Project Gutenberg's The Family and it's Members, by Anna Garlin Spencer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Family and it's Members Author: Anna Garlin Spencer Release Date: February 21, 2007 [EBook #20645] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FAMILY AND IT'S MEMBERS *** Produced by Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and unusual spelling in the | | original document have been preserved. | | | | Bold text is marked with ='s, italicized text with _'s | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES EDITED BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D. TEACHERS COLLEGE. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER LIPPINCOTT'S HOME MANUALS Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D. Teachers College, Columbia University CLOTHING FOR WOMEN By LAURA I. BALDT, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia University. 454 Pages, 7 Colored Plates, 202 Illustrations in Text. SUCCESSFUL CANNING AND PRESERVING By OLA POWELL, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 425 Pages, 5 Colored Plates, 174 Illustrations in Text. Third Edition. HOME AND COMMUNITY HYGIENE By JEAN BROADHURST, Ph.D. 428 Pages, 1 Colored Plate, 118 Illustrations in Text. THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUSEHOLD By C.W. TABER, Author of _Taker's Dietetic Charts_, _Nurses' Medical Dictionary_, etc. 438 Pages. Illustrated. Second Edition, Revised. HOUSEWIFERY By L. RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Teachers College, Columbia University. 351 Pages. Colored Frontispiece and 175 Illustrations in Text. LAUNDERING By LYDIA RAY BALDERSTON, A.M., Instructor in Housewifery and Laundering, Teachers College, Columbia University. 152 Illustrations. HOUSE AND HOME By GRETA GREY, B.S., Director of Home Economics Department, University of Wyoming. Illustrated. MILLINERY (_In Preparation_) By EVELYN SMITH TOBEY, B.S., Teachers College, Columbia University LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES Edited by BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D. Teachers College, Columbia University CLOTHING--CHOICE, CARE, COST By MARY SCHENCK WOOLMAN, B.S. 290 Pages. Illustrated. Second Edition. SUCCESSFUL FAMILY LIFE, ON THE MODERATE INCOME By MARY HINMAN ABEL. 263 Pages. THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS By ANNA GARLIN SPENCER, Special Lecturer in Social Science, Teachers College, Columbia University. LIPPINCOTT'S FAMILY LIFE SERIES EDITED BY BENJAMIN R. ANDREWS, PH.D., TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS BY ANNA GARLIN SPENCER SPECIAL LECTURER IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, TEACHERS COLLEGE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FORMERLY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL WORK, SPECIAL LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND HACKLEY PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND ETHICS AT MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL; AUTHOR OF WOMAN'S SHARE IN SOCIAL CULTURE PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PRINTED AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A. TO THE MOTHERS AND FATHERS, IN NUMBER BEYOND COUNT, WHOSE COURAGE, LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS CARRY ONWARD THE GENERATIONS AND KEEP THE MAIN CURRENTS OF LIFE STRONG AND WHOLESOME. INTRODUCTION =A Threefold Aim.=--This book is based upon three theses--namely, first, that the monogamic, private, family is a priceless inheritance from the past and should be preserved; second, that in order to preserve it many of its inherited customs and mechanisms must be modified to suit new social demands; and third, that present day experimentation and idealistic effort already indicate certain tendencies of change in the family order which promise needed adjustment to ends of highest social value. Many learned books have been written concerning the evolution of sex, the history of matrimonial institutions and the development of the family. This volume is not an attempted rival of any of these. The work of Havelock Ellis, of Le Tourneau, of Otis T. Mason, of Geddes and Thompson, and others building upon the foundations laid by the great pioneers in the study of the family, constitute a sufficient mine of historical information and scientific analysis and evaluation. The studies and suggestions of Olive Schreiner, Mrs. Clews Parsons, Mrs. Helen Bosanquet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Key and others indicate the tendency of modern inquiry into the just basis of the family order. The work of Professors Howard, Giddings, Thomas, Boss, Goodsell, Calhoun, Patten, Dealey, Cooley, Ellwood, Todd and others in college fields, shows the importance of the family and the necessity of giving all that concerns it the most serious attention. This book aims to begin where many of these students leave off and to turn specific attention to the problems of personal and ethical decision which now face men and women who would make their own married life and parenthood successful. The past experience of the race is drawn upon only in so far as it seems to explain present conditions and point the way to future social and personal achievements. =Basic Principles Underlying All Socially Useful Changes.=--A fundamental principle in democracy is the right and duty of every human being to develop a strong, noble and distinctive individuality. For such development it is necessary that a person be self-supporting, free of despotic control by others, and able and willing to bear equal part with every other human being in the social order to which he or she belongs. This implies that no human being should be wholly sacrificed in personal development to the service or welfare of any other human being, or group of human beings, either inside or outside the family circle. On the other hand, after temporary excursions into an extreme individualism that ordained a free-for-all competition in every walk of life, society is now keenly alive to the need for control of personal desire and individual activity within channels of social usefulness. It is beginning to be clearly seen that society has a right to demand from any person or class of persons that form of community service which definitely inheres in the social function which is assumed by, or which devolves upon, such person or class of persons. In the old days of "status," when each and every person found himself in a place set for him and from which he could not depart, there was only the duty of being content and useful in the "sphere of life to which he was called." In the new condition of "contract," in which each and every person in a democratic community finds himself at liberty to use all common opportunities in the interest of his own achievement, there is the duty of choice along every avenue of purpose and of activity. This gives the new double call to the intelligence and conscience; the call to become the best personality one can make of oneself and the call to serve the common life to ends of social well-being. =The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference.=--Doctor Giddings declares in fine summary "we may conceive of society as any plural number of sentient creatures more or less continuously subjected to common stimuli, to differing stimuli and to inter-stimulation, and responding thereto in like behaviour, concerted activity or coöperation, as well as in unlike or competitive activity; and becoming, therefore, with developing intelligence, coherent through a dominating consciousness of kind while always sufficiently conscious of difference to insure a measure of individual liberty." Democracy tends to enlarge the area of those who, while conscious of kind that unites, are also keen in desire to develop in liberty any natural difference which can make their personality felt as distinctive or powerful. The individual differences among women were wholly ignored in the past. They were never in reality all alike, as they were commonly thought to be. The usual designation of a subject class lumps all together as if all were the same. It is the mark of emergence from the mass to the class, and from the class to the individual, that more and more defines differences between persons. Women have now, for the first time in the civilization called Christian, arrived at a point in which differences between members of their sex can claim social recognition. They are, therefore, now called upon as never before to balance by conscious effort the personal desire and the social claim. The family, more than any other inherited institution, feels the oscillations between the individual demand for personal achievement and the response to the social need for large service within group relationships which now, for the first time, stir in the consciousness of average women. =The Family as We Know It Is the Central Nursery of Character.=--The inevitable outcome of the new freedom, education and economic opportunity of women gives us the problem of the modern family. The ideal of the democracy we are trying to achieve is higher personality in all the mass of the people. The method of democracy so far as we can see is education, perfected and universalized, by which all the children of each generation may be developed physically, mentally, morally, and vocationally to their utmost excellence and power. The family, as we have inherited it, is so far the central nursery and school in this development. So far in the history of the race or in its present social manifestation no rival institution, even the formal school, offers an adequate substitute for the family in this beginning of the educative process. The intimate and vital care and nurture of the individual life still depends for the mass of the people upon the private, monogamic, family. This intimate and vital care of the children of each generation has so far in human experience cost women large expenditure of time and strength; so large expenditure that personal achievement has been wholly and is even now largely subordinated to the social service implied in home-making. The deepest problems of the modern family inhere in the effort to adjust the new freedom of women, and its new demands for individual development in customary lines of vocational work, to the ancient family claim. New adjustments are called for not only in the family itself but in all the educational, political, economic, and social arrangements of life to accommodate this new demand of women to be achieving persons whether married or single. Women have entered, as newly emerging from status to contract, into a man-made social organization, a man-made school, a man-made industrial order, and a man-made state. Achievement, individual and successful, means to most of them, as to any newly enfranchised class, the type of distinctive activity and accomplishment which their elder brothers have outlined. The antithesis, therefore, which now works toward acute problems in the minds of both men and women is between the sort of achievement which men have sought after and attained, and the sort of social service which the past conditions required of women. Slowly it is being perceived that in the actual family service, as it is now aided by social mechanisms surrounding the household, is place and economic opportunity for high personal achievement by competent women. Still more slowly is it being apprehended that in the new adjustments of economic and professional life there is or may be opportunity for married women and mothers to serve the family in high measure and also attain outside some distinctive vocational pride and satisfaction of craftsmanship. Most slowly of all is it being understood that the future calls for such modification of specialization in outside work that men and women alike may serve the generations in family devotion to the sort of work fathers and mothers have to do and yet cherish some personal and ideal vocational effort which may sweeten and enrich their lives. =Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society.=--There are five basic institutions in modern social organization. They may be named the family, the school, the church, the industrial order, and the state. They have all come to us as parts of our social inheritance from time too remote to reckon. They have mingled and intermingled their tendencies of control and influence in varieties of social functioning too numerous to mention. They are now emerging to distinctness only to be engaged in new forms of interaction that make the highest ideals of each and all seem fundamentally akin. The main tendency of development in all these institutions is, however, identical and one clearly perceived. It is the tendency from status to contract, from fixed order to flexible adjustment, from static to dynamic condition, already noted in regard to the family. In the school we have moved and are now moving from an aristocracy of command, by which ancient life was reproduced, to a democracy of comradeship in which it is aimed to make each generation improve upon its predecessor. In the church, as it has moved from the family ritual at the domestic fireside to the self-chosen altar of each worshipper in the world's cathedrals, the reactionaries have held on to "the faith once delivered to the saints" and the progressive minds have moved to some new prophecy of the truth and right; until to-day, as Professor Coe well says, "the aim of the modern church is to give education in the art of brotherhood," and to evoke "faith in a fatherly God and in a human destiny that outreaches all the accidents of our frailty." In the industrial order, still in the trial stage of conflict between the fixed status of the "hand" and the "master" and the contract of equal partners in a coöperative enterprise, the movement is steadily toward the social requirement of equality, justice, and good-will. In the state we have achieved mechanical expression of complete democracy. We still lack, and in our own country woefully lack, the "spirit within the wheels" that can move with power toward an actual government by the people, for the people, and truly of the people. Yet by fire and sword and through blood and suffering the handwriting of equality, justice, and fraternity has been set in our Constitutions and Bills of Right. What remains to be done is the socializing of the political mechanisms. That means simply that we shall learn to live our democracy and be no longer content to merely write it in law. The difficulty now is not so much to get a good statement of democratic right as to make it work effectively in common action. This fact makes it of doubtful wisdom that men and women so often concentrate effort on the eighteenth-century doctrinaire position of appeal for Constitutional Amendments and blanket state legislation as if of themselves these could secure actual personal liberty and social welfare. The objection that some forward-looking persons have to the demand of the "National Woman's Party," so called, for a Federal Amendment that shall "abolish all sex discriminations in law" is not that its principle is too radical, but that its method is too antiquated. The business of the present and the immediate future is to so adjust the family life to "two heads" as to keep love and to balance duties. The next job is to adjust the family order itself to a contract system of industry that gives each member of the family a free and often a separating access to daily work and to its return in wages or salary, in such manner as to retain family unity and mutual aid while giving freedom and opportunity for each of its members. The pressing political duty is to use the new voters, the women recently enfranchised, for needed emancipation from partisan and selfish political despotism in the interest of effective choices for the public good. The ever-growing demand of the school is for some translation of freedom of self-development in terms of respect for social order and in the spirit of social service. The family life, in the United States, at least, stands not so much in need of manifestoes of equality of rights between men and women as of delicate and discriminating adjustments of that equality to the social demands upon husbands and wives and upon fathers and mothers. This book aims to suggest some of the changes in external customs and inherited ways of living which may lead toward a firmer hold upon social idealism within the family, as well as within all other inherited institutions, while new bases of democratic freedom are being firmly installed. =Coveted Uses of the Book.=--This volume is intended to meet the needs of college and teacher-training school students; of university extension classes; of study groups in Women's Clubs, Consumers' Leagues, Leagues of Women Voters and Church Classes. It is also hoped that it may form the basis for private study by groups within the home. The book is written with a poignant sense of the breaking up of old social foundations in the agony and terror of the Great War. It is sent forth with a keen understanding of the spirit of youth that to-day challenges every inherited institution and ideal, even to the bone and marrow of the church, the state, the industrial order, the educative process, and even the family itself. It issues from an abiding faith that "above all things Truth beareth away the victory" and hence that no fearless inquiry can harm the essential values of life. It confesses a clear trust in "the Spirit that led us hither and is leading us onward." It would sound a call to hold all that has dowered the race at the sources of life sacred and of worth. It would echo all that bids us move onward to higher and better things. The greatest ambition herein recorded is to serve as one who opens doors of insight into the House of the Interpreter. --THE AUTHOR. JANUARY, 1923. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 5 A Threefold Aim. Basic Principles Underlying All Socially Useful Changes. The Sense of Kind and the Sense of Difference. Vital Changes in All the Basic Institutions of Society. Coveted Uses of This Book. I. THE FAMILY 19 The Experience of the Past. New Ideals Affecting the Family. The Headship of the Father. Is It Possible to Democratize the Family? What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care? Modern Ideals of Sex-relationship. Ellen Key and Her Gospel. What is Meant by the Demand that Illegitimacy be Abolished? The Legitimation of Children Born Out of Wedlock. Philanthropic Tendencies Respect Legal Marriage. Illicit Unions of Men and Women in Divergent Social Position. Shall We Return to Polygamy? All Children Entitled to Best Development Possible. The Work of the Children's Bureau. The Suggested Uniform Laws. Have Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood? Ellen Key's Estimate of Motherhood. Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work Inerrantly. New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support. The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life. Women Cannot be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage. A Few Believe in a Third Sex. Most Social Students Believe in Marriage. Dangers of Extreme Specialization. Industrial Exploitation of Children and Youth. Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils. The Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries. The Prevalence of Divorce. Old Institutions Need New Sanctions. The Monogamic Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness. The Inherited Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments. The Family as an Aid to Spiritual Democracy. The Family the Nursery of Personality. Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us. The Moral Elite in the Modern Family. Questions. II. THE MOTHER 46 Antiquity of the Mother-instinct. Recognized Essentials in Child-care. The Protective Function. Social Elements in Modern Protection of Children. Women's Leadership in Social Protection. The Provision of Food, Clothing and Shelter. The Woman in Rural Life. Modern Demand for Standardization. The Apartment House and the Family. New Uses of Electric Power. Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate. The Mother's Compensation for Personal Service. Early Drill in Personal Habits. Early Practice in Talking, Walking, Obedience, and Imitation. Special Responsibility of the Average Mother. Women's Relation to More Formal Education. Women's Relation to Educational Agencies. The Social Value of Parental Affection. What Women Need Most. Questions. III. THE FATHER 69 Historic Background of Fatherhood. Purchase and Capture of Wives. The Patriarchal Family. The Three Chief Sources of Influence. Ancient Military Training of Youth. Ancestor-worship. The Double Standard of Morals. Basic Needs for Equality of Human Rights. Special Protection of Women Needed in Ancient Times. The Social Value of the Patriarchal Family. The Responsibilities of the Ancient Father Commensurate with His Power. Moral Qualities in Women Developed by Masculine Selection. The Highest Ideal of Fatherhood. Incomplete Adjustment to Equality of Rights in the Family. The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem." Women Cannot Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old Privileges. New Social Advantages for Fathers. Questions. IV. THE GRANDPARENTS 90 Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life. Savage Treatment of the Aged. The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for Aged Men. The Position of Chief-mother in the Ancient Family. Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life. Old Women and the Witchcraft Delusion. Older Women in Religious Vocations Honored in Middle Ages. To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at Seventy. Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families? Reasons Why Husbands Desert Their Families. The Financial Provision for Old Age. Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age. Pension Laws. Old age Home Insurance. To Prevent Premature Old Age. Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor. Need of Experience in Many Fields of Work. Prepare Vocationally for Old-age Needs. The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age. The Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World. Questions. V. BROTHERS, SISTERS AND NEXT OF KIN 116 The Ancient Kinship Bond. Present Demands of Kinship. Special Burden of Women in Family Obligation. Disadvantages of the Only Child. Permanent Value of the Family Bond. Questions. VI. FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE 124 The Power of Friendship. The Newly-wed and Old Friends. Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders. New Demands for Social Control of Marriage Choices. The Young Should be Helped to Make Wise Choices. The Revolt of Youth. The Wisdom of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth. Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now Widest Range. The Value of the Church in Social Life. Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage Responsibility. New and Finer Marriage Unions. Questions. VII. HUSBANDS AND WIVES 141 Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded. Social Restraints on Marriage Choices. Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name? Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality? Who Shall Choose the Domicile? Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home? Economic Considerations Involved. Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage? Shall Parenthood be Chosen? Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless. What is the Just Financial Basis of the Household? What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living? The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage. The Supreme Satisfactions of Successful Marriage. Questions. VIII. THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY 164 Conditions to be Secured for Every Child. The Need for Two Parents. Equal Guardianship of Both Parents. Every Child Should Have a Competent Mother. Every Child Should Have a Competent Father. Economic Aspects of the Father's Competency. The French Plan of Extra-wage. The Endowment of Mothers. Does this Plan Make Too Little of Fathers? Just Limits to Number of Children in Subsidized Families. The Right of a Child to be Officially Counted. Every Child Should Have Social Protection. Child-labor. Children Must be Protected in Recreation. Standards of and Aids to Health. Health Boards Should Help All Alike. Items of Work in Child Hygiene. The Educational Rights of Children. The Use of Married Women as Teachers. Individual Sharing in the Social Inheritance. Questions. IX. THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY 189 The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre. Eugenics. Euthenics and Eudemics. Only Men in Lists of Geniuses. Social Need to Learn What Children Are. "Charting Parents." New "Observation Records" for Children. What to Do with the Specially Gifted Child. Genius Universal in Nature. Genius Its Own School-master. Varieties of the Gifted. Questions. X. THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP 205 The Defective Children. Custodial Care of the Defective. Heredity. Difficulties in Care of Morons. The Colony Plan. Mental Hygiene. Special Rooms in Public Schools. Training the Nervous System. Responsibility of Women in Marriage. The Call for Preventive Work. Questions. XI. PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS 219 Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son? Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and the Defective in Criminal Classes. Moral Invalids. Rehabilitation of the Competent. The Right Use of Leisure Time. The Moving Picture. The Automobile and Its Influence. Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training of Children. Parental Love for the Black Sheep. Children's Courts. Domestic Relations Courts. Dangerous Rebound from Ancient Family Discipline. Do Modern Youth Need New Community Disciplines? Questions. XII. THE BROKEN FAMILY 233 The Problems of Divorce. Frequency of Divorce in the United States. Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy. New Standards of Marriage Success. Dangers of Extreme Individualism in Marriage. Free Love Not Admissible. Must Work Toward Desired Permanency in Marriage. Needed Changes in Legal and Social Approach to Divorce. Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce. Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret. Earlier and Better Use of the Domestic Relations Court. The Children to be Affected Society's Chief Care. A Uniform or Federal Divorce Law. Education Our Chief Reliance. Helps Toward Family Stability. Shall Society Favor the Remarriage of Divorced Persons? Turning from Compulsory to Attractive Methods of Reform. Questions. XIII. THE FAMILY AND THE WORKERS 246 Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor. The Old Household a Work-place. Welfare Managers in Modern Times. Child-labor. Increase in Women Wage-earners. Social Pressure on the Individual Worker. Demands of Family Life Should be Considered in Industry and in Labor Legislation. The Code for Women in Industry. Should Adult Women and Children be Listed Together in Labor Laws? Women in War Work. Minimum Wage for Fathers of Families the Vital Need. The Attitude of Women Toward Labor Problems. Necessary Protection of Children and Youth in Labor. Women and the Cost of Living. The Family Demand upon Unmarried Women. Farming and the Farmer's Wife. Domestic Help and Family Life. The Application of Democratic Principles to Life. Women Must be More Democratic. The Social Effect of Trade Unions. Women in Trade Unions. The New Solidarity of Women. Questions. XIV. THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL 269 New Forms of Education Demanded by Modern Industry. Education a Social Process. The Three Learned Professions. New Calls for Trained Leadership. The Special Education of Girls. Formal School Training of Women New. Modern Training for Social Service. Departments of Household Economics in Colleges. Society Now Based upon Man's Economic Leadership. Women Socially Drafted for Motherhood. Father-office and Mother-office Still Differ. Should the Education of Girls Include Special Attention to Family Claims? Adjustment of Family Service and Vocational Work. Dangers of Specialization in Professional Work. The New Training in Sex-education. Heroes Held Up for Admiration. Moral Training at the Heart of Education. Drill to Avert Economic Tragedies. A Graduated Scale of Virtues. Dr. Lester Ward's Types of Education. Questions. XV. THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE 290 The Socialization of the Modern State. The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political Change. Health a Social Enterprise. General and Vocational Training for All. Women's Work in Philanthropy. Culture Aids to the Common Life. Many Languages in One Country. The Children's Bureau. A Women's Lobby at the National Capitol. Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset. Social Service in Peace. Problems Voters Must Solve. Confusion Between National and Local Effort. Preferential Voting. Proportional Representation. What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service Attempt? Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen. Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations. Vows of Civic Consecration. Questions. BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 THE FAMILY AND ITS MEMBERS CHAPTER I THE FAMILY "The family is the heart's fatherland; the fatherland is the cradle of humanity."--MAZZINI. "The family has two functions; as a smaller group it affords opportunity for eliciting qualities of affection and character which cannot be displayed in a larger group; and in the second place it is a training for future members of the larger group in the qualities of disposition and character which are essential to citizenship. Marriage converts an attachment between man and woman into a deliberate, permanent, responsible, intimate union for a common end of mutual good. Modern society requires that the husband and wife contemplate lifelong companionship, and the affection between husband and wife is enriched by the relation of parents to the children which are their care. The end of the family is not economic profit but mutual aid and the continuance and progress of the race."--PROFESSOR TUFTS, in _Ethics_, by Dewey and Tufts. =Social Work and Family Conservation.=--"By whatever name they may be called, the most essential elements of social work are those which seek to conserve the family life; to strengthen or supplement the home; to give children in foster homes or elsewhere the care of which tragic misfortune has deprived them in their natural homes; to provide income necessary in the proper care of their children; to restore broken homes; to discover and, if possible, remove destructive influences which interfere with normal home life and the reasonable discharge of conjugal and parental obligations. The institutions which exist for the benefit of those individuals who have no home or who need care of a kind that cannot well be supplied in the home, only emphasize the importance of conserving family life when its essential elements are present."--EDWARD T. DEVINE. "Human nature has achieved the consciousness that existence has an aim. Human life, therefore, is a mission; the mission of reaching that aim, by incessant activity upon the path toward it and perpetual warfare against the obstacles opposed to it."--MAZZINI. The Home: "For something that abode endued With temple-like repose; an air Of life's kind purposes pursued With ordered freedom, sweet and fair; A tent, pitched in a world not right, It seemed, whose inmates, every one, On tranquil faces bore the light Of duties beautifully done." --COVENTRY PATMORE. =The Experience of the Past.=--By many experiments, over many differing "folk-ways," the modern family has arrived. We name it now "monogamic," and mean by the name the union of one man and one woman, in aim at least for life, and their children. Whereas once it was the rule of a tribe or clan which determined every detail of sex-relationship, a rule represented either by the mother or the father, it is now an individualistic choice of two adult persons only, socially legalized by a required certificate and ceremony. Whereas once it was the basis of all social order and mutual aid, it is now one of several institutions inherited from the past, and is itself subject to the state, which is the chief heir to our social inheritance. The family, however, is now, as it has always been, the interior, vital, and so far indispensable social relationship, beginning, as it does, at first hand the training of each individual toward membership in society-at-large. In the past, under the mother-rule, the social elements of the family were emphasized, since her power was one delegated by the group of which she and her children were a part and closely related to peaceful ways and to primitive industrial arts. Under the father-rule, the political and legal elements of the family were emphasized, since his was an autocratic and personal control of wife and children, even of adult sons, and in many cases of his own mother, and marked the beginning and worked toward the power of the modern state. In all cases, however, it was as a representative of the group-ideal and the group-control that the parents held sway over the family; and if the family is to persist in the future as an institution it will hold its authority over individual lives as trustee of society-at-large. Name, line of inheritance, rights and duties of one member toward other members and to the family group as a whole, must all be determined in the last analysis by the "mores" of the people and the time concerned. =New Ideals Affecting the Family.=--To-day the ideal of equality of rights for men and women, and the ideal of ministration to childhood's needs, are stronger than the ideal of family control. The social demand is, therefore, for standardization of family life and of child-care on a high plane of physical, mental, and moral development of each individual life rather than for an autocratic representation of the power of what Professor James called "the collectivity that owns us." Hence certain problems which have never before been clear in social consciousness are now arising to enter all debates on family stability and family success. =The Headship of the Father.=--During the middle ages of our civilization and for centuries of our later past the headship of the family rested securely in the father. Now the ideal of "Two heads in council; Two beside the hearth; Two in the tangled business of the world" is working toward democratization of the family. This leads toward a legal status and an economic adjustment in which the relation of husband and wife may be equalized toward each other and toward their children. In this new process, which is a part of the general movement we call democracy, there are special difficulties of modification peculiar to the family relation. The monogamic ideal and practice demands permanency, solidarity of interest and unity of control both within and without the family circle, at least until all the children of a marriage have reached maturity. The ideal of the rightful individuation of women, and even of minor children, works against that legal solidarity and obvious unity. The old way of obtaining these elements of family stability, a method still in vogue in many places and still defended by some persons, was to place all power of control in the hands of the husband and father, and thus make the wife a perpetual minor and leave the children wholly under patriarchal bondage. The modern ideal of women as entitled to self-ownership and self-control even when married, and the social need, just beginning to be understood, for women as for men to fully develop their powers and capacities militates against the legal headship of the father. To-day there is a demand, growing in insistency, that we accept the right of each member of the family circle to individual development and work toward its realization. There is also the demand that we retain inviolate the social means for successful family life. Some do not hesitate to say that to fulfil both these demands is not within human power. =Is It Possible to Democratize the Family?