rendered acute by boycotts and blacklists. Our 
 governmental and voluntary machinery for settling 
 disputes has long been felt by thoughtful students 
 of industry to be defective. Force, on the one hand, 
 and violence, on the other, have revealed its weak- 
 nesses. Some dissatisfied workmen use dynamite, 
 and society properly visits upon them its severe 
 condemnation. Other dissatisfied workmen — 
 justly dissatisfied workmen — refuse to use violence, 
 and have the greatest difficulty in getting any hear- 
 ing whatever or any redress for their grievances. 
 
 Realizing these things, realizing them very keenly 
 at the time of the Los Angeles dynamiting confes- 
 sions a few years ago, a group of social workers and 
 economists secured, by act of Congress, the ap- 
 pointment of a Federal Commission to investigate
 
 MATURITY 151 
 
 industrial relations, industrial unrest, and to devise 
 means for maintaining industrial peace on a just and 
 equitable basis. That Commission is still in exist- 
 ence, and it would be premature to offer any com- 
 ments on its work. Whoever solves the problems 
 entrusted to it by the government of the United 
 States will make a most important contribution to 
 the normal life of man in America.
 
 V 
 
 MATURITY: 
 
 HOME
 
 THE HOME 
 
 Having discussed some of the social problems of 
 adult life centering in industry, involved in the 
 activities of men and women in earning their living, 
 we have next to ask what conditions are needed to 
 assure a normal home life and what circumstances — 
 especially what modifiable circumstances — are in- 
 terfering with its full realization. 
 
 We may notice, by way of preface, that marriage 
 is popular in America, as well as work. Even 
 among the young people twenty to twenty-five 
 years of age about half the women of the nation 
 are married and about one-fourth of the men. 
 By the time they get into the thirty-five to forty-five 
 year age-group only seventeen per cent of the men 
 are still single and only eleven per cent of the 
 women; and at sixty-five and over the men have 
 caught up with the women, and there remain only 
 six per cent of each who have never married. The 
 proportion of single persons is lower in the United 
 States than in most foreign countries. Further- 
 more, the census figures seem to show, contrary to 
 the prevailing impression, that in all classes of our 
 population (i.e. census classes, according to color 
 and nativity) a larger proportion of the younger 
 
 155
 
 156 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 people are marrying now than was the case twenty 
 years ago, and that this increase is sufficient to 
 affect the proportion in the total adult population. 
 Thus, if the marriage rate may be taken as an index, 
 the tendency in the United States seems to be in- 
 creasingly in favor of establishing homes. 
 
 In other words, notwithstanding the growth of 
 cities and the rise in the standard of living which 
 operates to delay marriage, notwithstanding the 
 immigration of unmarried men and women, not- 
 withstanding all the influences which are supposed 
 to be undermining domesticity and dissolving home 
 life, the proportion of the adult population who de- 
 scribe themselves as married has actually increased 
 in twenty years, and, as the census bureau sagely 
 remarks "very few persons are ignorant of their own 
 marital condition." 
 
 STANDARD OF LIFE 
 What kind of homes they shall be — whether 
 normal or abnormal — depends largely upon our 
 standard of living: that spiritual atmosphere, that 
 indefinable force, compounded of income and what 
 we buy with it, ideals and tastes and the environ- 
 ment provided by our fellows, which is something 
 more than the sum of its parts, something different 
 from any of them, a power to which unconsciously 
 we defer in every choice we make, and which we 
 frequently invoke to sustain arguments or justify 
 general policies.
 
 MATURITY 157 
 
 When this standard becomes consciously ideal- 
 ized, when it has become ingrained in the habits 
 and instincts of a group of people, when it extends 
 to activities as well as to pleasures, when it oper- 
 ates to fix the age of marriage, the hours of the 
 working day, the issues of war and peace, of life 
 and death, of the here and the hereafter, we may 
 justly call it the standard of life. 
 
 The greatest national asset of any civilized, en- 
 lightened, prosperous, and progressive people is the 
 standard of life of its adult population. Undigged 
 minerals and soils and water power and harbors, 
 accumulated capital in manufacturing plants and 
 road-beds and rolling stock, native shrewdness in 
 bargaining, native energy in labor, acquired knowl- 
 edge of the arts of industry, are all of less signifi- 
 cance, less fundamental importance, than that com- 
 plex, subtle, intangible reality — the standard of 
 life of the working people. 
 
 Trade unions exist mainly to protect the stand- 
 ard of life. When laborers in some great conflict 
 seek to show that their cause is just because the low 
 wages against which they protest are not sufficient 
 to maintain their standard of life, they make, if 
 they are sincere, the one irresistible appeal to which 
 every patriot must pay heed, the appeal by which, 
 if their evidence is sufficient, they will best be justi- 
 fied in the long-range view of human welfare. If 
 war or industrial depression or irregular employ- 
 ment or famine or pestilent epidemic or demoraliz- 
 11
 
 158 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 ing poor relief or the luxurious indulgence of vice 
 breaks down the standard of life, this is for civiliza- 
 tion its one real disaster, retrievable, it may be, by 
 long and painful effort, but very probably not in 
 the same nation or community. Such a disaster is 
 not easily retrieved. Earthquake or flood or fire 
 or defeat in arms may be but a slight disaster in the 
 larger perspective of history, but any force which 
 reaches the inner standards of the people, their 
 ideas as to what manner of life they should lead, has 
 a cumulative and incalculable effect on all their 
 future welfare. 
 
 This standard of life, however, fortunately is not 
 determined mainly by wars or famines or any other 
 external accidents. It is the direct product of that 
 good inheritance, that healthy infancy, that pro- 
 tected and sufficiently prolonged childhood, con- 
 secrated to education in its broadest sense, that 
 youth spent in the upbuilding of sound character, 
 that rational organization of the occupations into 
 which the young enter at the threshold of matur- 
 ity, that attention to the conditions under which the 
 wealth of the world is produced and distributed, 
 which have occupied our attention as we have 
 dwelt upon the successive stages in a normal life. 
 
 Tainted, corrupt, diseased stock should be elim- 
 inated if by any means it can be done: if for no 
 other reason, because it lowers the standard of life 
 of all whom it touches in the family either to cor-
 
 MATURITY 159 
 
 rupt or to burden. Sickly babies should be made 
 strong, bottle-fed babies nursed at the breast, 
 that the physical basis for a high standard of life 
 may be laid secure. Children should be informed 
 and disciplined, made strong and fit for life in ways 
 thought through deliberately with the end in view 
 of maintaining the highest standards to which men 
 have risen, and creating the conditions which will 
 lead to the spontaneous, inevitable realization of 
 higher standards still. These things are implied 
 in all those policies of social selection, protection, 
 nurture, and adaptation which the interests of the 
 unfolding normal life of man require. 
 
 Now, however, we may think of the standard of 
 life as exhibited in the normal family household, in 
 the home where man and wife, parent and child, 
 brother and sister, in mutual interdependence live 
 the life which the passing generations have made 
 possible for them. 
 
 WISE USE OF INCOME 
 
 The first essential to a normal standard of living 
 is an adequate and regular income, earned prefer- 
 ably by the male head of the family, without as- 
 sistance from his wife ordinarily, never with the 
 aid of children; earned without exhausting the 
 worker's strength prematurely or exposing him to 
 unnecessary dangers from accident and disease. 
 
 The second essential is that this adequate income
 
 160 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 shall be adequately used, and for this the house- 
 wife has normally the main responsibility. To 
 woman, by an evolutionary process, has fallen the 
 task of directing how the wealth brought into the 
 house shall be used, whether much or little shall be 
 made of it, what values shall be added to it. The 
 woman at the head of a household is as truly an 
 entrepreneur, if we may drop into the terminology 
 of economics, as her husband at the head of a fac- 
 tory; she is as truly a producer of wealth when she 
 broils a chop or washes the dishes, thereby increas- 
 ing the utility of those commodities, as is her son 
 when he helps build a bridge or repairs a drain-pipe 
 or blacks some one's boots. Of still greater im- 
 portance is the contribution she can make by de- 
 termining a wiser consumption of wealth, not only 
 by choosing more intelligently each separate article 
 of food and clothing and furniture, but also by 
 bringing about such a relation among all the dif- 
 ferent material elements of the home that the result 
 is a harmonious unit instead of a haphazard assem- 
 blage of necessities of life. The person who ar- 
 ranges and groups commodities in such a way that 
 their combined utility is greater than the sum of 
 their separate utilities performs an economic ser- 
 vice which is of equal importance, at least, with that 
 performed by the one whom we call technically a 
 producer. Browning seems to think that it is only 
 in music that this principle applies. The rapt com- 
 poser, thrilled by his own conceptions, his ability
 
 MATURITY 161 
 
 to make something wonderful out of sounds mean- 
 ingless in themselves, taken separately, cries: 
 
 And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to 
 
 man, 
 That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, 
 
 but a star. 
 
 Every housewife does things quite as wonderful. 
 Improvements in consumption which bring about 
 greater harmony of combinations, and conse- 
 quently actually create a sort of surplus value, hold 
 the greatest immediate possibilities for advancing 
 the general prosperity. In other words, and to be 
 concrete, household management deserves and will 
 repay, even from the point of view of the national 
 welfare, the application of the best brains and the 
 best-educated brains of the land. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF SOCIETY 
 Under normal conditions, however, the wisest 
 housewife, with an adequate income, is apt to be 
 thwarted in her attempts to provide intelligently 
 for her household unless society does some intelli- 
 gent planning on its own account. Even in the 
 daily marketing there is scope for social coopera- 
 tion, now that our market-gardens extend from 
 Key West to Halifax, and our poultry yards reach 
 beyond the Mississippi. The cheapening of sugar, 
 the development of cold storage transportation, 
 and the invention of the art of canning fruit and 
 vegetables have transformed our diet, but safely so
 
 162 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 only if the government inspects the canned goods, 
 debars authoritatively poisonous preservatives, and 
 makes the labels tell the truth. 
 
 Take the fundamental matter of choosing a home, 
 the physical dwelling-place of the family. For the 
 great majority of families choice is restricted to 
 houses that have already been built by some one 
 else. Where they have been built and what kind 
 of houses they are has been determined not with 
 reference to the needs of the people for homes, as 
 such, but by the real estate system, the tax system, 
 the transportation system, and other things resting 
 upon laws and the administration of laws, all of 
 which have ordinarily had in view business in- 
 terests, civic interests, perhaps, in a narrow and 
 short-sighted sense, but not the welfare of the aver- 
 age family. The way in which the streets of the 
 city were originally laid out has its influence, and 
 mistakes need not be repeated in newer parts of the 
 city or in new cities. The transportation system 
 is generally a "system" by courtesy only, being 
 made up of a number of unrelated ventures, under- 
 taken for private gain, and of most unequal and 
 frequently uncertain social value. Factories have 
 been located primarily with a view to the immediate 
 interests of the business, not for the effect they 
 might have in bringing about a healthy and de- 
 sirable development which would bring permanent 
 advantages to the individual manufacturer as well 
 as to the rest of the community. When we have
 
 MATURITY 163 
 
 concerned ourselves with town planning and the 
 transportation problem at all, it has been rather for 
 their relation to business, commerce, industry, and 
 civic centers, than for their bearing upon the charac- 
 ter and location of the homes of the people. 
 
 In a sound program of social construction the 
 streets and parks and car-lines will all be looked 
 upon as elements in the problem of domestic house- 
 keeping. Transportation facilities will be devel- 
 oped, actively and consciously, into an adequate 
 system, making it possible to get quickly and com- 
 fortably from home to work and back home again, 
 and opening a variety of different residence dis- 
 tricts to persons employed in the same establish- 
 ment. Factories will be located in accordance 
 with a consistent plan, based upon consideration 
 of social welfare and worked out with scientific 
 wisdom and prophetic insight. The city will be 
 divided on what is called the zone system, not 
 necessarily into concentric zones, but into districts 
 suitable for its geographical contour and social 
 needs, for the purpose of securing diversity in the 
 character of buildings in the different zones, dis- 
 couraging speculation in land, and preventing the 
 duplication in outlying portions of bad conditions 
 already established in the center. Specific legis- 
 lation will insure, furthermore, that all buildings 
 intended for homes — all congregate dwellings, at 
 any rate — shall have certain minimum require- 
 ments which have come to be regarded as essential.
 
