SOCIAL ECONOMY. PARTI THE NORMAL LIFE EDWARD T. DEVINE Heui fork Hatt QlnUege of Agticulture At afarnell MniucraitH JItljaca, Si. f . Cornell University Library HN 64.039 The normal life 3 1924 014 046 100 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014046100 THE NORMAL LIFE SOCIAL ECONOMY: PARTI THE NORMAL LIFE EDWARD T. DEVINE SECOND EDITION REVISED \:li. )/ NEW YORK DOUGLAS C. MCMURTRIE I917 Copyrigkt, igij, hy Edivard T. Devine Douglas C. McMurtrie New York CONTENTS Page Introduction '. i I. Infancy 9 II. Childhood 26 III. Youth 55 IV. Maturity: Work 93 V. Maturity: Home 128 VI. Late Maturity and Old Age 166 Conclusion 193 Appendix: Suggestive Questions 199 Index 207 • NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION The Normal Life, originally prepared for a course of lectures in Baltimore in 1915, has since been found useful in university classes in social economy, in schools for training social workers, and in informal study-classes, such as those given for civilian relief workers in the Red Cross. After thor- ough revision it is now presented as Part I of a text- book of Social Economy. The object of Social Economy is that each shall be able to live as nearly as possible a normal life ac- cording to the standard of the period and the com- munity. The present volume sets forth as simply and concretely as possible what constitutes the American standard of a normal individual life in the twentieth century, to what extent it is attained, and what are the main obstacles to its general realiza- tion under existing conditions. Part II will examine social work as it is organized at the present time. The undertakings which have in view to make a normal life possible for every in- dividual will be described, their principles and methods scrutinized. Such an account will natu- rally deal with organized charity in its broader aspects, institutional and non-institutional, with health and housing movements, with child welfare and certain aspects of education and recreation, THE NO RM AL LIFE with penology in its social aspects, with the appHca- tion of organized and usable knowledge to any im- provement which is possible in the effort to over- come poverty, ignorance, disease, and crime. In Part III the development of social work will be traced from the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Jews, through Greece and Rome, early Chris- tianity, the middle ages, and modern times, down to the present day, examining the theory and practice of the social economy of the peoples and periods which have especially contributed to our own. My colleague. Miss Lilian Brandt, has shared in the preparation and revision of the volume to an extent which would justify placing her name on the title page as joint author. E. T. D. INTRODUCTION THE STANDARD OF LIVING The central consideration in Social Economy is 'the standard of living'. Elusive and kaleidoscopic though it may be, nevertheless the conception rep- resented by this phrase is a definite and powerful reality. The expression means something to every- one; the thing itself is the controlling force which shapes every life. In simplest terms 'the standard of living' means all those things which one insists upon having. It is not merely a collective name for the commodities enjoyed at a given time, but for those which are so related to one another, and so important to the con- sumer, that if any one of them is lacking forces to restore it are immediately put into action. Each individual has his own standard, determin- ing every choice he makes. Each family has its own, the result of combinations, consolidations, and compromises among the standards of its individual members. Each locality and each nation has its stan- dard, produced by the inter-play of an infinite num- ber of economic, social, and psychic forces, holding in solution the standards of all the individuals but not the same as that of any one or of all combined. The community's standard of living — the collec- tion of things which the community insists upon THE NORMAL LIFE having for all its members — is of fundamental im- portarjce to the social economist. It is at once the point of departure and the object of solicitude. It determines the size and the nature of the tasks to be undertaken. In the first place, those individuals who are unable to maintain the accepted standard of living — ^whether because of disease, defect, feeble- ness, ineflSciency, conflict with the law, or lack of the usual family relationships — must be 'cared for', 'relieved', 'treated'. In other words, they must be supported; restored or developed, in so far as that is possible, to the point of being able to maintain the standard without further assistance; or at the least restrained from lowering the standard of the community and interfering with their children's chance for a normal life according to the commu- nity's standard. In the second place, those factors in the economic and social organization of the community which are known to be prejudicial to the standard of living must be studied and modified or removed, or transformed into beneficent influences. It would be convenient for practical purposes if a formula in terms of income could be found to ex- press the normal standard of living. If we could say with confidence that in a specified city an in- come of so many dollars is necessary to maintain the standard for a family of specified size and com- position, and, furthermore, that the assurance to all of income according to the formula would ensure a normal standard for all, social economy would be INTRODUCTION tremendously simplified. But this cannot be done. Families differ in their spending ability — in what they can get out of a given income. They differ in their needs — in the clothes and the food and the recreation which they must have to secure the same degree of well-being — and in their estimation of the relative importance of physical, intellectual, and moral advantages. They differ in their situation with respect to public facilities, so that one family is obliged to pay for what another one can have free. The same aggregate income for the year, moreover, seems to have widely differing purchasing power according as it is received regularly or irregularly; and so on, to such an extent that it is impossible to decide upon any sum as representing the standard of living. This is not to say that investigations of family budgets are useless. On the contrary, such investi- gations are the most important contribution that has been made to an understanding of the standard of living. Their great value lies in the analysis they compel us to make of what people spend their money for and what they are able to get for it. No one could be more cautious than most of these very investigators have been in adopting a figure for the minimum income which every family should have.' • The Standard of Living in New York City, by Robert Coit Chapin, is a scholarly and illuminating discussion of the most im- portant investigation of this kind in recent years. Published by the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1909. 4 THE NORMAL LIFE Another approach to a formula for the standard of living is to express it in terms of the physical necessities and comforts — the 'commodities' — which it includes : cubic feet in sleeping quarters, plumb- ing, amount and quality of food, dental service, life insurance, car-fare, tickets to motion picture shows, and so on.'' This can be done, and it is a profitable exercise, but it, too, has its difficulties. Minimum standards of light and ventilation and safety and privacy in dwellings have been established by law in many places. These regulations represent the community's standard with respect to housing as far as they go, but they do not fully represent it. Science has made great progress toward determin- ing how much and what kinds of food are essential to keep the body in good working order, but even here science recognizes the influence of such factors as aesthetic pleasure, mental anxiety, and fatigue, on the nutritive results obtainable from a given die- tary, as well as the variations in individual powers of assimilation. Even if it were possible, however, to make a list of the minimum requirements in the way of shelter, food, clothing, and 'sundries', there would still remain the fact that there is a constant competition among these elements in the standard of living. Beef-steaks and bath-tubs, outside rooms and victrolas, a new suit or an addition to the bank- account, an automobile or an investment, a vacation ' Devine: Principles of Relief , pp. 29-46. Compare Marshall's enumeration of the necessaries for efficiency, in Principles of Economics, Vol. I, Bk. II, Ch. 3. INTRODUCTION or a rug — such conflicts are always going on, and it is not possible to say, by reference to a table of what every family should have, which decision in a given case is in the interest of the standard of living. THE INDIVIDUAL NORMAL LIFE The most satisfactory way to describe the stan- dard of living, therefore, is not in terms of physical equipment, nor in terms of the money that it takes to secure that equipment, but rather in terms of what we may call the social result, as it is seen in the lives of the individuals who make up the nation. Translated into an individual life, the standard of living in America in the twentieth century passes from an economic abstraction to a human reality, and becomes indeed a practicable measure, both for determining what are the tasks of social econ- omy and for estimating with what degree of efi&- ciency those tasks are performed. In this case, as in many others in social economy, the true scientific spirit and method consists in relinquishing the superficial appearance of scientific precision in order to give their proper place and significance to those spiritual elements in human affairs which are none the less obstinate facts and powerful forces because they are not susceptible of isolation, tabulation, measurement, and physical examination. It is, then, by examining the elements of a normal individual life and considering in what ways and to what extent individual lives fall below that stan- THE NORMAL LIFE dard, that we shall arrive at a fair idea of the scope and nature of social economy. Stripped of all ad- ventitious details, which vary according to locality and a hundred other circumstances, the essential features may be stated briefly. < The child is born into a home where it has been lovingly expected and prepared for. It begins life without the handicap of congenital defect or debil- ity. It is carefully tended, if not always scientifi- cally, 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, entering into its 'social heritage'. Then 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. The family circle includes 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 INTRODUCTION 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 rec- reation, 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 rep- resents at least a course in Normal School 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 in- dustrial 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 to spend it, the young men and women marry. They surround their children with rather more com- forts and advantages than they themselves had, and give them a longer period for education. There is no more firmly-rooted element in our standard than this, that each generation shall stand on the shoulders of its predecessor. They live to see their children established in homes of their own, and their grandchildren growing up. Gradually they relinquish active duties to the younger generation, while keeping lively interests and a place of useful- 8 THENORMALLIFE ness; their support provided either by savings or by their children's care. At the end they leave the world — reluctantly, to be sure, for it has been an agreeable place, but with a sense of satisfaction, as at the close of a full day of work and wholesome pleasure and friendly intercourse. There is no place in this picture for blind babies, feeble-minded girls, syphilitic young men, neg- lected orphans, child workers, ignorant and inef- ficient men and women, repulsive or lonely old people; there is no place for dependence on charity, for long, disabling illness or accident, for prostitu- tion, drunkenness, vice, or habitual crime, for neg- lect of children or other disregard of natural obligations, for premature age or early death. These things all exist, and we all know that they exist, 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 standard of living as ex- pressed in the course of an individual's life from the cradle to the grave. They are abnormalities. They are obstacles which interfere with the realization by every individual of a normal life. They are cir- cumstances which menace our standard of living. In the following chapters we shall consider what is involved in the normal standard at each stage of the individual's life, what circumstances interfere with its full realization, and to what extent con- scious social effort may remove these adverse con- ditions and assure a normal standard to ail. I INFANCY HOME AND FAMILY The preliminary condition to a normal infancy and childhood is a home. No satisfactory substi- tute has ever been devised for the specialized and individual attention which children receive in fam- ily hfe.i The home must meet certain minimum specifica- tions, material and moral, if it is to fulfill its func- tion and justify the dictionary definition of it as 'a congenial abiding-place'. Of these specifications the fundamental ones, from the child's point of view, are that it should be founded on marriage, that the parents should be healthy in mind and body, that the father should be able and willing to provide an income adequate to the very moderate needs of mother and child, and that the mother should have the intelligence and the disposition to give the child the care which it requires, and which only she can give, in the months before birth and the first year or two of its life. PARENTAGE In the first place, centuries of experience have shown that it is desirable for children that their ' For an admirable discussion of the value of the family to the child and as a social institution, see The Family, by Helen Bosanquet. lO THE NORMAL LIFE parents should be united under the legal sanction of society. The illegitimate child has less chance than others of being born alive; it has only about half the chances of living through its first year; and in other ways, too familiar to need enumeration, it is handicapped from the outset and throughout its life. How many children in America begin life with this handicap we do not know, because the registration of births is incomplete and informa- tion on this particular point is even more scanty. But we know that the number is much larger than it should be. In New York City, which has succeeded in securing a complete record of all births, about one in 85 or 90 is 'apparently ille- gitimate'. It is important, furthermore, that the parents should be healthy in mind and body, or at the very least, free from transmissible defects and diseases. Heredity is a fact of human life of which not merely the individual in his private relations, but the com- munity in its broader social relations, must take account. Normally like tends to beget like. Sci- ence has demonstrated that feeble-minded, incur- ably insane, epileptic, syphilitic, alcoholic men and women cannot expect to have normal children, and the inference for social economy is plain. Such per- sons must not become parents. They must be cured, when cure is possible, and all possible means for treatment must be provided ; and they must be kept under guardianship as long as the dangerous INFANCY II condition persists, which in the first three classes mentioned is ordinarily for life. As far as defectives and incurables are concerned, this should be done preferably in custodial institu- tions, humanely conducted colonies, where the capacities of the patients may be exercised for their own good and that of their companions ; but if not in such institutions, then in some other way, by adequate home supervision when there are sufficient resources for it and sufficient guarantee that it will be exercised, by surgical operation in suitable cases, though conservatives on this subject would prefer that such operations 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 diseases it is necessary that they be brought under public control by means of the program which has been tested with respect to other infectious diseases: compulsory notification to the Board of Health of all affected persons known to institutions and to private physicians; free laboratory assistance in making Wassermann tests and other aids to diag- nosis; a very considerable increase in provision for treatment, both in hospitals and in clinics; popular education about the c6nsequences of these diseases to wife — or husband — and child, about their long and insidious course, and the essential treatment. 12 THE NORMAL LIFE It is only to a limited extent that society can determine what kind of children shall be born and under what conditions they shall begin life, but by a firm policy of direct control of those who are demonstrably unfit to be parents the number of children with congenital handicaps may be tre- mendously reduced. This policy would also do more than any other single measure to reduce the number of illegitimate births, and something further may be accomplished in this direction by deterrent legislation and effective procedure which fastens responsibility for the illegitimate child on its father. These measures, however, though important, are at the best only negative. They are only a begin- ning in the purification of parenthood, the raising of the standard of equipment at birth, the improve- ment of the race. The rest can be accomplished better by the slow and indirect processes of educa- tion and general improvement of conditions than by compulsory regulation of marriage. The point at which to prevent illegitimate births is in the home and at school, long before they might occur, by the development of the will of the strong and the protection of the person of the weak. There is no adequate safeguard against unfit births except an early acquired ideal of parenthood, strong enough to keep the baser passions in subjec- tion and to hold the young men and women to a rational use and development of all their powers. The responsibility for the selection of parents for INFANCY 13 the children of the next generation is likely to re- main, except in the case of the positively unfit, and it is desirable that it should remain, where it is at present — on the parties to the marriage contract, their parents, their spiritual and medical advisers, and their friends. The important services of so- ciety in this matter, with the exception already noted, are indirect: the provision of such education as will make individuals lead clean lives and act wisely, when the time comes, about marriage and parenthood; of such industrial and social condi- tions as favor wholesome relations between the sexes and encourage family life. THE BIRTH-RATE The same methods may be relied upon to deter- mine the quantity, as well as the quality, of the increase of population. It is not desirable that the families of successful achievement should die out; nor on the other hand is it desirable that the human race should be perpetuated in the wasteful fashion of the lower animals. In a study of fifteen hundred Chicago families a few years ago ^ it was found that among the large families of six children or more the infant mortality was considerably over twice as high as it was among the families of moderate, size (four children or less) in similar economic circum- 2 Excessive child-bearing as a factor in infant mortality. By- Alice Hamilton, M.D. Conference on the Prevention of Infant Mortality, New Haven, igog. 14 THE NORMAL LIFE stances. Other studies bear the same testimony, and Dr. Newsholme has constructed a table of fertility rates and infant mortality rates for Eng- land and Wales, which shows that a high fertility rate is accompanied by a high mortality and vice versa, except among the textile workers, where many babies die although relatively few are born.' There is no need of organized agitation, however, to prevent an excessive birth-rate. Economic forces are quite as effective in this direction as the welfare of society demands. Private property, family re- sponsibility, educational standards, the adoption by immigrants of the standard of living of their neigh- bors, and other institutional checks, seem likely to keep population well within the means of subsis- tence, even within the boundaries of a normal life. The solution for an undesirably low birth-rate, the other extreme, lies in such educational propaganda as has already been begun; in the exaltation of simpler, healthier ideals; in controlling the diseases which produce sterility; in economic readjustment of the sexes, following the gradual emancipation of women from antiquated restrictions. THE ANTE-NATAL PERIOD Infancy is divided naturally into two periods — before and after birth. At the present time the ante-natal period appears to be the most dangerous « Forty-third Annual Report (1913-1914) of the Local Govern- ment Board. INFANCY 15 epoch of life. English and French authorities have estimated that one-fifth or one-sixth of all preg- nancies end in abortion or miscarriage; in addition, many of the children born at full term are born dead; and of the children born alive fully one in twenty die in early infancy as a result of congenital debility or malformation or other causes ante- dating birth.