=--The witty writer who declares that "the democratization of the family is impossible, since the family is by nature an autocracy and ruled by the worst disposition in it," is not without endorsers. There are also those, more serious in intent, who claim that the family as an inherited institution is by virtue of its inmost quality inimical to the personal freedom of its members, and hence that the state, which is now standardizing child-care, must undertake the practical duties involved and leave both parents free to change marital relationship at will before or after the birth of children and maintain their separate bachelor or spinster freedom. =Mating and Parenthood.=--This latter view is stated definitely by one writer who believes that a new morality will "separate entirely, mating from parenthood" in the interest of a more effective social arrangement--"mating," or the free union of a man and a woman in sex-relationship, to be in that case "solely a private matter with which no one but the parties involved have any concern." "Parenthood," on the other hand, having relation, as it must, to society, requires, so this writer declares, from either the father or the mother, as inclination and capacity indicate, or from both parents if such should be the wish of both, a "contract with the state" binding to an upbringing of the child in accordance with accepted standards of physical, mental, moral, and vocational demands. Such a contract with the state in respect to child-care and the training of youth might give far better results, be it confessed, than follow the utterly ignorant and careless breeding of the young of the human race by those on lowest levels of thought and action. Few, however, think such a contract would meet all essentials of child-development. =What Is the Modern Ideal in Child-care?=--What is the ideal of those most advanced in knowledge of childhood's needs and most sincere in devotion to the welfare and happiness of the young? It is certainly not one which ignores or minimizes the influence of the private home or one which includes the belief that one parent, however wise or good, can do as much for a child as two parents working in harmony over a long period of years can accomplish. Nor can the influence of such a proposed separation of mating and parenthood upon the sex-relationship itself be ignored in any proposed new ways of living together. Some of the critics of the family, as we know it, may put "duty" in quotation marks when dealing with sex-relationship in the effort to put "love" on the throne, but experience shows that in all the intimate relationships of life some stay from without the individual desire is needed to restrain from impulsive change and lessen frictional expression of temperamental weakness. On reason and a sense of obligation are based all successful human arrangements, and these need social support. =Modern Ideals in Sex-relationship.=--To so separate mating and parenthood as to make it the business of no one but the two chiefly concerned when or how often such mating became a personal experience, and to make it a matter of social indifference whether one or two parents contracted with society for the right upbringing of the child or children involved (with no troublesome questions asked about either parent not in evidence in the contract), would certainly blur the social outline of the family, as we know it, to the point of legal nullification. There might, indeed, grow up in such an imagined condition a form of contract between two persons mating, as well as one between parents and state, in respect to parenthood's social responsibilities, and where such personal contract was broken redress from the courts might be sought and obtained. The effect, however, of such a plan as that proposed would inevitably be to leave the nobler, the more loving and less selfish of the men and women involved, more surely even than is now the case, the victims of the weaker, the more grasping, and the more selfish of the twain. =Ellen Key and Her Gospel.=--Indeed, the high priestess of the gospel of freedom from legal bondage in sex-relation, Ellen Key, declares that "a higher culture in love can be attained only by correlating self-control with love and parental responsibility," a correlation she believes would "follow as a consequence when love and parental responsibility were made the sole conditions of sex-relations." She also says that "in all cases where there is an affinity of souls and the sympathy of friendship, love is what it always was and always will be, the coöperation of the father with the mother in the education of the children as well as the coöperation of the mother with the father in all great social works." She thus links her ideal of true freedom for the choices of love with social obligations and hence again with what is best in inherited family life. In addition, however, to the claim that love should be freed from legal restraints in the interest of self-expression and self-development (whether or not from Ellen Key's high standpoint of parental responsibility) we have another attack upon the legal autonomy of the family, as we know it, in the demand of some radical feminists that "illegitimacy should be abolished." =What is Meant by This Demand?=--A crusade against all sex-association that may result in children born out of wedlock is understandable but is surely not the counsel of perfection in sex-control intended by those making this demand. What is meant seems rather that we should take ground against any legal distinction between the status of children born within and those born outside of legal marriage. What would that be likely to mean in respect to the monogamic family? The hard conditions attaching to both unmarried motherhood and unfathered childhood, often in the past wholly cruel and unsocial, have been much ameliorated during the last fifty years and largely through the efforts of those who held firmly to the value of legal marriage and the accepted family system in general. Laws have been passed and firmly executed to find the shirking father and bring him to marriage with the woman involved; or if such marriage is not possible or feasible to compel him to make financial contribution toward the support and education of the child. =The Legitimation of Children Born Out of Wedlock.=--If marriage occurs, then the child otherwise illegitimate may come within the legal family through appropriate laws which the most conservative now advocate. In such cases the belated acceptance within the family bond does not count seriously against the child. If marriage does not occur, and there are many cases of irregular sex-relationship where that is not the right solution of the problems involved in illegitimacy, then the unmarried mother is helped to establish herself with her child where cruel stigma and useless curiosity may be best avoided. To aid in her protection she is encouraged by many agencies and persons to take the title of "Mrs.," since that is a conventional term at best and may be given according to age (as in the older custom) or come to attach itself to motherhood as justly as to wifehood. More and more society is reaching out through law and wise philanthropy to fasten mutual responsibility for child-care and nurture upon both parents even where they are not legally married. This movement must go on until the handicap of the child born out of wedlock is reduced to its lowest possible terms.[1] =Philanthropic Tendencies Respect Legal Marriage.=--These tendencies, however, are not in the direction, intentionally at least, of making legal condition and status in respect to name, inheritance of family property from a father whose parental relationship is not legally established, and public recognition of parenthood, identical in the case of children born within and without the legal family circle. Is such an identical status and condition desirable? If so, in what way could this goal be accomplished? If men and women become fathers and mothers without benefit of clergy or state license and later marry, then the children born before and those born after the wedding ceremony may, usually do, and always should, become one flock. In many countries where legal marriage is difficult because of expense involved or distance from officials, such cases often occur and with no apparent social harm where there is real affection and true loyalty between the men and women involved. Many illegitimate conceptions are similarly taken care of by the enforced or assisted marriage of the parties concerned just before the birth of the child. In many cases, however, in our own country doubtless the great majority, the father concerned has an illicit connection with some girl quite outside his own social circle and later, as in the famous "Kallikak" case, marries a woman of his own class and has a family of recognized children. What would be advised in such a case by those advocating the legal abolition of illegitimacy? Should a searching investigation of the whole previous life of every prospective bridegroom be made, and wherever a previous relationship can be found which involves parenthood a legal prohibition work automatically to prevent a second relationship? This seems to be the plan proposed by Mrs. Edith Houghton Hooker in her recent book, _The Laws of Sex_, as in her program of "measures designed to minimize extra-marital sex relationships and to check the commercialization of vice," she lays down the principle "the common parentage of an illegitimate child to constitute marriage or if either of the parents was previously married, bigamy." This would, of course, carry out her next item of the social program, namely, "place the illegitimate child on the same plane as the legitimate," but that plane would be a very low one in the cases that would legally become those of bigamy. In the case of very unequal partners in an illicit sex-relationship, a legal union that was based on the fact of equal responsibility for a child born out of wedlock, and made a legal necessity only because of that mutual relationship, could surely be good neither for the men and women involved nor for any child or children thus legitimatized by force of arms, as it were. =Illicit Unions of Men and Women in Divergent Social Position.=--On the other hand, in cases where the illegitimate parenthood is the fruit of a union between a man of a high and a woman or girl of a very low grade of intelligence and of social position a legal prohibition which would work automatically to prevent any later and legal marriage with a woman of higher grade (because of the existence of a child by the extra-marital relation) would not be wholly satisfactory. Although such a regulation would prevent any legitimate children being born of that father, it would not necessarily legitimatize the child or children of the first relation. The social value of either of these plans is extremely doubtful. =Shall We Return to Polygamy?=--Again, in such cases as have been indicated, should the first mother be ignored and the child or children of the irregular union be adopted into the legal home of the father and added to the registered children of the second mother? Some such plan has been adopted in some countries and at certain periods of family development. Such a course undertaken now, however, in modern conditions would, in addition to the possible suffering of the adopted children, be most unjust to the unmarried mother. Or, again, would it be advised that the first mother with her child or children be accepted as a legal part of the home in which the second mother is legally installed? That would be a frank return to polygamy in cases where there have been irregular pre-marital relations outside of the monogamic bond. Or do all those who advocate the abolition of illegitimacy take the ground, which some of them definitely do, that the monogamic family is obsolete and that the state in its corporate capacity should take full charge of all children? Or, when the demand is sifted to its ultimate elements, is it merely that the unjust conditions attending the lives of children born out of wedlock must be ameliorated by a larger charity of feeling, a better understanding of human weakness and the effect of bad social conditions, and the constant effort to give all children as nearly equal chance at the best things of life as can be made possible by social feeling and wise social care? =All Children Entitled to Best Development Possible.=--If the latter is all that is meant, the phrase the "abolition of illegitimacy" is unfortunate and the real agreement among philanthropists, educators and all right-thinking people on the just claim of all children (however they may chance to arrive on this troubled planet) to the best development possible, should be emphasized in the slogan. It is well to remember that only a minority of children in any country, and in many countries a very small minority, are involved directly in this problem of the right treatment of children born outside the legal family. It would seem the part of social wisdom, therefore, in this, as in all other matters of social control, to ask ourselves the question, What rule on the whole gives the best condition for the largest number of persons?--and on the answer to that question base our law and custom, then add considerate treatment for the minority who must in the nature of things have some handicap if the rule is obeyed by the majority. =The Work of the Children's Bureau.=--To lessen this handicap, the Federal Children's Bureau in Washington, D.C., began in 1915 an inquiry into illegitimacy as a child welfare problem, causing studies to be made of laws in different States of the Union. The results of this study were published in 1919 in Bureau Publication No. 42. In 1920 conferences were held under the auspices of the Bureau to consider standards of protection which might be embodied in laws. A Committee appointed to draft suggestions arrived at and to recommend the same made a Report, which is published in Bureau Publication No. 77. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws on request formed a Committee on Status and Protection of Illegitimate Children which reported at length to the Thirty-first Annual Meeting of that body in August, 1921. This report formed the basis of discussion by legal experts, and in the meeting at San Francisco of recent date a revised program for "Uniform State Legislation for Children Born Out of Wedlock" was accepted and recommended. The title used is itself an advance upon old ideas. =The Suggested Uniform Law.=--It is less harsh to speak of "those born out of wedlock" than of the "illegitimate." Moreover, the recommendations include a suggestion that in future in all reference in legal papers or official notices to a child born out of wedlock it "shall be sufficient for all purposes to refer to the mother as the parent having the sole custody of the child or to the child as being in the sole custody of the mother, no explicit reference being made to illegitimacy except in birth certificates or records of judicial proceedings in which the question of birth out of wedlock is at issue." The general law in the States of our Union legitimatizes a child born out of wedlock by the subsequent inter-marriage of the parents. This makes it easy for men and women to repair an injury if they can marry after the birth of their child. In any case the recommendations for uniform State laws make it clear that the tendency is strong to bring legal pressure to bear upon the father of a child by an unwedded mother to pay the expenses of her confinement, to support the child under the laws requiring "support of poor relatives" or under statutes specifically obligating recognition of parental responsibility outside the marriage bond; and this obligation, it is held, should continue in recognition and enforcement until the child is sixteen years of age. Although there is strong demand on the part of many to give the child born out of wedlock the "right to inherit from the father's estate even though not legitimated," the Committee of the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws do not so recommend. Their statement concerning Liability of the Father's Estate is as follows: "The obligation of the father where his paternity has been judicially established in his lifetime or has been acknowledged by him in writing or by the part performance of his obligations is enforceable against his estate in such an amount as the court may determine, having regard to the age of the child, the ability of the mother to support it, the amount of property left by the father, the number, age, and financial condition of the lawful issue, if any, and the rights of the widow, if any." To this writer this covers the just obligation if rightly administered and by leaving still a distinction in law between the rights of children born within and those born outside the marriage bond helps to preserve the interests of the majority of children. In any case the preservation of such distinctions as are left in the milder and more humane laws advocated should help in making men and women anxious to give all the children for which they may be responsible a legal right to both parents by due process of marriage. =Have Unmarried Women a Social Right to Motherhood?=--It is not alone philanthropic interest in the welfare of a class of children now handicapped by birth outside of legal family bonds, that has issued the call to "abolish illegitimacy." The slogan is also an expression of a new demand that women fit to bear and rear children and deeply desiring that personal experience and the social obligation which it implies, should be given a social right to become mothers whether or not the fitting permanent mate be found for a life-union under the law. This demand is reaching a critical poignancy in those countries in which the Great War has added to a long-increasing "surplus of women" an astounding total of millions of women fit to marry whose rightful mates are buried on the fields of conflict. Shall these women, it is asked, be denied motherhood as well as wifehood? Shall the state lose the children these women, child-loving and noble and wise, might bear to help make good the horrible losses that war has entailed? Moreover, women everywhere are discerning the shallow inconsistency between the ideal so long preached of motherhood as woman's chief if not her only contribution to normal life and genuine social usefulness and the abnormal economic conditions and double ethical standards which doom so many women to single life. Still deeper in the hearts of women, now for the first time free to give voice to inner questionings of the inherited organization of society which has bound them to conventions written solely by men in statute and custom, rises the query, Is the present fashion of courtship and wedding favorable for installing fit women as mothers or keeping to single life those least capable of that social function? =Ellen Key's Estimate of Motherhood.=--Ellen Key expresses this feeling that fitness for a task so tremendous as parenthood is more important than any mechanism by which parenthood is secured when she says, "It is solely from one moral point of view that motherhood without marriage, as well as the right of free divorce, must be judged. Irresponsible motherhood is always sin with or without marriage; responsible motherhood is always sacred with or without marriage." And again she says, "The one necessary thing is to make ever greater demands upon the men and women who take to themselves the right to give humanity new beings." Ellen Key has also much to say about the superior value of what women can do in and through their race-service as mothers to anything they can do outside of that office, except perhaps as teachers helping mothers. Her feeling on this matter is echoed by not a few women who ask for the social right to motherhood even when denied or not desiring ordinary family life. She declares that "It is an indisputable fact that if the majority of women no longer had the calm and repose to abide at the source of life but wanted to navigate all the seas with men, the sex contrasts would resolve themselves not into harmony but into monotony. Until women come to realize this it must still be insisted that the gain to society is nothing if millions of women do the work that men could do better and evade or fulfil poorly the greater tasks of life and happiness, the creation of men and the creation of souls." To fulfil these tasks properly she insists that women require the same human rights as men but they should use their new power of choice "in the field of life, in those provinces in which imponderable values are created, values that cannot be reduced to figures and yet are the sole values capable of transforming humanity; for it is not utilities but complete human beings that elevate life." The same feeling that she expresses animates many women who desire fit women to be mothers, even if unmarried, at whatever cost to old forms of family autonomy. =Monogamic Marriage Does Not Work Inerrantly.=--Certainly no one can contend that monogamic marriage has worked inerrantly to give women who are "born mothers" a chance for their natural career, or to keep from physical motherhood within legal marriage all the women unfit for the spiritual tasks of parenthood. It is certain that in present conditions many women most needed for the transmission of both physical and social inheritance in finest form are side-tracked from the central roadway of life, and the race suffers thereby. Any custom, however, which should make it a negligible matter whether or not a permanent "houseband" were enlisted with a "housewife" in building a home in which to place a child desired must tend toward a reversion, not an advance, in social organization. Or so it seems to many students of the evolution of the family. The mother and child made the first social grouping in which love and trust could work. The father, as we know him, is a later asset of social progress. He has taken into the home many things we want now to get rid of, as, for example, a social tendency toward masculine monopolies. His genius for organization in political and economic fields has in many ways worked against the right alignment of men and women in family relations. But can we do without the father altogether, save for a brief hour of service as a "biologic necessity"? Still more, can we have for mothers that "calm and repose" which Ellen Key bespeaks for them unless they have fathers of efficiency and character to help them in their peculiar task of life-creation? Is not the alternative to the father's partnership in family life the creation of a class of "state mothers" or the social endowment of all mothers by public grant? =New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.=--In point of fact, all the demands for new freedom in respect to motherhood rest primarily upon the recognition by society-at-large of a claim upon it, financial as well as spiritual, for the benefit of all who are allowed to be mothers, in right of their own fitness for the function. And this recognition of the social value of mothers is emphasized by many who hold firmly to the monogamic family. It is not clear that any sweeping changes away from the private family should be made to meet a condition that may be changed by less drastic means. =Local Discrepancies in Numbers of Men and of Women.=--Fit men and women are not always together in the same place. To have more men in a given locality than can possibly have wives or more women than can possibly marry under the monogamic system is to derange its workings. Is it conceivable that we shall always be so stupid and clumsy in economic adjustment that such conditions shall continue, now that we are able to be more easily mobile and flexible every decade? The mere mechanical maladjustment caused by serious discrepancies in numbers of the two sexes; in cities and in older countries more women, in manufacture and pioneer agriculture more men; certainly creates serious conditions. Social engineering is needed for remedy. We may not, as so long ago was done in Virginia, transport hundreds of "attractive damsels" from crowded towns, where women most do congregate, to a new country, to be eagerly accepted wives on landing from the ships. We are told, however, that many girls are being assisted to emigrate from England to places where their service is needed and where there are so many surplus men that they do marry in short order. We shall find that nature and economic adjustments will unite to more and more even up the two sides of life. It is a sinister condition of modern life that forbids early marriage to so many men and all chance of suitable marriage to so many women who really desire that relationship with all their hearts. We must go about its remedy with open eyes, and from frankly accepted reasons, for the sake of better family conditions. =The Increasing Tendency of Women Toward Celibate Life.=--There is, however, another condition, many-sided and complex, often operating upon the persons most involved unconsciously and seldom treated with clarity or frankness, which works against the family as an institution. This condition is the increasing tendency of many of the ablest women to marry very late or to refuse to marry at all. These are not the women who feel defrauded that they are not mothers in their own person, still less that life has cheated them in not furnishing a husband. They are usually those who in youth began some specialized form of vocational service which holds their interest and leads toward pecuniary profit and social recognition. They are the modern spinsters, happy and busy, who often feed their motherly instincts by caring for other people's children and feel a sense of relief that it is a voluntary service, which they may rightly indulge in vacations, and not a bond that never releases from duty. They are the maiden aunts who spend affection and money upon the families of their relatives; who help their younger brothers and sisters through college; who take care of the aged and invalid in the family connection, and act often as stay and prop to all the weaker and more burdened of their kin. What many families would do without this type of unmarried woman is hard to tell. They are often grateful for their release from wearing domestic cares and enjoy their sense of power in general serviceableness to those they love while at the same time appreciating with keen satisfaction their own joy of craftsmanship in some chosen profession. Except for a brief hour now and then, when sister has a new baby or brother takes a new wife, they feel anything but troubled over their condition of single blessedness until, perhaps, a premonition of lonely old age stirs regret. =The Demand of Eugenists.=--From the point of view of the eugenists, who demand more fecundity on the higher and less on the lower levels of life, one of the most sinister of all influences inimical to family life is this large and increasing band of superior and happy single women who are not even discontented and make no demand for any closer touch with life than is now given them. If it is bad for the family for a large number of women unable to find suitable permanent mates to be so eager for motherhood that they claim social permission for that public service whatever their marital position, it may be still worse for the family for a large number of highly superior women to cease to care greatly for intimate comradeship with men or for the actual experience of motherhood. Many women working and living in solitary fashion until too old to risk the chances of marriage, and able to find highest comradeship and largest comfort in other women's companionship, have been so held by family burdens in youth that this result has been inevitable. Society has, therefore, a task to prevent the weight of past generations, falling now so heavily upon some young men and upon far more young women, from operating against the well-being of the generations to come. We should make it our social business to share more justly the burdens due to old age and chronic invalidism. =Women Can Not be Forced Back to Compulsory Marriage.=--It is too late in the day to pass laws forbidding women from gaining economic freedom and social power in professional careers so that all the best of them shall again be obliged to marry as a "means of support." Few persons would do this if they could. But we can and should make haste to bring together, as the State Universities of our country do so helpfully, those who should be the fathers and mothers of the future, in that period of life when love will take chances for the future. "Propinquity," the old adage declares, is the "best incentive to courtship," and it should be made to work more effectively. In our own country, eugenists may be comforted to learn, it is still fashionable to marry, even in the best families. We are told by our census that more people marry in the thousand and marry young in the United States than in other countries.[2] And although it may be claimed that the older Americans and the finest types do not reproduce so freely as social well-being requires, there is much hope that movements of population, so much freer here than elsewhere among the educated and competent, will lead to better sex-adjustments and to the absorbing of more first-class women in family life. =A Few Believe in a "Third Sex."=--There are those, however, although but a few, who do not view with alarm the modern increase of unmarried women of types most needed for motherhood. These believe that in the present time, and perhaps in a long future, our complex social needs cannot be met by holding the best blood and breeding within the family bond, but that there must be a reserve of celibates, a few men and many women, to carry on the school and to work for social amelioration and social progress. This point of view, which has been sometimes characterized as "defense of a third sex," is based on two premises: namely, first, that all of a married woman's time and strength throughout her whole adult life must go into strictly family service in order for the family to be maintained; and, second, that those men and women who specialize in some vocation in such extreme degree that they cannot marry and have children are thereby, by reason of that celibate concentration, better able to function socially in their chosen work. It is the object of this book to disprove both these assumptions. =Most Social Students Advocate Marriage.=--Celibate concentration upon a specific task, however valuable that task may be, is open, we contend, to serious social dangers, as history amply proves. And family life has now such varied and efficient aids from commerce, manufacture, educational provisions in school and recreation centres, in summer camps and special organizations of youthful energy toward social serviceableness, that men and women can marry and rear families, if they really desire so to do, more easily than ever before, provided they are willing to pay the price of simplicity in the home and in individual mastery of the technic of new ways of living. What is needed for the best development of the family under modern conditions is not more celibates, men and women of high ability and noble consecration to undertake wholesale service in its behalf, but rather that more of the best and the best-balanced men and women be absorbed, to necessary degree, and at the right period of life, in the task of actual transmission of their quality and tendency through the living tissues of the social organism in the vital process of parenthood. What is needed to secure that result is not only a new ideal of social obligation but also, and definitely, such skill in economic and domestic adjustments as will more and more leave a margin of strength and energy for a chosen vocation not wholly mortgaged to family uses, in the case of women as of men. It is quite time that some of the rightly honored "maiden aunts of society," as our leading spinsters have been called, used some of their wisest thought and their most self-sacrificing service toward securing such economic and domestic adjustments as will work toward the diminution of their own kind! Again it must be insisted that what society-at-large now needs most is not celibates, however wise and good, working along one line, without close touch with the main experiences of birth and death and common social relationship, but rather the deepening and broadening of common human relations through the reaction of the wise and good upon all the fundamental ties that bind the race and the generations together. The loss to society of those who might have been fathers and mothers and chose to be so devoted to religious orders as to stand apart from their race-life is an admitted calamity in the view of most people who study mediæval history. =Dangers of Extreme Specialization.=--Moreover, the tendency now in all departments of industry and professional service is toward a specialization which often defeats its own end and lessens rather than increases the usefulness of its own department. "We want not workers," says Emerson, "but men working." We want not specialists in the extreme sense but all-round students devoting themselves to one sphere of research or activity with a constant sense of its relation to all other spheres of thought and action. Particularly in social service we want not so much those who in early life specialize in one or another form of social pathology or social therapeutics but rather those mature and rounded in personal experience who elect some particular service with full realization of its place in the network of common human relationship. Especially is this true of all social work which deals directly with individuals. The higher development of the family and the wider range of social service, therefore, alike, demand that a much greater proportion of the moral and intellectual élite of the race pay their debt to the generations through the family. =Industrial Exploitation of Childhood and Youth.