 164 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 The primary function of the home is to give pro- 
 tection, privacy, and security. The modern city 
 home gives excellent protection from rain and snow 
 and lightning, and relative security from robbers. 
 In the tenement flats of the large cities, however, its 
 minute dimensions make privacy within its walls 
 almost impossible, and it affords but scanty pro- 
 tection against the vice and contamination that 
 may be housed on the next landing or next door in 
 the alley. It exposes its occupants to worse ene- 
 mies than the weather, in the unseen germs which 
 it shelters, until it actually seems, as an inspector 
 of the New York Board of Health reflected in 1842, 
 and as health conditions in the refugee camps in 
 San Francisco suggested in 1906, that it might be 
 preferable to be "absolutely houseless." It is a 
 fact that after the destruction of the homes of San 
 Francisco by the great fire and earthquake the 
 death-rate and the morbidity rate were astonish- 
 ingly reduced. 
 
 Because of the seriousness of the evils which de- 
 veloped under the laissez-faire system of providing 
 houses, and because the individual can to so lim- 
 ited an extent influence the kind of house that he 
 is to live in, since a house once built will almost 
 certainly be occupied by some one, the principle 
 may be said to be established that it is a duty of 
 society to make it impossible for any of its members 
 to live in houses below a minimum standard pre- 
 scribed by law. In many places now the laws en-
 
 MATURITY 165 
 
 sure that all tenements which are built shall be 
 model tenements, i. e. shall be practically as good 
 in the essential features of light, ventilation, sani- 
 tary conveniences, security from fire and other 
 similar dangers, as the dwellings erected but a few 
 years ago, partly from philanthropic motives, and 
 called "model." On no other subject perhaps have 
 we gone so far in putting into the form of laws or 
 ordinances our social standard as we have in some 
 cities on the subject of housing; and this is well, 
 for the character of our domestic life is enormously 
 influenced by the character of the houses in which 
 we live. Think, for example, of the tremendous 
 social and economic effects of such minor features 
 as a garden, an attic, a cellar (with a cellar-door for 
 a slide) and pantries, fences and a gate to swing on 
 and a post to sit on, and roofs and verandas, to say 
 nothing of more serious matters, like the size and 
 number and arrangement of rooms, ventilation and 
 water-supply, and fire-escapes. 
 
 POSITIVE INFLUENCES ON HOME LIFE 
 Before our discussion runs, as it inevitably must, 
 into the destructive influences menacing normal 
 home life, it is expedient to emphasize once more 
 the positive resources for creating an affirmative 
 home life, that we may not draw the mistaken in- 
 ference from these discussions, that painstaking 
 defensive measures against the dangers represent 
 the best social tactics.
 
 166 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 There is no sociological recipe, so far as I know, 
 for family affection: for that continuing and ever 
 strengthening love of man for wife and of woman 
 for husband, without which there is no family in 
 the true sense; for that, if need be sacrificing, but 
 in any event always uncalculating, love of parent 
 for offspring, and that reciprocal attachment of 
 child for parent which, beginning in physical de- 
 pendence, may ripen into a conscious loyalty match- 
 ing mother love itself; for all those natural ties, 
 as we rightly call them, of brother and sister and 
 other relations, extending into collateral lines in- 
 definitely according to circumstances, sometimes 
 farther than consorts with the immediate economic 
 welfare of the individual, so that a young man or 
 even a young woman may at times obey a sound 
 instinct when he goes into a far country for the 
 express purpose of getting away from his family 
 and escaping from their traditions. 
 
 Common religious interests are among the 
 strongest influences to support, develop, and main- 
 tain these natural domestic relations. The family 
 altar is not so often outwardly visible in the mod- 
 ern home, — partly perhaps because rents are high, 
 — but unless there is set up in the hearts of children 
 a reverence for things really held sacred by the 
 parents, one of the most ancient and the most es- 
 sential of intangible family bonds is broken. 
 
 Economic equality within the family, amount- 
 ing to the communistic formula, "From each ac-
 
 MATURITY 167 
 
 cording to his powers, to each according to his 
 needs," is another foundation stone of family soli- 
 darity. We accept that principle within the 
 family as axiomatic. All the income is, of course, 
 for the benefit — the wisely and justly apportioned 
 benefit — of the whole family. If differences in 
 education are made among the children, it is be- 
 cause of some real or assumed differences in their 
 aptitudes, or because of changed conditions. 
 Girls and boys share equally; eldest sons have no 
 rights of primogeniture; youngest sons no exclus- 
 ive claim to affection. The welfare of each, broad- 
 based in the welfare of all, is our ideal, and even the 
 persistent attempt at a practical realization of that 
 ideal becomes a bond of union among the members 
 of the family. No doubt that ideal fails in practice 
 often from miscalculation. 
 
 Such failure will be less frequent when the prac- 
 tice of budgetary standards becomes common, 
 displacing the haphazard spending of whatever is in 
 sight without regard to future or even present 
 competing needs. As incomes increase, families 
 have it in their power to pass over from forced 
 standards to deliberately planned budgetary stand- 
 ards. On the lower plane they pay for rent, food, 
 and clothing, more or less what they must. There 
 is no margin for long-range planning, for saving and 
 investment, as in building and loan societies or 
 life insurance, except for burial expenses. On a 
 higher plane of income many families continue just
 
 168 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 the same method of expenditure, not having ad- 
 justed their psychology to their earning power. 
 Any American skilled workman or office man, with 
 an income of nine hundred dollars a year or more, 
 can ordinarily plan his budget on a monthly or 
 annual basis, or his wife can do it for him if she has 
 the chance, as, of course, she should; and such 
 careful planning of expenditure, such matching up 
 of expenditure to income, taking account of com- 
 mon family needs, and also of the changing individ- 
 ual needs of its individual members, will become a 
 bond of union and strength in the family household. 
 Common interest in the physical and mental 
 development of children, from the day of birth, 
 through infancy, kindergarten, school, apprentice- 
 ship, college, professional school, wherever the 
 destiny of the individual guided by parental care 
 and encouragement and all other complex influences 
 may lead him, is another such factor of family 
 union. What subject is so engrossing in the 
 family circle, what elastic and invisible bond so 
 secure as the sharing of anxieties, the triumphs of 
 such an interest as that of the education of the 
 growing members of a family? Common house- 
 hold possessions, family parties at the theatre or 
 elsewhere outside the home, or within its circle, and 
 all the multitude of miscellaneous socializing ex- 
 periences, — each makes its special contribution 
 towards that unique and indissoluble whole, the 
 home life of the family.
 
 MATURITY 169 
 
 Pride in family traditions may be good or bad. 
 Often it is neither, but a rather harmless, some- 
 times amusing, artificially maintained satisfaction 
 in doing things a little differently, in saying things 
 a trifle otherwise, keeping up a distinction between 
 the family and the neighbors, not so much because 
 it is of any advantage to the family as because it 
 may bother the neighbors. 
 
 INTEMPERANCE 
 
 Let us now turn to the pathological aspects of 
 adult life in the home. 
 
 Among the vicious habits which impair or destroy 
 normal family life none other compares in devasta- 
 tion with the appetite for strong drink. 
 
 Alcoholism is no doubt sometimes an inherited 
 taint, the outcropping of a degenerate germ plasm, 
 certain to take some form of mental or nervous in- 
 stability — if not inebriety, then some other less or 
 more harmful. Sometimes it is no doubt a disease, 
 even if not inherited, akin to insanity. Sometimes, 
 no doubt, it is a mere weakness of the will, an in- 
 dulgence in pleasure, like overeating, or extrava- 
 gance of any other harmful kind. 
 
 Primarily, however, when considered in its effect 
 on individual and family welfare, alcoholism is to 
 be looked upon as a habit, easily formed under 
 favoring conditions, easily prevented at the outset 
 under favoring conditions, beginning often, not 
 always, in youth or early manhood, increasing by
 
 170 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 easy stages, undermining gradually economic 
 efficiency, the sense of family responsibility, per- 
 sonal and social standards, creating fleeting de- 
 lusions of power and resourcefulness for which there 
 is no substantial basis, and leading on, just as tem- 
 perance reformers have always said, straight to 
 destruction, physical, economic, social, and moral. 
 
 Bad associations and good advertising lead most 
 often to the drink habit. The light and warmth of 
 the saloon, its convivial sociability, its wide-open 
 hospitality, its omnipresence where it is present at 
 all, its business-like efficiency for its own ends, its 
 brilliant advertising signs, its substantial backing 
 by distilleries and breweries, by journalism and 
 politics, and the feebleness of its competitors in the 
 kind of social service which it renders, are surely 
 enough to account for the steady supply of victims 
 in the early stages of this pernicious habit. The 
 elimination of the saloon does not eliminate the 
 inheritance of degenerate racial stock or strengthen 
 weak wills or insure temperance as a positive virtue. 
 But it does prevent or diminish the temptation to 
 form the alcoholic habit. It does increase the 
 chances of normal development, through adoles- 
 cence and early maturity, of those who have begun 
 life fairly and come through childhood safely. 
 
 An entirely dry community, i. e. one from which 
 alcoholic beverages strong or mild are deliberately 
 barred, is a new experiment in the world. In mod- 
 ern times the experiment is very modern indeed and
 
 MATURITY 171 
 
 hardly yet tried on any such scale, or for any such 
 period of time, as gives a sure indication of its suc- 
 cess. Thoroughgoing, courageous experiments of 
 this kind, however, of which we are witnessing the 
 most magnificent instances in the Russian Empire 
 and in France at this moment, are congenial to the 
 progressive spirit of the modern world. If the use 
 of intoxicants is ancient, so are the evils inherent in 
 their abuse. If normally strong men have withstood 
 its worst ravages, yet in all ages men of average 
 strength have succumbed to it : their lives cut short 
 in disease by its complications; their families de- 
 prived of normal guardianship and income; their 
 standard of life kept miserably low, and all their crea- 
 tive power destroyed. It is not merely degenerate 
 weaklings who have been victimized by strong drink. 
 The average man has suffered a more tragic, because 
 needless, injury from it. For the great body of the 
 working population the disappearance of this par- 
 ticular temptation to wasteful expenditure and 
 harmful indulgence is unqualified gain. For their 
 wives and children it is gain immeasurable. For their 
 descendants in the third and fourth generation it will 
 be compounded gain, unqualified and immeasurable. 
 Whether the elimination of the saloon, and all its 
 illegal substitutes, should be by prohibitory law or 
 by the steady pressure of public opinion and the 
 corresponding increase of restrictions on its manu- 
 facture and sale, may be open to question. It 
 would be a victory on a higher plane if strong drink
 
 172 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 were to be overcome by the voluntary growth of 
 temperance principles. All the reasons for re- 
 fraining from indulgence in strong drink are equally 
 strong reasons for not indulging other vicious ap- 
 petites and it might seem safer to save the young 
 men altogether from carnal temptations. There 
 are numerous measures short of prohibition which 
 are genuine temperance measures; and on a high 
 plane prohibition itself is not one. It is too primi- 
 tive, too naive, too direct, too crude, to be called 
 by so moderate and restrained a term as temper- 
 ance. But this crude directness, this writing into 
 the law of a downright conviction, if it is not diplo- 
 macy or education, is at least legitimate warfare 
 and religion. It is an impatient short cut with an 
 old and nasty foe. Like the Palmer-Owen bill to 
 prevent child labor, — which just failed of passage 
 in Congress and probably will pass another year, — 
 it does the business. And we can surely sym- 
 pathize with the determined reformer who says that 
 he is weary of pleading with boys and men not to 
 fall into the net which plotting villains spread in 
 plain sight before the eyes, when it is practicable 
 to gather in the nets once for all and break them 
 like playthings in the hands of strong men. There 
 is no need to keep temptations needlessly about for 
 the sake of developing character. All that are 
 required to develop strong character will remain 
 after we have done our level best not to lead men 
 into temptation but to deliver them from evil.
 
 MATURITY 173 
 
 Intemperance is but one, though the foremost, of 
 the evil habits which undermine the home. Lazi- 
 ness, shiftlessness, improvidence, quarrelsomeness, 
 extravagance, sensuality, greed, jealousy, — every 
 human emotion or instinct may be perverted to an 
 evil habit, breaking down the normal life of the 
 individual at work and in the home. 
 