* Dr. Newsholme estimates that half the ante-natal mortality is due to syphilis alone, and it cannot be doubted that the institution of the policy of control suggested on page 1 1 would elimi- nate the greater part of this flagrant waste of life. Assuming that the elementary principles in re- gard to parentage have been complied with, the first stage in the child's life is comparatively simple. Its welfare up to the time of birth depends on one individual, its mother, and so powerfully does nature work in behalf of the new life that a very moderate degree of welfare and intelligence on her part is about all that is needed to ensure the birth of a healthy child. What is needed is such a family budget and such conditions in the home as will give the mother a moderate degree of comfort and reasonable freedom from anxiety and overwork; such advice and in- struction, adapted to her understanding, as will save the embryonic life from harm through her ig- norance and carelessness, and bring it to birth in ' One in 31 from congenital debility and malformation alone, in New York City in 1914. l6 THE NORMAL LIFE the best possible condition; and such competent attendance at birth as will do away with all avoid- able injuries to mother or child. It is important that there should not be overwork of any kind, or overfatigue through social functions or pleasures, at any time during this critical period, and that toward its end there should be a consider- able lightening of tasks and responsibility; but, on the other hand, it is not necessary, or even desir- able, that the mother should spend the nine months in idleness. Occupations suited to her strength are an advantage. For the most part the interest and affection of family and friends must be relied upon to secure these conditions, but society may — and does, in many states — interfere to the extent of pro- hibiting the employment of women in factories for a minimum period before and after childbirth. The most important service which society can render at this period of life is to provide special in- struction for those prospective mothers who are not in position to get it from their own physician or some other natural private source. This instruction should be sufficiently diversified to meet the needs of women of a wide range of intelligence and educa- tion. For the average American woman who can read and understand simple English and follow simple instructions nothing could be better than the authoritative pamphlet which has been prepared by the Children's Bureau.^ For others an organized ' Publication No. 4, Pre-natal Care, by Mrs. Max West. INFANCY 17 clinic service is needed in cities and towns, and a district nursing system in rural districts. The ex- periments in this direction which have already been made by private societies and by departments of health have had such remarkable results in reduc- ing the percentage of still-births and premature births and the mortality of both mothers and babies that there can be no doubt as to the desirability of greatly extending the facilities for such instruction. There is perhaps no other form of social work which yields larger returns on the modest invest- ment required. Pre-maternity homes may be needed, in some cases, to ensure the special attention which is de- sirable in the days immediately before confinement, but in America the number of women who cannot have such care in their own homes is limited, even now, and it will be still less when the social policies outlined above are in full operation. BIRTH At the time of birth the minimum requirement is skilled and prompt attendance, either at home or in a hospital. Hospital accommodation is essential for complicated cases, in which there are conditions involving special danger to mother or child; and even for normal cases, and even when the home is comfortable, there is an increasing tendency to use the maternity hospital. To meet these require- ments further extension of hospital accommoda- THE NORMAL LIFE tions is needed, further improvement in medical skill, and better training and supervi&ion of mid- wives. The substitution of a physician or a hos- pital for the midwife may be desirable, but in view of the large number of foreigners in our population, with their preference for the midwife of their own nationality, this cannot be expected in the near future, and it is therefore important that the mid- wives should be as skilful as possible. Among the incidental advantages to be expected from improvement in the standard of professional attendance is a diminution in the amount of con- genital blindness, much of which— not only that part which is due to gonorrhoea and which, there- fore, demands more searching measures, but also many cases of entirely different origin — can be prevented by the simple precaution of applying silver nitrate to the eyes immediately after birth. Prompt registration of birth is the next step, in chronological order, which is demanded by the future interests of the child and by social welfare. Documentary evidence of age is required in many cities both to get into school and also to get out, if release is desired at the earliest possible moment. Birth certificates are frequently needed to estab- lish American citizenship or right to inheritance. Legislation is constantly increasing the occasions in life in which proof of age or nativity is required, and thus demonstrating the usefulness of an official record. Of even greater importance to the individ- INFANCY ig ual, however, though he may not see it so easily, is the basis given by an accurate registration of births for studying the infant mortahty and for putting into operation a systematic supervision of babies. American dislike of 'red tape' has kept us very remiss with respect to this elementary social duty, but there is no reason why every city in the country should not have a complete record of births within a few years, if it wants it. New York City has it already, in spite of its unparalleled difficulties of varieties in custom and language; and if that has been possible, an intelligent and resourceful board of health anj^where can secure the necessary co- operation from physicians, midwives, and parents. INFANT MORTALITY After the child is born and properly registered there follows a period of a year or two when the engrossing occupation of all who are interested is merely to keep it alive. So great is the mortality in the first months of life, unless special pains are taken to care for the delicate creatures, that in- fancy has been called one of the extra-hazardous occupations. A large proportion of the loss of life in the first month is due to lack of adequate care before or at birth or immediately after, or to ante-natal infec- tion, and the way to avoid such deaths has already been indicated in the preceding pages. Among babies over a month old deaths are due largely to 20 THE NORMAL LIFE what sanitarians called hygienic and dietetic errors, which either act directly, to cause gastro-intestinal diseases, or indirectly, to lower the resistance to pneumonia and other infections. These 'errors' may be corrected very largely by the same edu- cational methods which are efficacious in the ante-natal period. Historically, in fact, efforts to provide instruction for mothers originated in connection with milk-stations and supervision of new-born babies, and were extended back into the period before birth as the necessity for beginning earlier became apparent. It is in the first year of the child's life, 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 labor, 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 — professional, industrial, or unclassified — which interferes 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 « Forty- third Annual Report of the Local Government Board, p. xxix. INFANCY 21 nurseries attached to factories in which the work is not arduous and the sanitary conditions are good might be a genuine advantage to mother, child, and employer. Day nurseries which receive babies a week or ten days old at seven o'clock in the morning 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. By encouraging mothers to nurse their babies, teaching them how to meet their simple but imper- ative needs of pure air and clean and suitable food with the resources at their command, supplement- ing these resources when necessary, and furnishing expert counsel in emergencies, private philanthropy and departments of health have achieved results no less than theatrical in reducing infant mortality. 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. Twenty years ago fifteen out of every hun- dred 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 hun- dred 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, ' The figure was 153 per thousand births for the decade 1896 — 1905 for Manhattan and Bronx, assuming that ninety per cent of the births were registered at that time; in 1914, when the registra- tion of births was almost complete, the rate was ninety-eight. 22 THE NORMAL LIFE that these ninety reach their first birthday anni- versary 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 suc- ceeding 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 ninty-second, ninety-third, ninety-fourth, and nine- ty-fifth, but it can probably be done. EFFECT OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS The welfare of the baby, it is clear, depends pri- marily upon its home, and within the home prima- rily on its mother, but mere good-will on her part, even when buttressed by the most efficient over- sight and instruction, is not sufficient to ensure the desirable conditions. Employment of the mother is only one of the factors of home life which have an influence on the survival and the health of babies. It is not possible to pick out the various elements in a low standard of living and determine just what effect each one has, but the general connection is undesirable. The Children's Bureau found in Johnstown * that the infant mortality was five times as great in the poor- est ward as in the section containing the homes of the well-to-do; that, in general, it fell as the earn- ings of husbands rose and the proportion of wage- ' Children's Bureau Publication No. 9, by Emma Duke. Seii also, on this subject, the entire Infant Mortality Series of the Children's Bureau. INFANCY 23 earning wives declined; that it was considerable lower in dry, clean homes containing a bath-tub, than in damp, dirty homes with no water-supply; that of the babies who slept at night in a well- ventilated room, as nearly half of them did, 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 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 indexes to the general economic status of the home. 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 afifect only slightly. A minimum stan- dard of housing with respect to safety, decency, water-supply, and ventilation; an adequate drain- age system for all parts of the city; an abundant supply of pure water for drinking and household purposes; an efficient street-cleaning service; super- vision of the milk supply; small parks at frequent intervals — these are some of the features of munici- pal housekeeping which are favorable to babies. Still another element in the saving of babies and the improvement of the physical basis of the indi^ 24 THE NORMAL LIFE vidual's life is further advance in medical knowl- edge of children's diseases and of their causation. All social measures to this end must rest on the teachings of science, and very often it is the skill and insight of the individual physician that deter- mine whether a particular baby shall live or die. Higher standards of general medical education, the including in the curriculum of the medical school of a larger amount of specialized instruction in the diseases of infancy, and the encouragement of ad- vanced study in this difficult and elusive field, are technical and scientific problems of social interest. HOMELESS BABIES The 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 turning cradle of a hospitable institution on her first day out of the maternity ward. Motherless and father- less babies are not a part of our normal standard of living, and there will be fewer and fewer individuals 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 prob- lems for the city department of charities. Provi- sion for foundlings is a present necessity on account of the existence of abnormal conditions, which we must use every effort to eliminate. As long as it is INFANCY 25 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 practically 100 per cent., as it has been in some institutions. There seems to be an immense advantage for the baby, and consequently for the state, in small, simple, inexpensive cottages, each in charge of a nurse. There are still greater advantages in per- suading unmarried mothers not to relinquish their babies, and in finding them positions where they can work out their own rehabilitation. II 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 pre- cludes much serious attention to the matters which are to vex them, and us, at a later stage. Childhood is above all for education, as infancy is for physical well-being. The problems of physi- cal 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 'trysting-place of the gen- erations'. Without dwelling upon the transition from in- 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 CHILDHOOD 27 the school, as those of infancy center in the mother, and those of mature Hfe 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 monopo- lizes 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 sharpen the problems of social economy which spring from the special needs of childhood, we place the school for the time being in the fore- ground. 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 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 28 THE NORMAL LIFE hundreds of social contacts which mold and influ- ence the child's 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 trea- sures, the acquired capacities, of the race. So con- ceived, it concerns every age, but childhood is its special province — the period marked by nature as peculiarly adapted to this process. Unlike the beasts that perish, man is not depen- dent upon biological inheritance alone, but has also a social heritage, handed on from one generation to another. It is to childhood that this debt of the past 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 achievements 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, must not be expected to yield a harvest of figs from a sowing of thistles. If we analyze this social task of education from 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 CHILDHOOD 29 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 when 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 continuously. 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 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 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 upright. For a million years or so sal- 30 THE NORMAL LIFE vation on earth depended on ability to distinguish friend from foe at a great distance. Now, when the objects of our interest and solicitude are more apt to be at eighteen inches from the eye instead of a mile, we find ourselves handicapped by an optical instrument fitted for the distant but not for the near vision. We subject ourselves to eye-strain, and have headaches, 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 elementary things; not anatomy and physiology, though they are useful ; but cleanliness, respect for bodily func- tions, coordination of muscles, repose 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 provide food is to give the mastery of the body. Certain drills are necessary to make the mind rapid and accurate. Certain processes are necessary to develop observation and the critical faculty. Other exercises are useful in cultivating the memory and the imagination. But above all, from the social point of view, the educational system must be sue- CHILDHOOD 31 cessful 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 spiri- tual with the material. Right reasoning about what can be attained by a given effort, and what the sat- isfaction thus attained is really worth, as compared with other possible results from the same effort — this 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 habits, physical, mental, and moral. The economic reasoning just now referred to is a conscious and sometimes a slow and painful process. But after a while, if the pro- cesses of our reasoning are sound, a particular judg- ment 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 neces- sary. Time is saved. Effort is saved. Wear and tear of tissue and vital energy 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 authorita- tively attested, that it offends rather than helps us 32 THENORMALLIFE 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 productive will be the expenditure of energy in satisfying the higher and more complex wants. This restatement of the elementary aims of edu- cation may seem so obvious to specialists in the theory of education as to be trite, or so incomplete as to be fantastic. To the social economist the school system is an instrument like any other of social construction. Education conceived as the means of carrying civilization forward, as the con- scious 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 instruments of satisfying the wants of man; en- courage 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- 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 CHILDHOOD 33 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 all in childhood a part of education. The school, although not exhausting its content, is the institutional embodiment of this idea of education. PHYSICAL WELL-BEING Coming now more directly to some of the social problems of childhood which center in the school — it is necessary to discover and remedy the physical defects of children. Some of these are due to neg- lect of the pre-natal, natal, or post-natal problems of infancy, to overworked and undernourished par- ents, or to ignorance of the conditions essential to a right start for children. Others may not show themselves, or may not be remediable, until earlier infancy is past. Medical inspection of school chil- 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, it must be said, are antiquated. Our standards, our common notions of what is the right and reasonable thing, more much faster than our practice, which is dependent on appropriations 34 THE NORMAL LIFE and administrative details and unlucky accidents and the slow process of bringing large numbers of people to understand precisely what is to be done 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 correc- tion and treatment of other crippling disabilities; the cleaning of scalps; the isolation of infectious skin and eye diseases and proper treatment 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 sus- ceptible and so easily poisoned by foul air. Equally justified with such medical inspection is instruction in sex hygiene— ^very generally and very 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 dis- ease and 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- CHILDHOOD 35 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 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 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. 36 THE NORMAL LIFE A definite relation between the school and the future active life of the child, however, long antedates the trade school. Useful work and rational 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 com- munity — in their mind's eye. Peripatetic teachers in the home kitchens, perhaps helping to transform the kitchens in a little while into cooperative enter- prises, may, for example, be one of the next inno- vations in this direction. 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 workers must come into possession of them, and to this end they must become cooperative capitalists. One of our socialist congressmen has quoted Lasalle's saying that the proletarian workers and the intel- lectuals must unite, and has quoted it to disagree, urging that the workers must themselves become intellectual. The workers of the future must be able to use their minds no less than their bodies, and neither minds nor bodies in mutilated fragments. CHILDHOOD 37 They must be efficient, not under compulsion, but under leadership and direction. CIVIC NURTURE Hygienic training for health, then, and economic education for efficiency, are the first two planks in a platform 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 courses in 'civics', dealing with the framework of political government as it happens to exist in a particular community, than it is the function 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 teach- ing. If the new conception of government as a democratic cooperative enterprise can be planted in the mind, this will help, but society does not con- sist merely of its courts and legislatures. Failure to recognize this is the great weakness of those Junior Republics in which the whole life centers 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 commerce, a church or synagogue — the family at one extreme and the human brotherhood at the other — expresses social relations, and that any one of them, at a given moment, under particular circumstances, may have 38 THE NORMAL LIFE greater significance for the individual 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 re- lations, is an even higher and more comprehensive 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 well-being. Let us consider some of the very ele- mentary corollaries. First, there must be room for all the children; and the room must be in the neighborhoods where the children are. There should not be seventy thousand children in Texas who have no chance to CHILDHOOD 39 go to school, nor should there be 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 provided for. A prerequisite to better adjustment is such a collec- tion and interpretation of population statistics as will allow a forecast of the location of buildings to meet future needs, and such liberality of expendi- ture as will actually meet them. A permanent census or registration of all the population, kept constantly corrected by recording all changes of residence as well as births and deaths, would be the most satisfactory and economical method of secur- ing such data. Such calculations will be more easily made and more nearly correct when 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- buildings 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. 