=--There is another condition of modern life which must be noted as inimical to the stability and the efficiency of the family, a condition which works from the bottom upward through the lower levels of society as others which have been noted work from the top down through the higher levels. It is the condition which leads toward the misuse of young girls in wage-earning tasks. There is a difference of opinion among the wisest in regard to the social usefulness of forms of protective labor legislation for adult women which are not shared by men. There can be none in respect to the social harm of using the vitality, the charm, the strength, the happiness of minors, especially of potential mothers, to carry on the processes of machine-dominated systems of manufacture and business. It takes so little physical strength or mental power to become a cog in these rapidly revolving wheels. It means such a waste to thus use the years of youth, meant for education and development and meant to attract toward successful family life rather than away from it. The wrong and injustice of child-labor is equal for both sexes and no law can be too stringent or too severely enforced against it. The social waste of using youth exclusively in wage-earning pursuits can easily be proved, in the case of girls, to extend to years older than in the case of boys. The family cannot be maintained in stable condition, and certainly can not progress in social value, unless the majority of young girls are given the right attitude toward it and time to prepare for its opportunities and responsibilities. If, as is generally now believed, the legal majority and voting age for boys and girls should be the same, namely, twenty-one years, then the girls, as potential mothers, must have a distinct and specialized protection up to that legal majority from all that harms health, prevents safeguarded recreation, or turns life-currents away from the home to the factory. The death-rate of babies when mothers work in factories or shops with no provision for special rest is one testimony to the social improvidence of our present industrial use of older women. The life-long invalidism of many women, the childlessness of multitudes, the statistics of home conditions revealed by Children's Courts furnish testimony of like character. The unknown toll of loss of personal aptitude for family life leading to broken homes, or to hopeless struggles against invasions by poverty of the right of common men and women to a home, are proof positive that a change in economic conditions is demanded in the interest of family life. =Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils.=--These social evils connected with child-labor and the neglect in the industrial world of youth and its needs are not to be mended by helps to individuals alone. More radical measures are required for the protection of society's most precious asset, the health, happiness and leisure of all its children. "Education," says the ancient sage, "is the ladder that every child must climb in order to become all that he is meant to become; and therefore children are made unfit for other employments in order that they may have leisure to learn." To this may be added, the type of education that fits the average girl for high usefulness as a housemother is an absolute need if the average home life is to be made a centre of freedom and of happiness. Those, therefore, who are working against child-labor and against the unrestricted use of mothers of young children and of potential mothers, in wage-earning industry, are working directly, and with great power, for the preservation and stability of the family. Those also who are working through the formal education of the schools for the insertion of study and practice along lines of home-making are making a complementary and valuable contribution toward the inner unity and the outer success of the family. =The Attack upon the Family by Reactionaries.=--One more and most important attack upon the family as it exists to-day must be noted in this list of elements in modern society which work against this inherited institution. It is an attack which, however mistaken, is ostensibly, and often honestly in intent, a movement for the protection and improvement of the family order. It is the effort to turn the history of that institution back upon itself and make the family again, as in the past, a legal unity with one representative, the husband and father, through whom alone the wife and children have distinct relationship to society-at-large. It is an effort to return to mediæval thought and practice and to reaffirm in legal outline the headship of the husband and father, the permanent minority of the wife and mother, and the complete subordination of the children. It is even an effort to rescind such laws as have given married women independent contract-power and property rights, the equal guardianship of their children, the full use of educational provisions, and individual relationship to the state through the franchise. Voices are not wanting to insist that only through a return to this old domestic order of kingship of the man can the family be preserved. A recent book claiming intellectual authority and endorsed by many men in high positions states this opinion clearly, and seeks to strengthen it by the use of scientific half-truths used not scientifically but as a support for a metaphysical theory of masculine and feminine quality. Every step that has been taken from the male despotism within marriage and parenthood has met such appeals to stay the progress of democracy toward the hearth-stone lest the family order be wholly destroyed. Most people, however, believe that the steps which have been taken away from that family despotism are too many to be retraced. Women will not be put back into perpetual legal minority when once they have become adults under the law. They will not consent to lose property rights and the power of guardianship over their own children. They will not consent to their own disfranchisement or to the loss of opportunities of education and of economic independence. It is as futile as it is stupid to expect that in this matter history will go backward. To oppose measures already accomplished which are in the direction of democratic adjustment of social relations, even by those who think certain measures "a reform against nature," is not only idle in effect but shows that the opposer is out of touch with "whatsoever forces draw the ages on." There are many elements in the restlessness of a period too rapidly changing to be always sure of its ground that needlessly confuse the issues of family obligation and personal loyalty to accepted tasks. There are many tendencies toward extreme individualism which need balancing by clearer ideals of social serviceableness. Especially is this true in the case of women somewhat intoxicated by the belated freedom and power which came to them after too prolonged a struggle against inherited bonds. There are many economic and educational requirements yet to be met in order to protect and maintain the accepted ideal of monogamic marriage. But of all the ideas inimical to the family in our modern life, the demand for its return to aristocratic and outgrown forms is the most absurd and the most harmful. All history shows that those who try to put a law, a political system, an economic method, a rule of morality, or a religious ideal back into a form discarded by the majority of those who constitute the ethical and intellectual élite directly work toward the chaos of revolution. To try to force the family ideal or its legal bond or social outline back into the patriarchal form is to do the utmost possible to bring on a catastrophic struggle between the new and the old. The evil wrought by such reactionary teaching is in the exact ratio of its power of influence. Whatever we may try to do, as balance, through evolutionary methods at points where changes in form have not been as yet made safe and sane by required adjustments of the individual life to the new order, we should make haste to attempt. No person, however, who is in actual touch with the movement of social progress can hope to turn any great democratic tendency back upon itself and "make that which hath been as if it were not." No truly just person will wish to do so. =The Prevalence of Divorce.=--Many urge reactionary attitudes toward present family ideals and practice because of the divorce problem. The omission of this from the list of causes for the modern instability of the family and for its too frequent lack of success may have been already noted and condemned by the reader of these pages. The fact of divorces, however, whether they be many or few, is to the writer a symptom, not a cause, the legal expression of a social disease, not the disease itself. Bad diagnosis, or inadequate treatment on the basis of a symptom, may increase the disease; and the facts concerning divorce are of so serious a nature that a separate chapter has been assigned to them under the heading: The Broken Family. The prevalence of divorce, however, it must here be said, demonstrably proves two things--one that men and women now feel themselves at moral and social liberty to seek divorce when longer living together seems to them intolerable, and that women are using their new freedom and economic independence to make marriage conditions more to their liking. They are setting a standard respecting desirable husbands, not always wisely, often selfishly, but in the long run and large way to ends of greater equality of demand in the marriage relation. The tendency on the whole is toward a higher conception of what marriage should be and what it should do for both parties in the bond. The statistics of illegitimacy, of commercialized prostitution, of venereal disease, of infant mortality, of early death or life-long invalidism of wives and mothers, of marital unhappiness and parental neglect which are found by honest investigation in states and nations in which no divorce is allowed do not lead to the belief that legal permanence of the marriage bond secures socially helpful family life. On the contrary, such facts already show that divorce in the civilization we have inherited comes as a result of bad conditions which worked infinite harm before divorces could be obtained. =Old Institutions Need New Sanctions.=--We must now ask of any laws concerning any institution not what did ancient "folk-ways" ordain but what do modern conditions require? No form of human association, however old and whatever its contribution to the social inheritance, but is on trial to-day before all free minds. That trial must be openly conducted. No "secret diplomacy" to reinstate old ideals or laws against the common belief; no "boring from within" to propagate new schemes the object of which is to gratify personal wish without regard to public good; but "open covenants" with the future "openly arrived at" in an ethically consecrated present. What shall be our guide in such a free and frank consideration of the present and the future of the family? =The Monogamic Family Justifies Itself by Social Usefulness.=--In the first place, one must accept the fact that it is presumptive evidence of the continued worth and value of any inherited institution if it can be proved that it has served vital social needs which still operate and that no other existing institution is able or ready to take its place for the special social service which it was designed to render. To the present writer it seems clear that the monogamic family holds its title clear to social preservation on both these points. The family preceded individualistic marriage as we know it and was developed for the purpose of giving to oncoming generations a share in the race-life, whatever the ideals concerning that race-life may have been at any period of social order. Even in its present undeveloped form, with its cramping limitations of past autocracy and with its crude attempts at an as yet half-understood democracy, we may well count the private monogamic family as a priceless inheritance and work toward its better organization and larger service to social life. No other institution yet developed has shown in history or now shows in present life a worthy substitute for its functioning in child-care and child-development. Many also believe that no form of sex-association secures such possibilities of moral discipline and personal satisfaction as does the guarded relationship of monogamic marriage. =The Inherited Family Order Demands New Social Adjustments.=--There are, therefore, no reasons for welcoming the decline of the private family. There are many that demand imperatively some adjustments in inner comradeship and in mechanical arrangements surrounding the household, in order to hold firm its spiritual values during changes in social conditions. How far these changes of detail may go or what will be the end of some present clearly outlined tendencies no one can prophesy. The duty of the hour is, however, to set this treasure of social inheritance in a clear light; to show its actual and potential social value as at present perceived; and to try by all simple measures open to our intelligence to aid in its evolution toward a more perfect expression of the love of man and woman each for the other and of the protection and care of both for the children of that love. The basic test of all proposed changes in any inherited institution is from henceforward, we must believe, that which inheres in the spiritual essence of democracy. What is that essence of democracy which must be applied as test within the family, as within the state and within the industrial order? It is the fundamental belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the equal right of each and all to personality. No man, as in the older days, must be obliged to be husband and father, but may choose, if he deems it essential to his own being, to remain in a solitary path outside the current of the generations. No woman must be obliged to live solely to serve a family. She, too, has right to self-development in some chosen way. No married couple must be forced to add to the children already here; they may justly be protected in living and working together in some comradeship that has no family limitations save those of mutual loyalty and mutual service. No child is to be justly held so much under family control as to have his nature stifled or warped, and no child shall be made a pecuniary asset to the family regardless of his own needs. No family autonomy is henceforth to be secured by fiat of law enthroning one "head" as the legal despot or economic ruler. The family must be democratized in that sense in which each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live solely for others' service or to have his or her value estimated in terms of contribution to other lives, but all to seek the utmost perfection of individual life as a contribution to the common life; this is the democratic ideal. =The Family as an Aid to Spiritual Democracy.=--There seems to be no other inherited institution in which this spiritual essence of democracy can be so clearly and so well realized as it may be and to-day often is in the private monogamic family. The permanent and successful family offers a unique centre of personal development at the heart of all other social groups. Founded as it is in selective affection, and in aim at least permanently secure, it offers a refuge in every distress and a help in every trouble of each of its members. There was never a time when such a mutual resistance of a small and intimate group to the complex pressure of the world upon each individual life was more sorely needed. The confusing social currents of this changing era set free from ancient moorings many who can find no clear chart for newer voyaging in thought and action. These need what the family more than any other inherited institution can still give--something of the simplicity of the blood bond and something of the strength of clan membership, and more of the partial affection which sets each personality in its best light and gives each a chance to better its own world achievement in the appreciation of its dearest. =The Family the Nursery of Personality.=--The family in this sense of comforting and developing the individual nature has as yet no rival. Says Browning, "Every man has two soul sides--one to face the world with and one to show a woman when he loves her." There are those who blame the family relationship for its exclusiveness and partiality, and there are countless instances where the ego is so extended into the blood group that selfish disregard of all others becomes a mark of family affection. Yet is it profoundly true that just as the baby needs some one to whom its little life is all-important in order to gain strength of will to achieve its difficult beginnings of consciousness, so all of us need a small group in which our well-being and our happiness are of greater concern than those of any one person can be to all the world of persons. No truly enlightened person believes that he or she is as wise or as good as the best friend thinks; and no truly enlightened person believes that the affection of one's family is a just gauge of the value of one's life to the world. We all need, however, and children particularly need, some inner circle of love which comes to us by virtue simply of our being, to help us when we make excursions of moral and affectional adventure in the world outside, in a world in which we are valued only for what we can achieve. =Life, Not Theory About Life, Teaches Us.=--Let no one believe, however, that any theory about or claim for the family really indicates its value. We live before we can interpret our life, and what is already achieved by those in the forward ranks shows what all may yet become. We are not left to chance or imagination or to argument or affirmation of principles to visualize the family as it is or as it may be. We may look about us and see what it is and can do for men and women. Few, perhaps, are standing on the heights of their own being when they build the family altar. Yet in the love and sacrifice of plain and unknown fathers who cheerfully toil for their loved ones, in the patient endurance of simple-hearted mothers who give so much of their lives in ready service to husband and family, in the frolic-joy and eager activity of ordinary children whose only dower is the free and happy service of their parents, is the fruit and the promise of the human family. =The Moral Elite in the Modern Family.=--Above all, we have to-day a growing number who live in the spirit of a true marriage and a noble cradle of infancy and show by actual example what the family is meant to be. These prophesy a marriage that demands each of the other that a perfect life shall perfect their love. These give a new pattern and type of parenthood, woven of the tears and joy, the aspiration and the service of those who call children from the storehouse of universal life, not in response to careless passion but in the solemn joy of creative purpose. These are the men and women who shall yet build from the home as the heart's centre, a wiser school, a more righteous state, a juster industry, and a purer worship of the ideal. It is in the new comradeship of men and women on all the levels of life that such auspicious promise of better social life is found. It is on the new basis of reverence of each personality for every other, not only for the person that other is but for the person he or she may become if given fair chance for best achievement, that the new social ethics rests. It is on that basis that we may build a faith assured and strong that the family will not be lost in the time that needs it most but will shape itself to finer issues and more useful service. QUESTIONS ON THE FAMILY 1. What has been the general trend of development in Matrimonial Institutions? 2. Has the monogamic family, as now outlined and legalized, any elements inherently inimical to a democratic order of society? If so, what are those elements? If not, what stand should be taken in regard to proposals for fundamental changes in the inherited family system? 3. If the inherited family system should be preserved and maintained, what, if any, changes in form, or practical adjustments to the new freedom of woman and new ideals of education of youth, are demanded for its present stability and future success? 4. In _Taboo and Genetics: A Study of the Biological, Sociological, and Psychological Foundation of the Family_, by M.M. Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Blanchard, it is claimed that "The chief interest of society should be in the eugenic value of the children born into it." Is that true, and if so, how can this social interest be best excited and maintained? 5. Dr. Edward T. Devine advocates social insurance for sickness and widowhood, but not out-door relief or widow's pensions; also advocates physical investigation and home visiting for school children, but not school lunches, eye-glasses or clothing as a free gift. His conclusion is that "the state should enforce a minimum standard of child-care, but the expense of providing it should fall on parents or on some insurance fund to which parents have contributed." Is this sound American doctrine? If so, should proposed legislation be gauged by it? 6. Read chapter, "The Family," in _A Social Theory of Religious Education_, by G.A. Coe. Is the emphasis laid upon equality in this statement justified? FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Children Born Out of Wedlock_, by George B. Mangold, Ph.D., University of Missouri, 1921. [2] See Chapter V, "The Home," in _The Normal Life_, by Edward T. Devine. CHAPTER II THE MOTHER "Strength and dignity are her clothing; She openeth her mouth with wisdom; And the law of kindness is on her tongue. She looketh well to the ways of her household, And eateth not the bread of idleness. The heart of her husband trusteth in her; Her children rise up and call her blessed; Give her of the fruit of her hands; And let her works praise her in the gates." --PROVERBS. "A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller betwixt life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect woman, nobly plann'd, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still and bright, With something of an angel light." --WORDSWORTH. "Yet in herself she dwelleth not, Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot; Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her sunshine share." --LOWELL. "I loved the woman; there was one through whom I loved her, one Not learned, save in gracious household ways, Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No angel, but a dearer being, interpreter between the gods and men. "Happy he with such a mother! Faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay." --TENNYSON. =Antiquity of the Mother-instinct.=--The mother-instinct of protection of offspring, of care of weakness and of sacrifice for the young, came to high power before the human was reached in the scale of beings. It must never be forgotten that humbler sisters set the fashion of motherhood's devotion too long ago to reckon the time and in types of organism too remote to be always recognized as kin to the human beings we know to-day. This is the greatest and most racially useful of all the biological assets stored up for us in the prehuman struggle toward what we now call civilization. Nor should we fail to give full value to the testimony of primitive human life that the mother and child formed the first social group within the loose association of the herd. It was the first group to develop, by virtue of its conscious relationship, the sense of trust and the habit of service of the stronger to the weaker, thus leading toward mutual aid within an area of affection and good-will. These facts give basic assurance that mother-love will last, no matter what changes in form of its expression may be called for by changes in social order. The reason why the relationship of mother and child was able thus to lead the way toward social organization for the common good is obvious. The intimate physical tie, the easily understood claim of the child upon its mother, the prolongation of human infancy instituting a habit of continuous service of the young and hence a tendency toward a settled home and peaceful industries, all made it easy for woman to become care-taker of children. These also made it easy for the early social order to hold mothers to the task and, in growing measure, protect them in it. What have been the recognized essentials in that care-taking of motherhood? What are the permanent elements in the mother's devotion to offspring which persist under all changes in social conditions? =The Recognized Essentials in Child-care.=--The more important items in a program of child-care may be summed up as follows: First--Protection of infancy and childhood from threatening dangers. Second--Providing food, clothing, and shelter for the young. Third--Drilling children in physical habits and manner of personal behavior demanded by the family rule of time and place of birth. Fourth--Teaching the child to talk, to walk, to obey, to imitate. Fifth--Interpreting to each newcomer the group morals which govern the family and the educational process in the period and locality into which he is born. Sixth--For ages untold, the more formal education of all girls and of all little boys in the folk-lore, the vocational skill, the ways of living together and the methods of social arrangement both within and without the tribe or state or nation into which they were born. Are any of these essential elements of motherhood's ancient devotion to child-life lifted wholly from her obligation? Careful study of the family needs and conditions, and the effect upon them of modern social control and social organization, indicates that not one of these ancient obligations is taken bodily from the modern mother's service. =The Protective Function.=--The protective function has indeed been considered for many centuries peculiarly the father's duty. Ever since man was bound to family obligations he has been charged with repelling enemy attacks upon the group of which his own family was a part and with the task of standing guard over wife and child as against all physical dangers. Man has developed under this social pressure a sense of chivalry and a tendency to "save women and children first" which give noble examples of courage and self-sacrifice to fire the imagination of each new generation. Has the father-office developed such many-sided and adequate protective service to childhood that mothers have been able to "lay down their arms" and rest content in the knowledge that their children are shielded from every danger? It seems not. In the days when women were ignorant of all outside their homes they may have felt so secure because not understanding the cause of many family tragedies. In the days when they had no power to change conditions affecting the home from without they may have felt excused from the protective function of early motherhood, since men had taken over physical defense and economic support and the relationship of the family group to the social whole. No open-eyed woman in a country giving women social, economic, and political power can so think to-day. It is a far cry from the savage mother, beating back some beast of the jungle or the plain, to the modern mother whose physical protection and that of her children is amply provided not alone by the husband and father concerned but by organized society with its police power, its courts and laws. The dangers that threaten child-life to-day in the more civilized communities are not the same that threatened the young of the herd-pack or the early lives of primitive men and women. Then the mother had sometimes to defend her child against its own father, especially her girl-babies against the social fiat of death executed by the father's will. Ancient folk-lore and myth show us many a struggle, intense and cruel, between mother-love and this group-sentence of death upon some of its young. In case of war also the ancient mother had to protect her virgin daughters against outrage and capture, albeit so feebly and to so disastrous an end. And war, since it is always and by its nature must be a return to savage conditions, now leads to the sacrifice of women and children in much the ancient manner; and faced by its horrors at close touch, the mother-instinct essays the old task to the same bitter defeat. In peaceful periods, however, in the long ages when the father-rule was a despotism tempered only by natural affection and the skill of women in securing advantages while simulating submission, mothers had large use of their protective function in easing family discipline and in gaining relief from harsh conditions affecting childhood. Theirs was then no open fight for the well-being of their offspring, and often not a wise effort to that end, but ancient song and story all show that childhood and youth depended upon the mother-love in crises of family experience and that without such refuge many young lives would have been utterly sacrificed. =Social Elements in Modern Protection of Children.=--To-day the dangers to which babies and children are exposed are more subtle in form and more complex in action. They are less within than without the average home. They are those that give the high death-rate of infants, the crippled limbs of children, the weakness of body and defectiveness of mind and feebleness or perversion of moral nature that make so many human beings unequal to life's demands. They are the dangers, personal and social, summed up in the antitheses of "health" and "disease," of "normal" and "abnormal." Not that the dangers so indicated are new but rather that we are newly aware of them. Not that savage or early civilized life had conditions more favorable to health and normality but that the easier modern conditions save alive many who in harsher times would have died in babyhood. Moreover, we are beginning at last to set a standard, in ever-clearer outline, of what is health and of what is normality in physical, mental, and moral human life. Moreover, we are seeing as never before that the dangers that beset the child to-day are not those from which the mother alone, or the individual father and mother working together, can adequately protect. They are dangers that only society can prevent and that society alone can abolish. =Women's Leadership in Social Protection.=--Why, then, do we say that the protective function of individual motherhood is still demanded and still a large part of the modern mother's obligation? Because she is to-day the one most clearly required, in our own country at least, to summon the social forces to lessen or abolish those dangers to which children are exposed. The action of the solitary, primitive mother fighting off the despoiler of her child does not much resemble the banding together of modern women by the hundreds and by the thousands to abolish typhoid fever in some city in which it has become endemic through the greed of manufacturers who pollute the water supply. It is, however, the same spirit in both; and in the modern instance it wakes, first, the fathers to their protective duty, and then the guardians of the public health, and then educates the public mind, and at last accomplishes the desired result through appropriate laws, well enforced. It is a long step from the indirect "influence," the often deceitful cunning, the appeal to sex-attraction and the pleading of weakness by which for ages women sought to protect their children against harsh punishments, their daughters against marriage to those whom they loathed, and their sons to apprenticeship to work they could not choose, to the openly exercised power of the modern mother. In the days when wives and mothers had no legal rights which society was bound to respect, appeal was woman's only weapon; now the modern mother has command of her protective function and exercises it fearlessly. The same spirit is in all the long process of change, however, and women to-day banding openly together and joining also with men on equal terms, to secure laws protecting children from cruelty even against their own parents; to raise the "age of consent" in order to prevent the unwitting moral suicide of little girls; to sweep the streets free from vicious allurements that young boys may be preserved from debauchery and disease; to place trustees of society's power of public protection as chaperones in every place of moral danger; these modern women are near of kin to all motherhood of any past. So also are those of the same spirit as the ancient mother who band themselves together, again with men on equal terms, but oftenest, perhaps, with men whom their own social interest has summoned to the task, for the establishment of "Health Centres", of adequate and efficient clinics and dispensaries; for securing necessary education and care of mothers before the birth of their children, and for mothers and babies alike needing good, fresh air, rest and comfort after birth; for the raising of standards of physical well-being all along the line of life from youth to age. The ancient mother was too ignorant and had too little power to save her children and family from physical ills, but she did her best. The modern mother is able to learn about requirements and to act with power for the better health and better training of every child. Is she always ready for and equal to the task? At least we can claim this for the mother devotion in modern times, that it shows, and in exact proportion of its increasing social power, an alertness and a moral earnestness in all that concerns the welfare of children that have perpetuated and extended the protective functions of society as no other agency has done. Much of the modern legislation and social work directed toward the physical and moral safeguarding of the young has been instituted and is carried out in detail largely by women. The passage of the so-called Maternity Bill by our National Congress, at the recognized instigation of women of the United States, and the call it makes for a large staff of women workers to carry out its provisions, is a case in point. This protective work for mothers and babies is not always done by women who are themselves mothers. Perhaps too often its details are in charge of those lacking deep experience of life, and hence not able to interpret new laws of social control to parents of ancient ideals and backward social culture. But women in any case are called for in large numbers to translate the ancient personal duty of protective care of the young in terms of social obligations. =The Provision of Food, Clothing, and Shelter.=--The second recognized ancient duty of mothers is in respect to the provision of food, clothing, and shelter for the young. This duty has undergone great changes of method during the last century, and in the large centres of population has altered almost past recognition. These changes seem to many to minimize the individual mother's responsibility in these matters to the vanishing point. It is indeed an almost immeasurable distance from the primitive mother scratching the soil with her sharpened stick, her baby bound to her bended back, in order to plant a few seeds for a tiny harvest to save the life of her child when the hunt should be poor, to the modern mother whose food supply for her family comes to the table from all parts of the earth at the call of her telephone. Is the modern mother, then, released from all obligations as to that food supply? It is a long step also from the primitive mother making slowly with her thorn needle the only garment her child may wear, and even a long step from the home spinning, weaving and dyeing of later handicraft, to the modern use of the "ready-made" shop and the division of all garment-making into innumerable specialties of labor. Is the modern mother thereby released from care concerning the family clothing? For the modern housing of families do we not all have to depend upon the architect, the builder, the real estate broker, the speculator in land, the laws concerning boundaries, taxes and title deeds, rent and landlords' powers, and press all one upon another for a chance for a home when we elect to live where many other people want also to live? Is, then, the shelter of the family no longer the mother's care? =The Woman in Rural Life.=--The country-woman, dealing at first hand with rural conditions, has many of the same problems of personal devotion in the provision of food, clothing, and shelter with which her ancient ancestor struggled. She has, it is true, "scientific farming" of men to raise the harvests that ancestor's heroic but feeble efforts could not secure. She has mechanical and commercial aids as housemother such as the primitive woman never imagined. She has been released from much of the drudgery which burdened her grandmother in the domestic stage of industry. She is under social protection such as no previous woman enjoyed in the solitary household of the past. And in the United States the Federal Government is offering her aids.