 CRIME 
 
 Homes are destroyed, or heavily burdened, when 
 their adult members commit criminal acts. We 
 have besought clemency in judgment and oppor- 
 tunity for reform on behalf of juvenile delinquents, 
 nor should we be harsher in judging the moral qual- 
 ity of adult offenders. Literal observance of the 
 injunction not to judge, if by that we mean any 
 final or authoritative condemnation of individual 
 men and women, is the only rational attitude of 
 society towards the so-called criminal. But, as in 
 the case of juvenile offenders against the law, re- 
 straint and correction, education for the corrigible, 
 and hospital or custodial care for the incorrigible, 
 are not to be regarded as evidences of moral judg- 
 ments. It is not sentimentalism, such as is ex- 
 hibited in short terms and a failure to convict 
 criminals, that is required. 
 
 Modern penology rests upon the theory of social 
 defense; and reformatories, which are educational 
 institutions, and hospital colonies for mental or 
 moral imbeciles, are its reliance, when probation
 
 174 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 and other preventive measures of a milder sort have 
 failed. The prison, conceived as an institution for 
 inflicting punitive vengeance, is already as obsolete 
 as the whipping post and the gallows. Experience 
 has shown that they are not deterrents but that 
 they are demoralizing to the society which cher- 
 ishes them. Within the broad theory of social 
 defense there is room for many divergent views as 
 to the best way of suppressing or eliminating crime. 
 There is the theory of the Italian "positivist" or 
 "scientific" or "biologic" school, that the male 
 criminal and the female prostitute are born de- 
 generate, and bear physical stigmata by which we 
 may in time expect experts to separate from normal 
 citizens those who need special treatment appro- 
 priate to the criminal class, whether they happen to 
 have committed definite crimes or not. 
 
 The idea is not new. De Quiros mentions a 
 mediaeval edict ordering that in case of doubt be- 
 tween two suspects, the one showing more de- 
 formity was to undergo torture; and there was a 
 member of the Medici family who reserved final 
 judgment until the criminal had been examined 
 physically and then said, "Having seen your face 
 and examined your head, we do not send you to 
 prison, but to the gallows." The idea is not new, 
 but it is not true either. What is true about it is 
 the principle that the offender should be treated 
 according to his nature rather than according to his 
 specific offense. A competent physical and psycho-
 
 MATURITY 175 
 
 logical examiner can tell us something about his 
 nature and so lay the basis for a more intelligent 
 regimen. Courts should not fix sentences. Judges 
 are neither physicians nor teachers. Their ma- 
 chinery is not adapted to the making of a curricu- 
 lum or the prescribing of a course in corrective hy- 
 giene. Criminal court procedure is admirably 
 adapted to discovering whether the right man has 
 been caught and whether he has committed some 
 offense of which society must take cognizance. 
 When this has been done the decision as to how the 
 offender shall be treated, whether it is fitting that 
 he should remain normally in society or be tem- 
 porarily or permanently secluded, and on what 
 terms, if at all, he shall gain social rehabilitation, 
 should be made by an entirely different authority, 
 with wholly different machinery and resources at 
 its disposal. 
 
 Some such reorganization of penal law and crim- 
 inal procedure is in the air. It is still far from a 
 reality. An assistant district attorney in New 
 York, after indicating this sounder theory, pessi- 
 mistically adds: " Be that as it may, vengeance and 
 not public spirit is still the moving cause of ninety 
 per cent of all prosecutions for crime." So, as in 
 all other social problems, we have something to 
 work for. What we have to do is: 
 
 First, to socialize the police, changing their 
 point of view to that of prevention, and when 
 an arrest is necessary, to the laying in each case
 
 176 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 of a sound basis of fact for a final and logical 
 disposition of each case when it comes to court. 
 In other words, not necessarily a conviction, 
 but such investigation of all the circumstances 
 as will lead to appropriate action, is the test of 
 honest and efficient police work. 
 
 Second, to socialize the courts. This is a 
 process long since under way. Among its 
 landmarks are probation, suspended sentence, 
 indeterminate sentence, specialized courts, 
 such as those for children, for women, and for 
 domestic relations, and night courts, and better 
 records, with finger print identification. These 
 landmarks are not the thing itself. Socializa- 
 tion lies in the spirit of procedure of which these 
 institutions are but the outward symbol. 
 
 Third, to socialize the prisons, which means, 
 as prisons, to abolish them altogether. Logic- 
 ally obsolete, they are still very much in evi- 
 dence and many of them are conducted on the 
 principle shamelessly announced some years 
 ago in the Prison Congress by a warden who 
 said: "These men are sent here for us to pun- 
 ish and it is our business to punish them as 
 much as possible." A system of probationary 
 fines might enable many to remain with their 
 families while still receiving necessary disci- 
 pline ; and the earnings of those who are im- 
 prisoned, as experiments have already demon- 
 strated, might be used for the partial support of 
 their families. 
 
 DISEASE 
 The high death-rate of early infancy from con- 
 genital causes and intestinal infections is followed,
 
 MATURITY 177 
 
 as we have seen, by a relatively low death-rate in 
 the years from five to twenty, though health has 
 remained a prime object of solicitude at every 
 period of life. From this point on mortality and 
 morbidity increase. 
 
 Most tragic of all diseases of adult life are those 
 which cause the alienation of the mind. Insanity 
 does not often afflict youth, but from the beginning 
 of maturity through old age it is one of the sinister 
 influences operating to break up homes or to inter- 
 fere with their establishment. There were one 
 hundred and eighty-eight thousand persons in the 
 hospitals for the insane on January I, 1910, two- 
 thirds of them between the ages of twenty-five and 
 fifty-five, with an average age for all of forty-five. 
 The sixty-one thousand admitted during the year 
 were somewhat younger, as would be expected, the 
 bulk of them being from twenty to fifty, and their 
 average age forty-one. In proportion to the popu- 
 lation of the same age, the number of patients 
 admitted increases rapidly up to the age of fifty, and 
 again after seventy, with a stationary or slightly 
 lower ratio between fifty and seventy: i. e. except 
 for these two decades, liability to insanity increases 
 steadily with advancing years. Fortunately, over 
 half of the insane men and over a third of the in- 
 sane women in hospitals are unmarried. Widows 
 and widowers constitute a rather larger proportion 
 of the insane than of the general population; and 
 the proportion of divorced among the insane is
 
 178 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 twice as great for men and three times as great for 
 women as it is in the population at large. 
 
 In the thirty years between 1880 and 19 10 the 
 insane in hospitals increased more than fourfold in 
 actual numbers, and their ratio to the population 
 was more than doubled.* The greater part of this 
 increase is only apparent and represents causes for 
 congratulation: additions to hospital accommoda- 
 tions, improved methods of care, greater skill in 
 detecting insanity, greater willingness to entrust to 
 institutions persons formerly cared for at home. 
 There probably has been, however, some real in- 
 crease in the relative amount of insanity, as there 
 has been in suicides, along with the development of 
 urban centers and other accompaniments of pro- 
 gress which have not yet been thoroughly adjusted 
 to the needs of the normal life of man. This 
 tendency may be counteracted, and a further de- 
 crease effected after the increase has been checked, 
 by establishing all along the line those normal con- 
 ditions of work and living which are desirable for 
 many other reasons as well. For, as Dr. Nathan 
 Allen, of Lowell, said at the second meeting of the 
 National Conference of Charities in 1875: 
 
 This cannot be the fruit or result of true 
 civilization, but comes from something wrong — 
 some artificial habits, some unnatural, un- 
 wholesome way of living, some false and cor- 
 rupt state of things in society. 
 
 * 1880: 82 per 100,000; 1910: 204 per 100,000.
 
 MATURITY 179 
 
 By way of confirmation it may be mentioned 
 that ten per cent of the patients admitted in 1910 
 were reported to be suffering from "alcoholic 
 psychosis" and over six per cent from general 
 paralysis, which is indicative of syphilis. 
 
 It will be necessary to enlarge still further our 
 hospitals for the insane and to increase still more our 
 expenditures for this, already the largest single 
 item in some of our state budgets. Diagnosis, and 
 curative and hygienic treatment based on the 
 diagnosis, are the great needs. The interval be- 
 tween the recognition of the disease and admission 
 to a hospital or a psychiatric clinic, already com- 
 paratively brief, must be made briefer; and the 
 interval between its onset and its recognition must 
 be cut down to a minimum by medical skill and 
 enlightenment of the general public; oversight of 
 the patients who leave the hospitals recovered or 
 improved (eighty-two per cent of those discharged) 
 must be provided for a probationary period, in or- 
 der that dangers of relapse may be warded off; and 
 continuous oversight of those who are discharged 
 unimproved, as long as there shall be any such. 
 Above all, perhaps, or at any rate under all, is 
 needed the patient education of nervous children 
 and young people in habits of emotional control, 
 and the protection of all from such a degree of 
 stress and strain as the normal mind can not reason- 
 ably be expected to stand. 
 
 Of early mature life the great scourge is, of course,
 
 180 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 tuberculosis. The principles of the world-wide 
 campaign against this leading cause of death are 
 far too familiar to need recapitulation. It is in all 
 ways a health campaign. Its gospel of pure air 
 and sunlight, plain and substantial food, cleanliness, 
 abstinence from the use of stimulants, early diag- 
 nosis, and rest from injurious occupation, has cer- 
 tainly been one of the chief elements in the general 
 sanitary progress of the past two decades. The 
 enthusiasm which the anti-tuberculosis campaign 
 has aroused is no doubt largely due to this fact, that 
 nearly all its features of which the lay public takes 
 account are equally features of almost any health 
 campaign. Consumptives should not live in damp 
 basements or in dark interior rooms. But who 
 should? Consumptives must have plenty of milk 
 and eggs. But for whom are those delicious ar- 
 ticles of diet not appropriate? Consumptives must 
 be helped to get out of dusty trades, overheated 
 shops, work requiring a stooping, chest contracting 
 posture. But for whom then of the children of 
 men are such conditions beneficial? Consumptives 
 should not spit promiscuously, for reasons often 
 carefully explained. But is any other desiccated, 
 pulverized sputum a welcome addition to the air 
 we breathe? Consumptives should be cleanly, 
 conscientious in not endangering the lives of others. 
 Are those not universally desirable virtues? Al- 
 coholism is a dangerous complication in tubercu- 
 losis, but it is also a dangerous complication in life.
 
 MATURITY 181 
 
 This is not to suggest that there is no differentia- 
 tion, from the medical point of view, in the specific 
 treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases. Of 
 course there is, and one of the valuable features of 
 the tuberculosis campaign is its insistence upon 
 sanatoria, clinics, laboratories, and other special- 
 ized equipment both for research and for relief on 
 lines already fully established. 
 
 Typhoid, pneumonia, malaria, rheumatism, colds, 
 and headaches all interfere with normal life in the 
 home, as, of course, also with incomes and efficiency 
 at work. Elementary policies of social construc- 
 tion demand consideration of each, to examine how 
 they may best be controlled, how their economic 
 and social effects may be reduced to a minimum and 
 most judiciously distributed. They are not pri- 
 vate, personal matters, but social phenomena. No 
 man has a right to have a headache even, if society 
 can prevent it, much less typhoid, pneumonia, a 
 cold, or any other communicable disease. The 
 rights of others are involved in so many ways that 
 the most unsocialized egoist must recognize that 
 his diseases are affected, as the lawyers say, by a 
 public interest. 
 
 Most of the diseases to which I have referred are 
 germ diseases, to be attacked by the weapons of 
 Pasteur and Koch. There are other diseases which 
 in contrast with these more acute infectious dis- 
 eases may be called degenerative or chronic dis- 
 eases, such as hardening of the arteries, cancer,
 
 182 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 Bright's disease, and organic diseases of the heart. 
 Referring to this distinction in an address before 
 the American Public Health Association in De- 
 cember last, Professor Irving Fisher made this 
 generalization : 
 
 When we analyze the nature of the present 
 improvement, we find it due chiefly to a de- 
 creased loss of life from infection before middle 
 age in spite of an increased loss of life after 
 middle age from degeneration. There is thus a 
 race between two tendencies, a reduction in the 
 infectious diseases and an increase in the so- 
 called degenerative diseases. 
 