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 ' A Committee of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, 1913- 40 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 the variations in those human prob- lems around which the curriculum is to be organ- ized. Politics has no legitimate place in the selection of teachers, of course. Security of tenure for those who show themselves capable and the easy elimination of those who are demonstrably unfit are of equal importance. Whether the teachers are women or men, adequate pay is necessary in the interests of the schools, to secure professional prep- aration and to meet the increasing competition of other callings. 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 deaf, the crippled and nervous, the exceptionally gifted and well prepared, the clear thinkers and the hard workers. To subject all to the same undifferen- CHILDHOOD 41 tiated, uniform, mechanically prescribed routine squares neither with the principles of efficiency 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 was reported not long ago that in New York City more than twenty thousand slow children were cared for in so-called 'rapid progress classes', in which they had 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 importance of the school as compared with less organized, less formal influences. There is always danger of taking any human institution too seri- ously. Charities and schools especially are all the better for occasional blasts of satire, chaffing, illuminating criticism, free from either adulation or prejudice, which helps to restore a due sense of proportion. 42 THE NORMAL LIFE PLAY 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 boy who at the end of an elaborate and successful play pro- gram—it may even have been a 'pageant' — startled those in charge by proposing, 'Now let's have some fun!' What children need in this direction is a place to play, time to play, and health. The so- called playground movement recognizes that city children do not have a place to play, and that mod- ern civilization must, by conscious effort, restore the glorious privileges of which its own cruder stages have robbed both children and 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 neces- sary to its profitable use. But we are experiment- ing only. Play festivals and pageants, folk-dances and gymnastics, athletic leagues and competitive school games, are but interesting experiments, 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 and playmates, through religious and moral and social training, through responsible individual di- rection and through less direct but genuine com- CHILDHOOD 43 munity action, are the aims of social economy in normal childhood, as a good heredity and physical well-being are the aims at birth and in infancy. It may be that in these respects those whom we call 'the poor' — the tenement house and alley popula- tion in our cities today — 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 doctors and nurses, all teachers and pastors, all neighbors and associates, all who govern in the com- munity, and all who shape its public opinions, are among the builders of the child life of the nation, individually more or less responsible and jointly fully responsible for the death-rate, the incorrigi- bility rate, the efficiency rate of the children. DEPENDENT CHILDREN Among our thirty-one million children ? there are a few — something like one hundred and seventy- five thousand — for whom society has a greater re- sponsibility than for the others, a different kind of responsibility, because their parents are dead or un- able to provide for them or unfit to do so, and 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 foster families under ' Total population under sixteen. 44 THE NORMAL LIFE the oversight of child-placing agencies. There are, no doubt, some thousands more for whom parents are really unable or unfit to provide without assis- tance, but these, 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 entirely neglected by their parents, and discovered from time to time by relief agencies, by the church, by a settlement, or by a good Samar- itan. Of complete neglect by everybody, state and church and family and neighborhood, there are certainly plenty of instances, both in cities and in remote country places; and for such exhortations and proddings and demonstrations as are furnished by child welfare exhibits and like agencies there is abundant need. The hundred and seventy-five thousand children who have been left orphans, or taken away from their parents for any reason, present special prob- lems: the problems most often discussed in confer- ences of charities when children are under consid- eration. Dependent children are for the most part in orphan asylums, congregate institutions under private or church control, of the type familiar in all the older states; although the special report of the Census Bureau on benevolent institutions shows that there is an increasing number of state detention homes where dependent and delinquent children are CHILDHOOD 45 cared for pending final disposition by the juvenile courts, of receiving homes under the conduct of home-finding organizations, of state pubHc schools, intermediate between the orphanage and the re- formatory, and of training homes and schools of many kinds which practically are educational institutions. The average number of children in the institutions reporting ranged from thirteen in Wyoming to two hundred and ten in New York. One hundred and sixty-eight of the 1,151 institu- tions reported that they were 'on the cottage sys- tem', and some of the others could hardly have been on any other system, however they might de- scribe themselves, as for example the seven Arkan- sas institutions which together mustered only thirty-five children. We may hope that the cottage plan has gained since then, as the change in archi- tecture from barracks to cottage, although expen- sive, represents a determined effort to get away from wholesale methods to retail ; from uniformity to in- dividuality; from regimentation to something like family informality; from an impossible to a still dubious but not impossible substitute for a home. children's institutions Aside from the gradual — very gradual — intro- duction of the cottage system, the two marked ten- dencies to which the latest census report calls at- tention are the assumption by some state authority of supervision over benevolent institutions, includ- 46 THE NORMAL LIFE ing those for children, and the extension of the supervisory care of institutions over children placed by them in family homes or elsewhere. There is a 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 difficult problems, about some of which unhappy controversies have raged, fanned by reli- gious bigotry, and representing, even when free from acrimony or misunderstanding, very sharp and fundamental differences in theory. 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 carefully supervised boarding home. What if all the hundred and twenty-five thousand children in orphan asy- lums — only one child in every two hundred and fifty 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 reflec- tions haunt the mind and make uncomfortable the conscience of all who have ever seen 'an institu- tional child'. CHILDHOOD 47 The institutional system is wasteful of child life, wasteful of educational opportunities, 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 in natural family and neighborhood relationships, does not teach the value and use of money in exchange, does not give an opportunity for the development of self- reliance and self-direction, does not gradually in- itiate the child into the every-day routine of free citizenship, but necessarily represses his budding in- dividuality, limits and controls the exercise of his judgment as of his body, contracts his vision, mutilates his faculties, distorts his sense of values. Two or three years ago, in company with two superintendents of children's institutions, I had occasion to make an inspection of an institution — not a large one, such as is thought of as typical of New York, but nevertheless distinctly an institu- tional institution. It was sanitary, light, airy, 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 per- sonal interest of the members of a large association to which the home bears an informal relation. And yet, under all these favorable conditions, the children were not receiving the physical or the edu- cational or the religious care which is childhood's 48 THE NORMAL LIFE birthright. Even yet the wasted opportunities in the lives of that hundred children appall and op- press 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 appreciate and respond to. The four hours of that day spent in their company on serious business lifted for me a little way a curtain behind which there lurk too much darkness, too much community neglect, too much indifference, too much ostrich-like concealment of an age-long, age-unsolved problem. 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 abnormal and all but impossible. Immigration, congestion, religious interests, a great investment in institu- tional plants, and an existing subsidy system con- spire to put what seem to be insuperable obstacles in the way of any radical substitution of placing and boarding out for institutions, and even make diffi- cult any general substitution of the cottage for the congregate system. It seems quixotic to be advo- cating any change. Yet even here a courageous commissioner of public charities is finding family homes for large numbers of children who under former conditions would have gone into institutions, and is looking forward to the time when the existing CHILDHOOD 49 institutions shall have become the refuge of those children who are not adapted to family life. 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, obliged to justify itself from year to year and subject to in- spection by a competent state board of charities, is far less apt to fall behind the educational ideals and standards of the community. A small church home, caring for the children in a particular neighborhood, visited by church members and supported by their contributions, although likely to be inadequately equipped, may be free from serious abuse. 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 homelike by the fact of its meager population and by the influence of the larger non- institutional work of which it is but an incident. It is the large institution under private or re- ligious auspices, managed by a self-perpetuating or appointed board, but supported by state or munici- pal 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 af- 50 THE NORMAL LIFE fairs. The subsidy or contract system continuously grows by what it feeds on. It represents an un- sound principle by which control is divorced from support. One body directs the affairs of the institu- tion ; another pays the bills. The result is a division of responsibility and neglect of the child. In such an institution children are apt to be received ir- responsibly, eagerly, without any due sense of the corresponding obligations. Out of them go children who are disciplined, in a narrow sense religiously in- structed, but still half-educated. Where the subsidy system is not already firmly established it should be shunned, for it is demoralizing and subversive of the most elementary principles of child welfare. The chief defense of the institution, aside from financial economy, in which respect, for a given number of children, it has an advantage over cot- tage homes or a boarding system, is in its superi- ority on the side of religious and moral instruction. In view of the fact that these children are deprived of their natural home influences there is force in the contention that to place them in a state school, organized like the public day schools, without re- ligious instruction, would be unjustified and abnor- mal. Foster and boarding homes, or at least small cottage institutions, could largely meet this re- quirement, however, 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 home life as against an artificial, hot-house environment. CHILDHOOD 51 PRINCIPLES OF CHILD CARE Making no attack upon any particular type of institution, much less upon those of any particular church, we may 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 inefificiency or immorality. 2. The most important and valuable philanthropic work is not the curative, but the preventive. We urge upon all friends of children ... to improve the con- ditions surrounding child life. 3. As to the children who for sufficient reasons must be removed from their own homes, or who have no homes, it is desirable that, if normal in mind and body and not re- quiring special training, they should be cared for in families whenever practicable. 4. Institutions should be on the cottage plan. . . Existing congregate institutions 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 buildings are constructed. 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 edu- cational authorities. 7. Complete historiesof dependent children and their par- ents should be recorded for guidance of child-caring agencies. 8. Every needy child should receive proper medical and surgical attention and be instructed in health and hygiene. 52 THE NORMAL LIFE The placing of dependent children in foster homes has its own difificulties, 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, con- scientious, and continuous. If these children are to be protected from exploitation, taught and nur- tured 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 the community in which the children are placed, provided they are placed in a community which has normally high standards. But through reports and inspections and a readiness to resort, when neces- sary, to disciplinary measures, including the sum- mary removal of children for cause and their re- placement 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 compe- tition, a generous rivalry between institutions and placing and boarding-out societies or institutions. We are not far enough along to decide that either should be abolished. New and better agencies, or the old ones made better, should not suffer on account of the others. The institutions have an CHILDHOOD 53 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 organ- ize, as it were, the whole life of the child — educa- tional, 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 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, preferably on 54 THE NORMAL LIFE the cottage plan, to three in foster famiHes under proper supervision. At the same time, instead of one in every two hundred and fifty 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 adoptive parents. Among preventive measures which the White House Conference so emphatically prefers to- cura- tive, public out-door relief or widows' pensions are not necessarily included. Social insurance for sick- ness and widowhood should be. Help by the state in furnishing school lunches, eyeglasses, clothing, or other personal equipment may or may not be ad- visable. Physical examination of children, the visit- ing of the home, and the enforcement when neces- sary of natural parental obligations, are essential. In other words, the state should enforce a minimum standard of child care ; but 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. Children's needs must be met if possible in such a way as will strengthen and not weaken the family bond, develop and not undermine the sense of family responsibility and solidarity, provide a fair opportunity for all, and hold the individual responsible for making 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 edu- cation; education for economic efficiency, for prof- itable enjoyment of leisure, for the responsibilities of marriage and family life. Indispensable to it are more opportunities and better opportunities for wholesome recreation. Youth demands a positive program of guidance and normal development, to meet its own needs and to prepare for later life. There is another side also. Abnormal tendencies 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 oi repressed or diverted, as the case may require. 56 THE NORMAL LIFE From this point of view the period of adolescence is the critical time in life. As the supreme considera- tion in infancy is the establishment of a sound and vigorous physique, though 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 the physical problems, to be sure, 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 depreciating the health problems and the mental problems, that the central interest is in the development of character, that in fact it is for their immediate or ultimate influence on character — on personality — that we are then interested in health and recreation and training for efi&ciency. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE It was to emphasize the importance of continuing the period devoted to education past childhood, into and through adolescence, that no reference to com- pulsory school attendance and child-labor laws was made in discussing the education of children. That children should go to school needs in America no ai'gument. There are some children who get no systematic schooling, either in public or private schools or at the hands of tutors or governesses, be- cause they live in remote country districts or in neglected corners of the city, because they are sick or crippled, or because their parents or guardians YOUTH 57 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 schoolroom 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 certain 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 ii: 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-five. Probably most of us would say, if we were discussing this question with a visitor from Mars or China, 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 were to go to the latest census to verify our statement, we should find that among fourteen-year-old children in the United States nineteen in every hundred had had no connection whatever during the school year 1909-1910 with any kind of school — day or evening, public or private, academic or industrial; and that in one state the 58 THE NORMAL LIFE percentage rose as high as forty-five. We should find that the proportion of children in school in- creases 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 aiid 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 interesting variations among different groups and in different states : that below fourteen, for example, the children of immi- grants show the highest proportion of school at- tendance (probably because they live mainly in cities, where schools are thickest), while at fourteen and over the children of native-born parents are more apt than others 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 percentage of ne- groes 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 likely everywhere to be in school) who did not at- tend at all in the census year varies in the different states from one in forty-three in Vermont to one in three in Louisiana. We should reluctantly conclude that in respect to school attendance our actual acomplishment is YOUTH 59 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 marked 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 illit- eracy at successive ages taking us back through 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 negroes: among the old people 60 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 rises from early childhood to the age of eleven, hav- ing a narrow apex of only three years from eleven to thirteen, falling at fourteen and after that 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 precipi- tately. The 'wasted years' between fourteen and sixteen, which are worse than wasted if used for earning, are the most productive years for devel- opment. CHILD LABOR 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 inter- YOUTH 6l est. Child-labor laws cannot be enforced success- fully unless the compulsory education laws harmonize with them, and unless there are schools for all the children involved, and unless the children want to attend them, or at least unless their parents want them to. 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 dozen 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 attention to the physical injury done to young persons through confinement and long-continued labor in the cotton mills, asserting that 'the active recreations of child- hood and youth are necessary to the growth, the vigor, and the right conformation of the human body'; and he could not refrain from suggesting, though apparently he felt 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'. ' Quoted in Hutchins and Harrison: History of Factory Legis- lation. 