[3] It is, however, true that the housemother in rural communities still feels many of the obligations of the ancient woman. The three-meal-a-day routine, the actual preparation of raw material of food for the table, the personal offices of housework, washing, ironing, mending, making, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, in all their varied details, keep her in active sympathy with the past. This fact furnishes the main reason why "Women's Columns" and "Magazines for Women" reach such large circulation in rural districts, where they help toward lessening the domestic burden by showing how to carry it more easily. The farm woman, however, is moving, many thousand strong, with men as many, to mitigate the isolation of the solitary household, to bring the home nearer to the neighbors, the school, the church and the store, by massing rural homes in villages and forming the habits of the men-folk to go further afield for their own work. This movement, which is of all social reforms most needed because affecting larger classes than any other and also because affecting the basic industry of all countries, that of agriculture, is working toward making farm-life once more attractive to young men and capable of winning young women to the life of the farmer's wife. Meanwhile, the higher forms of social organization possible in cities and in closely settled towns and villages are working to lessen house-keeping burdens to an unprecedented degree. It is noticeable that all schemes for so specializing woman's work and so easing the domestic burden as to make, as one writer puts it, "the home a rest place for women as for men," have their imaginary seat in great cities or closely built suburbs. The farm-women we know can combine and coöperate to a greater extent than they now do and the town and city women may take far better advantage of the agencies of household assistance now at their doors. How far this movement to relieve the home of household work may go we do not know. =Modern Demand for Standardization.=--Is there any plan yet proposed, however, which can relieve the mother of her primary and ancient obligation to see that her family is well nourished, suitably clothed and healthfully sheltered? Some one must attend to the needs of each family in these vital particulars which underlie all problems of public and private health. Shall the state do it? So far the experience of state institutions and even of private "homes" do not encourage hope along that line. So far the physical and affectional needs of children and youth, and of husbands and wives, and of fathers and mothers have not been met by any substitute for the private home. And in the private home, under any plan, there must go on certain processes which have to cost some one member of the family a great deal of thought, much personal effort and constant attention. For most families in average condition that person is naturally the housemother. If the husband and father is the chief or only wage-earner in "gainful occupations," then his health and strength are of primary concern to all the family and must be secured by adequate and healthful provision of food and clothing, and the home must give him what he vitally needs for maintaining power of economic service to his family. If the mother, also, is a wage-or salary-earner we have the dictum of economists that her inherited and usual place in the family machinery must be filled, if at all successfully, by trained and congenial helpers at a cost in present conditions prohibitive for the average family income. The estimate of Mr. Taber, in his excellent book, _The Business of the Household_, is that unless for causes of illness or special emergency "no family having an income of less than three thousand dollars has any right to maintain a maid." This estimate seems not only economically correct but shows why so few families have incomes that can release the housemother from housework. It also shows why only the exceptionally trained and competent vocational worker, if a married woman and mother of young children, can earn enough to release herself from the miscellaneous tasks of the private household without loss to the family treasury. The easing of the burden of housework, almost unbearable as it has been and responsible, as we have good reason to believe, for much ill-health of women and much unhappiness in marriage, is coming fast and from quite other directions than is often perceived. The commercial aids of wholesale preparation of food and clothing, and the new fashions in house-building and household management are alike working toward such a reduction of private household service as may enable the average woman to meet the family needs, even where there are several young children, if she is strong in body and trained in efficient ways of working, and yet have considerable time left for other activities. The apartment house has set the fashion of simplification and reduction of necessary personal service in the home. The apartment house, with its continuous hot water, its ready heat and its relief from care of sidewalks, halls and stairs, and with its hour-service at command is obviously becoming a favorite place to live in. Especially do women like it. The multiple house, however, does not seem the best place for children after the earliest months of infancy, and in many such houses they are openly "not wanted." The multiple house has also many disadvantages from the social side in the lack of home associations which support family affection. They are also for the most part in localities where people are brought together without plan or friendship and hence can not cultivate that neighborliness which, so far in the history of the race, has been a nursery of the community spirit. =The Apartment House and the Family.=--The apartment house seems to be the best place for those families in which all the adult members are busy at some vocation, and in which the children are of age to profit by educational opportunities usually found only in cities. In such families the burdens of the person who is in command of the family comfort as to food and raiment and house-keeping are reduced to the lowest terms. If to the usual apartment house provisions for aids to the housemother are added, what is now offered in some places, namely, the "Auto-Service for Meals," whereby the principal meal, at least, the dinner, is brought to the door ready to place on the table and all cooking dishes hard to wash are returned to the centre of supply to be prepared for another service, then, indeed, can all the members take turns in rendering the small offices for family comfort still required and each go about his or her special vocation at will. This seems to be the goal of many progressive minds, although personal taste is seldom satisfied by "coöperative" cooking. It must be remembered by all, that the sort of family pictured above has in it no children of ages requiring freedom of motion and constant attention (unless, indeed, "the boarding-school in the country" for all over four or five years is contemplated). It has in it no aged whose needs in diet and in physical comfort vary from the usual. It has in it no chronic invalids and no convalescents, no blind or lame or specially weak requiring special help. It is for the particular benefit, at least, of families of a particular type, of which the cities, with their more varied facilities, contain an unusual proportion. For the family of the ordinary type, with its many differing needs and its variety of claim upon some one person for its central direction and service, the various aids from without which have been indicated serve rather to relieve from excessive burdens than to remove altogether the special obligations of the woman-head of the family. Moreover, the time left to the average housemother from the old housework by the new helps in that work is, in part at least, mortgaged in advance to social effort to make the new commercial aids to family service actual helps and not hindrances to family health and comfort. The food supply drawn upon must be sharply investigated lest it contain deleterious substances or be denuded of nourishing quality. The ready-made clothing must be bought with knowledge and constant vigilance against cheating in material or in construction or in sins of fashion against health and beauty. The labor-saving devices of every sort must be put to intelligent test and require specific training for most efficient use. The family budget must be more carefully planned and more heroically maintained at prudent levels. The public service of markets, transportation facilities and functions of "middlemen" must be understood and controlled as never before. Above all, the pressure of uniformity must be resisted if the offered supply of the essentials of life prove inadequate to the deepest needs, or the scale of living be too ambitiously set by the housing facilities adjusted to the ideas and claims of landlords rather than to the needs of family life. Hence we may say that the old forms of effort by which mothers fed and clothed and sheltered their children led directly to absorption of interest, energy and conscientious labor within the house. The new forms of effort by which these essentials of healthful and comfortable living are secured lead directly to all manner of coöperative social adjustments of supply to demand. The standard of demand, however, let it never be forgotten, is made and maintained within the intimate family circle itself, and the personal intelligence and ethical maturity of the housemothers, who form the major purchasing class of every civilized community, determine that standard. For that great enterprise of high standardization the same personal devotion to the central demands of life is required in the average modern woman which made the ancient mother so great a leader in primitive culture. The new aids to the housemother's task may give her a better chance than any women ever had before to see the real social significance of the personal offices of home life. The poets have seen it all through the centuries and have pictured the myth goddesses bringing the cup and the bread and the fruit and weaving the web of ceremonial or of simple garment in household poetry. All human need for sustenance and the nurture of our physical being has made the wife the loaf-giver and the mother a nourisher of the young, and as such artists have portrayed her. We may say "our father-land," but we always say "our mother-earth." To those who see clearly the value of the ancient family rite of the meal alone together, to which it may well be every member of the family has made a distinct contribution; to those to whom the private table still appeals and who still appreciate the taste and quality of every purchase made for each individual member of the intimate group (things taking time and thought most often of the mother), the individual home has meanings that are not lost but rather are growing in spiritual importance as the drudgery of the household is lessened. =New Uses of Electric Power.=--To-day another great contribution to the spiritual value of the private household ministrations is offered in the new uses of electric power. Already the "servantless house" is widely advertised. Already the grave difficulties in household adjustment made by the growing unwillingness of competent girls and women to do anything in the households of strangers, and thereby giving rise to the serious "servant-girl problem" for people of limited means, are being mitigated by the new devices of this modern wizard of electricity. It seems to many of us that had this magician been discovered before the invention of steam-power-driven machinery the whole tendency of modern industry would have been turned not so absolutely, if at all, toward the factory. Such modifications of domestic manufacture and handicraft as right use of electricity could have initiated, might have prevented some of the social and economic evils of our present labor world. However that may be, it is clear that now the modern housewife has at her hand the means of easy control of her special family duties such as no ancient woman could have conceived. The movement henceforward, therefore, we must believe, is toward such lessening of household burdens by mechanical means, and such simplification of household requirements by new family ideals as will make every woman of ordinary strength and of even moderate capacity and training so sure a master of essentials in that field that she can dispense with the "help" that so often now hinders the real family life and make the home more truly the private shrine of affection and of mutual aid than it has ever been before. =Certain Duties the Mother Cannot Delegate= if she would hand on the torch of life the brighter for her handling. Doctor Devine has well said that "the only satisfactory method of getting babies safely through the first years of life is the strictly individualistic plan of attention to each one by its own mother." The proof of this is in the death-rate of infants in foundling asylums and in other forms of communal care even where scientific knowledge has been invoked and humane feeling exercised. To keep babies alive and well is a prerequisite to all later development, and happiness seems to be a necessary foundation for such preservation of their life and health. So far in human experience babies have declined with one accord to be happy unless some one person was constantly devoted to their welfare. That person may be a "hired expert," it is true, but the successful nurse must have the mother-feeling. Moreover, it is now agreed that the best physical stamina is secured by mothers breast-feeding their own babies, and all manner of incentives, even to state subsidies, are being used to lead women to this personal office. If mothers thus nurse their babies they must come close to them in affectional contact, and it is through affectional contact more than in any other way that babies seem to thrive. No one can claim that ability to care for and bring up children "comes by nature." The affectional tie does, however, give an added earnestness to the desire to learn how to minister wisely and well to the needs of the child. That same affectional tie on the part of the mother is shown in a return of affection from the child. Such personal ministrations of the mother to the child have also a great effect in forming the whole character in later life. One may worship from a distance, and the capacity to justly estimate excellence grows with maturity. But the child knows best those who serve his needs most intimately and gives his love to that person. =The Mother's Compensation for Personal Service.=--There is much compensation, therefore, for the woman who gives herself to her child in old-fashioned ways of personal service. She gets the charm and the allurement of the growing bud on life's tree. If she misses that she loses something of her birthright and some "substitute-mother" gets something of satisfaction from the child that she does not. =Early Drill in Personal Habits.=--The third essential of the inherited obligation of mothers to their children is the early drill in personal habits that are required for health and decency and propriety in any given time and place. For this it is an absolute necessity that either the mother so serve herself or that she secure some substitute-mother of refinement, knowledge, affection and devotion which make her an equal in the family circle. How many nurses fulfil that demand? Many, even of those least recognized by their employers as entitled to special gratitude and appreciation. The point to be noted is, however, that even if experts for "hour-service" as nursery governess could be had in sufficient numbers and even if the majority of families could financially meet the expense of those fully competent, such service would not, as a rule, meet the needs of children under three or four years. It is a constant task, not, indeed, requiring every minute of time, but requiring constant readiness to serve at need both day and night to start an infant along the required rules of daily habit. And that task does not lend itself to the conditions of group-teaching or to the schedule of shared service of visiting experts. Some one must be on the job all the time or it is not accomplished with success, although skilled personal care-takers can get fine results in gradually lessened attention by the time the baby becomes the child. If there are several children in a family, however, the most competent mother, or substitute-mother, has the process to repeat with each newcomer, so that for every child we may reckon at least two years of very constant attention if the bodily habits of health and propriety and the first steps in social training for agreeable membership in the family are to be well taken. The public school is full of children for whom the teachers heroically try to make up for lacks in this intimate home-training. It may be that some people view with pleasure a "movie picture" in which large numbers of children go through a "toothbrush drill," but to some of us it is a sorry exhibit. When Booker Washington opened Tuskegee he required only a toothbrush as entrance fee and equipment, and the use of that implement had to be explained and almost all other agencies for personal neatness and physical care of the body to be offered and their use enforced. This was the step of a whole race toward civilization, a step which the slave condition had not made possible before for the field-hands of the South. The people coming to us from all the peasant classes of Europe and the East have many of them lacked also the chance to be drilled in the things that belong to private and personal habit demanded by our civilization. It may be that for such the public school is the only medium for the belated acquirement of such habits; but if publicity in drill and lack of reserve and modesty be the price paid for wholesale instruction it may injure those with good breeding at command in their own homes by lowering their standards, even while it helps upward those who need the school baths and the school treatment of heads and throats and teeth and all manner of personal care. It is not easy to get what children require in these particulars in the crowded tenement. It may be impossible in the congested quarters of a great city. But the need thus pathetically shown in the children of many social strata in the United States indicates that not only should there be own mothers or substitute-mothers for every little child to start each aright along the way of life but every own mother or substitute-mother should have a decent place to live in so that all needed drill may be conducted in dignified privacy and in an atmosphere required for right results. The housing problem reaches back to the primal need to have a suitable living-place into which to put every home. =Early Practice in Walking, Talking, Obedience, and Imitation.=--The fourth obligation which the past has laid upon the modern mother is to teach the little child to walk, to talk, to obey, and to imitate. All these are a part of the habit-drill of the very earliest years. They are bound up with the acquirement of those personal habits of health and propriety before indicated. It is not for nothing that women from the oldest time have been noted for their power of speech and habit of talking. They have had to give every little child the start toward that most indispensable key to all knowledge, the use and understanding of language. And the mother, or the woman who acts for the mother, knows what the child says before any one else can understand his fumbling at speech. Later the mother and the father and other devoted members of the family have to interpret the child's language to all others until he gets accustomed to this difficult art. In learning to walk it is the desire to get closer to those most beloved that helps the child to balance on his feet and try the fearful voyage across the room to where father or mother waits to welcome his approach. And here in most families the mother has the practice in hand far more hours in the day than any one else in the family. Yet for talking and walking in families where there are several children the most efficient instruction of the youngest is often given by the older brothers and sisters. The first child has all to do or to try to do alone; the only child has to pioneer all through childhood and youth so far as his own family life is concerned, but the child in a family of several children learns almost by unconscious absorption from those just a step in advance of his own attempts. Where there are children too near in age the inevitable jealousy or unhappiness of the baby too soon pushed from his throne defeats this end of easy accomplishment through imitation. Where there are too many children in the family for the father to properly support, or the mother to healthfully or happily care for, the nearness of age often means friction and not comradeship. Where in such families the older children act as "little fathers" or "little mothers" they may be defrauded of a child's right to care-free leisure or develop a tyrannous control of the younger ones far from helpful to the development of either. The coming of new members to the family, however, in right spacing and right conditions, means that each child gets the benefit of all the teaching each other child receives and makes it far easier for all to learn the ways of life. The art of obedience which is learned in such conditions is a share in a family public opinion, outlined, indeed, by the parents, but maintained by all the younger members of the group. Not that the same elements enter into the early character-drill of each child. There are as many temperaments and as many capacities and as many differing reactions to like conditions in any family, as a general thing, as there are children to be considered. This difference, however, while it makes family discipline more difficult, makes it also usually more effective, for it insures that parents shall study reasons for rules and try at least to reach an obvious basis for them in personal and social well-being rather than in the parents' will. This leads the way to later democracy by stimulating the sense of justice and the sense of individualistic right, together with the sense of mutual tolerance and mutual aid in the very beginnings of family living together. =Special Responsibility of the Average Mother.=--The burden of this preliminary training toward social order and social welfare rests to-day more heavily upon the mother than upon any one else, even the father. He often has pressing business down-town whenever hard questions of family discipline must be faced. He is often so overburdened with the financial support of the family that he cannot give time or attention necessary to the constant helping of children to escape from the savage to the civilized, from the selfish to the helpful, from the ignorant to the ever-learning. At any rate, just as many men "keep their religion in their wife's name," so, many fathers, although successfully appealed to as final authority in larger concerns of family order, leave the details of character-drill of all their younger children in the hands of the mother. What teachers can do in school comes later in life than the period of which we now speak. Even the kindergarten, with its short hours and its more artificial life, only shows each day a picture of what the child may do later on in his own self-culture. The home nursery is the real place of actual experience for the average child, with the family table and the intimate association with father and mother and brother and sister. These make a school of preëminent importance to the later training. =Women's Relation to More Formal Education.=--The fifth obligation which the modern mother inherits from the ages is that relating to the more formal education of all girls and of all little boys in the folk-lore, the vocational skill, and the methods of social arrangement which set moral fashions and demand personal obedience to the social order into which one is born. This obligation is so largely shared to-day that many see in it no special burden for the modern mother. The school training once so largely within the home, or for the older boys so definitely obtained in fraternities or war-groups of men, is now a separate institution. The customs, tribal or national, that once ruled the family-training are now solidified and definitely outlined in laws written on statute books. The illiterate parent cannot, if he would, disobey the compulsory school law. The poverty-stricken parent must either starve himself to feed his children according to the demands of the health board or he must accept public or private charity for their sustenance according to modern demands. The ignorant parent must submit to treatment of his children by public nurse or doctor of whom he may be afraid. The parent not ignorant, but differing from the majority as to what will prevent disease or cure it, must accept the public rule. The decay of domestic industry and the growth of the factory system have given rise to so many and serious social dangers that laws are now passed forbidding home manufacture on grounds of need to abolish sweatshop conditions, although to many such prohibition seems, and to some may be, the denial of parental moral protection to children and youth in families of the very poor. The training for self-supporting work, which came about so naturally from within the household in the handicraft stage of industry, now requires many public agencies of education. The new social "mores" accepted by the majority and supported by law and court may be directly opposed to the inherited ideal of right living of large numbers of people in any given locality, especially in the United States with our large immigrant population. To have education so much a public concern seems to many to so minimize the mother's share in it that she is placed in the same general relation as the father to what was once her special duty. Ideally, both parents are equally bound to decide all questions concerning the formal education of their children within the limits of personal choice made possible by the public provisions of which all parents may now take advantage. In some favored families this really occurs. Actually, however, in most families the mother has more leisure to learn of possible opportunities, to influence possible improvement, and, above all, to help to wise individual choice in the use by the family of these socially provided educational facilities than has the father. She is also now more likely to belong to associations or clubs or classes for adult study in which educational problems are discussed than is he, and often more intimately acquainted with children's desires or needs in education. =Women's Relation to Educational Agencies.=--A glance at the list of national and local associations for the study and application of educational science and art will show the vast majority of women over men (in the United States at least) who are trying to find out what real education in modern life should be and how to secure that best training for their own children and for the children of all. The educational obligation is, therefore, not taken from the average mother's duty; it has changed its form only and often is the more difficult to meet successfully because of the high specialization of the teachers and the confusion of the school direction. No one would claim that fathers, if loyal and worthy, are less anxious than mothers for the trailing of their children toward successful living. The fact, however, that most mothers stand nearest to the lives of the children make them most often the necessary purveyors of educational opportunities from the public provision to private use. =The Social Value of Parental Affection.=--Below and within all other gifts to humanity which have come by the way of motherhood's devotion to child-life is that selective and partial affection which secures to each child one adult person at least to whom he or she is supreme in interest. Most normal women feel when they hear the cry of their own new-born that all of life is justly tributary to that one priceless creature who has come at their call out of the mystery of being to travel the difficult road of the generations of mankind. Nor is this inherited tendency toward partial affection a sign of undeveloped or selfish quality in the woman of to-day. It is a provision of nature still supremely useful in helping each tiny atom of the social whole to find and keep its own place in a world of struggle and hardship. The fear of defeat handicaps many a purpose before it is put to the test. The sense of loneliness drives many to lower companionship when higher is hard to attain. The lack of courage and the paralysis of faith in one's self or in others makes invalid many a nature which might otherwise achieve. To prevent such waste from inner weakness and to "encourage excellence in each individual," to use Doctor Small's fine phrase, we need a childhood saturated with the sense of personal values on the plane of affection. Selfishness may indeed pollute this mainspring of personal power, and selfishness sometimes reaches its acme in motherhood's partiality for its own. The ideal of social solidarity and the claim of all upon each one must never be absent from the family influence if that influence is to be wholesome. The family, however, exists to make a small spot in which there may be a unity found nowhere else, and at the centre of the family life is still the mother. Says Schiller, "Knowledge and culture demand a blissful sky, much careful nursing and a long number of springs." Who shall be able to secure this for every son of man if no one stands at the door of young life to make these the first demand upon time and strength and devotion for every child in the interest of every child? "The community" has been called "an endowment for human progress." Parental love, so often supremely expressed by the mother, works still and in any future in sight must work ever more devotedly and wisely to secure for each child his rightful share in that endowment. The main business of life is the carrying on of life, and in that business women were drafted long ago for the heaviest end of service and with little social permission to do their work by proxy. Many social helps in her task now make possible leisure and opportunity for individual vocation as never before. Her primal duty to the race remains, however, a debt to be paid as a first obligation wherever and whenever a woman accepts the august function of motherhood. And to-day the majority of most successful families absorb in large measure the time and strength of the housemother. =What Women Need Most= is moral sanity and mental poise; the ability to adjust themselves to radical and rapid changes in their relationship to society without losing the finest and most useful results of their past social discipline. Woman is acquiring a new relationship to the home--that of mutual headship with man in the social institution in which for ages she has been a legal subordinate. Social welfare demands that she take into the new copartnership of domestic life the old devotion to family interests. Woman is acquiring a new relationship to the school--that of learner in the highest educational opportunity and of teacher in an ever-widening area. Social welfare demands that she take into the modern school her ancient devotion to child-life. The mass of women are acquiring a new relationship to the industrial order--that of spenders instead of producers. Social welfare demands that the modern woman put into her function of purchasing consumer of staple products the same conscientious standardizing of those products and the same sense of responsibility for the conditions surrounding laborers which she displayed in the old handicraft days of domestic industry. A minority of women are acquiring also a new relationship to the industrial order in becoming the recipient of wages or salary, instead of being paid for work as of old in "truck" or in "kind." The feel of the pay envelope on her palm is an unaccustomed but a delicious pleasure to the modern woman. Social welfare demands that she be not beguiled thereby into complicity with industrial exploitation of the weak and the poor, such as she would not have tolerated in the old days of personal relationship in labor in domestic handicraft. Woman is acquiring a new relationship to recreation and the social control of the customs ruling leisure hours. Social welfare demands that gambling be not made fashionable in the drawing room as it is being driven out of the business world; that dancing be not vulgarized and the mother-tongue not corrupted, but that self-control, purity, dignity, mark the "new woman" as it did her best ancestors. Woman is acquiring a new relationship to the state--that of citizen with full responsibility instead of her old perpetual minority under man's control. Social welfare demands that she take into the body politic the same devotion to the weak and undeveloped, the same patient, wise dependence upon the spiritual elements of justice and wisdom which have made her private motherhood so successful. She must not now, on peril of a social setback, take up man's weapons of selfishness, of violence, of impatient revolution--weapons the best of men have already discarded. Women should now be clear-sighted enough to see that the world needs from them not the same but different contributions to the upreach and onward march of the race from those elements in which man has excelled. If society-at-large is to become truly a family of those who love and serve each other, then human beings of the mother-sex must take into public life and public service the best they have learned and taught in the individual home. What women most need now is to "retain all the good the past hath had" as they step forward to their full liberty and responsibility in new relationships to life. QUESTIONS ON THE MOTHER 1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon wives and mothers, and how have these been met in the past? 2. What, if any, of these inherited social demands are now met by social agencies outside of the private family? 3. What, in general, may be defined as the line of demarkation between the private obligations resting still upon mothers for personal service to family life and agencies of public child-care and social standardization? 4. How far is a trend toward minimizing the demand for personal service of the housemother in the private family to be encouraged? 5. If a mother, in average financial condition, has the "three and one-half children" eugenists demand of each family, and does her duty by them in private family life, how much of her time and strength must go into the housemother's service and for what period of years? 