 The increase in the diseases of later life is to be 
 accounted for partly by the decrease in the dis- 
 eases of earlier life. If we do not die of diphtheria, 
 scarlet fever, or measles, we survive to an age in 
 which we are likely to die of cancer and arterio- 
 sclerosis. If we do not die of tuberculosis in early 
 manhood, the vital organs have a chance to wear 
 out. To be sure it is not to our credit that they 
 wear out prematurely, and the time has apparently 
 come to concentrate on personal hygiene some of 
 that same kind of attention that we have given to 
 sanitation. There is no need to diminish the one 
 in order to increase the other. Probably the next 
 great step ahead in the protection of public health 
 is the working out of some plan by which every 
 person shall be periodically examined. The Life 
 Extension Institute presents one plan to carry this
 
 MATURITY 183 
 
 idea into effect. Health Departments may come 
 to offer such examinations free to those unable to 
 pay for them. 
 
 The philosopher Dooley makes his favorite char- 
 acter, Dock O'Leary, complain that he is not a very 
 muscular man and that "some of the windows in 
 these old frame-houses are hard to open." "He 
 says the more he practises medicine th' more he 
 becomes a janitor with a knowledge of cookin'. 
 He says if people wud on'y call him in befure they 
 got sick he'd abolish ivry disease in th' ward except 
 old age and pollyticks. He says he's lookin' 
 forward to th' day whin th' tellyphone will ring 
 and he'll hear a voice sayin', 'Hurry up over to 
 Hinnissy's; he niver felt so well in all his life.' 
 'All right: I'll be over as soon as I can hitch up th' 
 horse. Take him away f'm the supper table at 
 wanst.' " 
 
 Sickness insurance, taking the form, so far as 
 wage-earners at least are concerned, of social in- 
 surance under state control or supervision, is the 
 approved modern method of distributing the finan- 
 cial burden of sickness. England and Germany 
 have both developed very complete and successful, 
 though very different systems of state sickness in- 
 surance. We shall have to work out the problem 
 on somewhat different lines from either, probably 
 adopting some of the features of each ; but work it 
 out we must in our own way, for the hardships and
 
 184 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 inequity of our present lack of system in this matter 
 will not long seem tolerable. 
 
 Sickness insurance seems to me a more pressing 
 problem in this country than old age insurance or 
 unemployment insurance, more necessary than 
 mothers' pensions or any other form of public 
 relief. It should cover, as it does in European 
 countries, maternity insurance and life insurance 
 on an ampler scale than our present industrial in- 
 surance companies provide. The expense should 
 be divided between the insured and his employer, 
 who will have the same opportunity to pass his 
 part on to consumers in the form of slightly higher 
 prices that he has in the case of compensation for 
 accidents. If necessary, the state can assume a 
 part of the cost, as the prevention of sickness and 
 the distribution of its burdens is properly a public 
 function. 
 
 Sickness insurance does not of necessity mean 
 sickness prevention, but it is easy to unite the two 
 harmonious and closely related policies into a con- 
 sistent policy of sickness insurance and prevention. 
 A Federal Health Department, vigorous state 
 Health Departments, even more energetic and well 
 supported local municipal and rural health boards, 
 all engaged in a well-knit campaign of prevention 
 and education, will be outward and visible signs of 
 that public health ideal of which sickness insurance 
 is another normal expression.
 
 MATURITY 185 
 
 DIVORCE AND DESERTION 
 Disease and crime and bad habits are abnormali- 
 ties which even in their milder forms interfere with 
 normal home life. They may go so far as to de- 
 stroy it altogether, or at least to mutilate it by re- 
 moving one or the other or both of the heads of the 
 family, leaving the remnant to go on but haltingly 
 if it keeps together at all. Disease may result in 
 premature death. Insanity or crime may leave 
 wife or husband worse than widowed. 
 
 Family bonds may be broken by the abrogation 
 of responsibility, through divorce or its informal 
 substitute, desertion. Divorce is increasing rap- 
 idly in the United States, and so steadily, over the 
 forty years for which records have been studied 
 by the Census Bureau, that what is called by a sort 
 of grim humor a "normal rate of increase" for a 
 five-year period has been computed. It is an in- 
 crease of thirty per cent over each preceding five 
 years, and that is much faster than the population 
 is increasing. The real significance of these figures 
 is revealed when we learn that of every thousand 
 marriages in existence in 1880, two were dissolved 
 during that year by divorce; in 1890 there were 
 three; in 1900, four. This is a far higher rate than 
 is found in any foreign country for which data are 
 available, with the single exception of Japan. 
 Hard times is the only influence which has a visible 
 effect in checking this tendency. After each of the
 
 186 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 financial panics or industrial depressions the in- 
 crease was retarded or cut off entirely for a year or 
 two, though it leaped ahead faster than ever after 
 prosperity had been restored. This may be due 
 partly to the sensitive response of the marriage- 
 rate to unfavorable economic conditions, resulting 
 in fewer new marriages and consequently fewer 
 opportunities for divorce than there would have 
 been under normal conditions. It suggests also, 
 however, that considerations of economy may have 
 had a bearing in postponing the necessity for main- 
 taining two establishments in place of one; and 
 further, that the pressure of economic problems 
 may operate to put in the background the indul- 
 gence of emotion and trivial personal grievances. 
 In so far as this increase in divorce is merely a 
 writing into the official records of transactions 
 which formerly were carried on without reference 
 to laws or conventional standards, as is probably 
 true of large parts of the Negro population, it is 
 not an unhealthy symptom. In so far as it repre- 
 sents open, frank adjustment of relations which 
 under harsher laws would have been adjusted sub 
 rosa, it may not be undesirable. In so far, however, 
 as it is due to a light assumption, and an equally 
 light repudiation, of family responsibility, it repre- 
 sents, as does desertion, its substitute in classes of 
 society with less regard for conventions in such 
 matters, a grave menace to normal home life. Of 
 the two, desertion is probably the graver problem,
 
 MATURITY 187 
 
 because of the evasion of financial responsibility 
 which its informality favors. Efforts should not 
 be spared — intelligent, resourceful efforts, including 
 any necessary expenditure of money — to find de- 
 serting husbands and fathers and exact of them to 
 the utmost the fulfillment of their obligations. 
 A desertion bureau is coming to be as necessary as 
 a marriage license bureau. The principal safe- 
 guard, however, against this danger which threat- 
 ens the home lies not in laws or courts but in that 
 fundamental education, that direction of character 
 in youth, to which we have had so many occasions 
 to refer that it may seem a monotonous refrain. 
 
 WIDOWHOOD 
 
 Widowhood in itself is not necessarily a social 
 problem. On the contrary, it is the normal conse- 
 quence of marriage, and must ordinarily be the ex- 
 perience of either husband or wife for at least a 
 brief period at the close of life. More often it is 
 the wife who survives, both because she is usually 
 younger than her husband, and because women 
 have profited more than men by the general im- 
 provements which have been reducing the death- 
 rate. Ordinarily, too, it is probably better for the 
 family that it is the mother who survives. 
 
 Widowhood which comes prematurely, whether 
 to husband or to wife, at the beginning or in the 
 midst of the normal course of life, is, and has been 
 from ancient times, a matter of serious social con-
 
 188 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 cern. There are comparatively few widowers 
 under forty-five years of age, and over sixty-five 
 there are less than half as many widowers as wid- 
 ows. Among girls fifteen to nineteen years old one 
 in five hundred is a widow. The proportion in- 
 creases to eight per cent among women thirty-five 
 to forty-four; twenty-one per cent at forty-five to 
 sixty-four; and fifty-eight per cent among those 
 above sixty-five years of age. 
 
 Most widows, like most widowers and most un- 
 married adults of both sexes, in this country nor- 
 mally take care of themselves or are taken care of 
 by their relatives. But many widows who are 
 suddenly called upon by a husband's death to 
 support themselves and several little children, 
 without assistance, are unable to do so because in 
 their youth they have had no training, because the 
 occupations open to them — such as sewing, clean- 
 ing, washing, housework — are abominably un- 
 organized and generally underpaid, and because 
 there are few well conducted employment and in- 
 telligence offices to direct capable applicants to 
 desirable positions. 
 
 The charitable societies and churches and over- 
 seers of the poor have been coming but slowly to 
 realize what are the essentials of constructive relief 
 giving, how serious are the dangers to health and 
 to child-welfare of an inadequate income and a low 
 standard of living. My own conviction is that 
 there should be a recognized and organic relation
 
 MATURITY 189 
 
 between the death or chronic disabling illness of 
 the father of a family and the provision made for 
 the support of the family during a period — often, 
 when there are young children, a prolonged period 
 — of readjustment to new conditions. If a man is 
 killed or disabled at his work, for example, the in- 
 dustry should provide a substitute for his wages, as 
 the compensation laws now provide. If he dies 
 from disease, there should be an insurance fund, 
 to which he himself and his employer and the state 
 may all have contributed in just and reasonable 
 proportions, so that the expenses of his illness and 
 the care for a time of his wife and children may 
 be met by a fund which represents some sacrifice 
 and saving, some thrift and foresight, on his own 
 part. 
 
 With such compensation laws and social insur- 
 ance of sickness and death in full operation there 
 would be comparatively few widows who could not 
 manage their own difficulties, with the natural help 
 of friends and relatives. Those few could be helped 
 by private charity or by public relief as each com- 
 munity prefers, and the public relief might be 
 called widows' pensions if that term is preferred, 
 though there is something inherently dishonest or 
 naively childish in all such attempts to disguise a 
 transaction by giving it a different name; and 
 money paid from the public treasury to meet in- 
 dividual or family needs will remain what it has 
 always been, whatever it is called. The answer
 
 190 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 to the old puzzle as to how many legs a horse has 
 if you call his tail one, is not five but four. 
 
 Premature death is the great social tragedy 
 whether it occurs in adult life or in youth or in 
 infancy. The widowhood and orphanage and the 
 bereft parenthood which are its deep scars are but 
 the scars after all, the evidences of the tragedy, not 
 the tragedy itself. The prevention of accidents on 
 railways and in mills, the prevention of tubercu- 
 losis, the prevention of typhoid and malaria and 
 the hookworm disease, the prevention of rheuma- 
 tism and colds and headache and all their disabling 
 sequelae, the prevention of cancer and of those 
 other diseases of later life about the causation of 
 which so little is yet known, — these are still the 
 big campaigns of social work. 
 
 Divorce and desertion, intemperance and crime, 
 insanity and disease, widowhood, overcrowding in 
 tenements and alleys, unemployment and irregular 
 employment, uncompensated accidents, sweating 
 and exhaustion from overwork, disaster, in a word, 
 from exploiting industry on the one hand and from 
 broken homes on the other, are the tragedies of 
 maturity, as neglect is the tragedy of infancy, the 
 lack of nurture of childhood, and the perversion of 
 character of adolescence. The aim of normal life 
 is to anticipate and prevent these tragedies. The 
 aim of social work is to mobilize the forces of so- 
 ciety for honest, straightforward, persistent, com- 
 prehensive attack upon them as pathological ab-
 
 MATURITY 191 
 
 normalities which no self-respecting society will 
 ever deliberately tolerate. 
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE HOME 
 The typical home which occupied the center of 
 our attention just now has wonderfully changed in 
 its outward physical aspects in recent years. Hos- 
 pitals, kindergartens, restaurants, and factories 
 have taken over on a large scale functions once per- 
 formed in the home. Society has organized some- 
 what on horizontal levels, taking children as well 
 as adults out of the home for some activities, some 
 enjoyments, some mere conveniences for which 
 our fathers had no parallels. We even hear of a 
 defensive parents' league, a sort of trade union to 
 withstand what are felt to be the unreasonable de- 
 mands of school and society on the time of young 
 children. 
 
 How are these changes as a whole affecting the 
 home? Are they making it perhaps superfluous? 
 Are they destroying its unique character, trans- 
 forming it into at worst a mechanism for perpetuat- 
 ing the race, and at best a high class boarding-house 
 or a sort of club in which a few congenial but by 
 age rather ill-assorted people preserve the vestiges 
 of an obsolete institution? 
 
 A closer analysis will lessen such apprehensions. 
 What is it after all mainly that the home has lost 
 by the revolutionary changes so much in our minds? 
 Mainly disease and noise and dirt and drudgery.
 