62 THE NORMAL LIFE A few years later, summarizing in another con- nection 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 employ- ments and for the duties of manhood', and to the importance of not debarring children from all op- portunities for education, and adds: 'The untimely labor of the night, and the protracted labor of the day, with respect to children, not only tends to diminish future expectations as to the general sum of life and industry, by impairing the strength and destroying the vital stamina of the rising genera- tion, but it too often gives encouragement to idle- ness, extravagance, and profligacy in the parents, who, contrary to the order of nature, subsist by the oppression of their offspring'. This last point was made again later on by a magistrate testifying be- fore Sir Robert Peel's parliamentary committee in l8i6: 'If parents were thrown more upon them- selves 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 witness at the same hearing called atten- tion to the low wages of adult workers as an argu- ment 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 YOUTH 63 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. We know that even at fourteen and fifteen the bony structure of the body is still plastic and yielding. Important physiological functions are in process of establish- ment. A large amount of evidence has been ac- cumulated to show the high cost of the pitiful wages that can be earned in these years: the cost in dis- ease, in accidents, in crime, in inefficient maturity, in 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 children's fingers when they are inattentive, as children sometimes are, leaving them 'no good for work any more'. Chil- dren who work are apt to be undersized and anemic. They are found in the juvenile courts out of all proportion to their numbers, are more inclined to the serious offenses, and very much more apt to become habitual delinquents, so that, inasmuch as 64 THE NORMAL LIFE the working and the non-working juvenile delin- quents come from 'the same general level of well- being', it 'seems rather difficult', as the Bureau of Labor conservatively puts it, 'to escape the con- clusion that being at work has something to do with their going wrong'. ^ Children 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 employ- ment 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. Yet in actual practice, in the realization of our standards, we have not yet attained the very 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 employment of children in factories before the age of puberty, or render their employ- ment 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 fourteen and twenty the youth is still immature, although capable of consid- ' Woman and Child Wage-earners, vol. viii, Sixty-first Congress, Senate Document 645. ' Second Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1879. YOUTH 65 erable 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. WORKING CHILDREN And yet, .even now, the census investigators of 1 910 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 W. Hine puts it, with the vivid- ness of one of his photographs, that 'the procession . . . 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, without the children who work in the cranberry bogs of New Jersey, in the berry fields of Maryland and Delaware, in the fruit and vegetable canneries of New York — to mention only a few places where special inquiries have found large numbers of them engaged in seasonal occupations which were not in operation 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 66 THE NORMAL LIFE from the streets, where they have been selling news- papers, blacking boots, driving grocery wagons, and running to and fro with telegrams and hat-boxes and proofs 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 fifteen 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 engi- neer in an iron mine, three engineers on boats, four bakers and two bakeresses, one hundred and fifty- one barbers and hair-dressers, four compositors, three grocers, seventeen 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 hundred 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, like the five-year-old oyster shucker, whose mother said, with a mingling of pride and re- proach, 'He kin make fifteen cents a day when he wants to work, but he won't keep at it'. Investi- gators find them here and there, and there are records of them on the individual schedules filled YOUTH 67 out by the census enumerators in 1910, though the tabulators have not bothered to count them up. STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS 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 were greatly disappointed that it could not. A great deal was accomplished, but, as Dr. Felix Adler, who has been chairman of the Committee since the begin- ning, said at the tenth annual meeting: Though there is more or less adequate legislation in the great majority of the states, there are still enormous ob- stacles 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. '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 was accomplished in the decade, however, justified the estimate of the present secretary, Mr. Owen R. 68 THE NORMAL LIFE Lovejoy, that child labor may be completely abol- ished '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 edu- cators to promote it. We have been instrumental in setting on foot the most important 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 Government to outlaw traffic among the states in the products of child labor. The reference in the last sense of the quotation is to the Palmer-Owen bill to exclude from inter- state commerce goods in the manufacture of which children under fourteen had been employed. This bill passed the House of Representatives in the Sixty- third Congress; and as the Keating-Owen bill in the next Congress passed both branches and was promptly signed by the President. It became effective September i, 1917, and is known as the Federal Child-Labor Law. Its administration is en- trusted to the Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor and the rules and regulations under it are made by a board consisting of the Attorney General, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Labor. When this law was passed many states had already enacted laws more advanced than the federal statute. The regulation of street trades, the adoption of a minimum age limit higher than YOUTH 69 fourteen, the raising of the educational requirement to the eighth grade, a twenty-one year limit for district messenger service, an effective system of work permits for all under eighteen engaged in common gainful occupations, and finally, the ex- tension of legislative protection to children em- ployed on farms, are among the objects for which reformers still have to contend. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE 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 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 makes 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- 70 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 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. Today'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 seem to be interested in their school work in proportion to the relation which they can see between it and 'real life'. It is on the teaching profession that the main re- sponsibility must rest for solving these educational problems, for 'rationalizing' and 'democratizing' 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 col- < Helen M. Todd in McClure's Magazine, April, 1913. YOUTH 71 lege. We may safely leave this responsibility with the educators of the country — half a million of them there are, or more, including those twenty-one under fourteen years of age — if the students of industrial problems do their part in supplying in- formation about conditions in the various industries and in helping to analyze the various processes with a view to discovering what is the precise training required for each. EDUCATION FOR ADAPTABILITY Education for efiRciency is not to be identified with a narrowly specialized 'vocational' education. Too narrowly specialized training may have pre- cisely the opposite result, creating inefficiency in- stead of efficiency. Processes in any vocation may be completely revolutionized within a few years, or the vocation itself may disappear. Adaptability 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 par- ticular 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 72 THE NORMAL LIFE is a more liberal form of education, though it is fundamentally the same — an education suitable for 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 industrial and economic and moral situations that will arise, for the crises which will come, requiring judgment and character. This more liberal education lies at the very foundation of efficiency. Fourteen to six- teen or eighteen are the years for it. It may, under exceptional conditions, be imparted in the commer- cial 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 elements 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; and it is equally certain that, unless it is absolutely necessary, no child should be deprived of the privilege of a first-hand study of the history and the literatures of some other peoples, ancient and modern. CHOICE OF AN OCCUPATION 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 undifTer- YOUTH 73 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 even turn out to be better equipped to earn a living after sixteen than the one who has been specializing for two years in a vocation which he selected at the age of 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 father'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 we say democratize? — the thing itself. We may have been destined for the ministry and have 74 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 and can take the path that allures us as soon as we recog- nize it, within the limitations of our circumstances. Our 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, find his way to social work. One, for example, 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 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 YOUTH 75 they have no real aptitude for the law. Medical schools say that the number of students tempera- mentally unqualified to become physicians is la- mentably large, and seems to be increasing. Nor- mal schools estimate that less than half of their students have any special teaching ability; and fifteen theological schools report that seventy per cent, of their enrolment have no marked qualifica- tions for the profession they are preparing to enter. Even in the training schools for social work, al- though this profession has not yet begun to attract in any considerable numbers persons not naturally adapted to it, we find students every once in a while whom we are not justified in encouraging to complete the course. VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND GUIDANCE 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' exerted. They 'get a job' in any way they can — through a friend or a brother or sister, by answering advertisements, or by applying in response to a sign 'Boy Wanted' or 'Girl Wanted', no matter for what. A Hungarian woman had worked for four years in flower shops as the result of a "negative choice', made by eliminating other occupations : ^ ' Artificial Flower Makers, by Mary Van Kleeck, p. 200. 76 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 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 policeman 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. An Italian boy in New York had the following experiences in the first three months of his indus- trial career : ' On the last day of last January John Panello, aged fif- teen years and five months, graduated from a public grammar school in New York. On the twentieth of Feb- ' Education and Work, by Winthrop D. Lane, in The Survey, vol. xxix, p. 225. YOUTH 77 ruary he got his "working papers' from the Board of Health. In school he had been fond of arithm,etic, and from childhood had wanted to become a bookkeeper. But the class-room had become irksome to him, and his par- ents, 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 ofifice boy in a place where he hoped that he might work up to a position as bookkeeper. . . After three weeks of look- ing for work he got a job as errand boy for a dyeing and cleaning establishment. 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 prom- ise of a job with a millinery firm. At first his work con- sisted in 'going for stuff to the first floor', then he ran a crimping machine, and next was detailed to 'get the cord downstairs for the men who make rugs'. After a week and a half of this . . . 'another feller said, "Come along and learn carpentry," ' so John got a job at loading and un- 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. 78 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 sweeping 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 treat here. A mere enumeration of some of the terms to be encountered in current discussions may suggest some of the problems involved and some of the experiments in progress: Manual training, industrial education, vocational edu- cation, professional vocational education, commercial vo- cational education, industrial vocational education, trade education, occupational education, agricultural education, pre-vocational education, continuation education, non- vocational continuation education, vocational continu- ation education, continuation occupational education, commercial continuation education, professional continu- ation 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 the age of eighteen in touch with those who are in- YOUTH 79 terested in getting them properly placed, by re- quiring 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 change work until they are eighteen, they avoid the pitfalls which lie in any scheme for fitting boys and girls to partic- ular jobs merely by physical examinations or by the tests of experimental psychology. HEALTH AND RECREATION 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 years from forty-five to sixty-five. After the age of fifteen tuberculosis begins to affect the death-rate more seriously. A large proportion of the comparatively small number of deaths between ten and fifteen, one-ninth or one-eighth of the whole, are due to drowning, injuries from firearms, street and railway accidents, homicide, and other external causes. 80 THE NORMAL LIFE Of course the death-rate at this age is by no means a complete index of the health problem. In adolescence, 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 cav- ities. Decayed teeth are a neglected source of infection, even in this country, in spite of the de- servedly high reputation of American dental sur- gery. Free dental clinics have their champions, but inexpensive service would be better. We should not have to choose between the high prices charged by skilful dentists, a free dental clinic, and the quackery of a 'painless' dental parlor. A den- tist has suggested the advantage of opening tooth- cleaning establishments at many convenient places, economically equipped but sanitary, in charge of properly instructed young women, where, for twenty-five cents or at most half a dollar, any cus- tomer, 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. It has been suggested that this business might offer suitable employment to some cripples who are handicapped for ordinary occupations. In somewhat the same way a trained refraction- ist, even if he is 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 YOUTH 8l 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, or charlatanism. Adenoids may still be present in the adolescent years, or may have come back after earlier treat- ment, and need to be removed. Spinal curvatures and broken arches and organs which do not func- tion properly may still require appropriate rem- edy. Such conditions may be evidence of earlier neglect, or they may have developed after an ap- parently normal infancy and childhood. Eternal vigilance to detect them promptly, efficient disci- pline 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 normal physical health in adoles- cence, 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. They may be even more essential at this age, for in adolescence the mind is capable of receiving and storing up dominant ideals, perma- nent motives, which will color the whole subsequent 82 THE NORMAL LIFE life. Even childhood does this, but youth does it more consciously, more rationally, and more firmly. Our health ideal must be social, democratic, posi- tive, associated with vigor and enjoyment and full- ness of life. To get such a dominant ideal in the back of the minds of the youth of America is the most stirring program of social reform. Recreation in these years of character forming is essential, not primarily for health but simply be- cause it is one of the natural and enjoyable occu- pations of youth, as play is of childhood. Athletic sports, causing the young men and maidens to put forth their strength, to measure their utmost physi- cal powers with one another or with an imaginary bogey, giving them experience with team play in its simplest and in its most developed forms, guarding them by the varied attractions of the recreation fields from baser pleasures, having 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. YOUTH 83 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-mind- edness' is usually spontaneous in origin, that is, not due to influences acting on the parent, and that it tends strongly to be inherited. If this is so, pre- vention is not to be expected through such measures as lessen sickness and injuries, but rather by such means as prevent this inheritance. It is in the years of adolescence and early matur- ity that the need for custodial institutional care is greatest, and both our laws and the ages of the actual population of the institutions indicate that this is recognized. In 1910 forty per cent, of those in institutions for the feeble-minded were between ten and twenty, nearly thirty per cent, between twent}'' and thirty. Perhaps it might be better if these particular proportions were reversed by leav- ing children under fifteen with their parents when the home conditions are at all favorable, and con- centrating for the present on those from fifteen to thirty or forty. Patients of this kind, however, are 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 all the feeble-minded are in institutions. In the entire South the census reports only six negroes in ' Appointed in 1904; report issued in 1908. 84 THE NORMAL LIFE Special institutions 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. Martin W. Barr points out,^ a waste product, but one of the great achievements of the nineteenth century, as he also points out, was the utilization of waste prod- ucts, 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 certain degree of independence, growing to be no longer a menace to society nor altogether a help- less burden. It has been estimated by Alexander Johnson and Dr. Walter E. Fernald that two in a thousand of the whole population are mentally defective. Careful study of backward and de- linquent children and other groups tends to increase this proportion, rather than to diminish it. If in the manner urged by all authorities we can breed that element, or even half of it, out of the popula- tion, whether it be two per thousand or four or six, the gain will be beyond calculation. Adolescence is the time of life when it is most important that feeble-mindedness, if it exists, shall be definitely ascertained and appropriately treated. ' Charities, vol. xii, p. 883. YOUTH 85 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, proper safeguards and antecedents, is altogether normal. What middle-aged citizen does not look back to adolescent escapades which would have come within 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 ordinances'? If there is a citizen who has no such memory, the probability is that in his youth he was not looked upon as normal by his contem- poraries. Judge Lindsey ' points out that it is not for the most part courts, not even juvenile courts after they are established, that deal with delinquents. Par- ents, teachers, Sunday-school teachers, and neigh- bors are the real social agencies for dealing with delinquents; for quite literally all healthy normal children, girls as well as boys, are likely now and then to transgress 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 disciplinarians, parents, teachers, or it ' Of the Juvenile Court of Denver. 86 THE NORMAL LIFE may be policeman, who check their wrong actions without causing that deep-seated resentment, that spiritual revolt against social control, which is the beginning of an anti-social career of crime. A great many offenses are, of course, purely con- ventional, necessarily condemned because of the environment in which they occur, but in themselves harmless or even wholly commendable actions when age and need of physical expression are con- sidered. Playing ball is a normal expression of youth in a proper place. Driving a bicycle or a motorcycle 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 'nat- ural', so normally fit themselves into the abnormal conventions we impose upon them, so readily dem- onstrate that they are fitted for a social life, better fitted by the complex nature which is their social heritage than for a savage life. When we come to the delinquent boy in a nar- rower sense, it is well to recognize that his 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 excep- tion, for a considerable proportion of those who are convicted and sent to reformatories are feeble- YOUTH 87 minded — this difference between the delinquent and the normal child is one which is 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 devel- opment, in vitality, in acuteness of senses. It is sometimes because of such disadvantages that they are caught, while their more alert and vigorous companions escape. If these more alert and vigor- ous delinquents escape to the care and custody of indulgent but firm and skilled disciplinarians in the guise of their own parents, or others who have in- fluence 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 proceed to others of the same kind, 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 — though it was not always so — to have a first chance to reform, as a result of warning and paternal counsel. He is only too likely to have a second and a third chance — so many chances that if he does not profit by them he may come to loose respect for authority and to speculate with adolescent precocity on the curious turns of the wheel by which an all-too-blind justice 88 THE NORMAL LIFE distributes her penalties and favors. This was es- pecially so in the still recent dark ages, when youth- ful and adult criminals were penalized according 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, should not itself go wrong in its subsequent procedure. 