6. What amount of time and strength might be left, in the case of strong and competent women, for other vocational work? 7. Is the modern "nursery school" an adequate substitute for the early home-training? (See report, "A Nursery School Experiment," published by "Bureau of Educational Experiments," 144 West Thirteenth Street, New York City.) FOOTNOTES: [3] (_a_) See, for example, "Conveniences for the Farm Home," Farmers' Bulletin No. 270, and (_b_) "The Farm Kitchen as a Workshop," Farmers' Bulletin No. 607. CHAPTER III THE FATHER "Who plants his soul in stalwart sons and daughters keeps on giving His life and vision to his fellow men; His power grows like leaven. "His children strive to take his spirit up and keep it living; They share with all the love he gave his own, as he had shared, And lives, his love has served, all call him father." From the Tribute, _To My Father_, by HORNELL HART. "To dwell in the wide house of the world; to stand in true attitude therein; in success to share one's principles with the people; in failure to live them out alone; to be incorruptible by riches or honor; unchangeable by poverty; unmoved by perils or power--these I call the qualities of a great man."--MENCIUS. "For the man who is such as no longer to delay being among the number of the best is like a priest and minister of the gods, using the deity that is planted within him, that which makes a man uncontaminated by any pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, who cannot be overpowered by passion, one dyed deep with justice, understanding that only what belongs to himself is matter for his activity, yet remembering also that every human being is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to mans nature."--MARCUS AURELIUS. "'Tis not in battles that from youth we train The governor who must be wise and good. Wisdom doth live with children round her knees; Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk Of the mind's business; this is the stalk True power doth grow on."--WORDSWORTH. =Historic Background of Fatherhood.=--The father seems to have had a precarious attachment to the family in earlier forms of life. As Le Tourneau well says, "The animal family is especially maternal; although father birds often share parental duties, many mammals are less developed in duration and strength of affection." Fathers, mothers, and their offspring are not closely grouped in lower life. The relation of the sexes, even when the human was reached, seems not to have carried with it a sense of the double obligation of parenthood. "Marriage was brittle in the early times," says Sir John Lubbock. The obvious relationship of mother and child, the lack of such irrefutable testimony to parenthood in the case of man, and other elements of primitive experience lending confusion to the situation, made it a process of time and a test of growing intelligence for men to learn that babies take two parents to give them birth. When the human male did learn that he was a father, as his mate was a mother, it seems to have mentally intoxicated him, and led the way to many social vagaries. The grotesque comedy of the couvade, which proved a tragedy so often for the poor mother compelled by the custom to rise in her weakness and even neglect her new-born baby, in order to do double work and to tempt the appetite of her lord after his make-believe pangs of childbirth, was one sign that primitive consciousness found the new knowledge of double parentage very exciting. The varieties of phallic worship found in so many ages and among so many peoples show how man plumed himself upon the generative function and how he linked it with the god-idea. The "religious dedication of women," which gratified at once the lust of priests and the demands of ancient theology that the gods should have the best of everything earthly, is another testimony to the preoccupation of early man with sex in its relation to religion. This idea of the sacrifice of sex-relationship to the gods passed down through the ages until actual celibacy became the ideal of the holy life and the Divine was supposed to be better served by monks and nuns than by fathers and mothers. In the family relation the experience of fathers, after they knew themselves to be such, has been widely varied and not along any single line of development. To quote Le Tourneau again, "There has been no strict relation between intellectual development and the form of sexual union. Even among monkeys, as in men, we find both polygamy and monogamy; and bees and other forms of lower life show a high degree of social organization and division of labor without the institution of the family at all." The relation of the sexes has always been a deep concern of human society even in most primitive forms of social order, but after men knew the connection between the gratification of sex-instinct and the procreative function, they began to reason about and to make more definite the customs that outlined permitted marriage. The varieties of social expression in these ancient customs is witness alike to economic pressure, the effect of climate and immigration, political struggle and the institutions of war and of private property. =Purchase and Capture of Wives.=--Purchase and capture began early to run a race in the supply of wives. Purchase, which kept the twain together in nearness to one or the other side of the family line, was usually best for women; especially when, as often happened, it gave her the protection of her own blood relations. Capture, on the other hand, made woman not only the possession of her husband in a peculiar sense as separating her from all who might, through the working of natural affection, act as her helpers in time of need, but made it possible for the slavery of the wife to the husband to take on more cruel forms. Although, it must be said, even capture gave a few women of superlative charm a chance to take precedence of common wives gained in the usual manner. Two influences, one from the custom to allow marriages only within a certain blood bond, and one to allow marriages only outside that family relationship, have worked in the first instance to preserve certain racial traits from extinction, and in the second place to mix the common elements of human nature to the enrichment of the common stock. This balancing regard for the known and allurement of the novel has also worked to give manifold forms of family association, since those customs were superseded. It would seem that not only were "trial marriages" for individuals an ancient, not at all a modern device, to see how the twain could get along together, but varying trial forms of marriage for racial, tribal, and national groups have made all manner of experiments to see what on the whole would serve best the social need in the family relationship. That process of wide experimentation at last settled into the ideal and practice of one father-head, at least, even if still allowing more than one wife and mother within its bond. That father-head seems to have found his place only on condition of grant from society of complete authority over wife and children. =The Patriarchal Family.=--The patriarchal family, which Sir Henry Maine described so well, but which he mistakenly supposed to be the first great type of familial association, placed firmly at the centres of social order the power and responsibility of the man. Doubtless that power and responsibility drew their chief sanction from the idea of man as the real source of being. After man learned that he was as much a parent in being father as woman was a parent in being mother, nothing seemed to have contented him but spiritual supremacy in parenthood. The classic picture and interpretation of this phase of family development is contained in the great drama of the Greeks, the trilogy of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, Orestes, and the Erinnyes. Here we see how the mother-side of life, once so powerful as representative of tribal unity, was set aside and overborne by the father-side, as Apollo proudly claims all generative power for man and relegates the mother to the position of an underling nurse. It will be remembered, however, that Athena, although, as Apollo said, "having a father only," makes the mothers still invaluable as guardians of the family altar and as those who can bless or blight both the fruitage of the earth and of the marriage bed. The Greeks, by virtue of their superior self-consciousness when passing through radical social changes, and by virtue also of their power of literary portrayal of experience, have set down for us, for all time, the way by which man attained his unlimited power over woman and over the family order. We need not accept in full measure Dr. Lester Ward's picturesque story of the manner in which women were made subject to men, _i.e._, that female sex-selection so overdid the business of rewarding with favor the strength, the fighting quality, and the cunning which grew to mental power in the male, that when human men and women were reached, woman found a master ready-made by her subhuman sisters. We may, however, find a most suggestive indication of the real reasons for that masculine supremacy in Doctor Ward's testimony to the way in which the female sex, when it had the power of special selection of the kind of mates it wanted, set a fashion in masculine attainment which did work later against her own command of the sex-relation. Women did not become subject to men because of physical weakness. The savage woman does continuous work heavier and more strength-demanding than that assigned to the savage man. It was not even that the primitive woman had always to carry the child as she worked, and had therefore a double burden, although that greatly helped men in gaining supremacy. It was rather that the larger leisure of primitive man and his consequent development of thought and imagination enabled him to secure religion and statecraft as allies to his physical claims. The intellectual side of the male development was doubtless greatly aided by female selection, and when man was reached he already knew how to outwit other men and most women in the race for power. =The Three Chief Sources of Influence.=--It has been well said that the "three great sources of influence in barbarous as in civilized countries are religion, military power, and money." All these influences became masculine monopolies ages ago. The ancient woman was sometimes a priestess and often a healer in her simple fashion and in all ages has acted as nurse in illness and care-taker of the aged and the feeble when these have received care. She has been mistress of the ceremonials of birth and death and marriage when these have been parts of the family ritual, and courtship has been largely in her charge. All the customs that relate to intimate household experiences have been shared by women as ritual and rule of life. Men, however, took over the simple elements of religious feeling and social requirement in which women bore so great a part and made of them religious cults and theologies, and they then became a masculine monopoly. Men also took over the simple healing of gifted women and made it first the prerogative of the "medicine man" and at last of the medical profession, from which women were barred until very lately. The social customs which women once had power to enforce in so many ways became the "law," made and executed solely by men. Art, science, literature, grew to great proportions as man acquired the opportunity and the skill to concentrate his intelligence upon specialties of effort; and from all the walks of educational preparation and of professional achievement women were debarred. Hence, in the family order, in which the first and obvious place of women had been relatively high, man took the position of mastery by right of religious priesthood, by right of legal supremacy, and by right of monopoly of the money power. Back of all this lay the assumption of the superior relation of the father to the spiritual life of the child. Man gained his larger leisure first by the use of women as slaves when individual women became the property of individual men, and later by conquest over other men through which process he secured more slaves, and finally by the military systems that in various forms gave some men a chance to work at what they liked and from which they could gain advantage in the growing complexity of increasing social organization. Man's larger leisure, which gave him money power or its equivalent in earlier forms of exchange, could not have been secured by him had not woman been socially and by religious sanction set to the constant task of the family service and the more peaceful occupations of primitive agriculture. =Ancient Military Training of Youth.=--Doubtless man's military prestige and power gave him the greatest advantage over woman and was the source, more than anything else, of her subjection in the family order. This came about not only because military success gave the women of conquered tribes into the absolute power of the conquerors, and broke for such the social bond of remaining mother-right, but because of the special training of boys and young men which the military systems of all ages have initiated. "The ancient fraternities," and the manner of education which separated those who would be "braves" from the family life in early youth, the strong bond of a common purpose made appealing to youthful imagination by mystic ceremonials and burnt into the consciousness by painful "initiations," all combined to teach men how to work together for common ends and in a way unknown to the training and opportunity of women.[4] This it was which gave a consistency and a power to man's collective life which woman could not gain in the past, and exclusion from which enabled man to become her legal and economic master even within the home. The economic power which man acquired through specialization of labor, made possible for him by social excuse from exhausting personal service within the family; the political power, made possible for him by military achievement, from which women for the most part were strictly barred by the "Trade Unionism" of war preparation; the intellectual power, made a sex-monopoly in education and professional use and opportunity; and the religious sanction of priesthood and theology, which fastened all these to law and government, secured the complete subjection of mothers to fathers and gave woman in the family the status of her infant children. =Ancestor-worship.=--This triple influence of money, military power, and religion, gave the definite basis for ancestor-worship, which has been so widespread and so influential in the setting of social customs. Ancestor-worship, with its separate family ceremonials, for which the wife must learn her husband's family ritual, led to child-marriage, and that in turn to the slavery of the wife not only to the husband but to the older women of his family. Child-marriage led also to many tragedies of racial decay before it was seen to be inimical to strength and power of achievement. When child-marriage was not a part of marriage customs, however, and a suitable age was demanded, for sex-unions, ancestor-worship made the position of the father secure. He alone could pass on the name and inheritance, the family worship and the dutiful service of his forefathers, to the children yet to be. The Greek poem before referred to shows in the pathetic attempt of Electra, the loyal daughter of the slain Agamemnon, to offer the required sacrifices at her father's grave, and her joy that the return of the son could make such sacrifices valid for peace of the dead and the service of the living yet to be born, shows vividly how religion made firm and binding the father's place in the family. So deeply did this religious sanction of ancestor-worship affect the social "mores" that, as is shown so clearly in Spartan history, no man could shirk his duty of marriage and of parenthood without social opprobrium. The well-known anecdote related by Plutarch of the youth who, educated rigorously to show respect to the aged fathers, is praised for flouting a grey-haired bachelor and refusing to rise and give him a seat in the open square because, as the youth scornfully says, "No children of yours will ever make sacrifice for his ancestors," pictures vividly the sense of responsibility to the family life once almost universal. This feeling, bred by ancestor-worship, has persisted long after the church in its various forms has superseded the ancient family worship. We find it as late as in Colonial times in Protestant New England, where the bachelor was fined and subjected to humiliating community supervision and the spinster, almost unknown above twenty years of age, if persisting in her single life was treated as an exception to be held in social tutelage. =The Double Standard of Morals.=--The triple bond of money, military power, and economic supremacy, which made men masters in the family life, made them also able to free themselves from exclusive devotion to one wife, whether under the law of polygamy or professed monogamy; as it has been possible for men to divorce their wives for slight causes, while wives often received the death penalty for even supposed infidelity. It has also instituted and maintained for ages a double standard of morals by which the same act mutually shared by men and women has been for men a slight peccadillo and for women a deadly sin. Chastity has been made almost the sole virtue of women, invasion of which even by resisted force has destroyed her "honor," and voluntary rejection of which has made her a creature of social ostracism. Man, on the other hand, has been forgiven all manner of slips from the straight and narrow way of marital fidelity, provided he could achieve something of importance in the world of thought or action. This double standard of morals has reacted upon the family not only in preventing women from establishing social conditions suitable for their own best development and that of their children but has thrown over the home the dark shadow of commercialized prostitution with its cloud of evil thought, physical degeneracy and defrauded childhood. =Basic Needs for Equality of Human Rights.=--When women as mothers have no power of guardianship of their own children; when they as persons have no power of self-defense against cruelty and outrage of their own fathers or husbands; when as members of society they have no contract-power but must suffer all manner of injustice unless highly fortunate in their male representative; when as citizens of a so-called democratic state they have no voice in either law or its enforcement, then they are indeed a subject class. Any subject class dependent upon privilege or special favor for all the order and circumstance of life is clearly not a fit part of modern democratic society. It is, therefore, of tremendous social importance to the family, as truly as to all other inherited institutions, that women are now rapidly emerging from that subject condition of perpetual minority under the law to the individual responsibility and self-protective power of the legal adult. This passage "from status to contract" was too long delayed (the position of women after the affirmation of liberty and equality for men in modern forms of government being so illogical as to cause much disturbance in the body politic), but it has, after all, been rapid in its final steps. To-day the ideal of equal rights between the sexes and in relationship of men and women to society-at-large is fully accepted by a majority of the enlightened. What is before us is the slow and in some respects difficult task of working out that ideal in social adjustments. While at work on this task it behooves us to go over the past experience more carefully than many have yet done, to note what the patriarchal family gave to society and through society to wife and children as well as what of their just due it took from or refused to give to wife and children. =Special Protection of Women Needed in Ancient Times.=--It seems not too much to say that in the time and place where men in general first attained power of property rights, of military supremacy, and of religious priesthood, most women needed some special protection from particular men. In such period and condition the sex-relationship itself had not attained its present spiritual quality. There was apparently required the sense of ownership on the part of one man to safeguard those women most generally desired from exploitation by all men. Some legal order in the oppression of women by society had to precede, apparently, the abolition of oppression of women itself; just as to-day the effort is to "humanize war" before we can become wise and strong enough to abolish it. No social device that the imagination can conceive could be so well fitted to protect motherhood, in an age before justice could give power of self-protection, as was that of the patriarchal family. The religious aspect of ancestor-worship, the political aspect of the building up of great families from which the state could derive its power and the economic necessity of having the industrial system develop more highly all vocations, combined in the patriarchal system to make the family the main expression of social order and the chief heir of social privilege. It seems apparent, therefore, that a socially delegated power of absolute control by the father was highly useful in the period when the state was growing, and the school was separating itself from the hearth-stone, and the economic system was changing from barter to the complicated exchange of the present time, and religion itself was merging its ideals from the innumerable private ceremonials of noble families into the worship of one chief, emperor, or despot who must receive the homage of all, and so on to the incarnation of divine power in one King and Lord of Heaven. "Order" is not only, as we were once told, "Heaven's first law," but social order, human experience declares, comes before the recognition of equality of personal rights within that order. The great lady of the Middle Ages who begged of her King a "new Lord" within a month after the death of her husband because her "lands were being taken and her estate defrauded by hostile lords who surrounded her castle," and only a husband for herself, a new father for her children and a new owner for the inherited property could protect from this robbery, realized the social advantages of the patriarchal system in appropriate social conditions. To-day, when so much of the community protection surrounds the family and so much in education, law, and social custom aids the wife and mother toward independent action, we are naturally horrified at the thought of life and death power of the husband and father and shocked at recital of the humiliations and privations of women's subject condition in the past. We have to remember, however, that social history seems to indicate that no system of human association has grown up and persisted without great need for some, at least, of its dominant features. The protection of wife and child, which rested for so long upon man's conception of "property" to be defended from outside attack, was a chief necessity in the rougher and coarser ages of the world. The main hindrance to social progress, however, is the tendency of forms of institutional life and methods of social relationship to persist after the need for them has ceased. This hindrance has been shown perhaps most harmfully in the retention of the patriarchal power of the father after his abdication from the throne was called for by ethical and humane considerations. A form of family relationship entrenched in institutions of age-long prestige and supported by the triple influence of money, military power, and religion, lived on after its work in securing social order had been accomplished and long after its usefulness was entirely ended. After the father-headship ceased to express the highest ideals of either sex-relationship or parental devotion, its retention produced social evils and personal wrongs which made a conscious and determined movement for "Woman's Rights" necessary, and still makes necessary close and definite attention to the equalizing of opportunities. =The Social Value of the Patriarchal Family.=--It is well, however, to consider not only the negative but the affirmative side of the social inheritance of the patriarchal family, in which has grown up and developed the ideal of monogamic marriage. What did the father gain, intellectually and ethically, from that patriarchal order, and what did he give, not only in protection of wife and children but toward their moral development in social life? The effect of unlimited power over another is generally worse for the one who wields than for the one who is subjected to that power, and the faults of men have their deepest origin in the family order that gave all its members into his complete control. Man's faults of dogmatism, of selfish domination, of sacrifice of personal life to further desired political or economic ends, have roots in the patriarchal family. Man's careless misuse of his own moral ideals for purposes of ambition was certainly fostered by this sense of ownership of women and children with legal power to use them for pleasure or profit. Something else, however, came to man in and through the patriarchal system. Society, that gave him liberty to rule the family, rigidly required of him that such rule should be in the social interest, as that interest was then understood. It was obviously for the interest of society that women should be chaste, in order not only that a man might know his own children but that the family line and inheritance should be preserved from insecurity. A man's infidelity to the marriage vow might seem to do no perceptible harm if practised outside the family circle, but woe to him if he trespassed upon the family ownership of another man. There might be more than one wife acknowledged as secondary in status or a mere concubine slave to help in domestic duties while giving pleasure to the head of the family, but there was early a social demand for one chief wife whose offspring should inherit the family power. Although even in this fixed demand there were loopholes of "legal fiction of adoption" by which some favorite child not of the actual line of inheritance might be given the place of honor and control. Again, if the father under the patriarchal system was the recognized economic master he was also legally held to the financial support of wife and child. In the collective family life his obligation extended far through the line of kinship and of alliance by marriage, and to-day in many Oriental countries the father may be bound to poverty as the responsible support of a large company of dependent pensioners. It must also be remembered that if the ancient father, as head of the family, held the permission of society to discipline wife and child even to severity of corporal punishment he was also charged with the task of insuring their obedience to whatever social laws were in force and was himself legally liable to punishment if he did not keep his family law-abiding. That moral responsibility for the behavior of his family, early outlined in detail, was increasingly eased by the growth of personal relationship of women and youth to society. That was shown in the laws that defined the extent of punishment allowed the father-head. Although he might be secure in his legal right and duty to bestow on wife or apprentice "moderate castigation," an old Welsh law limited him to "three blows only with a broomstick on any part of the person except the head;" and another ancient law allowed the use only of "a stick no longer than the husband's arm and no thicker than his middle finger" in the case of the wife; while Blackstone's well-remembered restriction was to "a stick no bigger than his thumb." The moral responsibility of the father for his children, carrying with it as it did the liability of prison or even death for the misbehavior of sons, was governed by various statutes which show in the Middle Ages a growth toward freeing children from parental control and placing upon them when "of age" a definite and personal legal bond and penalty. For example, we read that the Anglo-Saxon law held many children at the age of ten responsible for some acts which were forbidden, but that most youth were legally minors until the age of fifteen. Until the early period of the eighteenth century it was still possible for a parent to legally sell his children, "a girl up to fourteen, a boy under seven." And after that period a wayward or troublesome son or daughter, or any of the offspring, when the parents could be proved financially incapable of their care, could be sent to convent or monastery. The ability to bear arms seems to have been the criterion for legal coming of age. The Romans, with their heavy weapons, held the son in tutelage until the age of fifteen. The Germans, with their use of light darts, gave their sons power of self-control at the age of twelve. In the heyday of feudalism "a knight's son became of age when he could swing his father's sword" and "a yeoman's son when he could swing his father's battle-axe," and by that process the fathers were released from liability to punishment for their sons' misdemeanors. On the other hand, after the tenth century, no child under ten could be punished for his father's crimes unless it could be shown that he was a party to them, and the custom of carrying family autonomy so far as to wipe out innocent and guilty alike, when a treason or crime of any sort angered the powers in command, was practically ended. When the beginnings of the modern industrial order appeared and burghers shared with knights and yeomen the social responsibility, "a burgher's son acquired freedom and legal responsibility when he could count and measure broadcloth." The wife gained a growing and perilous freedom from laws which increased her direct relationship to the state. She attained the power of being punished even by the death penalty for broken laws far earlier than she attained the slightest influence in the passage or enforcement of those laws. It was generally thought, however, until very recently, that if a wife "did not behave" it was the husband's fault and right that he should suffer the consequences. =The Responsibility of the Ancient Father Commensurate With His Power.=--Again, it must be remembered that if the ancient father was by virtue of his military training and activities separated from the domestic interests which he so often and with full social permission sacrificed to war and preparation for war, he was at the same time under perpetual conscription by the community of which he was a part to serve as protector of his own family and the families of those of the same social group. The social pressure upon the father-head of the family was therefore severe and unremitting, since he was in so many ways responsible for, as truly as master of, his household. It was no light task to be a worthy head of a patriarchal family in all the ages when growing law was superseding custom and advancing civilization was increasing the complexity of social life. This task when well achieved gave to man a serious sense of his duty as well as a firm conviction of his power. We see the fruits of that ethical training in family responsibility in many of man's noblest traits; preëminently in his recognition of the duty of protection of the weak and young, and in his devotion to his own, against the world if need be. The vast outreach of man's intelligence toward the organization of the state, of the industrial order, of the church, of the formal educative process, of the means of transportation, of the systems of finance, of the development and application of scientific knowledge, and even of the arts and of literature, all reveal the effect of his early schooling in the representative responsibility of fatherhood to society. We speak to-day of the "father of modern invention" in this or that particular. We have not ceased to praise the "good provider" or to esteem him highly who has a well-ordered home. =Moral Qualities in Women Developed by Masculine Selection.=--Moreover, we are all now recognizing the fact that we owe to the ownership of woman by man a secondary sex-selection of inestimable value. It may be an extreme statement to say, with at least one sociologist, that the ages of woman's subjection to man was not too great a price to pay for the gift to the race of feminine beauty and charm. We can assert, however, that some moral values which men insisted upon in the women they chose for wives gave the race what at one time it needed most and still needs: namely, the habit of service to others, and the power of adaptability to changing and often difficult conditions. Man's genius for organization institutionalizes every aspect of thought and activity he takes under his control. The institution, organized at first for the benefit of personal life and the life-process, tends invariably toward a fixity of method and hardness of substance that finally sacrifices life-growth to its iron pressure until a new form of institution makes its way through struggle and suffering. The relation of women to men and of women to family life demanded of most women easy and rapid adjustment to the requirements of others and led to their mediation between every institution and the personal life. The household mastership of men, and the fact that they could choose for favor the sort of women most agreeable to them as masters, placed at the centre of the family, and therefore at the centre of the life-process itself, the type of womanhood that lent itself most easily to social adjustment. And it placed that type at the centre of the social order when the "cake of custom" most needed to be broken to allow of a more democratic association. The type of womanhood which masculine selection, working through long ages, has made the essentially "womanly" type, is one in which physical beauty, charm of manner, general rather than special ability, affectionate and competent response to family, easy adaptability to whatever social system her marriage might give entrance, and unswerving loyalty to the ethical traditions and religious sanctions of her day and generation, combine to attract the love of man and the devotion of children. Some of these elements of character are especially needed to-day in order to make democracy work, and to secure against dangers incident to decay of autocratic control, and hence may later prove of great social use in the modern state. The idealization of womanhood by man, which seems never to have made him uneasy in claiming control of her person or estate, has embodied itself in the artist's pictures of Truth and Justice, and Knowledge and Charity, in feminine forms. These bear witness to the fact that even when men were most insistent upon father-rights they were moulded by intimate companionship with women in the home to some appreciation of the value of feminine personality. While, therefore, the moral discipline which came to the mother in the old order of the family, led her to understand the value of personality, and the need of ever-increasing effort to make the individual lives within the family circle comfortable, happy and good, the moral discipline of the patriarchal father led toward an increasing conquest of nature, of other men, and of all the social forces, in the interest of his own family group. This led at last to his impersonation of many ideals in the "eternal womanly that leads us on." =The Higher Ideal of Fatherhood.