 192 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 The factory and the office are better places in 
 every way for active work than the home was ever. 
 A well-managed hospital is often if not always a 
 better place to be sick in than a family sleeping 
 room, especially if the illness is serious, requiring 
 medical attention and nursing. The theatre and 
 the motion-picture are after all more entertaining 
 than backgammon and puzzle pictures. The rivals 
 of the home are rivals in very limited spheres. Its 
 unique sphere remains untouched, the more dis- 
 tinctly its own because of the specialization of 
 functions. Home is not a boarding-house but a 
 complex of relations, physical and spiritual, which 
 were never more beautiful, more enduring, or more 
 ennobling than in the modern family. Romance 
 has not departed from it, though a clearer recogni- 
 tion of ethical obligations has come into it. Re- 
 ligion still creates its atmosphere, though it is a 
 milder, freer, healthier religion than the austere 
 faith of ancient Rome or that of the Mosaic law, 
 both of which have made such a lasting impress 
 upon the family. 
 
 We may look to the transforming, emancipating 
 influences of the future without apprehension. 
 The family will survive, and the home will survive 
 as its habitat, the more wholesome and the more 
 efficient for all the new resources of civilization; 
 for the normal and not the abnormal is the fit to 
 survive.
 
 VI 
 
 LATE MATURITY 
 
 AND OLD AGE
 
 FULL MATURITY 
 
 All periods of a normal life are good. As the 
 tale of life now runs we may put the twenty years 
 of full maturity, and therefore of greatest useful- 
 ness, from say forty-five to five and sixty. 
 
 For one who has a zest in life and believes in 
 progress it is the years just ahead that are always 
 the best. We do not expect the infant to be look- 
 ing eagerly toward the twenties, or the school-child 
 to wax enthusiastic about middle life, or the young 
 man to be dreaming about what he will do in the 
 sixties; but to those who are no longer normally 
 dreaming the dreams of childhood and adolescence, 
 who have reached years of discretion, upon whom 
 the responsibilities of life are beginning to have a 
 sobering influence, and who at least in their own 
 children's eyes seem to be fully grown up, there 
 comes a new vision to take the place of childhood 
 dreams, a less blinding vision it may be, a little 
 more closely related to the serious thoughts of 
 waking hours, less flighty, less romantic, less ridicu- 
 lously impossible; and yet a vision still, a revela- 
 tion springing from no fleshly logic, but spiritual, 
 ennobling, seeking out the inmost nature, the ut- 
 most strength, the lowest layer of the will ; a vision 
 
 195
 
 196 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 of the latent possibilities of a mature life, based 
 upon the foundations of sound infancy and child- 
 hood, a wholesome youth, and well spent early 
 manhood; a vision tinged still with emotion, with 
 the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of 
 things not yet seen, but to be seen on earth if it be 
 His will — His will as expressed in personal hy- 
 giene, in sanitary control, in the social protection of 
 a normal environment. 
 
 For this period of full maturity, then, let us claim 
 some twenty years or so — not to fix too closely an 
 arbitrary limit at the farther end; make it three 
 score and ten if you like instead of sixty-five, before 
 you acknowledge old age, or by reason of your 
 strength make it four score; but save me a few 
 years for old age proper, of which I am not speaking 
 at all now, before the body of our normal life is 
 reduced again to normal dust. 
 
 Years do not of themselves bring judgment, or 
 stability of character, or that respect and confidence 
 of fellow-men on which the greatest opportunities 
 depend. Years do not of themselves restore health 
 squandered in profligate living. Years do not 
 bring economic prosperity, or a high standard of 
 living, or scholarship, or power of leadership, or 
 creative power of any kind. The years are but the 
 groove along which our lives may move if there is 
 propelling power to move them. The more the 
 plane of that groove inclines upward, the loftier 
 its goal, the greater is the energy necessary to
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 197 
 
 attain it, or to move at all in the direction of that 
 goal. 
 
 Assuming such vital energy, entrusted once, 
 forty-odd years ago, to the tiny nucleus of a cell, 
 we assume also that it has been released to vitalize 
 the vibrant body of a child, nurtured and disci- 
 plined, increased and treasured and put forth to 
 return again, multiplied ten, a hundred fold with 
 the passing years, pushing into forbidden paths 
 but retrieved with penalties, directed again toward 
 useful and ever higher ends, exercising the fingers 
 and hand of the man, the eye and the brain of him, 
 the physical powers, the moral powers. The nor- 
 mal man has had freedom and opportunity, but 
 he has had also the discipline denied to "privi- 
 leged," pampered individuals. He has had to 
 work, or at least has worked, and has learned by 
 experience the common lot. Male and female he 
 has worked and lived through forty years of edu- 
 cation, preparation, partial failure, trial and fail- 
 ure, trial and success, and achievement. Does it 
 seem likely that his achievement, her achievement, 
 has more than begun? Old age at forty may be a 
 melancholy fact — is a melancholy fact — of certain 
 industries. That fact is a bitter indictment of 
 those industries or of the conditions associated 
 with them. Men may be worn out at forty, but 
 not if they have had normal inheritance, have lived 
 normal lives, and have not been subjected to ab- 
 normal conditions in their work.
 
 198 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 From now on, the normal man — or woman — if 
 an author, may write his best books; if he has been 
 a politician, he may become a statesman; if he 
 has been a pedagogue, he may become a teacher; 
 if he is engaged in research, he may become a 
 scientist; if he is of a thoughtful turn of mind, he 
 may become a philosopher; if he has magnetism, 
 he may become a leader; if he has a turn for busi- 
 ness, he may become a financier or a captain of 
 industry. Those who have begotten and borne 
 children become in the full sense fathers and moth- 
 ers of those children as they reach the age of full 
 maturity and the children are growing up under 
 their watchful care. It is now that artists should 
 paint their best pictures, poets write their great 
 poems, scholars produce their opera magna, preach- 
 ers convert the heathen and edify the faithful, 
 blacksmiths hit their hardest and surest blows, 
 gardeners cultivate their most superb roses, fire- 
 men and policemen be most ready to risk their 
 lives and lose them least often, physicians and 
 surgeons command most completely the confidence 
 of the sick and disabled and deserve it most, bank- 
 ers and directors of railways and industrial cor- 
 porations stand highest as stewards of great trus- 
 teeship and, to express it modestly, run least risk 
 of criminal prosecution. 
 
 In none of the great fields of usefulness, from 
 manual labor to the highest levels of intellectual 
 creation, is there any valid presumption that maxi-
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 199 
 
 mum efficiency is normally reached under forty or 
 that it should show appreciable diminution under 
 sixty or sixty-five. 
 
 PROLONGATION OF WORKING LIFE 
 The prolongation of the working life is a social 
 ideal, quite comparable in definiteness and in the 
 strength of its appeal to that prolongation of child- 
 hood which education and physiology alike de- 
 mand. The one is indeed the natural corollary of 
 the other. Childhood is prolonged in its protec- 
 tion, its postponement of wage earning, its spon- 
 taneous freedom, both for its own sake, because 
 that is the natural, the normal, the human, the 
 God-like way to spend the years of childhood ; and 
 also because that is the natural and usually the 
 only guarantee of a prolonged and effective work- 
 ing life in the years of maturity. 
 
 Work in adolescence, on education's terms only, 
 not for gain but for development and preparation, 
 leads to the capacity for work later on for the sake 
 of the product, for the productive efficiency which 
 is a natural, an irresistible expression of human 
 energy, just as recreational activities, the more 
 passive and receptive occupations, are a natural 
 expression of a capacity for leisure. 
 
 Our ideal is that in the skilled trades, in indus- 
 trial pursuits of all kinds, and in agriculture, the 
 active working life of man shall be prolonged until 
 there are or might be grandchildren, until the
 
 200 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 youngest sons and daughters are grown, and the 
 older ones are more like partners and comrades 
 than like children, with established occupations 
 and homes of their own, into which, if it seems 
 wise, the retiring laborers may come at last as 
 honored guests, or, especially in widowhood, as 
 welcome members of the household, full of years 
 and honor and respect, no worn-out broken wrecks 
 of industry, but hale and hearty still, moving in and 
 out with dignity and a just consciousness of honest, 
 strenuous, useful work, cheerfully undertaken, 
 regretfully relinquished, and now worthily trans- 
 ferred to the broad shoulders of competent matur- 
 ity in the next generation. 
 
 The prolongation of the working life is desirable 
 from the employer's point of view. It means a 
 longer time to realize on the initial investment in 
 training. It means fewer changes, better rela- 
 tions, a steadier labor force, fewer strikes and mis- 
 understandings, less animosity, more loyalty. It 
 is even more desirable from the point of view of the 
 workers themselves and their families. Whether 
 they work for wages, as at present the vast majority 
 of industrial and clerical workers do, or, as they 
 may in a day of more industrial democracy, on 
 some cooperative plan for themselves, it is advan- 
 tageous to be able to work for forty years instead 
 of twenty. To the individual and his family there 
 is an economic and a moral loss when the purposes 
 of education and nurture are thwarted by a tragic
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 201 
 
 breaking down of health and efficiency at middle 
 age. For the individual himself, whatever his 
 vocation, sex, or station in life, there is more than 
 a mere arithmetic gain when a few years are added 
 to the period of the working life. We study with 
 appreciation and pleasure the lengthening span 
 of life as a whole, but most significant of all is the 
 lengthening span of its active, vigorous, productive 
 period. For, constituted as we are, there is a 
 pleasure directly associated with work — with the 
 putting forth of creative energy — which is unique, 
 which is wholly denied to the invalid, to the vale- 
 tudinarian. This is not to cast slurs upon the 
 compensating pleasures which they may be so 
 fortunate as to discover. We are to have a place — 
 a large place — in genuine old age for those pleasures 
 also ; but, like those of every other stage of normal 
 life, they must bide their time. Prematurely antic- 
 ipated, they crowd out keener, more appropriate 
 experiences, which, if lost when they are due, are 
 lost forever. 
 
 The expansion of the working life is not to be 
 one of empty duration. To be of value, it must be 
 of more than one dimension : longer in years, deeper 
 in productive efficiency, broader in variety. We 
 demand a working life fuller in return to the worker, 
 more remunerative, and entitled to the greater 
 remuneration because more productive, freer from 
 dangers and fears and uncertainties, taking a 
 greater share in planning, directing, and determin-
 
 202 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 ing the conditions of industry, transforming laborer 
 into capitalist, entrepreneur, and owner of natural 
 resources — not necessarily, not even probably, by 
 revolution or violence, but by evolutionary de- 
 velopment, which may be more rapid and more 
 sure than revolution, by emancipating education 
 and conscious social construction. 
 
 Early or easy realization of the ideal of a pro- 
 longed working life will not come of itself. In- 
 dustrial evolution seems to be moving in the con- 
 trary direction. Invention in the arts has out- 
 stripped invention in social policy. Long hours, a 
 seven-day week, the constant strain on nerves and 
 muscles in tending machines, the minute sub- 
 division of labor, the inconsiderate application of 
 efficiency tests, the speeding process, the setting 
 of the pace and rhythm by power-driven machines 
 instead of by the natural movements of human 
 beings, the cunning shift from time-wage to piece- 
 wage and back again in such a way as to extract the 
 last ounce of energy from labor; the growing ap- 
 preciation of swift deftness, of springy alertness, 
 of plastic adaptability in industry; the disappear- 
 ance of the individual worker from the conscious 
 knowledge of the employer through his submer- 
 gence in mere numbers and the more impersonal 
 and arbitrary estimate of his usefulness which 
 naturally follows; the increasing bitterness and 
 intensity of labor controversies; and the relative 
 increase in the number of industrial wage-earners
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 203 
 
 in the population, whose working life is shorter than 
 that of clerical, professional, and agricultural work- 
 ers — many of the large outstanding facts of modern 
 industry point to an earlier rather than a later old 
 age. And yet these facts are all wrong and the 
 ideal will prevail over them. We shall come to 
 understand these stubborn facts of industry and 
 change them. We shall eliminate the dangers 
 which industry has developed. We shall increase 
 physical resisting power. We shall cut down 
 hours, bring in more leisure and variety. We shall 
 adjust industry to man and install some system of 
 human audit by which the effect of industry on 
 physical and moral well-being can be accurately 
 judged, by which its essential nature, not as a 
 source of dividends, but as occupation for rational 
 living men, can be evenly and continuously ap- 
 praised. 
 