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 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 YOUTH 89 jails for young offenders obsolete and discredited, useless and impossible.'" There are furthermore many social policies of a more general application which affect juvenile crime. One of these is the socialization of police systems, increasing emphasis on the prevention of crimes, and diminishing emphasis on making a record for arrest and convictions. Another is a development of the school system which provides a greater variety of instruction and which connects the school with occupational interests and increases the efficiency of workers. Another is the provision through various voluntary agencies, above all, per- haps, through the Young Men's Christian Associa- tions and similar organizations, of facilities for rec- reation, for amusement, for the rational use of leisure. Boys' and men's clubs in churches, settle- ments, and elsewhere serve the purpose of giving a healthy outlet for certain social instincts which are normal, but too often perverted. We speak of boys and men, rather than of girls and women, only because they are more often delinquent. Of the twenty-five thousand juvenile 1° An exceptional number of valuable books has appeared on this subject in the last few years. Among these are The Delinquent Child and the Home, by S. P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott; Preventive Treatment of Neglected Children, by Hastings H. Hart; Boyhood and Lawlessness and The Neglected Girl, edited by Pauline Goldmark; The Individual Delinquent, by William Healy; The Slavery of Prostitution, by Maude E. Miner. go THE NORMAL LIFE delinquents in institutions on January first of the census year, six thousand were females and nineteen thousand males — more than three times a.6 many. Of a little over fourteen thousand com- mitted to institutions in the year 1910, nearly twelve thousand were males — about six-sevenths, that is. The most interesting fact in the analysis of the offenses for which these children and youths were committed is that 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 elaboration of argument will do it. It would be a satisfaction to believe, as the statistics seem to say, for example, that no juveniles were in custody in Maryland for homicide or fraud or rape, but there remains the uncomfortable possibility that that colorless item of 'other' or 'two or more offenses', may conceal any number of such crimes, or even a combination of heinous misdeeds, though the prob- ability is that it is made up chiefly of minor viola- tions of law or of the undifferentiated offense of merely 'being a juvenile delinquent'. Larceny and burglary, prostitution and allied offenses, and va- grancy are the most common offenses, always excepting that more than fifty per cent, of 'other' and compound offenses. YOUTH 91 INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER 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 charac- ter 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- 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- 92 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 influ- ences, 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 irritatingly 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 definite age-periods. We have refrained from setting precise boundaries to the stages of development, adopting words in ordinary use in their popular sense to suggest them. Indi- viduals differ widely both in physical and in social development, some passing earlier and some later from infancy to childhood, from childhood to 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 long ago ad- vised. We closed the chapter of infancy at about the time of the first birthday anniversary. Child- hood 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 childhood into manhood and womanhood. Babies and children '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 94 THE NORMAL LIFE process varies. Physiologists are inclined to place 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 certain 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 maturity:work 95 that so crude and unbalanced a youngster had been 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 a preparation has been given. A girl's eighteenth birthday does not ordinarily mean much more to her than her sixteenth or nine- teenth, unless she happens to be an heiress. Prob- ably 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 movable. 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 effect, 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 repudi- ated it. The period of life which we are now to consider begins, then, at the end of youth, when the young man or the young woman, brought to the threshold 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 96 THE NORMAL LIFE toga virilis, or its feminine counterpart, to become an active participant in the economic and social and political life of the community, no longer primarily a consumer and a beneficiary, but henceforth pro- ducer as well as consumer, contributor as well as beneficiary. If the conditions which we have found to be necessary for normal infancy, childhood, and youth have been met, our normal population arrives at manhood in physical vigor, untainted by disease, by indulgence in vice and idleness, un- weakened by overwork, with minds and muscles and ideals trained for efficient work and efficient home life. THE ADULT POPULATION At first glance a diagram of the population of this country by ages is puzzling. There are more chil- dren two years old than one, and 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; yet this extraordinary pyramid does not begin to show any effect from deaths until nearly middle age. It is rather a combination of prism and pyramid. Instead of tapering off grad- ually from base to apex, the sides rise almost ver- tical for the first thirty years. The explanation is, of course, simple — immigration. maturity:work 97 The pyramid of the native population tapers nor- mally enough, fewer at every age than in the group below; in our whole population, however, in the years of childhood, adolescence, and early maturity the deaths are compensated, mathematically speak- ing, 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 diminish as rapidly as it would if we did not have ready-made boys and girls, ready-made men and women, coming in to the country all the time. Because of immigration, then, we have, especially in the northern cities, an abnormally constituted population. This helps to solve some problems. It makes our civilization richer by the content of the varied racial and national contributions. It makes society industrially more productive because of the excess at the working ages. The ebb and flow of steerage passage to the Mediterranean has helped 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 prob- lems of crime, of exploitation, and of maladjust- ment. Recent immigrants are more easily sweated, crowded, underpaid, defrauded. They make neces- sary much work by the government simply because of their misunderstandings and mistakes, and because of our mistakes and misunderstandings of them. 98 THE NORMAL LIFE PERMANENT REGISTRATION Taking our population as it is, the first deside- ratum is to know more about it. Our national count we have made once in ten years, ever since 1790, with supplementary studies from time to time since the establishment of a per- manent census bureau in 1902. We have decided, evidently, that it is at any rate not a sin to be counted at regular, not too frequent, intervals, as it was in the days of David and Joab, according to the story told in the books of Samuel and of the 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 astonished. 'Now the Lord thy God', he said, 'add unto the people, how many soever they may be, a hundredfold, 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 num- bered?' His idea seems to have been that it was fighting edge and a good cause and the Lord's sanc- tion — 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 that comes nearer to agreement than some current official counts and estimates of armies. maturity:work 99 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 filed, our addresses constantly corrected, every birth, every removal, and every death being reported under penalty of the law, the proposal is apt to be greeted 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 exis- tence and where we are, not to mention what whorls our finger-tips may please to sport, is a gross in- fringement of inalienable prerogatives. Yet it is undeniable that a sound and compre- hensive social economy demands as its basis more certainty than we now have — demands a general registration of the whole population, stationary and lOO THE NORMAL LIFE 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 have already various kinds of registration under federal, state, municipal, or voluntary aus- pices, even in normal times : 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 diiTerent reg- istrations, each affecting 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, and election authorities, tax assessors, county clerks, sherififs, and other public officials, and also such voluntary agencies — churches, lodges, charitable societies, tradesmen and others — as have occasion to know the where- abouts and the family relationships of their customers or applicants or members, as the case may be. Several countries in Europe have long had some such complete and constantly correct registra- tion of the whole population. It has shown its MATURITY: WORK lOI Utility in war; and, what is more to the point, it has continuously shown its value for more than a generation 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 enume- rators' schedules to some local census authority, probably the health department, and for the latter, after transferring the information presum- ably to 5 X 8 cards, to provide for keeping up the record by incorporating the reports of births and deaths, which are already 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, contain- ing his name, date of birth, and finger-print, the system would be complete. The operation of election laws would be simpli- fied by such a registration; thousands of persons arrested for petty offenses, who are 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, planning for school buildings, the enforcement of child-labor laws, would all be simplified. No hon- est man would have anything to lose by such a reg- istration. Homeless, irresponsible people might not get the full benefit of it, but all would reap advan- tages innumerable from the wiser plans which could be based upon it. 102 THE NORMAL LIFE The exigencies of war have already done much to habituate us to the idea. If those of us who do not yet like it will let it sink in, digest it by think- ing about it in relation to social problems, we 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 registra- tions it would save or simplify, how much it would contribute to a policy of social construction. 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 adminis- trators 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. In a sense they are rivals. We have been entertained by the conceit of a wife's suit for separation based on the alienation of affec- tions by a defendant called the day's work. There are other important interests, of course, for all: participation in political life, for example, or church activities, or lectures and concerts. But for most of us such activities do not compare in immediacy of interest with our activities as workers and as members of families. Other interests are absorbed in these two great interests, or incidental and sub- maturity: work 103 ordinate to them, even when they are fully recog- nized and appreciated. 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, though sporadic instances are undeniable; and at the other end of the eco- nomic scale 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 19 10 as 'en- gaged 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. That is a larger proportion 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, permanent interest from work to home ; young men have also, but their best way of showing interest in home is to take more rather than less interest in work. The proportion of idle men does not vary appre- ciably in different parts of the country, the largest number being five per hundred in Vermont, North and South Dakota, and the District of Columbia, and the fewest (2.2 and 2.5 per cent.) being found in 104 THE NORMAL LIFE Mississippi and Alabama, South Carolina, Wyo- ming, and Rhode Island. The most industrious population of women — although it may be better to use strictly the language of the census, since housewives, who are not included among those en- gaged in 'gainful' occupations, are well known to be the most industrious of women, and to say 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 con- trast only about fifteen per cent, in West Virginia, Oklahoma, 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 education ; maturity: work 105 or they are taking a year off for travel and recre- ation ; or they are, here and there in rare instances, 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 producers, or performing even more valuable economic func- tions 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, but they are none the less genuine commodities. 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 grad- ually eliminate most of them. I06 THE NORMAL LIFE More numerous, unhappily, are those who are not able to do anything for which the world is will- ing to pay, or who are not able to make connections with an employer who could use their services. Those who are unemployed because they are un- employable, through physical or mental defect or illness, or lack of training and guidance, we may hope to see reduced to a mere handful — no social problem at all — after we have done even for one gen- eration the things which we have seen to be essen- tial in a 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 those who are really degenerate, unteachable, and unresponsive to discipline there is nothing for it except segregation — employment at public cost under direction — but we must approach that solution with patience and with minds open to the evidence which is slowly accumulating. The unemployable are thug separable by careful scrutiny into two wholly distinct groups of (i) the subnormal and unteachable, and (2) those who with opportunity and instruction can become em- ployable. But besides all these, in almost all parts of our country, in good times as well as in periods of de- pression, there is a very considerable number of employable, capable persons in need of work who maturity: work 107 are not actually employed. Among the causes of this unsatisfactory failure to make use of usable labor force are immigration and migration from place to place within the country, fluctuations in the demand for certain commodities and services, the seasonal character of certain occupations, the variable fortunes of particular employers, especially of large employing corporations, the absence of ad- equate 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 requirements, 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 abstraction — is a ques- tion of pure academic speculation, such a problem as would have delighted the mediseval 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 workers, 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 com- prehensive enterprise, like the Panama Canal, I08 THE NORMAL LIFE which can be planned from a central office with no regard to anything except efficiency and an eco- nomical application of labor force and plant. In times of national emergency an honest at- tempt is made so to regard it, but in spite of the favorable circumstances of unity of national pur- pose and devotion to the common welfare the result serves only to establish the unwieldiness and complexity of the factors in the situation. An infinite number of influences takes the place of the directing genius, counteracting, compensating, sup- plementing, 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 delicate an adjust- ment as is desirable. There are certain commu- nities, 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 or of violent changes in economic demand 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- maturity: work 109 sary. One of them is an expansion of the work of the ordinary reHef agencies. Prompt and liberal relief in cases of distress is appropriate at all times, but especially in times when distress is augmented by unemployment. Carefully managed loan funds — pawnshops, chattel loan societies, and even loans on personal character without any material se- curity — are a valuable means of helping those who do not often or easily bring themselves 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 carpen- try jobs, and the more thorough cleaning of streets under the direction of the regular municipal author- ities, are illustrations of beneficial emergency mea- sures. They have their drawbacks and weak spots that need watching, but they do lighten the hard- ships of the unemployed 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 per- manent is needed also. A series of efficient employment bureaus through- out the country, organized to supply accurate information about conditions and to analyze em- ployees and positions, with facilities for intercom- no THE NORMAL LIFE munication and publicity, could do a great deal toward matching up the unemployed with oppor- tunities for work. 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 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 opera- tors on men's clothing who are thrown out of work in their dull season in September, might find work at their own trade in Chicago, 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 advantage. But that several thousand, in each of many trades, should do so regularly every year, or irregularly, in response to every fluctuation in demand, whether they migrated back and forth as families or indi- maturity: WORK III viduals,, would hardly be feasible, and would be demoralizing if it were. The chief service of em- ployment bureaus probably lies in making ad- justments of workers to work in their own locality, between different plants in the same industry and between industries needing workmen of similar qualifications. Unemployment insurance, for which a demand has lately become articulate in the United States, makes for stability of labor, and it can probably best be organized, as it has been in England, in connection with a national or state system of em- ployment bureaus, since through these bureaus there would always be reliable information as to whether there Was or was not employment to be had and whether, therefore, the insured was or was not entitled to an out-of-work benefit. SEASONAL TRADES Among the conspicuously seasonal industries, some are necessarily so, 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 persons were employed at this work in January as in September, and that most of these thirteen per cent, were prob- ably not identical with the September employees in the same industry, as they were mainly occupied 112 THE NORMAL LIFE 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- poHshed 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 weather, and building opera- tions are affected, though not entirely determined, by weather conditions. The building trades are not only seasonal, but are subject to most erratic fluctuations, depending upon general prosperity, housing laws, the money market, real estate specu- lation, 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 but which only subtle psychologists can ade- quately expound. Manufacturers must wait until styles have been decided upon and then they must get out their samples and early stdcks in time for the opening of the retail season. 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 M A T U RI T Y : W O R K II3 September — both no doubt in order to be ready for the Christmas trade. The number of persons em- ployed in providing some of the permanent 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 goods — does not vary greatly from month to month in the aggre- gate, though even among these industries indi- vidual establishments no doubt see serious fluctua- tions. Irregularity in those seasonal trades in which the disturbances are due to fashion and custom might, within narrow limits, be influenced by education; 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 ineradicable and not very modifiable want of man to wear the un- comfortable stiff felt hat in January, and the in- adequate 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 muni- cipal — 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 attempted in this direction, an impossible burden of expense would be added to taxes, for governments, after all. 114 THE NORMAL LIFE are subject to much the same conditions of weather and finance in their industrial operations as are private investors. 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 urged on educational grounds, and which stands him in good stead in the ups and downs of pros- perity and adversity in his particular occupation; and in deliberate 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 bureaus 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 maladj ustments. Mayor Mitchel recognized the reasonableness of this de- mand when he made up his committee on un- employment in the winter of 1914-1915 largely of officers and directors of large industrial, railway, and banking corporations, instead of social workers and ladies at large. This committee was expressly asked to consider not only relief workshops and maturity: work 115 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 preparation for it, un- employment insurance, and the distribution of labor under ordinary conditions. It continues its work after the acute situation which called it into existence had passed, and issued reports which have a permanent value. It is a hopeful sign that the public is coming to expect investors, directors, and officers of corporations which employ the great bulk of the industrial workers to give the same close and continuous and effective attention to labor problems and their results as they have presumably given to financial policies and their results. Fortunately, however, for all of us as consumers, most of us as workers are, after all, at work most of the time, and we are concerned even more with the conditions of work than with enforced idleness. WOMEN AND CHILDREN Of child labor enough has already been said. 