=--Throughout this many-sided discipline of marriage and parenthood there has been growing an ideal of fatherhood so noble and so tender that it has easily become the central thought in many religions. The "Heaven-father" is an old picture. The Father in Heaven persists in the effort to bring the Supreme near to the human heart. A law of obedience unquestioned, a rule of conduct making an actual Way of Life, a power unlimited and yet a loving-kindness that marks the sparrow's fall and has regard for the prodigal as for the upright son--surely there must have been uncounted fathers of goodness and wisdom passing praise to have made the name the easiest one by which to call the Divine! Meanwhile, the average life has been working, often unconsciously, toward a condition in which the patriarchal father is out of drawing with his own industry, his own political system, and his own theology. To-day we give the wives and potential wives contract-power, private ownership of property, opportunity for economic independence, vocational training, entrance to all higher educational institutions, adult responsibility under the law, and the franchise on equal terms with men. In the light of these accomplished facts vain is the effort of such writers as Devoe, in his _Studies in Family Life_, to show that "the Christian family" still makes women "subject" and holds "all goods in common" in the husband's name. =Incomplete Adjustment and Equality of Rights in the Family.=--There is, however, great confusion of mind as to the extent of change in the father-office which the new independence of wives and mothers should effect. Take, for example, the matter of the financial responsibility of the husband and father. If a married woman has independent property, shall she not be liable as well as her husband for the support of the children? If so, what becomes of the suits at law against "Family Deserters" heretofore applied alone to husbands and fathers? A study of this class of offenders under the law, published in 1904, shows that in New York alone something over $100,000 was collected in one year in "alimony from men, two-thirds of whom were deserting husbands." In these cases the duty of providing financially for wife and child pursued the husbands and fathers after they had run away from home. In the 591 cases of "Family Deserters" especially studied two-thirds were men and one-third women, showing not only that the law deals more severely with men than with women, even when women are held to be responsible for any sort of family support, but that desertion is for the most part a masculine offense. If it can be shown that fathers are or should be relieved from the age-long financial responsibilities of family support, will the showing in "Family Desertion" be different? There seems to be a consensus of opinion that in present conditions that family is likely to be in the best economic condition, in which the chief, if not the entire, income is supplied by the husband and father, leaving the wife and mother to be specially responsible for the translation of that income in terms of family comfort. That is admirably indicated in Mrs. Hinman Abel's book, _Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income_. Does that condition still carry with it the sole economic responsibility of the husband and father for the wife as well as for the children? Or shall the phrase now beginning to be used in laws passed against family desertion apply to the wife only when it is proved she is "in necessitous circumstances" without her husband's provision? For the children the newer laws say "him" or "her" when providing penalties for "any person," either father or mother, "who wilfully neglects or refuses to provide for the support and maintenance of minor children." The claim, then, of the wife seems to be increasingly one of either invalid "conditions," or "necessitous circumstances," or "lack of other means of support," when defaulting husbands are brought to court; and the claim of children upon parents is increasingly extended from father to mother whenever there are means at hand from either to supply the children's needs. In respect to the "choice of domicile," always the right of the husband and father, there is little change in law; but the strong movement to secure to women independent nationality, in place of automatic following of the nationality of their husbands, will, if carried out, make the supreme choice (that of the country to which one shall pledge allegiance) a legal right of women as of men. That in itself would make some confusion in cases where international marriages give separate national interest. In respect to man's responsibility for national defense in the interest of home and native land, he is alone conscripted to-day, as of old, for fighting service on the battle-field, but all manner of social demands, almost as imperative as a governmental draft, now call women to special service in war time. In peace, the taxes know no sex, and the rules of the business game are not amenable to chivalry. In the matter of professional and vocational training and opportunity, men and women are largely on an equal footing, in the United States, at least. And apparently for the first time in human history a man and a woman, both eminent in their line of work, may seriously ask which of the two earns the larger salary, and hence it may be which of the two can do more toward family support. The full consequences of women's moral acts now fall wholly upon her in the case of disobedience to law. There is still, it is true, in some parts of the civilized world respect for "an unwritten law" that excuses a man for killing a rival in his wife's affections, but for the most part she stands on her own feet and he on his when there is question of crime or misdemeanor. =The Marriage Question To-day the "Husband-problem."=--The whole situation is changing in so many ways as relates to the mutual obligation of men and women in family life that Havelock Ellis is right when he says "the marriage question to-day is much less the wife-problem than the husband-problem." That is to say, the single headship of the family is invaded and yet the methods of adjustment of two heads are not yet clear in either law or custom. As the Bishop of Hereford said at the meeting of his brother Bishops, in which the resolution to omit the word "obey" from the marriage service of the Church of England was withdrawn (on the ground that if presented it would be successfully opposed), "It is obvious to every one that it would not be convenient to have two heads to a family."[5] There are already two heads in every up-to-date family in the United States! The real difficulty now is to see how best to adjust mutual responsibilities toward each other and toward the children involved, and to write a consistent and uniform set of statutes into the law. That law respecting marriage and the family, partly inherited without change from the patriarchal order, partly altered in particulars in obedience to some popular demand based on cramping conditions made by the law whenever it was enforced, after it was already outgrown, needs careful revision. Ignored so often by the moral and intellectual élite, inconsistently set aside by new measures passed without regard to what is already established as precedent, all laws respecting marriage, the family, and the parental relation which have come down from the past, need thorough overhauling and the best wisdom should be exercised in full revision and codification. The husband and father, meanwhile, many times holds firmly to his old-time fine chivalry and adds justice without spoiling his relationship to the family. The wife keeps her inherited aptitude for loving care of husband and children, and adds a new independence of thought and action without danger of confusion of ideal or function. =Can Women Have All the New Freedom and Also All the Old Privileges?=--Some women, however, are trying the absurd and dangerous experiment of seeing how much they can take from men in the old lines of "support" and how little they can give in the old lines of service; how much they can gain in the new freedom and how little they can pay for it in individual work. These are the women who are willing that the family property shall be in their name for the purpose of cheating creditors, and at the same time acknowledge no obligation to support the children from a common family fund. These are the women who demand their liberty to achieve and deny their duty to help. These are the women who take "alimony" from a man with whom they will not live and have married for their own convenience. They are the women who have independent incomes from inheritance or from vocational success and yet excuse themselves from any responsibility toward even invalid husbands, and never see the parental bond as now binding both fathers and mothers alike. Many men are struggling in some confusion of mind as to the outcome of this new tendency to equalize rights and opportunities, and to the credit of most of them, be it spoken, they want to do the right thing. It is now for women to preserve the father, the best of him, and for men to still call for the mother, the noblest of her, in the new adjustments that wait for full realization of the new democracy in the family. Here, again, we need not wait for perfect consistency in law, or full understanding of social tendencies and their outcome, to find our way in life. Love shows the way--love between intellectual and moral equals, who, in trying to adjust their own lives to a higher law in which "self-reverencing each and reverencing each," settle all problems on the higher levels of thought and feeling. =New Social Advantages for Fathers.=--Meanwhile, again, the father-office stands out in actual living function as never before. The fathers that now show what fatherhood was meant to be--they are legion. Holding the wife and mother in her place of sacred honor, they are to their children the Supreme Court of appeal in grave questions of discipline, the highest functionary of the family in the distribution of honors and rewards, the best comrade in fun, the most delightful companion in games, the strongest challenger in effort, and the symbol of knowledge and power of the community life. With the new partnership of men and women in the family the father has a chance to be a companion and friend as never before. He has an opportunity to show his children that side which the ancient father often failed to develop, the side of friendship and understanding. To the boy a clear picture of what he would be, to the girl a declaration of the kind of man she would marry, the modern father of the highest type makes possible a modern mother who shall show her son what womanhood may become in freedom, and who can lead her daughter to be, like herself, the flower of all the best of the past. QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER 1. What, in general, have been the social demands upon husbands and fathers, and how have these been met in the past? 2. What effect has the new freedom of women had upon the autonomy of the family and the legal obligations of the husband and father? 3. Should the relation of men and women to family life be identical? If not, why not? If so, what new agencies can or should be developed to secure what husbands and fathers are now legally obligated to provide? 4. What ideal of fatherhood should we now secure and maintain? 5. In Minnesota, recent bills presented to the Legislature "relating to and regulating marriage" include among the items "prohibition of marriage within six months after a divorce has been granted from a former spouse; and forbidding of marriage between persons either one of whom is epileptic, imbecile, feeble-minded, insane, an habitual drunkard, affected with a venereal disease, or addicted to the use of opium, morphine, or cocaine." This indicates the trend of newer laws regulating marriage. Is this trend justified? If so, how do the laws of your own State compare with others in this particular? 6. Doctor Devine says, "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." Is that true? If so, what contribution must the father continue to make to family success? FOOTNOTES: [4] See "Education of the Australian Boy," by A.W. Howitt, in his book, _Native Tribes of Southeast Australia_, showing the Initiation Ceremonies that separated the youth from family influence. [5] Since that decision a General Convocation of the American Protestant Episcopal Church has voted to eliminate the word "obey" from its marriage service. CHAPTER IV THE GRANDPARENTS "From my grandfather I learned good morals and the government of temper. From my great-grandfather to know that on education one should spend liberally. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds but from evil thoughts; and, further, simplicity in way of living. To the gods I am indebted for having good grandparents, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends."--MARCUS AURELIUS. "Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of years, nor that is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the grey hair unto men and an unspotted life is old age. The multitude of the wise is the welfare of the world; and the righteous live forevermore."--THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON. "Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the springs of life. "Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. We grow old only by deserting our ideals. In every heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from other men and women, and from the Infinite, so long is every one young."--SAMUEL ULMAN. "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made." --BROWNING. =Relative Increase of the Aged in Modern Life.=--The outstanding fact concerning the aged is that they increase proportionately to population as civilization increases. Easier conditions of living make for longer life. Public sanitation, private hygiene, good heating arrangements in each house, good water and plenty of it, sidewalks and porches for easy airing, medical science and the art of nursing made more widely available even for the poor, more physical comforts of every sort, more widely distributed, all tend toward the preservation of life after middle age is reached. They also tend to keep alive many babies who would have died in harder conditions and prolong the life of many invalids who would have succumbed to hardships in early youth. Indeed, Doctor Holmes declared that "the best insurance of a long life was to acquire an incurable disease when young;" while the average of robust health in all modern communities is certainly lowered by the modern methods of preservation of the delicate and the aged. =Savage Treatment of the Old.=--In the annals of savage life we find many gruesome tales of intentional disposal of the aged. The use of the old grandmother as a target for the training of young boys in the art of slaying one's enemy is an extreme example. The pathetic couple left behind when the tribe migrated, often with a small supply of food saved for them by some pitiful member of the family from the scanty hoard that must suffice until the next harvest or the next hunting, the neglect and the actual abuse that often made the last days quickly ended, all show that when life is too hard there is no room for the old. =The Relation of Ancestor-worship to Respect for Aged Men.=--Two things, at least, helped to give the aged a better place in the social esteem and in the provision for necessities as primitive life developed toward civilization. One was ancestor-worship, which made the father and the grandfather a link, indispensable and therefore honored, in the chain of blood relationship which carried on the generations. This type of religious belief and practice did not, however, work to ease the lot of old women. If the young wife did not have a child, especially a son, she could be repudiated often, and lose her standing in the family relation and hence be subjected to hardships that made her early old and often ended her life while still in middle age. If she had a son and rose to be a grandmother she might attain a most honorable position, having her son's wife to be her servant and her son's son's wife to be her slave. Even with the best intentions, the patriarchal father could not attend to all the details of government within his usually extensive household, and no man has yet lived who could manage unassisted a group of women, such as legal polygamy and concubinage brings under one roof, each one determined to get from him the best possible conditions for her own life and that of her children. =The Position of Chief-mother in Ancient Family.=--These facts often made the position of the chief-mother in a family one of such importance that they became her insurance against want and ill-treatment. The position of the chief-mother in the collective family is now one of the vital problems of Eastern nations trying to adjust the family system to modern ideas. The father's power is so much a delegated responsibility and the relationship between the lesser wives and the younger wives so much closer to the chief-mother than to the chief-father that the grandmother's position may be that of a tyrant. A series of questions which a group of Chinese students in an American university has drawn up include such as the following: "Where a young girl is brought into the home to be reared as the future bride of the boy in the family, is there any limit to the authority of the mother-in-law?" The mother-in-law in such cases being usually the older or chief-mother, she is really the grandmother-in-law. =Memory of the Aged Valued in Primitive Life.=--The position of aged men in primitive life secured some advantages because of the dependence upon memory for the carrying on of continued and conscious social existence before literature was born. The aged man who had been an important member of some military order or "fraternity" and remembered the exact words and motions of a valued ritual could be sure of having his continued life provided for by all those who desired to learn and to retain the means of perpetuating the religious cult thus expressed. Also those who remembered vital tribal occurrences and dealings with other tribes and could rehearse the same with exactness must have been considered of social use, and the older they were the more their memory gathered and the more their recital seemed sacred and hence the more the reciter was cherished. Nothing corresponding to this social value of the aged man, who could make permanent in ritual or in song or in story the experiences of the group, can be traced in the valuation of the experience of the aged woman in the periods before written literature. There were, however, as we can clearly see, traditions and customs, taboos and permitted familiarities so many and varied that old women with good memories and a personality that commanded attention must have had some accepted value within the inner circles of family experience. We get from folk-lore some clear intimations of this prestige and power of the ancient old woman in intimate social relationship. The power of old men received a great accession when political and religious orders and legal rules began to make social organization more definite and precise. "Old men for council; young men for war" had an early meaning. "The venerable Senate" is not a modern phrase. The "reverend father of the church" is an ancient allusion to the respect for and leadership of the aged in religious circles. The Popes of to-day begin their high service at an age that is in many positions a "dead line." The hardening of the social arteries in religion, government, politics, and law, however, while making old men more sure of their place in life, made old women less valued and worse treated. The ages of mediæval experience and of the feudal order, until chivalry began to affect the sex-relation, show almost unbelievable cruelty toward many aged women. The idea of the church fathers that women were, at best, a necessary evil and at worst the form most often assumed by the Devil of temptation, made it seem that all divergence from the purely domestic type was proof of collusion with evil powers. And all nervous ailments were once deemed a sign of the witches compact with Satan. Hence, since the unmitigated drudgery and the hard conditions of the lives of most women made them not only prematurely old but also given to nervous prostration (before that title appeared in the medical lists), the numbers of old women tortured, burned, drowned, beaten, and stoned to death, and otherwise destroyed, seems almost incredible to modern ideas, although so well authenticated in history. =Old Women and the Witchcraft Delusion.=--The young woman, being necessary for the bearing and rearing of children and the carrying on of important, although despised, labors, might escape active ill treatment. The old woman, old at thirty-five or forty, often, was not only considered a useless burden but a positive nuisance if she were at all "highstrung" or "meddling." Hence the natural conception, in a time of superstitious fear of evil spirits, of her complicity with those spirits made her seem a danger to society. The history of the witchcraft delusion and the cruelties that were a part of that delusion show that aged women almost alone suffered from that nightmare of human ignorance. Doubtless, however, there were even in those days grandmothers beloved and protected, busy even to the last with caretaking of childhood and the rites of hospitality; grandmothers whom their sons and even their sons-in-law revered for some quality of gentleness and sympathy found useful in family emergencies; grandmothers whose shrewd wisdom of experience and fine gift of understanding made them invaluable members of the family circle. Folk-lore and ancient song give hint of these. The waste of old age in women, however, is, as has been indicated elsewhere by the writer, the greatest of all social wastes since time began. The idea that women were serviceable only for the procreative function and the hardest drudgery of family service, and that they lost all social value when they ceased to be attractive to the senses of men or ended their personal ministrations to their own little children, long obtained. This idea is responsible for the further conception of old women as not only useless but a disagreeable burden. Hence, while old men rose during many ages in social regard and protection and care, old women became more and more miserable and ill-treated where the collective family was superseded by the newer type of individualistic bond between one man, one woman, and their children. In the ancient patriarchal and collective family the oldest mother might reign as queen. In the more modern type of family, made the social fashion by what is called Christian civilization, the aged woman, the grandmother, unless exceptionally attractive and sweet-tempered and exceptionally able to help in the household tasks, was the victim of the change from one system to the other. The fact that women, if well-developed and well-treated, are younger at seventy than are men and that more women than men live to be aged than when the conditions of living were less favorable to the weak and delicate, gave early in our civilization what must have seemed far too many old women. While women had the constant burden of a "steady job" within the home, harder and more continuous than men had in their handicraft labor, yet men were killed in battle in large numbers, and were physically able to dangerously overdo in some labor "spurt" and hence more women than men lived to be old. Hence, again, there were far more grandmothers than grandfathers in the family in all mediæval life. This led to many cruelties to old women who were deemed "superfluous." While, however, the actual experience of common people made conditions so hard for grandmothers, the idealism within the religious field was favorable to the mother of any age. The same church fathers who shunned marriage as a cowardly concession to the body, and who wrote flaming animadversions upon women in general, gave the Virgin and Child their adoration and made a place of honor and of comfort to those women who chose the religious vocation outside the home. =Older Women in Religious Vocations Honored in Middle Ages.=--These women, the Ladies of the Abbeys and the special servitors of the Church, reached the first independent places of distinction which women in Christian civilization attained and to them, at least, age added power and veneration. Hence, even while they ignored their relationship to common womanhood, they often allayed superstitious cruelty toward other old women. Whenever any subject class develops within it a genius or a quality of talent or a specialty of activity that gives personal prestige, that class as a whole gains recognition. The Carlisle Indian who beats at the game of football; the Afric-American artist whose works claim admiration; the representative of the backward nation who shows power of achievement formerly supposed to be the sole accomplishment of the conquering peoples, not only makes a place for himself, he opens the door to wider opportunity for his class. So the woman of the religious orders, when of scholarly achievement and of commanding intellect, showed these qualities in increasing example as she grew older and more experienced, and so worked to make a place for the older woman in every sphere of life. Slowly it began to dawn upon the common consciousness that the individualistic family of one young couple and their children needed props from within if it had lost those from without--those ancient props which sustained as well as controlled young fathers and mothers in the collective family. Hence grandmothers, and grandfathers, as well, became of recognized use in the care and upbringing of children. The picture of the grandmother by the fireside holding the youngest baby and the grandfather coming in with a gift for the young mother, who is manifestly pleased, with the young father in the background delighted at the family welcome for his offspring, is not only old but the theme of many of the world's best-loved paintings and stories. =To-day Comparatively Few Really Old at Seventy.=--To-day there has come about a wholly new condition in the most advanced centres of social life in respect to the aged. In the first place, there are few "old" grandmothers left. There are grandmothers, but they are sprightly and give little token of being passée or laid on the shelf. There are few old men left. There are those who have passed the allotted term of threescore years and ten, but they well know and make all others understand that this was a mistaken limit to human powers. They look forward to usefulness until eighty, at least, and now are encouraged to feel that one hundred years is the natural span of life. There are, it is true, few really important studies of how to keep people from growing senile and really old before the time now set for failure of powers. Such studies, however, are prophesied in a small "endowment for the study of diseases of the aged" already given, and more in the statement of appeals for increase of such endowment. The tendency now is setting strongly not only toward the lengthening of life but toward the lengthening of the mental and physical power that alone makes long life desirable. We shall see more and more of this interest as medical science reaches out further and further toward lessening all the ills that flesh is heir to. Meanwhile, what is the actual condition in the various strata of life, in our own country, for example, in respect to the protection, the care, the comfort, the happiness, and the general welfare of the aged? In the first place, the speeding up of machinery has made many manual workers prematurely old. The worst thing, perhaps, about child-labor has been that, owing to premature "laying off" of the fathers, the children have been set to earn money for family needs, and have acquired, with their pay envelope, a contempt or disrespect for the father in ways that have reversed the natural relationship and given society much use for the Children's Court. This disrespect shown the father, even when he is only of middle age, passes on in increased measure to the grandfather who has been pushed aside from self-support and family support while still comparatively young and has never been able to again catch on to the wheels of industry. The fact that he eats and does not work; that he takes space in the crowded tenement and does not aid in paying its rent; that he has no light employment that can give his fading mental powers an impulse toward ambition and energy, all make the position of the grandfather in many homes of struggling poverty a most unhappy one. In such homes the grandmother is often still seen to be really useful. She may make it possible for the young mother to earn outside the home. She may, if skilled in sewing, ease the expense of ready-made clothes. She may, at least, and usually does, relieve the mother of much care of the babies. There are several reasons why more aged men are sent to public institutions for final care than aged women of the same general type of family, but the most important reason is that most women have skill in domestic matters; and domestic service is needed everywhere, no matter how many unemployed walk the streets. Needed most in the poorest home, the help of the grandmother is often appreciated in inverse ratio to the income. In the circles above the poverty line there is much variety in the estimation and in the treatment of grandfathers and grandmothers. The ideal picture of a family always has in its background, if not in the very front, an old man and an old woman, benevolent and sweet-natured, who can be depended upon to be more indulgent to the children than even the father or mother and who appear always in family emergencies to renew their youth of service in behalf of the younger generation. What is thus ideally pictured is a fact in thousands of families. No one can say that it is always best to have three generations under one roof, but all who have had a happy family experience believe that the grandparents should be "handy by," to use the Scotch phrase. The grandparents' house in the country is best of all, where all family and national holidays can be celebrated with due form and in accordance with ancient tradition. The grandparents' house for the city children is next best, if in a suburb near by where more space and independence of movement are possible than in the city residence. The grandparents' house or apartment in the same or a near-by city is, however, not at all to be despised as a refuge when "Mother does not understand," or "Father is so particular." =Is Any House Large Enough for Two Families?=--Although the proverb says, "No house was yet made large enough for two families," the residence of one grandparent (oftener the mother than the father) within the family circle has often proved highly successful if only a few rules have been observed. One of these rules is that each adult person shall have one place strictly his of her own. Another is a rule, so difficult for some aged persons of both sexes to obey, namely, that each person married is doubly entitled to individual choices in action without interference even from parents, since each such married person has to adjust his or her ideas to another person. To work out full agreement between themselves is all that any married couple should be expected to accomplish. Hence, in the nature of things, the grandparents who are so near the new family that they know and see everything have a far more difficult rôle to play than do the grandparents who have their own home and simply visit and are visited. It is, however, often a necessity of financial provision and often a choice of ease in ministration to the needs of the aged, that brings one grandparent or even two within the daughter's or son's household. The time-worn jokes about the "mother-in-law" are based upon the fact that it is more often the daughter than the son who is expected to or needs to personally care within her own home for the mother. The son is not so bound by social custom to take his mother in. Hence, more husbands than wives have trials with their parents-in-law. =Reasons Why Husbands Desert Their Families.=--The statistics of deserting husbands, as compiled in a careful study made by Lillian Brandt and Roger Baldwin, show that among the chief causes of "leaving home" is "trouble with the wife's relations." In these cases it is not only the grandmother, although she is often a member of the disturbed family; it is also often other relatives--a sister, a brother, or a first husband's people--who cause trouble. The wife's mother is, however, often enough a member of the household the husband leaves behind to give some point to the coarse and often unjust jokes concerning the mother-in-law. Where the feeling is right, and both generations reasonable and just, there are still many problems of adjustment arising from an attempt to bring either or both parents of the married couple into the same household. The first problem is that of the financial support. It ought not to be the case that any aged couple or any widowed father or mother should be left wholly dependent upon their children. The demand for better economic provision for the aged is one of the most vital and pressing of social needs. The difficulty of taking care of the father and mother when the children are coming on with pressing needs of their own is felt acutely in cases of narrow income. The call is almost universal to provide more adequately for grandparents. How can we meet this call? =The Financial Provision for Old Age.=--In the case of those whose earning capacity is not equal to saving a sufficient old-age provision while at work the claim for an Old-age Pension is growing. This may be either a subsidy from the state, a joint pension from the state and the employing business in which the man or woman has worked, or it may be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in addition, or as a substitute, a family provision on the plan so well suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, _The Business of the Household_, a plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age Fund," to which each child shall contribute in the years when he is earning most, not as a gift but as a "deferred payment," as it were, for all that the parents give in childhood. To this Old-age Fund any savings of the father and mother may be added until a sufficient sum is secured for comfortable care in old age. Mr. Taber indicates that at least five dollars out of every twenty-five saved should be thus assigned and invested only in the safest manner and held inviolate, no matter what the temporary needs of the family may be, until the work-time has passed. Whatever plan may be adopted, it is certain that family well-being and the happiness of the aged alike call for a better and more adequate old-age provision. The laborers who earn less than the required sum for a decent standard of life for father, mother, and children cannot, of course, make any provision for their own old age or care for dependent parents. In such families the public institutions or privately endowed and managed "Homes for the Aged" offer the only and often a comfortable and sometimes a happy place for the grandparents. The movement for this social care of the aged has many phases. In some countries, as in _The Danish Care of the Aged_, so well described by Edith Sellers in her book of that name, there is a far more complete and generous use of public funds than we have in the United States, a possibility of careful grading of persons in appropriate groups, and a removal of the crushing sense of public charity which those of English ancestry so often feel when obliged "to go upon the town;" yet this leaves much to be desired.[6] In the grade of economic condition above that in which it is a dire struggle to make both ends meet for the husband, wife, and their little children, there are to be considered five ways in which the care of the aged can be made adequate and not too great a burden upon those of young and those of middle life. =Needed Ways of Preparing for Old Age.