 When the question arises as to how these things, 
 which we have so clearly failed to do, are to be 
 done, there is no new answer. We may pin our 
 faith to the various means by which we have made 
 progress already; for there are other facts of in- 
 dustry than those to which we have just referred. 
 We rely first on trade unions and the principle of 
 collective bargaining which they represent. When 
 a prominent banker at a public hearing recently 
 expressed ignorance as to what collective bargain- 
 ing is, and made an equally naive and refresh- 
 ing acknowledgment, when it was explained to
 
 204 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 him, that it looked like a good thing, he was not, 
 after all, more than a few years behind a great many 
 employers who have been finding out to their sur- 
 prise that a bargain made by an association of em- 
 ployers with an association of employees has many 
 advantages and does not necessarily or even prob- 
 ably mean disaster or bankruptcy. 
 
 We may rely, secondly, on voluntary action by 
 individual employers, and by officers, directors, 
 and stockholders of corporations, action based 
 upon accurate and comprehensive surveys, inti- 
 mate personal acquaintance with workingmen and 
 their families. I am firmly of the belief that the 
 normal man of wealth and power in industry does 
 not desire to exploit or oppress; to destroy health 
 or morals and subject children or youth to undue 
 risks or certain injury; to take dirty profits either 
 from customers or from employees; and that in- 
 creasing knowledge will mean increasing prolonga- 
 tion of life by the voluntary improvement of in- 
 dustrial conditions. 
 
 We may rely, last, on public opinion, working 
 when necessary, but not exclusively, through legis- 
 lation and the courts. Trade unions, voluntary 
 reforms in industry, the pressure of public opinion 
 and education, are the means by which we are to 
 secure that normal life for working men and women 
 and for their families at home which is the only 
 remedy of premature old age.
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 205 
 
 OLD AGE 
 
 Unmistakable old age, so long denied, comes at 
 last to its own : not in ugly, tragic mask, but gentle ; 
 not hastening or loitering. With a touch of humor, 
 of philosophy, with a sense of life's irony and a 
 knowledge of its loving kindness, old age comes at 
 the appointed time. The autumn leaves upon the 
 branches are not more beautiful than the spirit of 
 the old who have lived. The leaves have felt upon 
 their faces storms and sunshine, have fulfilled their 
 end in nature, and when the unseen spirit of a 
 natural end of life puts its finger upon them, they 
 yield a consummation in color, in beauty, in ac- 
 quiescence, not less striking than the response of 
 swelling veins and bursting vernal energy in the 
 early life of the year. So old age has its own 
 beauty, its own appropriate medium of expression, 
 its acquiescence in a normal order of the universe 
 for which the seventy or the eighty years are in one 
 sense but a long approach. 
 
 Clearly as adolescence differs from infancy, so 
 clearly is old age differentiated from the maturity 
 of middle life. Physiological changes take place. 
 Habits become increasingly a reliance in preference 
 to independent conscious judgments. The physi- 
 cal strength undoubtedly wanes, and an increased 
 liability to degenerative diseases compels recogni- 
 tion. Vision becomes dim or reasserts its vigor. 
 Memory plays strange tricks. Appetite demands 
 
 14
 
 206 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 a change of diet and passion relaxes its hold. In- 
 terests shift and contract, and though the phrases 
 of regret at loss of active participation in life's 
 affairs may remain upon the lips, we know that 
 they may easily express less poignant emotions 
 than would similar expressions in some temporary 
 breakdown in earlier years. 
 
 These changes may not be pathological at all, 
 like those of premature old age, but natural and 
 welcome. To die in harness, cut off suddenly in 
 the fullness of powers, may be a source of personal 
 satisfaction, but it is egregious selfishness. It is a 
 mediaeval, not a modern, ideal. It represents the 
 ambition of a warrior seeking glory in action, not 
 the sober and quiet ambition of the normal citizen 
 of a modern state, who is willing to play the part 
 to the end and to keep the useful work of his com- 
 munity moving forward without break of continu- 
 ity, with the social welfare as its aim. Such smooth 
 perfection of social organization implies a period of 
 easy relaxation at the end, as of preparation in the 
 earlier part of life, a period with its own problems, 
 its own burdens, its own contributions to social 
 well-being. 
 
 DEPENDENCE IN OLD AGE 
 The first and most obvious social problem con- 
 nected with old age is that of support. 
 
 Old age dependence ranks in importance with 
 the care of the sick and of widows with dependent
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 207 
 
 children, far exceeding the problem of orphanage 
 or unemployment. In 1910 there were in the 
 United States just under four million persons who 
 were over sixty-five years of age. Mr. Lee W. 
 Squier, who has studied old age dependence sym- 
 pathetically, estimates that more than a quarter of 
 these were in want and supported by charity, public 
 or private. Whether it is a million and a quarter, 
 as Mr. Squier thinks,* or two million and a half, 
 as Mr. Berger says in a speech in Congress, — though 
 he is speaking of those over sixty, and includes all 
 who have an income of less than ten dollars a week, 
 — or only the half million or so that could probably 
 be counted from statistical sources as in institu- 
 tions or receiving partial support at home, the 
 number of the aged who require support presents 
 a problem serious enough to justify far more atten- 
 tion than it has received. 
 
 Our main reliance in this country has been on — 
 (1) The continued earning power of the aged them- 
 selves; (2) savings for old age; (3) support by 
 grown children or other relatives; (4) United 
 States pensions and state pensions to Confederate 
 
 * The principal item in Mr. Squier's table, about three- 
 quarters of a million, consists of United States pensioners. 
 A census report, published since his book appeared, shows 
 that his estimate of the number of persons over sixty-five years 
 of age in almshouses, the next item numerically in his list, was 
 much too high. Instead of ninety-five thousand over sixty- 
 five, there were only forty-six thousand over sixty. Mr. 
 Squier's estimate was based on the number reported as in 
 almshouses in Massachusetts.
 
 208 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 veterans; (5) private homes for aged, partly main- 
 tained by admission fees of their inmates ; (6) pub- 
 lic almshouses; (7) outdoor relief, and (8) private 
 allowances through churches or charitable agen- 
 cies, for which the funds may be supplied in 
 part by relatives, former employers, or friends of 
 the beneficiary. There are, of course, some de- 
 pendent poor in workhouses and jails as vagrants, 
 although some other condition than age and in- 
 firmity is assumed to be present when the aged 
 find their only refuge in correctional institutions. 
 There are, no doubt, some in hospitals and asy- 
 lums for the insane whose senility is not of such a 
 character as to require institutional care except for 
 their lack of any other means of support. 
 
 The federal and state pensions, in theory merely 
 a deferred recognition of services performed now 
 half a century ago, have become in fact the main 
 national provision for old age. Judged from that 
 point of view, it is not an equitable provision. The 
 federal pensions have been distributed mainly in 
 the northern states, where the need for old-age 
 support is certainly not greatest. Their cost has 
 been enormous. They have had no relation to 
 proved need, to thrift or merit. As an old-age 
 provision they have violated every known canon of 
 actuarial, ethical, and social policy. They are a 
 cost of the Civil War, and in that light alone could 
 they be defended as devised and administered. 
 And yet the federal and state pensions are not
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 209 
 
 without some substantial justification in their 
 social results. If the government had not expended 
 the four and a half billion dollars which it has spent 
 in pensions, the problem of old-age dependence 
 would have been far more pressing than it has been. 
 Much of that money has been wasted, some of it 
 has been demoralizing, but it has been one means of 
 support, perhaps on the whole the best means that 
 we have had after savings and maintenance by 
 relatives. 
 
 One minor reason for the long-continued poverty 
 of southern states, as compared with the greater 
 economic prosperity of the North, has doubtless 
 been the drain on its resources to care for its aged 
 white and colored dependents. The pension fund, 
 drawn from general taxation, has been expended in 
 the North. Another fund, not so enormous but 
 still large in the aggregate, has then had to be raised 
 for the support of the relatively larger and poorer 
 number who served the lost cause or were impover- 
 ished by the war. The result has been a violent 
 national maladjustment, which cannot be without 
 its effect on physical well-being and economic pros- 
 perity. 
 
 Whatever the sources of their support, the aged 
 may be cared for either in their own or their chil- 
 dren's homes, or in some kind of institution. 
 
 Personal thrift and the filial loyalty of children 
 may take either of these forms. A chair by the 
 family fireside, at the family board, and in the
 
 210 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 family councils, would no doubt be the preference 
 of the majority when conditions are at all favorable. 
 The argument in favor of such normal mingling 
 with kindred is not the same as that for home life 
 of children, and perhaps it is not so universally 
 convincing. Perhaps for some there is a certain 
 attraction in the independence of an institution 
 where board is paid or a life fee. Independence 
 may seem an odd term for any kind of institutional 
 life, where there must be a fixed routine, definite 
 limitations on liberty of movement and action; 
 yet just as a hotel is a place of greater freedom in 
 a sense for the guest than the most hospitable home, 
 so within the cadaver of its regulations an institu- 
 tion may, after all, offer a comparatively untram- 
 meled and untroubled haven to a storm-tossed soul. 
 As between maintaining, if possible, a separate 
 domestic establishment and going to live with sons 
 and daughters-in-law, or daughters and sons-in- 
 law, many would justly prefer the former. As 
 between being boarded out in the family of a 
 stranger and accommodation in a private or church 
 institution, many would prefer the latter. But 
 all four plans, and many variations upon them, are 
 legitimate for those respectively who prefer them. 
 Any of them is better than neglect, and some one 
 or a combination of them is a possible means of 
 caring for a very large proportion of those who are 
 past work. We put savings and care by grown
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 211 
 
 sons and daughters, therefore, as not only a natural, 
 but a desirable provision for old age. 
 
 THRIFT 
 
 Thrift is an old-fashioned but not an obsolete 
 virtue. Children should not support able-bodied 
 young parents, but able-bodied young people may 
 very properly support their parents or grandparents 
 in old age. Personal responsibility for one's own 
 well-being is not the most popular doctrine in these 
 days, but it is sound doctrine, nevertheless. We 
 who preach constantly social responsibility are in 
 danger of carrying it to an extreme, just as the doc- 
 trine of an overruling providence in supreme con- 
 trol of the universe has sometimes been used to 
 undermine a healthy feeling of personal responsi- 
 bility for that particular fraction of it which has 
 been entrusted to us. 
 
 When it is held that wages and salaries in 
 America do not permit saving, or do so only at 
 the expense of immediate welfare, we may cite the 
 analogous instance of the lawyer's demonstration 
 to a client that they could not put him in jail for 
 what he had done. Unfortunately for the argu- 
 ment, and for the client, he was in jail at the time. 
 So the fact is that American wage-earners and small 
 tradesmen and clerks and farmers do save, and 
 what many actually do, more could do, without 
 incurring the risk of slighting immediate needs of 
 the family. Saving in practice goes along with a
 
 212 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 higher, rather than a lower, standard of current 
 expenditure. 
 
 Thrift has received a bad name preparatory to 
 the hanging, but thrift is not the mean, unsocial, 
 antiquated relic of primitive society that it has 
 been so often of late represented to be. Thrift 
 is little else than strength of character, a sober 
 measuring of future against immediate needs. It 
 is a generous and manly trait, a certain soundness 
 at the core resisting the rottenness of civilization 
 and the dry-rot of stupidity. Thrift should be 
 taught in the public schools, as the Massachusetts 
 Commission on Old Age Pensions recommends. 
 It should be encouraged in the home. Facilities 
 for its exercise should be multiplied. The savings 
 which are its result should be jealously safeguarded, 
 and it should have its natural reward. 
 
 FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY 
 Family solidarity also is an ideal for which future 
 ages will have need, as past ages have needed it. 
 Covert and indirect assaults on the family are a 
 part of much revolutionary propaganda, but in- 
 creasingly in this country economic revolution is 
 trying to free itself from old-world association with 
 such attacks. There is certainly no reason why 
 conservative advocates of social insurance, whether 
 for sickness, unemployment, or old age, should have 
 any sympathy for sneers against the fullest de- 
 velopment of family responsibility and solidarity.
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 213 
 
 Social insurance rests upon the family in its in- 
 tegrity. Non-contributory old-age pensions, wid- 
 ows' pensions, and all other forms of public poor 
 relief, by the very terms used to describe them, 
 such as "the endowment of old age," "the endow- 
 ment of motherhood," "the right to relief," all 
 involve another and opposing principle. The one 
 principle is that, given a fair and reasonable oppor- 
 tunity, the individual is to be held responsible for 
 taking advantage of it ; that ordinary mishaps and 
 accident under normal conditions are to be met by 
 savings and the helping hand of relatives, neigh- 
 bors, and friends; that even sickness, unemploy- 
 ment, and old age are personal and family matters, 
 leading to public dependence only under excep- 
 tional and unforeseeable circumstances. The other 
 principle is that society and not the individual is 
 responsible for all these misfortunes and burdens; 
 that each condition of natural dependence, brief or 
 prolonged, such as maternity, illness, unemploy- 
 ment, invalidity, old age, and poverty in all its 
 manifestations, is to be met by the state, i. e. by 
 public funds raised by taxation. The individual 
 need give himself no concern: his children will be 
 supported from birth, his own old age maintained 
 in comfort, whatever his extravagances, his idle- 
 nesses, or his eccentricities. 
 