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 this subject demands 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 ef- ficiency of the young people will have adequate Il6 THE NORMAL LIFE safeguards. In a rational social organization the work will be done by adults, not by adolescents; by the grown-up, not by those who are in process of growing up. Of course, keeping children and youths out of work is not enough. The main thing is to prepare for work later on and for other aspects of 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- maturity: WORK 117 terest and in the common interest from night work, injurious work, and overwork. 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 negligent, or if a fellow employee was negligent, or if the accident 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 dis- abled 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 in- iquity 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 Il8 THE NORMAL LIFE law. The successful introduction of the compensa- tion-insurance principle in place of the liability principle, making the financial burden of deaths 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 ele- mentary justice over artificial law, of the principle of cooperation over exploitation. It is as an inci- dent 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. The great defect of the new compensation laws is that they deal mainly with the financial result of the injury. They do not provide adequately for the necessary long-continued convalescent care, for functional and vocational re-education, and for replacement in useful occupation. THE WORKING DAY Whether laws should directly prescribe maximum hours of labor for adult men is an open question. Probably the prevailing sentiment in this country is still against it, on the ground that through trade unions and voluntary agreements the long day can be shortened and the short day maintained, though the ten-hour law of Oregon, which has been found maturity: work 119 constitutional by the Supreme Court, may indicate the beginning of a change in our traditional atti- tude. There are advantages 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 out- rageously overworked so that their working life is reduced, their power to maintain 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 the work 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 prefer- ence for non-interference, we are coming to have 120 THE NORMAL LIFE a Strong 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 ac- cording 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 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 muscular exertion or strain or severe nervous ten- sion. We may hope that science will stop there and not produce an antitoxin, for it is disturbing to think what might happen if we 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 workers, working all the time, their fatigue poison neutralized as fast as it is produced. 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 compen- sated, is beneficial and not pathological. In the day of a sound social economy industry will be maturity:work 121 so organized as to keep all workers well within the safety line. SANITARY CONDITIONS Work should be carried on under sanitary con- ditions. Light and air and occasional relaxation from severe strain, such as speeding processes im- pose, are as elementary as freedom from unneces- sary accidents and a too-prolonged working day. Sanitary conveniences should be supplied volun- tarily by owners and managers, or should be pre- scribed by law if necessary. Running water for drinking and washing, soap and clean towels, a sufficient number of clean and decently protected closets, good light and ventilation, such arrange- ment 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 stan- dard 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 har- mony with the spirit of compensation laws and safety campaigns. 122 THE NORMAL LIFE 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, manufactures were 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 rail- ways or steamboats, now an integral part of our industrial 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 industries were mainly carried on within the do- mestic 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 condi- tions resulting from the industrial revolution — or the successive industrial revolutions, for there have been many, so many that perhaps some day, when we have them in a better perspective, we shall see that they have been stages in a gradual evolution. maturity: work i;23 The bald fact is that the modern home is no place for manufacture. When materials are given out to be made up in New York tenements, for ex- ample, the result is that the family is virtually de- prived 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 exploita- tion, and that may cheapen the goods to the con- sumer, though again it may not. What is especially objectionable about it is that the industry 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 employment, 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 manufacturing — such industries as cigar- making, garment-making, candy-making, and nut- picking — shall not be carried on in private dwellings, or at least not in rooms ordinarily used as bed- rooms or kitchens or for other domestic purposes. MINIMUM WAGE Society has gone so far in regulating working conditions as to take an official and controlling 124 THE NORMAL LIFE interest in fixing the age at which the youth may begin work, the hours during which women may work, the Hght and air and sanitary conditions to which workers are entitled while at work, the protection against accidents from machinery or other foreseeable causes, and compensation for such accidents as do occur. It is a question of fixing certain minimum standards corresponding to the accepted 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 sanitary conditions? Australia began fixing wages in sweat- ed industries twenty years ago, and England more recently followed suit, taking up one industry after another — chain-making, paper-box making, lace- making, tailoring, mining, and others. The ordi- nary procedure is to create wage boards on which employers and employees are represented, to in- quire 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 com- maturity: work 125 petent authority, are binding within the industry and the district covered by tlie inquiry. Ten of our states, after investigation by commis- sions, have passed minimum wage legislation for women and the Oregon law has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. Massachu- setts has proceeded more cautiously by providing for an investigation of alleged sweated industries and the publication of the findings of the commis- sion, but not making it legally binding on any par- ticular employer. The idea is that when the facts are fully known and officially attested, public opinion will compel the voluntary payment of a 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 services are worth less than the low minimum likely to be fixed by any such law should be out of employ- ment, either receiving a training which will make 126 THE NORMAL LIFE them worth more, or, if unteachable and subnormal, then cared for on some plan which will keep them properly occupied under direction in a hospital or colony appropriate to their particular need. 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. The operation of the minimum wage laws else- where does not justify the apprehension that the minimum wage tends to become the standard. Sometimes such a tendency is apparent, but usually the influences determining the wage contract op- erate 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 ren- dered acute by boycotts and blacklists. Our gov- ernmental 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 their weaknesses. Some dissatisfied workmen use dyna- mite, and society properly visits upon them its se- vere condemnation. Other dissatisfied workmen — maturity: work 127 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 industrial relations, industrial unrest, and to devise means for maintaining industrial peace on a just and equitable basis. That Commission did not succeed in its main purpose, although it produced a series of reports embodying the views of- the several elements of which it was composed. V MATURITY: HOME MARRIAGE Having considered some of the social problems of adult life which are 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 interfering with its full realization. By way of preface, we may notice 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 next age-group, thirty- five to forty-five, only seventeen per cent, of the men are still single and only eleven per cent, of the women. 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 people are marrying now than was the case twenty maturity: home 129 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 increasingly 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 we defer un- consciously in every choice we make, and which we frequently invoke to sustain arguments or justify general policies. When this standard becomes consciously ideal- ized, when it has become ingrained in the habits I30 THE NORMAL LIFE and instincts of a group of people, when it extends to productive activities as well as to pleasures, when it operates 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 stan- dard 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- ing poor relief or the luxurious indulgence of vice breaks down the standard of life, this is for civiliza- MATURITYIHOME 131 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 of but slight significance 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, fortunately, is not deter- mined mainly by wars or famines or any other ex- ternal 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 examined the successive stages in a normal life. Tainted, corrupt, diseased stock should be elim- inated as far as it can possibly 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- rupt or to burden. Sickly babies should be made strong, that the physical basis for a high standard of life may be laid secure. Children should be in- 132 THE NORMAL LIFE formed 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 reali- zation of higher standards still. These things are implied in all those policies of social selection, pro- tection, 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 shall be adequately used, and for this the house- wife has normally the main responsibility. To woman, by evolutionary process, has fallen the task of directing how the wealth brought into the house shall be used, whether much or little shall be maturity: home 133 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 importance is the contribution she can make by determining 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 different material elements of the home that the result is a harmonious unit instead of a haphazard assemblage of necessities of life. The person who arranges and groups commodities in such a way that their combined utility is greater than the sum of their separate utilities performs an economic service which is of equal importance, at least, with that per- formed by the one whom we call technically a pro- ducer of wealth. Every housewife does things quite as wonderful as the musician who out of three sounds frames 'not a fourth sound, but a star'. Improvements in con- sumption which bring about greater harmony of combinations, and consequently actually create a sort of surplus value, hold the greatest immediate possibilities for advancing the general prosperity. 134 THE NORMAL LIFE In Other words, and to be concrete, household man- agement deserves and will repay, even from the point of view of the national welfare, the applica- tion of the best brains and the best-educated brains of the land. CONTRIBUTIONS OF SOCIETY Under normal conditions, however, the wisest housewife, even if she has an adequate income, is apt to be thwarted in her attempts to provide in- telligently for her household unless society does some intelligent planning oh its own account. Even in the daily marketing there is scope for social co- operation, now that our market-gardens extend from Key West to Halifax, and the poultry yards of New York reach beyond the Mississippi. The cheapening of sugar, the development of cold stor- age transportation, and the invention of the art of canning fruit and vegetables, have transformed our diet, but it can safely be enjoyed only if the govern- ment inspects the canned goods, debars authori- tatively poisonous preservatives, and sees that the labels tell the truth. In the fundamental matter of choosing a home, its physical dwelling-place, the family, is largely at the mercy of society. For the great majority of families choice is restricted to houses that have al- ready 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 maturity: home 135 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 interests, civic interests per- haps, in a narrow and short-sighted sense, but not the welfare of the average 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, undertaken 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 eiTect they might have in bringing about a healthy and desirable development which would bring permanent advantages to the whole community, in which, of course, the indi- vidual manufacturer would share. When we have 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 social economy the streets and parks and car-lines will all be looked upon as elements in the problem of domestic housekeeping. Transpor- tation facilities will be developed, actively and con- sciously, into an adequate system, making it possi- 136 THE NORMAL LIFE ble to get quickly and comfortably from home to work and back home again, and opening a variety of different residence districts to persons employed in the same establishment. Factories will be located in accordance with a consistent plan, based upon con- sideration 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 dis- tricts suitable to 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. Legislation will ensure, furthermore, that all buildings intended for homes — all congregate dwellings, at any rate — shall be so constructed as to meet certain minimum re- quirements of safety, decency, and comfort which have come to be regarded as essential. 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 tenements of large cities, however, the minute dimensions of the individual home make privacy within its walls almost impossible, and it afTords but scanty protection against the vice and contamination that may be housed on the next landing or next door in the alley. The unseen germs maturity: home 137 which it shelters are worse enemies than the weather, so that it actually seems, as an inspector of the New York Board of Health reflected in 1842, that it might be preferable to be 'absolutely house- less'. It is a fact that after the destruction of the homes of San Francisco by the great fire and earth- quake of 1906, when a large part of the people were living in tents, the death-rate and the morbidity rate were astonishingly reduced. Because of the seriousness of the evils which de- velop under a 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 cer- tainly be occupied by some one until it is torn down — 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 prescribed by law. In many places now the laws ensure that all tenements which are built shall be practically as good in the essential features of light, ventilation, sanitary conveniences, security from fire and other similar dangers, as the dwellings called 'model' erected but a few years ago, partly from philanthropic motives. 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. This is appropriate, for the character of our domestic life is enormously influenced by the char- 138 THE NORMAL LIFE acter of the houses in which we live. There are tre- mendous 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 veran- das, to say nothing of more serious matters, like the size and number and arrangement of rooms, venti- lation and water-supply and fire-escapes. FAMILY BONDS 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 and affirmative resources for creating home life, that we may not draw the mistaken in- ference that painstaking defensive measures against dangers represent the best social tactics. 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 sacrificing, if need be, 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 relatives, extending into collateral lines in- definitely according to circumstances, sometimes maturity: home 139 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 most essential of intangible family bonds is broken. Economic equality within the family, amounting to the communistic formula, 'From each according to his powers, to each according to his needs', is another foundation stone of family solidarity. 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 because of real or assumed dif- ferences in their aptitudes, or because of changed conditions. Girls and boys share equally; eldest sons have no rights of primogeniture ; youngest sons no exceptional claim to affection. The welfare of each, broad-based in the welfare of all, is our ideal, and even the persistent attempt at a practi- 140 THE NORMAL LIFE cal realization of that ideal becomes a bond of union among the members of the family, though no doubt it often fails in practice through mis- calculation. Such failure will be less frequent when the prac- tice of budgetary planning becomes common, dis- placing the haphazard spending of whatever is in sight without regard to future or even present com- peting needs. As incomes increase, families have it in their power to pass over from forced standards to deliberately planned budgetary standards. 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, ex- cept for burial expenses. On a higher plane of in- come many families continue the same method of expenditure, not having adjusted their psychology to their earning power. Any American skilled workman or office man, with an income of a thou- sand 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 she should have. Such careful planning of expenditure, such matching up of expenditure to income — not neces- sarily requiring detailed itemized bookkeeping of every penny received and spent, but taking account of common family needs and also of the changing individual needs of its individual members, will be- come a bond of union and strength in the family. maturity: home 141 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 and triumphs connected with the education of the growing members of a family? Common household possessions, family parties at the theater or elsewhere outside the home or within its circle, and all the multitude of miscel- laneous socializing experiences — each makes its special contribution towards that unique and indis- soluble whole, the home life of the family. 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 Among the vicious habits which impair or destroy normal family life none other compares in devasta- tion with the appetite for strong drink. 142 THE NORMAL LIFE 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, though not always, in youth or early manhood, increasing by easy stages, gradually undermining economic efficiency, sense of family responsibility, personal and social standards, creating fleeting delusions of power and resourcefulness for which there is no sub- stantial basis, and leading on, just as temperance 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 allowed 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 maturity: home 143 kind of social service which it renders, are enough to account for the steady supply of victims in the early stages of this pernicious habit. The elimina- tion of the saloon does not eliminate the inheritance of degenerate racial stock or strengthen weak wills or ensure temperance as a positive virtue; but it does prevent or diminish the temptation to form the alcoholic habit. It does increase the chances of nor- mal development, through adolescence 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 hardly yet tried on any such scale, or for any such period of time, as would give a sure indication of its success. Thoroughgoing, courageous experiments of this kind, however, of which we are witnessing magnificent instances at this moment, are con- genial 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 complica- tions; their families deprived of normal guardian- ship and income ; their standard of life kept miser- ably low, and all their creative power destroyed. It is not merely degenerate weaklings who have been 144 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 particular temptation to wasteful expenditure and harmful indulgence is un- qualified 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 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 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 primitive, too naive, too direct, too crude, to be called by so moderate and restrained a term as temperance. This crude directness, however, this writing into the law of a downright conviction, if it is not diplomacy or education, is at least legitimate war- fare and religion. It is an impatient short cut with MATURITY: HOME I4S an old nasty foe. Like the federal child-labor law, it does the business. It is not difficult to 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 avoidable temptations about for the sake of developing character. All that are required to develop strong character will remain after we have done our best not to lead men into temptation but to deliver them from evil. 