=--First: There must be devised, as indicated above, better and surer ways of insurance, savings, and pensions, by which the grandparents can be made more or less independent even in families of limited means. Second: There must he measures established for the prevention of premature old age, measures operating in health and in labor-power to prolong self-dependence by means of individual earnings, to the fullest extent possible. Third: There must be for men, as for women, provision in vocational training by which each person may have in reserve some light and interesting form of activity, possibly of earning value, which may serve as occupation when strenuous work is outgrown. Fourth: There must be a clearer understanding of the mutual obligations of parents and children so that the care of the aged may seem more often, what it really is in most cases, not a charity from within the family circle, to be passed around with jealous eye for just distribution of family burdens within the group of children, but a family debt, for the payment of which early and constant provision must be made by all members of the family during the years of largest earning power. If the grandparents have had a chance to save enough to pay all their own share of the family expense to the end of life, well and good. If, on the contrary, as is so often the case (now that the social standard for child-care and child-education has risen to such heights of parental requirement), the parents, now old, have spent so lavishly on the schooling and marriage setting up of their sons and daughters that they have not been able to save for themselves, then the obligation of the children is clear and the grandparents should never feel themselves pensioners. Fifth: Actual old age, senility, failure of physical and mental power, should be postponed in each case as long as possible by active measures of mental and moral discipline consciously undertaken by personal effort. "The making of mind" is not an art of youth alone. It is an art of middle age and of the older years. Says William James: "The man who daily inures himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition and self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." Such a one also will resist the decay of powers and be able to keep young when the years tell of many birthdays. To go over these points with greater detail: The first requirement, namely, to make sure that all possible financial provision is made for grandparents while they are yet young and capable enough in their work to save, is one that is more and more recognized. Moreover, the tendency in every country is increasingly toward state recognition of the duty of society toward its aged members. The proposition of Victor Berger, then the solitary socialistic member of the Congress of the United States, to pension every person over the age of sixty is one that will hardly be carried into effect. The objection, however, to much existing pensioning by the state which this blanket proposition was intended to offset is that its benefits are mostly for those near the poverty line or below it and hence may be and often is a discouragement to thrift and self-dependence rather than an aid to individual effort. =Pension Laws.=--For example, in Great Britain, the pension law made all eligible to state aid who were over seventy years of age and whose personal income did not exceed one hundred and five dollars per year. Such were entitled to aid to the extent of $1.25 a week, and those having incomes above that sum were entitled to receive a graduated series of state benefits. This aid from the state has doubtless made the condition of many aged persons far more tolerable and even happy in families where, previous to the passage of that Act, the extra expense involved in caring for the grandparents was the last straw that broke the back of independency. In all cases where the addition of a few dollars weekly to the family income is an actual and obvious help to family comfort, state pensions for the aged have worked good results in family feeling and good-will and affection. Where, however, the state aid comes without any contributory savings from the individual or his employer and where to qualify for its benefit all must have an income of very small proportion, it is in effect a class measure and obviously for the relief of the very poor. The higher family interest demands that every system of insurance or of subsidy, or of occasional aid to any member of the family, should tend directly and powerfully toward and not away from thrift, work capacity, and sound business principles. Society-at-large must now make good in some makeshift fashion for many social failures of the past, but its main currents of pressure upon the individual life should be in the production of a line of normal and successful men and women, rather than attempts to make all share alike, whatever their personal quality, when old age comes on. This principle makes it imperative that some larger and wiser plan than has as yet been attempted shall make all systems of financial care of the aged a positive aid toward self-dependence and social serviceability. =Old-age Home Insurance.=--In this connection a radical suggestion is offered, namely, a scheme for Old-age Home Insurance. It is a well-known fact that the waiting list of most private Homes for the Aged is long, and that men and women wait piteously for the death of an "inmate" to give them entrance to the only place of comfort and security life can offer them. It is also well known that there are more aged persons who need the companionship of those of their own generation, who need quiet and relief from the noise and excitement of young children, than can now secure those requirements in the homes of their daughters or their sons. It is again true, although not so well recognized or understood, that most aged persons unable financially to retain a personal home would prefer a choice between residence in a child's family, however dutiful and generous that child might be, and residence elsewhere. It is also true that the care of aged parents in her own home is often too great a tax upon the time and strength of the housemother when there are many young children. Again, it is true that many aged people prefer a place they can call "home," even if it is only one room, to which they can invite their friends and from which they may pay visits to their relatives, even their nearest and dearest, and return to their own small quarters at will. It is also true that although most elderly persons live for years in quite good health and need little actual nursing, they do profit by occasional attentions which a nurse can give, and few such elderly people can afford or obtain this occasional service in either a home of their own or in one shared with a child. These facts indicate a need for a larger and a more democratic provision of homes for the aged, a provision that can be more easily made by personal effort through the younger years of life, and one that can receive social aid at less cost to personal dignity and with less rigid rules of managing "Boards" than the present prevailing type of Homes for the Aged supply. The boarding house sought by many aged persons who prefer independence of life to living in the family of their children, and sought also by many well-to-do elderly widows and widowers who find that the personal home is too lonely or too expensive to keep up for one alone--the average boarding house is a sorry substitute for a home. For the young, who hope to escape it soon, it is tolerable. For the aged, who need to feel settled, it is often a most unhappy dwelling-place. Beside, any one who tries to find a place for the elderly boarder will find that prices are often prohibitive for all but the rich, and few boarding mistresses want old people. A state pension has often, as has been said, been proposed for all aged people. Let us suppose that instead of this some scheme of State Insurance for Old-age Homes be devised; a scheme in which after the payment of a certain specified sum a share in a Boarding Home might be secured. If the state or if any private Agency or Foundation could provide the "plant," a suitable building and its repairs and fundamental expenses of upkeep, with one salaried superintendent whose character and ability could be guaranteed, the running expenses of a Boarding Home could be met easily by the limited means of many who now lack the security of an institutional provision and in consequence lack also many essentials of old-age comfort. A skilled budget-maker could determine the numbers required in each household to make the board low and a sympathetic social worker could suggest the coöperative features of management most likely to give successful results in the composite home. The entrance age in such a Boarding Home could be lower than that required in the usual type of privately endowed Home for the Aged and thus a felt need be met for a suitable home for those between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five. In these privately endowed Homes for the Aged the entrance fees range from $100 to $1,000, and beneficiaries are required to give up all the property of any kind of which they may be possessed when they enter this permanent residence. This is not unjust, but it is often an added trial to the independent nature. There is need of far larger provision for the old in Homes for Aged Men, Aged Women, and Aged Couples. No one can give anything but gratitude for the opportunities they now offer or fail to hope for their increase. There is, however, a special need for some social engineering which can initiate Boarding Homes for the Elderly. Many of these are still strong and well, but need special consideration in particular ways. Many others are not ill, but delicate, and in need not of full-time nursing care but of occasional good offices of trained helpers. One nurse, a "practical nurse" or a trained nurse past in age and strength full service of her profession, could easily give occasional service needed for twenty or more elderly persons in usual health or for ten or more aged, in greater need of care but not helpless, if all were under the same roof. The coöperative plans that often fail in serving the family of father, mother, and children, may be found exactly suited to special classes, and among them the aged. The Social Settlements were started to serve and have served the neighborhood needs of the poor and the immigrant. They have also, incidentally, demonstrated the financial advantages of coöperative housekeeping. A company of congenial people living together in groups of twenty to forty can secure the essentials of food, shelter, and necessary service at a cost per person far below the average expense for boarding or private housekeeping. This does not mean that families can combine easily in multiple households. The personal equation counts for its greatest influence in the real family group, of father, mother, and their children under eighteen years of age. Few, if any, schemes of coöperative housekeeping have as yet worked well for the combination of such groups. The aged, especially the aged widow or widower, are not in the direct family group. They belong to but they are not inside the inmost circle. If one alone is left the life of the personal home is broken for the elderly, however dear and kind the children may be. For such there surely needs something easier than the attempt to maintain a separate home with half its life gone. And also something more independent and more secure than either enforced residence with children or compulsory use of the ordinary commercialized boarding house. =To Prevent Premature Old Age.=--The second social demand, that premature old age shall be more effectively prevented, is one that is pressed upon this generation with new and imperative considerations. A knowledge of health conditions shows that although infant mortality is greatly lessened and infectious and epidemic diseases greatly brought under control, the diseases of middle age, such as hardening of arteries and kidney and digestive disorders, have increased relatively, while insanity is much more frequent than of old. These facts give us all deep concern. From the failure of health in middle life comes the premature senility and the invalid weakness of old age. The cause of the increase of middle-life diseases, relatively to those of other periods of life, seems to be principally the pressure of business and industrial life upon the worker. The high speed of machinery, the extreme competition in business, the monotony of the specialized manufacturing groups, the weight of great financial enterprises and the struggle to make the family setting equal to the family desires or even the family needs, all tend to make men in middle life fail so often in health and so often leave behind their better sheltered and more tenderly cared-for wives. There is a new movement of great social importance, and one tending directly toward the saving of one-half of the family circle, which is now taking a front place in social interest; namely, the movement for annual medical examinations. The work of the Life Extension Institute leads toward this end and seeks the better adjustment of life and work in the interest of simplicity and mutual service in the family and the better health of all its members. It is not, however, in the power of the wisest and most unselfish of individuals to so manage the work-power as to insure against premature old age from too great speeding and overstrain. There must be social movement of the most thorough-going sort to prevent the waste of the laborers in all fields. Social workers should remember that it is not alone important to try to safeguard the health and strength of mothers and of potential mothers by laws protecting women and girls in industry. It is as vital a need to safeguard the health and strength and perpetuate the work-power of fathers and potential fathers in order that old age may be not a terror but a blessing to the family. This is emphasized by recent indications that the increase of the diseases of middle age is already checked and that we are gaining ground in this particular. A recent report of the Federal Department of Commerce through the Bureau of Census shows that there has been a decline in the death-rate for all age periods during the last decade. In the rate for infants under one year of age a decline of twenty-six per cent., or from 13,804 per 100,000 in 1910 to 9,660 per 100,000 in 1920. The death-rate for middle-aged and old people shows an encouraging decrease, that of twelve per cent., in the period above seventy-five years of age. This shows that we are gaining on disease and premature death with every new advance in preventive medicine and the crusade against bad living conditions. This, again, means that in the future we shall have more aged persons in ratio of population than we have had in the past, and indicates the great need of taking measures betimes to make old age not only more mentally strong but more happy and comfortable in condition. =Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor.=--There are many requirements for youth in offered opportunities of training and of work which are distinctly detrimental to respect for, and possibility of continued service of, the old. Take, for example, the age limit in many departments of business and manual labor. During the war we had in the countries most denuded of young men a new sort of trial of the middle-aged in positions where it had been thought youth was required. What was the result? The trial made in Chicago by fifteen large employers of labor under the leadership of Mr. Benjamin Rosenthal, was distinctly, to use his words, "to upset the fallacious theory that men between the ages of 45 and 65 are fit only for the scrap-heap." The result of this experiment showed that in some phases of work the older men did as much work in a given number of hours as the younger men; in other departments they did as much in the week or month, from their steadiness and devotion to their work, but not as much in any one day. That is, the older men were less quick, but more steady and, therefore, in the end accomplished as much. In some kinds of labor the older men did better than the younger because usually more patient of detail and less restive in monotonous toil. In the larger enterprises older men are proverbially less speculative, more conservative, less venturesome than the young. American business would, perhaps, not suffer if a larger admixture of these qualities were found in all the walks of commerce and business. The fact that when a man is at the head of a concern, large or small, he is valued usually more at sixty-five than at thirty-five, and the further fact that thirty-five is often the dead-line for admission to the lower ranks of the same industry or commercial position, is a proof that this age-limit of the worker in lower position is not one of definite knowledge of actual incapacity after forty years of age but rather due to other conditions. Those conditions are, first and foremost, the easier management of younger than of older subordinates. It is hard for many men to "order about," in peremptory fashion, a man older than themselves, and few men can command without abruptness or sharp orders. It is still harder for most men to order about as office assistant or clerk or secretary a woman older than themselves. And fewer men can assume a respectful yet commanding attitude toward women than can do so toward men in their employ. Some embarrassment has yet to be worn off in business relations of the sexes. Moreover, the tendency toward upspeeding of all mechanical manufacture is a part of the rushing spirit of an age which has invented more fast-going things than it has as yet mental power to use wisely or with social safety, and it is true that fewer men over forty can rush in their work than can do so below that age. Youth is nimble; youth can be snubbed for errors of accomplishment without hurt to a "gentleman's instincts;" youth, although so careless as to often get injured by the swift-going machines, can yet exult in their rapid swing; and, above all, youth is flexible and can be shaped to any form of business requirement decided upon by those higher up. Hence a fictitious value is assigned to youth in all departments of work to-day. Hence, again, a special movement for actual trial of the relative values of workers of different ages in special kinds of work is necessary if we would know whether or not it is possible to prevent that premature old age and tragical financial helplessness at fifty-five or sixty, which makes the workless man or woman a burden where many believe he or she might be still a help to the family income. We have been a nation of the young. We shall more and more balance the different age-periods, as is already done in the older countries. We should prepare, betimes, for this new aspect of the future's census, by providing against preventable old age by the wiser use of all laborers as long as work-power can be made available for self-dependence. =Need of Experience in Many Fields of Work.=--There are certain fields of work on the higher side of social ministration in which the more experienced are more needed than the young. Some one has said that "no man is fit to be a pastor of a church until he has been something else for several years and knows something of life." There is a very real demand for any one, man or woman, who ventures to deal with the spiritual life that he or she shall have more than youth can give of sympathy and understanding. There is need also for larger experience and greater breadth of view in professional social work of all sorts, more than the young man or woman can give who has had college, plus "School for Social Work," and nothing else; but who, because "trained," feels expert. There could not be a greater social mistake than is made by schools which attempt to train for child-care, family visiting, rehabilitation of the dependent, aid to the "down-and-out," succor to the tempted and help to the weak, and yet deny the opportunities of their classes to men and women over thirty-five. The giving of "auditors' privileges," or "special courses for volunteers," or like makeshifts for regular student privileges is not what is required; for such provisions carry with them the idea of less than professional standing and usefulness. The initiation and maintenance and increase of schools of training for social work is one of the great educational and social achievements of the past quarter-century, but the age-limit for entrance in many such schools is a huge mistake. The very essence of true social service to individuals is experience in life. The girl or boy who has had none or little may make a good technician in many departments and may make a fine showing in work that is not personal, and may collect material or knowledge about groups of persons who need help. But the man or woman who is able to be of great value as a "social doctor" is not only born to such service but also is one who has not begun a specialty of social technic too young to have learned something of the difficulty of living. Young students? Yes. But many more who have come later in life to a sense of their social responsibility and to a desire to learn how best to serve society with all that they have gained in rich experience. The psychology of social training must envisage a wider range of years to be most effective. =Prepare Vocationally for Old-age Needs.=--The third demand, that every man and woman in early youth or in later youth shall be trained in some light and agreeable occupation that can be pursued, perhaps to economic return, in the days when strenuous labor can no longer be carried on, is one that has as yet received little attention but which should be a matter of deep concern. The fact that so many old women of little physical strength and who require much personal care can yet be useful and therefore actually wanted as helpers in many families is indicative of the fundamental fact in industrial life that a general training for general usefulness, such as the housewife has had through the ages, has some advantages still. Before Mrs. Perkins Gilman gets all women into some specialty, alongside of the already highly specialized men workers, let us see to it that men get a chance for a more general training! The restless idleness of the man whose specialty of manual labor or definite type of business interest is now beyond his strength or opportunity is a sad thing to see. We have had to develop a special charity to furnish a work-interest to aged men in public institutions. They were so miserable and pathetic without that occupation. Women fare better in this, as in many other elements of labor, for they can do so many things, usually have to do so many things, most of them, in the family, that some one sort of work, at least, is left to them for special old age. "Mother's pies" or grandmother's cakes or needlework or knack at dusting or baby-tending or what not keeps her young and makes her actually a helper even when old. Grandfather's loss of his job, of his specialty of effort, of his hold on the great industrial machine, leaves him too often hopelessly at sea for the passing of time still left to him. Well-to-do women in the United States, moreover, have acquired through the large leisure inherited wealth or their husband's means have supplied, a social business that has not only delayed old age but nearly obliterated its ancient signs and tokens. The Clubs, the Leagues, the Alliances, the charitable agencies, the institutions of care for the defective, the friendless, the infirm, the dependent children, the countless societies and coöperative social organizations for social serviceableness, in which women are leaders and chief workers, bear witness that "grandmother" has found a place for her energies after the children have grown and set up households of their own. If such a grandmother is a member of the daughter's family she is not half so objectionable to daughter's husband as when mother-in-law had a permanent place at the fireside, perhaps in the exact spot where he wanted to put his easy chair, and had to be "taken out" if she ever ventured into the great world. She now has her own interests, often so many and vital that her day is more completely filled than when she was younger. She has her own set of friends and her own use for the energy and power of direction that often in the old days made her a troublesome member of the family. If only she has a chance at her own little cooking, and her own individual sitting room, and has her own income, if ever so small, she may fit well into even a city apartment and no other member of the family be the worse. The thing required for old men and women alike is some work suited to slower motion and lessened strength and greater need for quiet and independent thought. This is a need which more women than men have met to-day, we repeat, but it is one that must be understood and effectively satisfied for men and women alike. Edward Everett Hale said every man needed "both a vocation and an avocation"--something by which he earned his living and something by which he maintained his interest in activity. It is the avocation that must be planned for. The vocation is often thrust upon one by necessity or chance association. If every aged person had something to do that made each day short and each night a welcome rest much of the friction between the older and the younger members of families would be avoided and life would piece the generations together more perfectly. =The Attitude of Mind Toward Old Age.=--Life calls upon us all to prepare while yet young for the lessened power of old age. The removal from the commanding place to the honorable but more difficult position of the ex-leader and the chief-emeritus is a step that requires care. The attitude of mind that can keep in harmonious touch with the oncoming generation and yet not lose the value of its own day of contribution to the social inheritance is an art to be acquired only by effort and the exercise of moral and mental power. There was, perhaps, never in the history of our civilization so great a gap between the ideals and social practices of the grandparents and those of the third generation. The parents even are feeling themselves too far from the children; the grandparents often realize a vast distance between themselves and the rising generation. The distance is not always the measure of progress. It is not seldom the effect of rapid changes in mechanical appliances, in material agencies and economic conditions, in literary taste and in ideals of culture; an effect which has unsettled youth in the inherited ways and not yet settled them in well-considered new rules of living. The experience that might aid in easing the process of readjustment is not always at hand and not always used when it is attainable. The experience of age is too often shown in dogmatic rules. The inexperience of youth is too often the accompaniment of a childish conviction that everything that has been is wrong and everything that promises to be is best. There is, therefore, greater need, perhaps, than ever before for wisdom and patience and sympathetic understanding of those from whom one differs within the family life. It is for the grandparents to set the fashion for these new adjustments. They have loved most because they have given most. They have learned most, or could have learned most, because longer in the school of life. And they have but a little way to travel on the long road their children and their children's children must go to meet their fate. To the lasting credit of human nature be it said that the grandparents of to-day measure as well for the most part as do the parents in these difficult tasks of family adjustment to a rapidly changing social order. It is often the grandparent who sees what the different life of his or her children have meant to the still greater difference in the condition of the grandchild, and can interpret to the latter the reason for the restraint of the parent. It is often through the tenderness and devotion to the aged called out by the grandparents that the son and daughter learn the real depths of parental love. It is often the partial affection of the grandparent for the grandchild that makes a new tie in family love and enables that family love to grow wiser as well as stronger. It may be, as quoted before, that no house is large enough for two families. It surely is true that no family living room is spacious enough for the continuous use of three generations; but it is still more true that with new interests all around the circle of family membership a more varied family life can be managed without friction or loss of privacy for any member if only there is the right attitude of mind. To-day the ideal of the Heaven-father fastens itself as easily to the child's affection for grandpa as on his dependence upon his father. To-day the ideal of mother-love, never lessened even by wrong-doing of the child, is as securely fibred upon the picture of grandma, ever ready to heal and comfort, as upon that of the mother, whose daily ministrations make the child comfortable. =The Special Gifts of the Old to the Home and the World.=--In some ways it is surely more easy to believe in goodness at the heart of things because some aged man or woman, closely related by blood and breeding, has been a living example of what must be revered. Moreover, to the family, as to the world-at-large, old age brings a special gift--if that old age is what it may be. Each period of life has its own gift to make. Age should make a precious contribution, even the central faith of life. Youth, eager, responsive to all noble ambitions and touched by all noble dissatisfactions with what is, makes its plan for what should be on a strictly logical basis. His rejected Evil is wholly evil; his chosen Good without a flaw. Children are all Calvinists; and youth, for the most part, separates its ideas of good and bad as the sheep and goats within its mind. Well that it is so. The law of growth in life is so far from logical, so operative by inconsistent fluctuations, that it is of the greatest social use for each fresh generation of reformers to hew to the line and express that intolerance of compromise which helps the struggling moral sense to clarify the issues of each new day. In middle life, if the individual worker for better things is not merely a prophesier but has become an actual agent for the realization of his ideal in practical achievement, he suffers many a disillusion, not in respect to his ideal, but in respect to the ease of working it into the body politic or into the compelling purpose of the social mind. That is the time of danger; and how many lose heart and hope and fall weakly by the way when they first learn that to state a truth with power is not enough to insure its acceptance! That one should set himself with courage and faith to the long, slow processes of actual change of the social order after he has learned how difficult that is, is to be indeed a hero--a hero of the actualization of the ideal, even though he dies with the promised land hardly in sight. In later life comes to many, and should to all, another gift. Not alone the vision of youth, never lost and always dear; not only the strength of open-eyed effort to achieve so much of the ideal, even its very least atom, as the times and the conditions allow and not lose heart that it is so little, but also the interpretative and harmonizing spirit of those who see, beyond the personal ideal and vision and far beyond the personal achievement, the upward march of all mankind--not alone the leaders of that march; not alone those who will and know the upward way, but all who feel the under-current pressure "toward the better, ever onward toward the best," This pressure even those feel who fondly imagine they are holding all life to outgrown patterns, and they prove its power by their unconscious response. Another gift of insight they may have who grow old in the spirit of youth. It is the gift of seeing in one picture those who have come a long way up the path of progress and those who have but just entered upon it. The harsh judgments of youth, so tonic and useful, that measure moral actions by their exact position in ethical perception (judgment so tonic and useful that youth without that element misses its own gift to human progress) cease to serve in old age for purposes of just discrimination. In later life may come the wisdom of understanding those from whom one differs, the gift of seeing the helpful interrelations of newer and older "mores" in normal human development and the glad recognition that even defective moral vision, though retarding needed changes, may be used by the powers that balance our complex life to hold, its course steady in chaos of change. These gifts may add patience and love, sweetness and light, to the zeal of the reformer and yet not dull his ardor for the next morning-hour of progress. Not the old, then, because it is old, nor the new because it is new; not the few who will hold no parley with that which to them is evil, nor the many who cling to what they have inherited lest they lose life's best treasures; not to those who call aloud in the market place, "Behold the coming of the Lord!" nor to those who sit at the fireside and cherish their own only; not on or to any one manifestation of the life in which we have our being can the old, with the spirit of youth, fibre their faith and trust. In all the struggling, mistaken, weary, selfish, cowardly, alike as in all the brave, heroic, unselfish and lovely, is manifestation that makes "no good thing a failure, no evil thing success." This is the testimony of a ripe and wise old age. In that they must trust who have tested the real things of life in the real world of effort, nor lost hope in the Onward Way for all. QUESTIONS ON THE GRANDPARENTS 1. What have been the general tendencies in social treatment of the aged? 2. What are some of the social needs in respect to public and private health, vocational training, wages and standards of living, family and personal insurance and educational opportunities which must be met if old age is to be prolonged as far as possible and made happy and comfortable to the end of life? 3. What should be the aim of youth and middle life in respect to preparation for old age? 4. Read _Old Age Support of Women Teachers_, by Dr. Lucille Eaves, _A Study in Economic Relations of Women_, by the Department of Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston, Mass., and read "The Trade Union and the Old Man," by John O'Grady, Catholic University of America, published in _American Journal of Sociology_ of November, 1917. Are the suggestions in these articles along needed lines? FOOTNOTES: [6] See _The State and Pensions in Old Age_, by J.A. Spender. CHAPTER V BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN "The members of the ancient family were united by something more powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the religion of the sacred fire and of dead ancestors. This caused the ancient family to form a single body, both in this life and in the next,"--DE COULANGES, in _The Ancient City_. "Land belonged to the clan and the clan was settled upon the land. A man was thus not a member of the clan because he lived upon or even owned the land, but he lived upon the land and had interest in it because he was a member of the clan."--HEARN, in _The Aryan Household_. "Three things if possessed by a man make him fit to be a chief of kindred: that he should speak in behalf of his kin and be listened to; that he should fight in behalf of his kin and be feared; that he should be security on behalf of his kin and be accepted."