 Pensions of all kinds, except retiring allowances 
 from funds provided in the employment in which 
 the worker has been engaged, represent the latter
 
 214 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 of these views. Social insurance, except in its 
 government subsidies, which are a compromise 
 concession, represents the former. The sturdiest 
 advocates of personal responsibility and family 
 solidarity may, therefore, work zealously for sick- 
 ness insurance, for workmen's compensation, for 
 unemployment insurance, for compulsory life in- 
 surance and insurance for old age, without incon- 
 sistency. What saves social insurance from the 
 curse of demoralizing paternalism is that it en- 
 courages thrift and rewards it; that the administra- 
 tion may be democratic rather than bureaucratic; 
 that it is a rational distribution of risks on a sound 
 actuarial basis rather than the handing out of un- 
 earned gratuities, gathered from grudging tax- 
 payers, manipulated for political advantage, and 
 defended on dishonest and fallacious grounds. 
 That is as accurate a description as I know how to 
 give of pensions and public poor relief as ordinarily 
 administered. 
 
 In so far, therefore, as old age requires support * 
 
 * For the most thorough discussion of the whole subject, 
 aside from Mr. Squier's book on old age dependency, to which 
 reference has been made, and the report of the Massachusetts 
 Commission of 1910, attention is invited to the admirable 
 treatise on Social Insurance by Dr. I. M. Rubinow, in which 
 there are several chapters on the old man's problem. Dr. 
 Rubinow looks upon pensions as half-way steps and perhaps 
 necessary supplements to social insurance, and at least a 
 public recognition of the need. To me they seem, on the 
 contrary, to be a vicious and unsatisfactory makeshift, post- 
 poning rather than bringing nearer the substantial and con- 
 sistent system of social insurance which we both desire.
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 215 
 
 supplementary to savings and the natural contri- 
 butions of sons and daughters, it may advan- 
 tageously come not from pensions or other poor 
 relief, but from a well-devised system of social in- 
 surance, requiring contributions from insured and 
 employers, and administered, or its administration 
 supervised and guaranteed, by the state. 
 
 PROLONGATION OF OLD AGE 
 
 The prolongation of life as a whole follows nat- 
 urally the prolongation of childhood and of the 
 working period of life, but there are special in- 
 fluences at work independently to the same end. 
 Science has been baffled by an increase in the dis- 
 eases of later life, but is diligently employing its 
 natural instruments of research and experimenta- 
 tion in a more vigorous attack upon those diseases. 
 Changes in diet and in habits of recreation conspire 
 with medical research to extend that period which 
 lies beyond the end of work. But again, as in the 
 expansion of earlier periods, it is not mere exten- 
 sion that is significant. The emptying of old age 
 of its conquerable diseases, its disabling infirmities, 
 its sufferings and anxieties and fears, will be a more 
 notable benefaction than the mere lengthening of 
 years. If, by reason of strength, not by reason of 
 drugs or extraordinary watchfulness, the ten years 
 are added to real living, the race will be ten years 
 ahead. But if there is strength and a time to put 
 it forth, there will be need of giving thought to
 
 216 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 the manner of its exercise. Occupations suitable 
 to retired age are a social problem, like Froebel's 
 gifts or occupations in the kindergarten. Their 
 purpose, to be sure, is different. Not instruction, 
 but the exercise of long-matured instincts; not 
 growth and work and the making of things, but 
 mellow expansion, reminiscence and reflection, the 
 play of mental imagery, and the testing of things, 
 are the typical and characteristic occupations of 
 the leisure of the evening of life. 
 
 Cicero disposed for all time of the idea that old 
 age is miserable. In his systematic brief* he sets 
 forth the reasons for thinking that it may be so : 
 
 (i) It calls us away from the transaction of 
 affairs. 
 
 (2) It renders the body more feeble. 
 
 (3) It deprives us of almost all pleasures. 
 
 (4) It is not very far from death. 
 
 Indignantly denying the first charge, he says that 
 the old, to be sure, do not engage in the occupa- 
 tions of youth, but in other and better things. 
 For himself he prefers to spend his old age on a 
 farm, for where can age warm itself better in the 
 sunshine or by the fire, or be more refreshed by 
 shady nooks and cool baths? Nothing, he thinks, 
 can be richer in utility or more attractive in ap- 
 pearance than a well-tilled field ; and certainly age 
 is no hindrance to these pleasures, but, on the con- 
 trary, invites and urges to their enjoyment. 
 * De Senectute.
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 217 
 
 On the second point, Cicero replies that the old 
 man no more feels the lack of the strength of a 
 young man than when a young man he felt the 
 want of the strength of a bull or an elephant. 
 What a man has that he ought to use. 
 
 We do not follow him so readily on the third 
 point, when in his stoic philosophy he counts it 
 the highest praise to old age that it has no great 
 desire for any pleasures. It lacks banquets, he 
 says, and piled-up boards and fast-coming goblets; 
 it is, therefore, also free from drunkenness and in- 
 digestion and sleeplessness. Aside from the pleas- 
 ures of agriculture, in which congenial vocation 
 Cicero especially cites the manuring of the fields as 
 one of the most thoroughly enjoyable features, 
 which he blames Hesiod for not having valued 
 highly enough, he finds various other pleasant oc- 
 cupations to mitigate the tedium of a life without 
 drunkenness, indigestion, and sleeplessness. Among 
 them he gives first place to conversation in clubs 
 and other like amusements. 
 
 As to the charge that old age is not far from death , 
 Cicero has, of course, many very interesting ob- 
 servations. One of his rejoinders, that death is 
 even more common in youth, will not bear statisti- 
 cal analysis. But that death in youth is a sort of 
 violence, while death in old age is spontaneous, 
 without force, natural, is a forecast of Metchni- 
 koff's demonstration that all infectious disease is
 
 218 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 violent death as truly as if by an external cause. 
 Young men, says Cicero, seem to me to die just as 
 when the violence of flame is extinguished by a 
 flood of water; whereas old men die as the ex- 
 hausted fire goes out. As fruits when they are 
 green are plucked by force from the trees, but when 
 ripe and mellow drop off, so violence takes away 
 their lives from youths, but maturity from old 
 men, a state which to me indeed is so delightful that 
 as I approach death I seem, as it were, to be getting 
 sight of land, and at length after a long voyage to 
 be just coming into harbor. 
 
 One saying more I must quote from De Senectute, 
 for it might have served for our text : 
 
 In my whole discourse remember that I am 
 praising that old age which is established on 
 the foundations of youth. Neither gray hairs 
 nor wrinkles can suddenly catch respect, but 
 the former part of life honorably spent reaps 
 the fruits of authority at the close. 
 
 Cicero's philosophy on this subject may be our 
 philosophy in part, but his religion is not our re- 
 ligion, and his economics are not our economics. 
 A Christian poet, interpreting a Jewish scholar of 
 the middle ages, retains this same philosophy of the 
 normal life of man, while giving it a new aspect — 
 the religious faith of modern life. Recall some 
 fragments of Browning's version of Rabbi Ben 
 Ezra's thoughts on old age and death :
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 219 
 
 Grow old along with me! 
 
 The best is yet to be, 
 
 The last of life, for which the first was made: 
 
 Our times are in His hand 
 
 Who saith, "A whole I planned, 
 
 Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" 
 
 As it was better, youth 
 
 Should strive, through acts uncouth, 
 
 Toward making, than repose on aught found made! 
 
 So, better, age, exempt 
 
 From strife, should know, than tempt 
 
 Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid! 
 
 Not on the vulgar mass 
 
 Called "work," must sentence pass, 
 
 Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 
 
 O'er which, from level stand, 
 
 The low world laid its hand, 
 
 Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: 
 
 But all the world's coarse thumb 
 
 And finger failed to plumb, 
 
 So passed in making up the main account; 
 
 All instincts immature, 
 
 All purposes unsure, 
 
 That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount; 
 
 Thoughts hardly to be packed 
 
 Into a narrow act, 
 
 Fancies that broke through language and escaped; 
 
 All I could never be, 
 
 All men ignored in me, 
 
 This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 
 
 This reflection that we are to be valued by our 
 ideals and not by our acts is one which is peculiarly 
 appropriate to old age, taking rest for a moment 
 ere the valiant soul be gone once more on an ad- 
 venture brave and true; and there we might leave
 
 220 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 the matter as the end of our attempt to follow 
 through the normal life of man. But economist 
 and pragmatist would have cause for complaint 
 if we were to do so. 
 
 Socially, acts are worth, not what the doer 
 hopes, but what difference his actions make in the 
 lives of men. We are concerned, as we agreed at the 
 beginning, in a sober, matter-of-fact consideration 
 of the serious social problems of life's succeeding 
 stages, and our last word therefore must be not 
 of the triumph of normal life over death in the man 
 who has achieved and won even his last great fight, 
 but a word of sober, unimpassioned, matter-of-fact 
 remembrance: of the babies that die for want of 
 nourishment and enlightened care; of the children 
 who are not leading normal lives in that they are 
 handicapped by tainted blood, by the drunken- 
 ness and sensuality, or by the lack of thrift and 
 efficiency, of their elders; of the older youth whose 
 amusements are craps and petty larceny, un- 
 guarded dance halls, and uncensored "movies," 
 or who have little leisure even for vicious amuse- 
 ments, because they are worked and overworked 
 until they are robbed of their youth; of the adult 
 men and women who have missed the normal way, 
 through their fault or ours, through defective per- 
 sonality or lack of opportunity, through bad in- 
 dustrial relations leading possibly to a disastrous 
 conflict or to disastrous litigation, through the long 
 persistent consequences of slavery, or the quick-
 
 LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 221 
 
 coming consequences of war, through dislocations 
 in industry or delayed social adjustment; of the 
 childless and friendless old men and women, bat- 
 tered wrecks of life, surviving through all the years 
 of their failures, or it may be pushed down tragic- 
 wise at the end after having known prosperity and 
 a measure of success and usefulness. 
 
 If we accept the faith that we build the social 
 structure, we must build it for them, the least of 
 these our brethren, or it will never stand. 
 
 Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, 
 On the bodies and souls of living men? 
 And think ye that building shall endure, 
 Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor? 
 
 God has plans man must not spoil, 
 Some were made to starve and toil, 
 Some to share the wine and oil, 
 
 We are told: 
 Devil's theories are these, 
 Stifling hope and love and peace, 
 Framed your hideous lusts to please, 
 
 Hunger and cold. 
 
 So said Lowell in two of his short poems seventy 
 years ago, and so may we say. We need accept 
 no scheme for exploiting the weaknesses and dis- 
 abilities of some that others may ripen into luxury 
 and privilege. Those are devil's theories wherever 
 they are spoken. 
 
 Neither superman nor subman can lead the social 
 
 life; for the one is an exploiter, and it is a devil's 
 
 theory that would enthrone him, while the other is 
 
 a constant temptation to the exploiting and tyran- 
 ts
 
 222 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 nical beast that slumbers ever in the breast of 
 every ordinary man, to be aroused by superior 
 position or special privilege or luck. The strong 
 man, socialized, has cast out the beast, has felt 
 the pleasure of helping men and learned how to do 
 it. He does not despise his fellows, but is their 
 fellow in spirit, in privileges, in aspirations, in a 
 common lot. The Father of men, the Son of Man, 
 the brooding spirit of mankind, has need for strong 
 men among the sons of men to bear their burdens 
 and to lighten them, to build more justly and firmly 
 the structure of our common lives.
 
 APPENDIX
 
 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 
 
 The following questions were prepared for a 
 class held in Baltimore in connection with the lec- 
 ture course. They may be suggestive for local 
 study of the social conditions and social provisions 
 essential to securing a normal life in any commu- 
 nity. 
 