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, perverted to an evil habit — may be an influence tending to break down the normal life of the individual either in his v/ork or in his 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, and we should not be harsher in judging the moral quality of adult offenders. Literal observance of the injunction not to judge, if by that we mean final 146 THE NORMAL LIFE 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, restraint and correction, education for the corrigible, hospital or custodial care for the incorrigible, are not to be regarded as evidences of moral judgments. It is not sentimentalism, such as is exhibited in short terms and a failure to convict criminals, that is required. Modern penology rests upon the theory of social defense. Reformatories, which are educational in- stitutions, and hospital colonies for mental or moral imbeciles, are its reliance, when probation 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 cherishes 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 degenerate, and bear physical stigmata by which we may in time expect experts to separate from normal citizens those who need special treatment appropriate to the criminal class, whether they happen to have committed def- maturity: home 147 inite crimes or not. The idea is not new. De Quir6s mentions a medieval edict ordering that in case of doubt between two suspects, the one showing more deformity 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 of- fender should be treated according to his nature rather than according to the particular offense which brings him under notice. A competent phys- ical and psychological examiner can tell us some- thing about his nature and so lay the basis for a more intelligent regimen. Courts should not fix sentences. Their machinery is not adapted to the making of a curriculum or the prescribing of a course in corrective hygiene. Judges are neither physicians nor teachers. Criminal court procedure is admirably adapted to discovering whether the right man has been caught arid 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 temporarily or permanently secluded, and on what terms, if at all, he shall gain social rehabilita- tion, should be made by an entirely different 148 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 still 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 of a sound basis of fact for a final and logical disposition of each case when it comes to court. In other words, the test of honest and efficient police work is not necessarily a conviction, but such investigation of all the circumstances as will lead to appropriate action. 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, including finger print identification. These landmarks are not the thing itself. Socialization lies in the spirit of which these institutions are but the outward symbol. Third, to socialize the prisons, which means to abolish them altogether, as prisons, transforming them into reform- atories and schools on the one hand and hospitals and colonies on the other, with a suitable institution for diag- nosis prior to a decision as to what treatment is needed. maturity: home 149 Logically obsolete, prisons are still very much in evidence and many of them are conducted on the principle shame- lessly announced some years ago in the Prison Congress by a warden who said: "These men are sent here for us to punish 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 discipline; and the earnings of those who are imprisoned, as experiments have already demonstrated, might be used for the partial support of their families. INSANITY The high death-rate of early infancy from con- genital causes and intestinal infections is followed, 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- ' For a convenient summary of the important facts about the death-rate at different ages and in different localities, see Studies in Social Work, No. 7, published by the New York School of Philanthropy. 150 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 them is 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 1910 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 — an increase in 'visibility' rather than in actual numbers — and represents causes for congratulation: additions to hospital accommodations, improved methods of care, greater skill in detecting insanity, greater willingness to entrust to institutions persons formerly cared for at ' 1880, 82 per 100,000; 1910, 204 per 100,000. maturity:home 151 home. There probably has been, however, some real increase in the relative amount of insanity, as there has been in suicides, along with the develop- ment of urban centers and other accompaniments of progress which have not yet been thoroughly ad- justed to the needs of the normal life of man. This tendency may be counteracted, and a decrease effected after the increase has been checked, by establishing all along the line those normal condi- tions 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 wrongs — some artificial habits, some unnatural, unwholesome way of living, some false and corrupt state of things in society. By way of confirmation of this view it may be mentioned that ten per cent, of the patients ad- mitted in 191 o 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- 152 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 patients who leave the hospitals recovered or improved (eighty-two per cent, of those discharged) must be provided for a probationary period, in order that dangers of relapse may be warded off; and continuous oversight must be given to those who are discharged unimproved, as long as there shall, be any such. Above all, perhaps, or at any rate, as the foundation of all, is needed the patient education of nervous children and young people in habits of emotional contr61, and the protection of all from such stress and strain as the normal mind cannot reasonably be expected to stand. DISEASE The great physical scourge of early maturity is 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 cam- paign has aroused is no doubt largely due to this maturity: home 153 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 articles of diet not appropriate? Consumptives must be helped to get out of dusty trades, overheated shops, work requiring a stooping, chest-contracting pos- ture; 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 these not universally desirable virtues? Alco- holism is a dangerous complication in tuberculosis; it is a dangerous complication also in life. 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 they also interfere with incomes and efifi- 154 THE NORMAL LIFE ciency at work. Elementary policies of social economy demand consideration of each, to examine how they may best be controlled, how their eco- nomic and social effects may be reduced to a mini- mum and most judiciously distributed. They are not private, personal matters, but social phe- nomena. No man has a right to have even a headache, if society can prevent it, much less typhoid, pneumonia, a cold, or any other communi- cable 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 which have been mentioned are germ diseases, to be attacked by the weapons of Pasteur and Koch. There are other diseases, which in contrast with these more acute infections may be called degenerative or chronic diseases, such as hardening of the arteries, cancer, Bright's disease, and organic diseases of the heart. While there has been a reduction in recent years in the loss of life from infection before middle age, the death rate has increased after the age of forty-five, from the so- called degenerative diseases. These statistics have occasioned much concern and have been cited in evidence of the sinister effect of modern life and the limitations of the public health measures thus far adopted. A careful analysis of the statistics ' leads to the ' By Louis I. Dublin, in the publications of the American Sta- tistical Association, March, 1917. maturity: home 155 conclusion that the increase may be explained by changes in our population, caused by inimigration, and by changes in practice with reference to record- ing causes of death on the death certificates from which the statistics are made up. It is true, however, that the marked improvement in the death-rate at the earlier ages cannot be expected after forty-five. If we do not die of diph- theria, scarlet fever, or measles, we survive to an age in which we are likely to die of cancer and arteriosclerosis. If we do not die of tuberculosis in early manhood, the vital organs have a chance to wear out. That they should wear out at the age of seventy-five or later hardly constitutes a social problem, but it is not to our credit that they should 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 pro- tection 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 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, an exponent of the doctrine of hygiene as superior to therapeutics. He com- 156 THE NORMAL LIFE plains 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 Ufe'. '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 coinplete 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 inequity of our present lack of system in this matter will not long seem tolerable. Sickness insurance is a more pressing problem in this country than old age insurance or unemploy- ment insurance, more necessary than mothers' pen- sions or any other form of public relief. It should maturity: home 157 cover, as it does in European countries, maternity insurance and life insurance on an ampler scale than our present industrial insurance companies provide. The expense should be divided between the insured and his employer, who will have the same oppor- tunity 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 may be properly regarded as a public function. Sickness insurance does not of necessity mean prevention of sickness, but it is easy to unite the two harmonious and closely related policies into a consistent policy of sickness insurance and preven- tion. A federal health department, vigorous state health departments, even more energetic and better supported local health boards, municipal and rural, 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 one of the normal expressions. DIVORCE AND DES^TION 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 158 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 1 880, 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. The only influence which has a visible effect in checking this tendency is hard times. After each of the financial panics or industrial depressions the increase 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 maturity: home 159 been under normal conditions. It suggests also, however, that considerations of economy may have had a bearing in postponing action which would necessitate maintaining two establishments in place of one, and further, that the pressure of economic problems may operate to put in the background, at least temporarily, the indulgence of emotion and trivial personal grievances. In so far as this increase in divorce is merely a writing into the ofhcial 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 a grave menace to normal home life, as does desertion, its substitute in classes of society with less regard for conventions in such matters. Of the two, desertion is probably the graver problem, because of the evasion of financial responsibility which its formality 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 fulfilment of their obligations. A desertion bureau is coming to be as necessary as l60 THE NORMAL LIFE a marriage license bureau. Tiie principal safeguard, however, against this danger which threatens the home, lies not in laws or courts but in that funda- mental 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- 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 widows. Among girls fifteen to nineteen years old one in five hundred is a widow. The proportion increases to eight per cent, among women thirty-five to forty- four; twenty-one per cent, at forty-five to sixty- maturity: home i6i 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 unorganized and generally underpaid, and because there are few well conducted employment and intelligence 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. There should be a recognized and organic relation 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 con- ditions. If a man is killed or disabled at his work, for example, the industry should provide a sub- stitute for his wages, as the compensation laws now provide. If he dies from disease, there should be an l62 THE NORMAL LIFE insurance fund, to which he himself and his em- ployer and the state may all have contributed in just and reasonable proportions, so that the ex- penses 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 part, as well as social prevision. 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 naively childish in all such at- tempts to disguise a transaction by giving it a different name. Money paid from the public trea- sury to meet individual or family needs will remain what it has always been, whatever it is called, just as the answer 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 maturity: home 163 railways and in mills, the prevention of tubercu- losis, the prevention of typhoid and malaria and hookworm disease, the prevention of rheumatism and colds and headache and all their disabling sequelce, 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, lack of nurture of childhood, and perversion of char- acter 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 society for honest, straightforward, persistent, comprehensive attack upon them as pathological abnormalities which no self-respecting society will ever delib- erately 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 l64 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 and atten- tion 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 that the home has lost by the revolutionary changes so much in our minds? Mainly disease and noise and dirt and drudgery. The factory and the ofifice are better places in every way for active work than the home ever was. 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 theater and the motion-picture are after all more entertaining than backgammon and puzzle pictures. The rivals maturity: home 165 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. 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 intoxicating 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 of the latent possibilities of a mature life, based LATE MATURITY I67 upon the foundations of sound infancy and chil- 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 we so elect. 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 fourscore; but save a few years for old age proper, 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 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 l68 THE NORMAL LIFE the vibrant body of a child; nurtured and disci- plined, increased and treasured and put forth to return again, multiplied ten, a hundredfold with the passing years; pushing into forbidden paths but retrieved with penalties, directed again toward useful and ever higher ends; exercising the fingers and hands of the man, the eye and the brain of him, the physical powers, the moral powers. The normal man has had freedom and oppor- tunity, but he has had also the discipline denied to 'privileged', 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 failure, 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. From now on, the normal man — -or woman — if an author, may write his best book; 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; LATE MATURITY 169 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 business, he may become a financier or a captain of industry. Those who have begotten and borne children become in the full sense fathers and mothers of those children as they reach the age of full maturity and the children are growing up under their watchful care. It is at this period that artists should paint their best pictures, poets write their greatest poems, scholars produce their opera magna, preachers con- vert the heathen and edify the faithful, blacksmiths hit their hardest and surest blows, gardeners cul- tivate their most superb roses, firemen and police- men 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, bankers and directors of rail- ways and industrial corporations stand highest as stewards of their great trusteeship. 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- 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 170 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 by extending the period in which protection is assured by law and by public opinion. Wage-earning is post- poned and spontaneous freedom is fostered, 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 g^aarantee of a prolonged and effective working 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 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 LATE MATURITY 17I 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 under- taken, regretfully relinquished, and now worthily transferred to the broad shoulders of competent maturity 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 relations, a steadier labor force, fewer strikes and misunder- standings, less animosity, more loyalty. It is even more desirable from the point of view of the work- ers themselves and their families. Whether they work for wages, as at present the vast majority of industrial and clerical workers do, or on some co- operative plan for themselves, as they may in a day of more industrial democracy, 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 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. 172 THE NORMAL LIFE We study with appreciation and pleasure the lengthening span of life as a whole, but most sig- nificant 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 valetudinarian. This is not to cast slurs upon the compensating pleasures which they may be so fortunate as to discover. We are to find 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. Pre- maturely anticipated, 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, giving the laborer a greater share in planning, directing, and determining the conditions of industry, transform- ing him into capitalist, entrepreneur, and owner of natural resources — not necessarily, not even prob- ably, by revolution or violence, but by evolutionary development, which may be more rapid and more LATE MATURITY I73 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. Indus- trial evolution seems to be moving in the contrary direction. Invention in the arts has outstripped invention in social policy. Long hours, a seven- day week, the constant strain on nerves and muscles in tending machines, the minute subdivision of labor, short-sighted 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 demand for swift deftness, for springy alertness, for plastic adaptability in industry; the disappearance of the individual worker from the conscious knowledge of the employer through his submergence in mere numbers, and the more impersonal and arbitrary estimate of his usefulness which naturally follows; the increasing bitterness and intensity of labor con- troversies ; and the relative increase in the number of industrial wage-earners in the population, whose working life is shorter than that of clerical, profes- sional, and agricultural workers — 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 174 THE NORMAL LIFE them. We shall come to understand these stub- born 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 occupa- tion for rational living men, can be evenly and con- tinuously appraised. 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 expressed ignorance as to what collective bargaining is, and made an equally naive and refreshing acknowledg- ment, when it was explained to 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 surprise that a bar- gain made by an association of employers with an association of employees has many advantages and LATE MATURITY 175 does not necessarily or even probably 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, intimate per- sonal acquaintance with workingmen and their families. 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. Increasing knowledge will mean increasing exten- sion of the working life through the voluntary im- provement of industrial 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. OLD AGE Unmistakable old age, so long denied, comes at last to its own : not in ugly, tragic mask, but gentle; neither hastening nor loitering. With a touch of humor, of philosophy, with a sense of life's irony and a knowledge of its loving kindness, old age 176 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 storm and sunshine, have ful- filled 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 acquiescence, not less harmonious and satisfying 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 ap- propriate 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 liability to degenerative diseases increases. Vision becomes dim or reasserts its vigor. Memory plays strange tricks. Appetite demands a change of diet and passion relaxes its hold. Interests shift and con- tract, 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 words in some temporary breakdown in earlier years. OLD AGE 177 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 medieval, 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 his 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 per- fection 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 problems 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 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 178 THE NORMAL LIFE or private. Whether it is a million and a quarter, as Mr. Squier thinks,^ or two million and a half, as Mr. Berger told Congress — though he was speak- ing of those over sixty, and included 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 institutions or receiving partial support at home, the number of the aged who require support presents a problem serious enough to justify far more attention than it has received. Our main reliance in this country has been (i) 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 vete- rans; (5) private homes for aged, partly maintained by admission fees of their inmates; (6) public 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 dependent poor in workhouses and jails as vagrants, but some 4 ' The principal item in Mr. Squier's table, about three-quar- ters of a million, consists of United States pensioners. A census report, pubUshed since his book appeared, shows that his esti- mate 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 in almshouses in Massachusetts. OLD AGE 179 other condition than age and infirmity is assumed to be present when the aged find their only refuge in correctional institutions. There are, no doubt, some in hospitals and asylums for the insane whose senility is not of such a character as to require in- stitutional 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 a 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 to merit. As a provision for old age 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 adminis- tered. And yet the federal and state pensions are not without some substantial justification in their social results. If the government had not expended the four or five 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 l8o THE NORMAL LIFE means that we have had after savings and main- tenance 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 impoverished by the war. The result has been a serious national maladjustment, which cannot be without its effect on physical well-being and eco- nomic prosperity. Whatever the source 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 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 OLD AGE l8l 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 frame-work of its regulations an institution may 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 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 l82 THE NORMAL LIFE 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, neverthless. We who preach constantly social responsibility are in danger of carrying it to an extreme, just as the doctrine of an overruling providence in supreme control 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 are reminded of the lawyer's demonstration to a client that they could not put him in jail for what he had done. Unfortunately for the argument, and for the client, he was in jail at the time. The fact is that Ameri- can wage-earners and small tradesmen and clerks and farmers do save, and what many actually do, more could do, without incurring the risk of slight- ing immediate needs of the family. In practice, saving goes along with a higher, rather than a lower, standard of current expenditure. Thrift has received a bad name preparatory to the hanging, but the exigencies of the war bid fair to rehabilitate, possibly even to popularize it. Thrift is not the mean, unsocial, antiquated relic of primitive society that it has been so often repre- sented to be. It is little else than strength of character, a sober measuring of future against im- OLD AGE 183 mediate needs. It is a generous and manly trait, a certain soundness at the core resisting the decay of indulgence and the dry-rot of stupidity. Thrift should be taught in the public schools. 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 no reason why conservative advocates of social insurance, whether for sick- ness, unemployment, or old age, should have any sympathy for sneers against the fullest develop- ment of family responsibility and solidarity. Social insurance rests upon the family in its integrity. Non-contributory old-age pensions, widows' pen- sions, and all other forms of public poor relief, by the very terms used to describe them, such as 'the endowment of old age', 'the endowment of mother- hood', 'the right to relief, all involve another and opposing principle. The one principle is that, given a fair and rea- sonable opportunity, the individual is to be held l84 THE NORMAL LIFE responsible for taking advantage of it; that ordi- nary mishaps and accidents under normal con- ditions are to be met by savings and the helping hand of relatives, neighbors, and friends; that even sickness, unemployment, and old age are personal and family matters, leading to public de- pendence only under exceptional and unforesee- able circumstances. The other principle is that society and not the individual is responsible for all these misfortunes and burdens; that each con- dition of natural dependence, brief or prolonged, such as maternity, illness, unemployment, inva- lidity, old age, and poverty in all its manifesta- tions, 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 com- fort, whatever his extravagances, his idleness, 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 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, without inconsistency, work zealously for sickness insurance, for work- men's compensation, for unemployment insurance, for compulsory life insurance and insurance for OLD AGE 185 old age. What saves social insurance from the curse of demoralizing paternalism is that it encour- ages thrift and rewards it; that the administration 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 unearned gratuities, gathered from grudging tax- payers, manipulated for political advantage, and defended on dishonest and fallacious grounds, which unfortunately is an accurate description of pensions and public poor relief as ordinarily administered. In so far, therefore, as old age requires support ^ 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. 2 For the most thorough discussion of the whole subject, aside from Mr. Squier's book on old age dependency, to which refer- ence has been made, and the report of the Massachusetts Com- mission of 1910, attention is invited to the admirable treatise on Social Insurance by 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 the present writer they seem, on the contrary, an unsatis- factory makeshift, postponing rather than bringing nearer the substantial and consistent system of social insurance which we both desire. l86 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 influ- ences at work independently to the same end. Sci- ence has been baffled by an increase in the diseases of later life, but is diligently employing its natural instruments of research and experimentation 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 ex- tension that is significant. The emptying of old age of its conquerable diseases, its disabling in- firmities, 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 watch- fulness, 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, theie will be need of giving thought to the manner of its exer- cise. 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 OLD AGE 187 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, De Senectute, he sets forth the reasons for thinking that it may be so: 1. 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 have the occupations of youth, but they do engage 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 appear- ance 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. 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 l88 THE NORMAL LIFE 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 indigestion and sleeplessness. Aside from the enjoyable features of agriculture, Cicero finds various other pleasant occupations to mitigate the tedium of a life without drunkenness, indiges- tion, and sleeplessness. Among these 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 many interesting observations. One of his rejoinders, that death is even more common in youth, may not bear statistical test; but that death in youth is a sort of violence, while death in old age is spontaneous and natural, is a forecast of Metchnikoff's demonstration that all infectious disease is violent death as truly as if by an external cause: Young men 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 exhausted 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 more saying must be quoted from De Senectute, for it might have served for our text: OLD AGE 189 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. 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, Yoiith shows but half; trust God: see all, 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, would 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; IQO THE NORMAL LIFE 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 adventure brave and true; and there we might leave the matter as the end of our attempt to fol- low 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 considera- tion of the serious social problems of life's succeed- ing 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 because they are handicapped by tainted blood, by the drunken- ness and sensuality, or by the thriftlessness and in- efficiency, of their elders ; of the older youth whose OLD AGE 191 amusements are craps and petty larceny, un- guarded dance halls, and uncensored 'movies', or who have little leisure even for vicious amusements, 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-coming consequences of war, through dislo- cations in industry or delayed social adjustment'; of the childless and friendless old men and women, battered 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. We need accept no scheme for exploiting the weaknesses and disabilities of some that others may ripen into luxury and privilege. Those are 'devil's theories', as Lowell said years ago, wherever and whenever 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- 192 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. CONCLUSION As this sketch of the normal life is not a Utopia, it obviously sacrifices whatever fascination there may be in imaginary forecasts of an ideal society. To discover what our present normal standards really are is more prosaic, but perhaps no less use- ful, than to speculate on the possible standards of our successors. Not being an actual biography, or even a composite photograph, it cannot claim the color and personal interest attaching to the lives of individuals. Not to picture all that men are, but to disentangle from what we are the essen- tial fundamental elements which we consciously hold to be desirable and practicable for all — this is the task of social economy with reference to the normal life. Not having for its aim the exposition of any particular creed or platform — whether aca- demic, political, or religious — the discussion may sometimes have seemed to be less dogmatic and explicit than a reader seeking authoritative guid- ance might wish. The attempt has been to present a simple and clear basis for practical social work, whether under- taken by the state and municipality or by volun- tary associations and individuals. Social work is inspired by social ideals. It is bounded by existing normal standards. Through social measures — edu- 194 THE NORMAL LIFE cational, sanitary, remedial, protective — we seek to safeguard existing standards, we help individuals to attain those standards, we discipline and control those who wilfully violate them. The sum of these standards — industrial and social — underlies the normal life as a sure foundation. Social measures to ensure this foundation of the normal life for all of every age, as far as society can ensure it, do not contemplate uniformity, or external control of thought, spirit, or action of individuals, except as may be essential to prevent degeneracy and exploitation. Freedom to rise above the minimum level fixed by society in the interests of all is a human birthright. Liberty is a positive as well as a negative conception. Non- interference is only its negative aspect. Affirma- tively it is a gift of society, a precious, inalienable, but not indestructible gift. It rests upon education and law and mutual self-help. AFTER THE WAR The war has not lessened the need for social work. Has it, aside from temporary war activities, radically altered its aims? This is a fair question, to which the answer is not yet clear. Perhaps we shall not be satisfied with the old ideals. Abso- lutism is vehemently attacked as the cause of the war, but there are abundant indications that the democratic nations are no less dissatisfied with many features of their own social order. The spirit CONCLUSION 195 of social work as it has been generated in the past few decades is responsible for much of this righteous discontent. Social work has come into relations with government and has been exceedingly critical of the lumbering inefficiency, the crass stupidity, of traditional governmental methods. The undue conservatism of the courts, the crudeness of legis- lative drafting, the low standards of efficiency de- manded in the civil service, and the lack of hospital- ity to new ideas, have been denounced in vigorous terms by social agencies of every kind. At the same time hopeful experiments have been solici- tously encouraged and pioneering public officials have been able to reply with confidence on the sup- port of the great body of social workers. After the war should now become a watchword for social work. It should mean a determination that the world shall then be a better place in which to live. It should mean thoughtful, prayerful preparation. It should mean hard thinking and the maturing of plans for definite undertakings. After the war we may expect a reaction against excessive control by government. After the war we may expect a more rational appreciation of the relative pleasure of money-making and social service. After the war we may expect less conges- tion of industrial population in towns and keener realization of the advantages of a healthy and well-rounded country life. After the war we shall be poorer but perhaps healthier, sadder but per- 196 THE NORMAL LIFE haps wiser, less naively but perhaps more pro- foundly patriotic. Nothing will be the same after the war; but if it brings in the end a fuller and higher life, there will be none to welcome and appreciate it more quickly than those who before and during the war have been keen to secure the possibility of a normal life to others. If it should turn out otherwise, and if from a narrower and harder manner of life man- kind must painfully make its way forward again out of war's devastation, then also those who have cherished an ideal of normal, rational standards of life and have learned how to help individuals prac- tically to achieve them, will be at home in the sterner, necessary tasks of the time. APPENDIX APPENDIX SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS The following questions may be suggestive for local §tudy of the social conditions and social pro- visions essential to securing a normal life in any community. I. INFANCY 1. a. How many feeble-minded persons are there in your community? 6. 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. o. 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? 200 THE NORMAL LIFE c. What provision is there for the free treatment of these diseases in hospitals and in dispensaries? 7. What organizations definitely provide pre-natal in- struction? 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? II. 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 children? 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? III. YOUTH I. What are the popular forms of recreation among boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty? APPENDIX 20I 2. Which of these are wholesome and which have unde- sirable 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? 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 suitable 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. AND v. MATURITY 1. Make a list of the various official 'registrations' or enumerations made in the community by federal, city, country, or state authorities, giving for each: a. Its purpose; h. 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 secured. 2. Is there any existing branch of the city government which could easily and naturally undertake the responsibility for a permanent registration of the entire population? 202 THE NORMAL LIFE 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? 6. Describe, as concretely and as much in detail as pos- sible, the elements which compose the minimum 'standard of living' in your community at the present time. 7. 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. b. What influences, on the other hand, are operating to lower it? 8. How many arrests were made last year for drunken- ness? What treatment followed the arrests? 9. How many men 25 to 45 years of age died last year? How many women? 10. What were the diseases which caused these deaths, in order of their numerical importance? VI. 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? APPENDIX 203 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) increas- ing or (b) decreasing in the community? 6. What influences in the community are favorable to family solidarity? What influences, on the con- trary, are actively unfavorable? 7. Make a list of the gainful occupations in the commu- nity which are open to persons over fifty years old. 8. a. What are the favorite forms of recreation among old persons? b. Is there any need of community interest in this question? 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 by his com- munity towards assuring a normal life for every citizen. INDEX INDEX Abbott, Edith, 89 Abnormal tendencies in youth, 55 Abnormalities, 8, 190 Accidents, 117, 161 Adaptability, education for, 71 Adler, Felix, 67 Adolescence. See Youth Adult population of the Uni- ted States, 96 Alcoholism, 141 Allen, Nathan, 151 Ante-natal life and care, 14 Barr, Martin W., 84 Berger, Victor L., 178 Birth, 6, 17 Birth-rate, 13 Births, registration of, 18 Blindness, congenital, 18 Bosanquet, Helen, 9 Breckinridge, S. P., 89 British Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded, 83 Browning, Robert, 189 Budgets, 3, 15, 140 Burns, John, 20 Census Bureau, Reports, 44, 57. 83, 90. 96, 98, 103, 128, 149, 158, 178 Chapin, Robert Coit, 3 Character, formation of, 55; inherited and acquired, 91 Childhood, 6, 26-54 Child-labor, 56, 60, 66, 115 Children's Bureau, 16, 22, 68 Cicero: De Senectute, 187 Civic nurture, 37 Compensation for accidents, 117, 161 Congenital diseases, 10, 15, 18 Cottage system, 45, 53 Courts, 147 Crime, 145; prevention of, $: Criminal procedure, 148 Curriculum, 40 Day nurseries, 21 Defectives. See Mental de- fect Degenerative diseases, 154 Delinquency, juvenile, 85; statistics of, 90 Dental clinics, 80 Dependence in old age, 177 Dependent children, 43 De Quiros, C. Bernaldo, 147 Desertion, 157 Disease, 152-157; prevention of, 32 Divorce, 157 208 THE NORMAL LIFE Dublin, Louis I., 154 Duke, Emma, 22 Economic judgments, 31 Education, 6, 26, 28, 55, 71 Efficiency, 35, 71 Employment, 102; bureaus, 109 Family, 9, 138, 183. See also Home Fatigue, 120 Federal Child-Labor Law, 68 Feeble-minded. See Mental defect Fernald, Walter E., 84 Finances of institutions, 49 Foster homes, 52 Foundlings, 24 Goldmark, Pauline, 89 Habits, 31, 91 Hamilton, Alice, 13 Hart, Hastings H., 89 Health, 79. See also Disease; Physical defects Health, Department of, 11, 19, loi, 155, 157 Health ideal, 82 Healy, William, 89 Heredity, 10 Hine, Lewis W., 65 Home, 9, 23, 26, 128-165; life, 138; manufacture, 122 Housing, 23, 134, 136 Hutchins and Harrison, 61 Hygiene, 30 Illegitimacy, 10, 12 Illiteracy, 59 Immigration, 96 Income, 2; use of, 132 Industrial relations, 126 Infancy, 9-25 Infant mortality, 19 Insanity, 149 Institutions for aged, 180; for children, 45, 51; for children, advantages of, 52 Insurance. See Social insur- ance Intemperance, 141 Johnson, Alexander, 84 Labor, Department of, 64, 65 Lane, Winthrop D., 76 Life Extension Institute, 155 Life, prolongation of, 186 Lindsay, Samuel McCune, 67 Lindsey, Ben B., 85 Lovejoy, Owen R., 68 Lowell, James Russell, 191 Marriage, 13, 128 Marshall, Alfred, 4 Massachusetts Commission on Old Age Pensions, 185 Maturity, 7, 93-175 Medical education, 24; inspec- tion of school children, 33 INDEX 209 Mental defect, 11, 82 Metchnikoff, Elie, 188 Midwives, 18 Miner, Maude E., 89 Minimum wage, 123 Mitchel, John Purroy, 114 National Child Labor Com- mittee, 61, 67 New York City, 10, 19, 21, 48, 79 Newsholme, Arthur, 14, 15 Normal life of man, 5; stages of, 93 Occupation, choice of, 73 Old age, 175-192; pensions, 185 Orphans, 24, 43 Over-population, 14 Over- work, 16, 119 Owen, Robert, 62 Palmer-Owen bill, 68 Parentage, 9, 12 Pensions, Federal and state, 179; for old age, 185; for widows, 54, 162 Physical defects, 33, 80 Play and recreation, 42, 82 Police, 86, 148 Poverty, prevention of, 32 Pre-natal. See Ante-natal Prisons, 146, 148 Probation, 88 Prohibition, 143 Recreation. See Play Reformatories, 88, 146 Registration of births, 18; of population, 39, 98 Relief, Principles of, 4 Rubinow, I. M., 185 Sanitary conditions, 121 Schneider, Herman, 78 School, 26; attendance, 56, 69; buildings, 39; inquiry. Committee on. New York City, 39; reasons for leav- ing, 69; teachers, 40 Seasonal trades, in Sex hygiene, 34 Sickness insurance, 156 Social economy, I, 99, 135, 193 Social insurance, 54, 162, 183 Social work, 193; after the war, 195 Squier, Lee W., 177 Standard of living, 1-8, 22, 129 Subsidy system in children's institutions, 50 Thrift, 181 Todd, Helen M., 70 Town planning, 135 Tracy, Roger S., 64 2IO THE NORMAL LIFE Transportation system, 135 Tuberculosis, 152 Unemployable, 106 Unemployed, 104 Unemployment, causes of, 105; insurance, III; reme- dies for, 108; responsi- bility of industry for, 114 Ungraded classes, 41 Van Kleeck, Mary, 75 Veneral disease, 11, 15, 34 Vocational guidance, 75 Wages, 123 War,Socialworkafterthe, 195 West, Mrs. Max, 16 White House Conference of 1909. 51 Widowhood, 160 Widows' pensions, 54, 162 Women, employment of, 16, 20, 104, 116 Work, 93-127 Working day, 118; life, pro- longation of, 169 Youth, 6, 55-92 Other Books by Edward T. Devine Economics $1 00 The Practice of Charity . . .60 Principles of Relief .... 2.00 Efficiency and Relief .... •75 Misery and Its Causes . . . 1.25 Standard Library Edition . . •50 Social Forces 1. 00 The Spirit of Social Work . 1. 00 The Family and Social Work .60 May be obtained through SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INCORPORATED 1 12 EAST I9TH STREET NEW YORK THE SURVEY A Weekly Journal of Social Work Subscription, Three Dollars per year Special rates to College classes Studies in Social Work Small, Inixpensi've Publications of Interest to Social fyorkers and Other Students of Social Problems 1. Social Work with Families and Individuals: A brief manual for investigators. By Porter R. Lee. i6 pp. Five cents. -!. Organized Charity and Industry. A chapter from the history of the New York Charity Organization So- ciety. By Edward T. Devine. Out of print. 3. The Probation Officer at Work. By Henry W, Thurs- ton. 24 pp. Five cents. 4. Is Social Work a Profession? 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