 I. INFANCY 
 
 1. a. How many feeble-minded persons are there in your 
 
 community? 
 
 b. How many of them are in institutions? 
 
 c. How are the others taken care of? 
 
 2. What percentage of the births are registered? 
 
 3. a. Is the infant mortality rate increasing or decreasing? 
 
 b. How many deaths under one year of age have there 
 
 been, year by year, in the last ten years, among 
 white babies and among Negroes? 
 
 c. What were the principal causes of infant deaths in 
 
 the last calendar year? 
 
 4. How many illegitimate births were there last year among 
 
 whites and among Negroes? 
 
 5. a. What proportion of the married women work for wages? 
 
 b. What occupations are they in? 
 
 c. Which of these occupations, if any, are probably in- 
 
 jurious to the women or to their babies? 
 
 6. a. What are the "reportable" diseases? 
 
 b. How many cases of each were reported last year? 
 
 c. What provision is there for the free treatment of these 
 
 diseases in hospitals and in dispensaries? 
 225
 
 226 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 7. What organizations definitely provide pre-natal instruc- 
 
 tion? How many mothers were supervised by them 
 last year? 
 
 8. On what conditions does a midwife secure a license? 
 
 9. How is the city milk supply supervised? 
 
 10. How many day nurseries accept young babies? 
 
 IL CHILDHOOD 
 
 1. a. What does "society" (i.e. the state or local govern- 
 
 ment, or voluntary organizations) do for the welfare 
 of the child from two to ten years of age? 
 b. What difference is there, if any, between the oppor- 
 tunities provided for the Negro child, the child of 
 immigrant parents, and the native white child of 
 native parents? 
 
 2. a. What salaries do teachers in the elementary grades in 
 
 the public schools receive? 
 b. Is the compensation sufficient to attract competent 
 teachers and to retain them? 
 
 3. What are the most important things for the public schools 
 
 to do next, in the interest of young children? 
 
 4. What are the favorite forms of recreation among the chil- 
 
 dren? 
 
 5. To what extent are the recommendations of the White 
 
 House Conference on the Care of Dependent Chil- 
 dren (1909) in force in your community? 
 
 m. YOUTH 
 
 1. What are the popular forms of recreation among boys and 
 
 girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty? 
 
 2. Which of these are wholesome and which have undesir- 
 
 able features? 
 
 3. What proportion of the boys and girls of fourteen and 
 
 fifteen attend school? 
 
 4. How many of them are at work, instead of in school? 
 
 What do they do?
 
 APPENDIX 227 
 
 5. How many children under fourteen work for wages? 
 
 Why are there any? At what occupations do they 
 work? 
 
 6. What facilities are there for assisting children to find suit- 
 
 able work on leaving school? 
 
 7. What additional facilities should be provided? 
 
 8. What desirable occupations are open to boys and girls of 
 
 sixteen or seventeen? 
 
 9. Are there any conditions in the community which tend to 
 
 produce juvenile delinquency? 
 
 10. At what age does "youth" begin? When does it end? 
 
 IV. MATURITY: WORK 
 
 1. Make a list of the various official "registrations" or enu- 
 
 merations made in the community by federal, city, 
 county, or state authorities, giving for each one: 
 
 a. Its purpose; 
 
 b. At what intervals or on what occasions it is made; 
 
 c. By whom it is made and what methods are used; 
 
 d. Its scope: i. e. persons affected and information se- 
 
 cured. 
 
 2. Is there any existing branch of the city government which 
 
 could easily and naturally undertake the responsibil- 
 ity for a permanent registration of the entire popu- 
 lation? 
 
 3. Draw up a plan for installing it and for keeping it up. 
 
 4. What are the arguments against such a registration? 
 
 5. What are the arguments for it? 
 
 V. MATURITY $ HOME 
 
 1. Describe, as concretely and as much in detail as possible, 
 
 the elements which compose the minimum " stand- 
 ard of living" in your community at the present 
 time. 
 
 2. a. Make a list of all the influences you can think of — 
 
 legislation, administrative policies, private associa- 
 tion, philanthropic effort, or unconscious forces— 
 which are operating to raise this standard of living.
 
 228 THE NORMAL LIFE 
 
 b. What influences, on the other hand, are operating to 
 lower it? 
 
 3. How many arrests were made last year for drunkenness? 
 
 What treatment followed the arrests? 
 
 4. How many men 25 to 45 years of age died last year? 
 
 How many women? 
 
 5. What were the diseases which caused these deaths, in 
 
 order of their numerical importance? 
 
 VL LATE MATURITY AND OLD AGE 
 
 1. Make a list of the five leading representatives of each 
 
 important occupation in your community, with the 
 approximate age of each. 
 
 2. a. In which occupations does an employee become "too 
 
 old" at forty? 
 b. What is the explanation in each case? 
 
 3. What influences are at work to lengthen the working life? 
 
 4. a. How many aged dependents are there in your com- 
 
 munity? 
 
 b. How are they cared for? 
 
 c. Which method seems to be the most satisfactory? 
 
 5. What evidences can you find that thrift is (a) increasing 
 
 or (b) decreasing in the community? 
 
 6. What influences in the community are favorable to family 
 
 solidarity? What influences, on the contrary, are 
 actively unfavorable? 
 
 7. Make a list of the gainful occupations in the community 
 
 which are open to persons over fifty years of age? 
 
 8. a. What are the favorite forms of recreation among old 
 
 persons? 
 b. Is there any need of community interest in this ques- 
 tion? 
 
 9. Which of the diseases of old age are the most serious from 
 
 a social point of view? 
 
 10. Prepare a brief in support of the thesis that a man's life 
 may be judged by the progress made towards as- 
 suring a normal life for every citizen of the com- 
 munity in which he has lived.
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abnormal tendencies in 
 
 youth, 77 
 Abnormalities, 10, 220 
 Accidents, 141, 189 
 Adaptability, education for, 
 
 93 
 
 Adler, Felix, 89 
 
 Adolescence. See Youth 
 
 Adult population of the Uni- 
 ted States, 120 
 
 Alcoholism, 169 
 
 Allen, Nathan, 178 
 
 Ante-natal life and care, 23 
 
 Barr, Martin W., 106 
 
 Berger, Victor L., 207 
 
 Birth, 28 
 
 Birth-rate, 39, 42 
 
 Births, registration of, 30 
 
 Browning, Robert: Rabbi 
 
 Ben Ezra, 219 
 Budin Foundation, 27 
 Burns, John, 35 
 
 Character, formation of, 77; 
 
 inherited and acquired, 113 
 Childhood, 43-74 
 Child-labor, 30, 78, 83, 87 
 Children's Bureau, 25, 26, 
 
 27, 36, 90 
 Cicero: De Senectute, 216 
 Civic nurture, 56 
 
 Compensation for accidents, 
 
 114, 189 
 Congenital diseases, 24, 34 
 Cottage system, 64, 70 
 Courts, 176 
 
 Crime, 173; prevention of, 52 
 Criminal procedure, 175 
 Curriculum, 54 
 
 Day nurseries, 35 
 Defectives, 18, 20 
 Degenerative diseases, 181 
 Delinquency, juvenile, 107; 
 
 statistics of, 112 
 Dental clinics, 102 
 Dependence in old age, 206 
 Dependent children, 62 
 De Quiros, C. Bernaldo, 174 
 Desertion, 185 
 Disease, 176; prevention of, 
 
 52 
 Divorce, 185 
 
 Economic judgments, 50 
 Education, 47, 77 
 Efficiency, 54, 93 
 Employment, 126 
 
 Family, 212. See also Home 
 Fatigue, 144
 
 232 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Feeble-minded. See Defec- 
 tives; Mental Defect 
 Fernald, Walter E., 106 
 Finances of institutions, 68 
 Fisher, Irving, 182 
 Foster homes, 71 
 Foundlings, 39 
 
 Habits, 50 
 
 Hamilton, Alice, 41 
 
 Health, 102. See also Dis- 
 ease; Physical Defects 
 
 Health, Department of, 19, 
 26, 28, 31, 33, 38, 183, 184 
 
 Health ideal, 104 
 
 Heredity, 18, 47 
 
 Hine, Lewis W., 87 
 
 Home, 37, 45, 153-192; life, 
 165; manufacture,i45 
 
 Housing, 164 
 
 Hutchins and Harrison: His- 
 tory of Factory Legisla- 
 tion, 83 
 
 Hygiene, 49 
 
 Illegitimacy, 20, 21, 25 
 
 Illiteracy, 81 
 
 Immigration, 120 
 
 Income, use of, 159 
 
 Industrial relations, 150 
 
 Infancy, 13-42 
 
 Infant mortality, 32, 36 
 
 Insanity, 177 
 
 Institutions for aged, 208; 
 for children, 63, 70; for 
 children, advantages of, 72 
 
 Insurance. See Social In- 
 surance 
 
 Intemperance, 169 
 
 James, William, 5 
 
 Lane, Winthrop D., 98 
 Life Extension Institute, 182 
 Lindsay, Samuel McCune, 90 
 Lindsey, Ben B., 107 
 Lovejoy, Owen R., 90 
 Lowell, James Russell, 221 
 
 Marriage, 19, 155 
 
 Massachusetts Commission 
 on Old Age Pensions, 212, 
 214 
 
 Maturity, 115-204; full, 195 
 
 Medical education, 38; in- 
 spection of school chil- 
 dren, 52 
 
 Mental defect, 18, 20, 105, 
 109 
 
 Metchnikoff, Elie, 217 
 
 Mid wives, 28 
 
 Minimum wage, 147 
 
 National Child Labor Com- 
 mittee, 83, 89 
 
 New York City, 24, 28, 31, 
 32, 33. 59. 60, 66, 102 
 
 Newsholme, Sir Arthur, 23, 
 
 30,41 
 New Zealand Society for the 
 
 Health of Women and 
 
 Children, 27, 32 
 Normal life of man, divisions 
 
 of, 15, 117 
 
 Old age, 205-222; pensions, 
 
 213 
 Orphans, 63 
 Over-population," 41 
 Over- work, 143 
 Owen, Robert, 85 
 
 Palmer-Owen bill, 90, 172 
 Parentage, 17, 22
 
 INDEX 
 
 233 
 
 Pearse, Carroll Gardner, ioo 
 Pensions, Federal and state, 
 
 208; for old age, 213; for 
 
 widows, 73, 189 
 Physical defects, 52 
 Play and recreation, 61, 104 
 Police, in, 175 
 Poverty, prevention of, 51 
 Pre-natal. See Ante-natal 
 Prisons, 176 
 Probation, no 
 
 Race suicide, 40 
 Recreation. See Play 
 Registration of births, 30; of 
 
 population, 58, 122 
 Rubinow, I. M., 214 
 
 Sanitary conditions, 144 
 Schneider, Herman, 101 
 School, 46; attendance, 78; 
 buildings, 58; Inquiry, 
 Committee on, New York 
 City, 59; reasons for leav- 
 ing, 91 
 Seasonal trades, 135 
 Sex hygiene, 53 
 Shaw, Bernard, 7 
 Sickness insurance, 183 
 Social construction, 5; edu- 
 cation, conditions of, 57; 
 insurance, 73, 189, 213 
 Squier, Lee W., 207 
 Standard of living, 36, 156 
 Still-births, 24 
 
 Subsidy system in children's 
 institutions, 69 
 
 Thomson, J. Arthur, 47 
 Thrift, 209, 211 
 Todd, Helen M., 92 
 Town-planning, 162 
 Tracy, Roger S., 87 
 Tuberculosis, 180 
 
 Unemployable, 130 
 Unemployed, 128 
 Unemployment, causes of, 
 
 130; remedies for, 132; 
 
 responsibility of industry 
 
 for, 138 
 Ungraded classes, 60 
 
 Van Kleeck, Mary, 97 
 Venereal disease, 19 
 Vocational guidance, 94, 101 
 
 West, Mrs. Max, 27 
 
 White House Conference of 
 
 1909, 70 
 Widowhood, 187 
 Widow's pensions, 73, 189 
 Women, employment of, 26, 
 
 34. 140 
 
 Work, 1 26-1 5 1 
 
 Working day, 142; life, pro- 
 longation of, 199 
 
 Youth, 75-114
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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