--WELSH TRIADS (cited by Seebohm). "I cannot choose but think upon the time When our two loves grew like two buds; School parted us; we never found again That childish world where our two spirits mingled Like scents from varying roses that remain one sweetness. Yet the twin habit of that earlier time Lingered for long about the heart and tongue. We had been natives of one happy clime And its dear accent to our utterance clung. And were another childhood world my share, I would be born a little sister there." --GEORGE ELIOT, in _Brother and Sister_. "When love is strong it never tarries to take heed Or know if its return exceed Its gift; in its sweet haste no greed, No strife belong. It hardly asks if it be loved at all, to take So barren seems, when it can make Such bliss, for the beloved's sake, Of bitter tasks."--H.H. =Ancient Kinship Bond.=--The relation of brothers and sisters in the family group has passed through many changes and must at times have caused much confusion and difficulty in the home. For example, in that state of familial association in which all the brothers of a certain relationship were considered as husbands of all sisters within a certain bond there must have been some heart-burnings and several kinds of family unpleasantness. We have some hints of these from many historical sources. In the era of complete subjection of the individual to the community such unpleasantness may have counted only for negligible unhappiness on the part of a few social rebels, but the custom alluded to did not prove to work well enough to become permanent. Again, the form of family bond which demanded that a man take to wife the widow of his dead brother and "raise up children to the name" of the deceased had a long but not a permanent life. In the well-known passage from Deuteronomy, the 25th chapter, the faithful are commanded that "if brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall ... take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her. And the first-born ... shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his name be not blotted out of Israel." The same passage shows that while it was doubtless at first an imperative social law, there came a time when the living brother had a choice as to whether or not he should take to wife the widow of one who had died. Perhaps there might have been an economic pressure that made it difficult to perform this ancient duty. Perhaps there might have been objection from the wife or wives already in command of the household matters. Perhaps the widow was sometimes of a type to make the brotherly and family duty seem very hard. At any rate, there came a time when, as the writer in Deuteronomy says, "If the man like not to take his brother's wife" he could refuse the family service. It cost him, however, in such cases a severe ordeal. He could be haled before the elders on the complaint that he "refused to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel." The widow "could loose his shoe from his feet and spit in his face" and say "so shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his brother's house." The large requirement for the brother, thus indicated, passed outward to the next of kin in certain circumstances. There are many deeply interesting accounts of readjustment of family life through the taking over by the living of duties once undertaken by the dead. The lovely idyl of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, shows this widely spreading brother-duty. Here the mother-in-law, so sweet and so wise that her sons' wives loved her deeply, shrewdly manages a contact between Ruth and Boaz to the lasting service of her son's inheritance of name and land. The whole story is redolent of the finer side of ancient forms of familial duty, the man being rich and generous enough to take on his more remote relative's responsibilities, the young widow being sweet and charming enough to capture the interest of the rich man even before he knows who she is, and the mother-in-law showing statesmanship of the highest order in managing the affair, together with such fine character of her own that all respect and love her. To-day we have left in law and custom but the shadow of these ancient demands upon brothers in the family. That shadow is limited to the purely economic aspect of brotherly responsibilities. The old law of inheritance made the sons the preferred heirs. Only when there was no son could the daughter inherit if at all. The responsibility of that heir, however, was often made commensurate with his inheritance. He must financially care for the near relatives--the father and mother first, the sister and brother next, the uncles and aunts and cousins not to be forgotten. =Present Demands of Kinship.=--The existing statutes make it incumbent upon any man in receipt of income beyond his own immediate needs to do what is possible to prevent his near relatives from requiring aid from the general public. The custom of all charitable organizations when appealed to for aid for individuals, or for a family, is to ask, "What can your relatives do for you?" The pressure upon those connected even by marriage to help relatives privately, and so reduce public relief, is often very severe. In those of English ancestry the disgrace of having a near relative, even so distant as a great-uncle or great-aunt or sister-in-law, "come upon the town" is felt keenly. The sacrifices of many people of limited means to prevent such a catastrophe would make a long and heavy list of discomforts and privations. The duty of brothers, sisters, and next of kin to help provide for the poorer members of the family connection is thus still held firmly by social ideals. That all people, however, pay this debt of family responsibility or that as many struggle to do it as used to do so cannot be affirmed. On the contrary, many charitable societies make it a serious business to discover and hold to responsibility shirking members of families in which there is great discrepancy in financial condition. There is now, however, no recognized social responsibility for giving support to poorer members of the family within one household. There is no pressure to bring those needing material relief tinder the roof of the well-to-do of the family circle. Even parents cannot claim residence with adult children, although they can claim by law some support commensurate with their children's income. It is seen now that the duty of aid does not carry with it the obligation for personal association. That is, on the whole, a gain, especially in cases where there is temperamental incompatibility. The whole relationship of brothers, sisters, and next of kin is simplified and placed more securely on bases of affection and ethical ideal in modern life, and people are good brothers and sisters or good family relatives in proportion as they are unselfish and useful in all their other social relationships. There is a real family tie, however, which still holds. We see it in the Family Reunions, in the listing of relationships in those devoted to genealogy, and in the patriotic societies that indicate by membership what ancestors fought in the Revolution or held office in Colonial days. There is the permanent tie of blood that makes a peculiar bond unlike that of friendship and unlike that of marriage--a tie sometimes carried to extremes, as in the case of the woman who, angry with her husband for a breach of etiquette, declared she "was glad that he was no relation of hers!" On the whole, in reasonable moderation, one of the best ways we have to-day of helping a group is by means of the generosity of the more successful members of that group. =Special Burdens of Women in Family Obligations.=--Brothers, usually, marry and have their own households to take care of. The unmarried sisters, coming from a long line of women who were supposed to work entirely for the family, with no commercial value placed upon their household service, feel a call to duty from ancient times to carry family burdens. The sons, however, do not escape the parental call for help and have often in the immediate past (when women ceased to have a large economic value in the home and had not yet acquired the capacity or desire for self-support) borne a heavy burden of financial aid for unmarried sisters. The tables are well-nigh turned now, however, and the number of self-supporting women who have relatives of varied nearness and ages dependent or partially dependent upon them, is much larger than that of spinsters care-free and independent. In all cases, however, whether of men or women, those who respond loyally to the needs of those kin to them are the unselfish and capable. The slogan of socialism, "To all in the measure of their need; from all in the measure of their capacity," may never be accepted by society in general, but it is now the rule in the family relation. =Disadvantages of the Only Child.=--In the individualistic family of the modern monogamic type the chief need is for every child to have brothers and sisters or at least a brother or sister. The "one-child" plan, which places a solitary little creature as sole recipient of money, affection, and care of the household, is one that shows poverty of condition for the child concerned, no matter how rich the parents. Such a child lacks a chief aid in its development. Nature sometimes sends, even in a large family, all boys or all girls and makes coeducation at the start difficult. Usually, however, when there are two, three, four, or more children they are mixed in due and helpful proportion. When the family is too large, as it so often was in the older days, it must subdivide according to ages and tastes, and in many old-fashioned families some brothers and sisters were near in sympathy and love and others wide apart. In the moderate-size modern family, however, where there is enough companionship within the home for family good times and not enough to cause breakage into groups within the group, we have the ideal conditions for child development. For the only child there are happily some substitutes for this home companionship in the "residential school," or the school with long days of group relationship of like age and condition, but it is not the same and seldom as good as the home circle of the right size and variety. The modern conditions make the old ties seem less important to many. In the United States, where people move about so freely across the vast spaces of our continent, and where in the large cities so many move each year to try vainly to better themselves in hired houses, the ties of family outside of the immediate circle seem remote and to be easily set aside. It is not, however, a sign of advanced social spirit which makes a young girl declare "she has no use for her relations; she cares only for her chosen friends," and it is often of the essence of social danger that a young man wants to give up all connection with his family. The fact is that one can understand better how one came to be what one is by knowing something of one's forbears and one's living relatives. =Permanent Value of the Family Bond.=--The feeling that one belongs to a blood group, the feeling so old and so wonder-working in the past, gives at least one ideal of permanence in a world of affairs whirling in such rapid change that the common mind becomes dizzy and the common idealism confused. On the other hand, it is cause for gratitude unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a different one to ends of complete divergence of character and capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are more reasonable. We even say that fathers and mothers may not be taken into the home of their children if it best serves the mutual happiness for them to have separate homes. We seldom now in enlightened families make the mistake of holding to "living together" when living apart is clearly the wiser thing. The old sense of family responsibility is, however, happily not lost and in its new ways of working often gives a finer representation of mutual aid than was common of old. The will of one rich man which included many gifts to sisters, cousins, and nieces, and left directions to the principal heirs to find out if there were any relatives of the same nearness left out and if so to make them equal sharers, is but a type of many who, with or without large means, share generously with all their name and kin. On the other hand, we have examples of those who, in the effort to leave a large fortune for some specific object of education or of public charity, wholly neglect, often with cruel indifference, the needs of some member or members of their own family. One man of conspicuous gift to education left a sister and her two daughters without means for comfortable living while piling up money for his pet scheme. Many men skimp themselves and also their wives, children, and still more their parents and more remote kin, to hoard a monster sum for some charity to be forever called by their name. These, however, are unusual examples of losing sight of the near in the remote. The average man and woman has in mind a series of concentric circles, those nearest to be helped first, those next beyond to share next, and the world outside to have what is left when these inner claims upon love and generosity are fully met. If it were not for this general tendency society-at-large would have far more responsibility for all sorts of care of the aged, of the incapable, of the unsuccessful, of the invalid, of the defective, of the insane, of the "cranky" and of the lonely. Finally, without this innate tendency to feel a sense of responsibility for those nearest related by family ties much of the discipline toward social usefulness would be lacking in the lives of average people. We learn the larger duty through faithful response to the nearer and closer obligation. For this reason the family holidays and reunions, the family birthday celebrations which include all the relatives within reach, the pressure of the law and of custom upon those able to care for those less strong and competent within the kinship bond, are all socializing influences which it is well to keep warm and consciously active. The lovely spirit of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's "Tembarom" when he finds a "real relative" is duplicated by many immigrants who after years of loneliness greet one of the family on the shores of the new country; and the member of the eastern family "gone west" is the most hospitable of all relatives to the visitor from the old home who has the same family tree. The gratitude of the ancient poet that "God has set the solitary in families" is not a sentiment to be outgrown. Those who feel that it is, lose something precious from the basis of human affection. The adjustment of this old bond to the new individualistic life is not yet made even in the Western world, while in the Eastern the vital problems of family adjustment press in supreme unrest. The one principle that should guide us in this as in all inheritance from the past is surely this, that while the sacredness of personality of any one member of any group, even of the family, shall not be wholly sacrificed to the needs and demands of any other member, yet "they that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak" in the old spirit of unselfish service. QUESTIONS ON BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND NEXT OF KIN 1. In the monogamic system of the family what, in general, has been the legal responsibility toward blood kin? 2. Is the inherited legal and social responsibility for the care and well-being of relatives lessened at the present time? If so, is that for good or for ill in the wider social fabric? 3. How far should accepted obligations toward near relatives be met in ways to bring under one roof more than the fathers and mothers and children of a given generation? 4. Should natural kinship weigh heavily in considering arrangements for material relief in poverty? In the care of orphans and half-orphans? And in provisions for aid to the aged, the sick, and those out of work? 5. What special conditions make appeal to family feeling difficult in a population like that of the United States with many immigrants and great mobility in industrial relations? 6. Is there any way of strengthening family feeling without attempting return to older forms of family autonomy? CHAPTER VI FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE "The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow: And we with singing cheer'd the way, And, crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May. And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood." --TENNYSON. "There is no man that imparteth his joy to his friend but he joyeth the more; and no man who imparteth his grief to his friend but he grieveth the less."--BACON. "True, active, productive friendship consists in equal pace in life, in moving forward together, steadily, however much our way of thought and life may vary."--GOETHE. "Accept no person against thy soul."--ECCLESIASTICUS. "Your love, vouchsafe it royal-hearted Few And I will set no common price thereon; But aught of inward faith must I forego, Or miss one drop from truth's baptismal hand, Think poorer thoughts, pray cheaper prayers, and grow Less worthy trust, to meet your heart's demand. Farewell! Your wish I for your sake deny; Rebel to love, in truth to love, am I." --D.A. WASSON. =The Power of Friendship.=--The man who said, "Our relations are thrust upon us; thank heaven we may choose our friends" expressed a feeling shared by many, that fate may handicap us by giving us birth in an uncongenial circle, but we may recoup ourselves by chosen friends and enjoy companionship with them which our kin cannot furnish. Friendship has inspired many of the greatest deeds and many of the noblest poems, and has given us examples of heroic devotion almost passing the love of man for woman. It is not within our purpose to recall these great friendships, but they are familiar and furnish the unfailing stimulus of finer sentiment in youth as the classic examples are recited to each generation. Real friendship is a sacred thing. There are pinchbeck imitations which are neither sacred nor helpful. The "mashes" and the "crushes" of school-life are not even good imitations. The bargain-counter exchange of services--"you give me society uplift, and I will give you under-current influence," as one woman frankly stated it to another, although it may be called friendship, has no element of real affection in it, as the first one to fail in "value received" so clearly understands. The unwholesome absorption of one woman with another, so that no minute apart can be endured, may be long-lived or an ephemeral expression of a weakness on one or the other side, but it is not the best type of friendship. Among men the submergence of one personality in another, so that although there are two people there is but one mind and one purpose, may be friendship, but it is not that equal comradeship which the healthy-minded seek. The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life-long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in life-long friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to wed, to make such a three-cornered comradeship a permanent success. Friendship at its best is a task as well as a gratification. Nothing in this world can be had for nothing. "Earth gets its price for what earth gives us." A really great friendship is a test and a challenge and a "time-consumer," as Emerson says. It is, next to marriage and parenthood, the most exacting of human relationships. For this reason few men and women can have a great friendship that does not lead to marriage, and at the same time have a complete marriage with another. For this reason again, the great friendships are generally between two unmarried men or two unmarried women. =The Newly Wed and Old Friends.=--Much is written of the sad disillusion experienced by the newly wedded man when he finds his friends are not as welcome at his new fireside as he had expected. These friends of his are not of the sort prophesied by the love of David and Jonathan, but they are valued comrades and he has anticipated sharing the delights of his new home with them. Many a woman in her desire to be all in all to her husband and in the selfish absorption of an undisciplined affection, starts married life the wrong way by making no place in the home life for these old friends of her husband's bachelor life. That reacts often in the worst possible manner upon his affection for her. She forgets too often that she is not called upon to give up her friends. They can come, and do come, when her husband is away at his work, while his friends, if they come at all, must come in his leisure hours which she often wishes to preempt for herself alone. It is the most short-sighted of follies for a woman to try to sweep clean of all former interests and friendships the life of the man with whom she is to try the great adventure of marriage. The most a wife can accomplish by selfish denial to her husband of his right to keep his friends and enjoy the old as well as the new companionship is to make it impossible for him to enjoy his friends in her company. She can thus send him off on hunting trips or other outside enjoyments which leave her lonely at home. The fact that few worth-while men or women have lived to the marriage day without deep affection for some friend, or perhaps for many friends, is not a testimony to need of change when a new relation is formed but to the enlargement of both circles of comradeship and their amalgamation into friends of the family. This may be a difficult achievement. Many men and women have found, to their surprise, that although they are in love with wife or husband they are not at all in love with the respective families and still less inclined to accept each other's chosen friends as their own. One angle alone of the many-sided character may have "made the match;" quite other angles have already attracted and still hold the friends. These often mutually incongruous friends of both sides must somehow be made to attach themselves to the marriage plan or they may work much harm to the new home. The art of holding on to old associations and yet substituting, where substitution is wise or necessary, a new for an established relationship is a great art. In the case of the newly married whose friends have been in widely different circles, it is often an impossible one. Here is where the social wisdom that in some manner essays to make the twain to be later one a part of the same or a very similar social group, shows its finest results. When marriage was arranged by the elders of the respective families there was likely to be a similarity in the social standards of the two circles from which the bride and groom were drawn. Their friends were usually so inevitably of the same financial standing and of similar cultural ideals and manners that they would be likely to be congenial to each other and all to both husband and wife. When the one chosen was selected by the fathers and mothers there were some essentials for successful married life secured in advance. We have now come to feel that each couple must choose for themselves and that conscious, selective love is the very essence of that choice. It is well, however, to name over the essentials secured by the arranged marriages, to which such an enlightened country as France still gives much heed and still holds to some extent in family control. =Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders.=--The old arranged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar financial position. Often greed of family prestige made the money end the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together of two great fortunes. Yet the fact that family choices usually united those of similar financial standing and power of gratification of taste did lead toward an easy adjustment of the young couple to life together. One of the chief causes of unhappiness in marriages wholly from personal choice and in response to an impulse of passionate attachment is that the taste and "style" of living of the two has been so different that it is hard, after the first glamour wears away, to settle down to agreeable compromises. As a rule, "the beggar maid and King Cophetua" can get on better than the young woman heiress and the ex-chauffeur in such compromises; for it is always easier to extend one's income than to contract it, and women can still owe all to the loved one with better grace than men can bear the position of one "marrying above his lot." The tendency of the older custom, however, to limit all marriage choices on the basis of money to be contributed to the common fund was, and is when now in force, as destructive to real happiness in marriage as any ill-considered leaping across social barriers could well be. It is well, therefore, that it is outgrown. The second condition believed essential to success in marriage from the point of view of family stability, when the marriage choice of the loved one was made by the elders, is far more important than that of financial equality. It is the congeniality of the two families to be united by the marriage. The custom of betrothing their children as a means of carrying on the close friendship of a lifetime beyond its natural limit into the generations yet to be, is an old and not a wholly bad one. It insures for the young couple a genuine love from both sides the family line. To be sure, that love may be an oppressive and undesired gift which one or the other of the young people ardently wishes to ignore or to be freed from, but it contains also some elements of a good start for those same young people in a mutually devoted double parentage. When, however, as in Eastern countries, it leads to betrothal in infancy or very early childhood and sets the girl who is to be the wife in the family of her betrothed when she is too young to know her own real nature or to have a mind to make up about what she would wish for herself, it may be and generally is an evil thing. In the questions concerning the family set forth by the Chinese inquiry, to which allusion has already been made, the first set of problems relates to "Early Engagements," and it is asked, "Is the practice of parents in arranging for the engagement of a girl while still a mere child productive of happiness in the future home?" And, again, "Can a woman refuse to marry a man whom her family decides she should marry, after the formal engagement has taken place?" To our Western ideas the answer is so plain to both these questions that one may be impatient at their repetition here. Yet it is certainly true that many people freely engage themselves to their later unhappiness and there have been many family virtues bred on even the outgrown fashion of family choice. Where unhappiness has been prevented in the results of family choice doubtless the friendship of the two family heads has had much to do with such mitigation of bad effects of extreme parental control in marriage. Social protection of the young has in a measure superseded the ancient family arrangement, but where it has not, a young person may be found to-day in as bad a position through personal choice as that of the girl set in a home without her own consent to be the future wife of a man she has not seen. The difference is, however, a vital one. In the case of the Chinese girl the status is fixed. In the case of a girl of the Western world, even of most unfortunate circumstance or weakness of character, there is a possibility of escape from even the worst conditions into a new relationship to life and to marriage. We have suicides in the Western world, and some of them of young girls who, free to choose their mates, loved not wisely but too well; but the toll of suicides of wives in China is one that testifies that polygamy and the power of fathers over their daughters in marriage and even in their sale for immoral uses, and the legal right to hold girls in domestic slavery, are evils not made tolerable even by the high-minded who try to perpetuate the friendship as well as the power of leading families by intermarriage. An early Massachusetts law declared that "No female orphan could be given in marriage during her minority except with the approbation of a majority of the selectmen of the town." This was proof that in this country from the first, the social power was used not to make girls accept husbands that might be chosen for them but to protect girls from exploitation of designing persons, and if they had not a family protection they were held secure in that of the officers of the community. The law of 1719, in New York, that no person under twenty-one should be married without the written consent of parent or guardian was a step in the direction of social control. This law aimed not to make marriage choices for any young person but to safeguard such choice from possible harm. The ancient family choice in marriage tried in the third place to give every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When a certain Doctor Brickell practised medicine in North Carolina in about 1731, he declared that "She that continues unmarried until twenty is reckoned a stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in this country;" and in New England the unmarried man, as elsewhere, was subjected to special tax and social odium. The family arrangement for marriage of the young did one thing, at least, in a time when women and girls enjoyed little protection or financial security outside of marriage--it set at work forces to provide husbands for many girls who would not be the first choice in a free competition for masculine favor. =Some Ancient Spinsters, But Few.=--There were, however, some distinguished women of the older time who never married. Margaret Brent, of Maryland, for example, whose appeal for "voyce and vote with men," in the making of laws to which she must owe allegiance, is historic. And that Mary Carpenter, sister of Alice, wife of Governor Bradford, who, at the beginning of her ninety-first year, was declared a "godly old maid;" and, again, that "ancient maid of forty years," who is said to have founded the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Others of distinction might be mentioned. These show clearly that the right not to marry at all, and the right not to marry a person whom she had not seen or, having seen, did not want as husband, was well sustained in the case of young girls in our own country from the first. The lot of most women here in the United States, as elsewhere in the world, includes marriage; and although no one wants to go back to family arrangement of nuptials, the desirability of marriage within a congenial and familiar circle--that which the family arrangement distinctly set out to secure--is still obvious. The fourth element of family stability and well-being which the ancient parental arrangement of marriage was intended to secure is deliberation and chance for learning all the facts on both sides, so that there may be no marrying in haste to repent at leisure. The reaction from this deliberation in tying the nuptial knot is seen in "running away to be married" without the slightest knowledge on either side of the qualities or capacities of the chosen partner and without giving the parents any opportunity of safeguarding from disastrous choice. This is the swing of the pendulum in a new freedom, often to personal disaster. Social ideals and legal provisions are alike engaged more and more to prevent too ignorant and too hasty marriages. Such may turn out to have been made in heaven as nearly as the average union, but the chances are against that happy consummation. =New Demands for Social Control of Marriage Choices.=--Social wisdom obliges more deliberation in the case of young people seeking a marriage license on their own initiative and perhaps after a very brief acquaintance. There is a strong demand that a certain period shall elapse between the request for the license and its granting and that sufficient publicity be secured to make it easy for interested parties to ascertain any facts concerning both the man and the woman involved, which might make the marriage either illegal, as bigamy, or a catastrophe, as uniting one unfit for marriage with an unsuspecting person blinded by sudden attraction. More than this, many States of our Union are beginning processes of law to require certificates of physical fitness, of freedom from infectious or dangerous disease, and some statement of facts as to previous obedience to law and ability for self-support such as alone would make marriage successful. Ministers of religion of various sects are taking more and more a stand against marriage of persons whom they know are of bad habits or otherwise likely to give a married partner an unhappy life. Insanity in the family is now considered in some States a disqualification for marriage, and statutes requiring some family testimony to facts concerning that inheritance are coming into enactment and enforcement. The tragedy of marrying ignorantly into a certain and hopeless fate of union with one who can never be of sound mind is so terrible that the state itself is trying to safeguard carelessness on that point. The medical profession is more and more acting a parental part in requiring the registry of diseases that are most unsocial in their effect--diseases incident to vice, and which make any man while suffering from them unfit for marriage. It is proposed by many, and by law required in some States, that no marriage license shall be given without a certificate of both mental and physical fitness, to be handed to the officer before registry of the application, in order that there may be no public refusal on such grounds of unfitness after it is known that a license to marry has been sought. This would be far better than, as has been proposed by some persons, for clergymen to take the initiative in requiring such physical and mental tests after a request to marry two people and after a license has been secured. After a matter has gone so far as to result in a request to a clergyman to officiate at the marriage ceremony, the exaction of an examination which the state has not previously required would inevitably, as has been already shown in some instances, lead to suspicion and bad feeling. The duty of the state, which alone in our country gives power to marry (the clergyman performing the ceremony pronouncing the couple married "by virtue of the power invested in him by the state"), is clear. That duty is to take all initiative in all previous inquiries aimed at preventing the marriage of unfit persons. If the state does take such initiative and for all alike, no matter what their social standing or reputation may be, then there is no stigma for any individual and no suspicion aroused to injure any class of persons. There seems as good reason why a compulsory physical and mental examination, together with an inquiry into the main facts of a person's life in order to prevent fraud and exploitation, should always precede the giving of a marriage license as for the required physical and mental examination of children when they enter the tax-supported public school. It is, in both cases, a way by which society secures itself, in the interest of the family and of social life, against the fostering or continuance of evils that may be prevented from poisoning the sources of moral and intellectual growth. The fiat has gone forth in the Western world that no one shall be compelled to marry against his or her will. The first revolt from family control of marriage, that which made so many persons believe that any one should be allowed to marry any one whom he or she might choose, is now, however, waning. Elements of social control are superseding the "marriage broker" and the parental office in deciding what unions shall be allowed. =The Young Should be Helped to Make Wise Choices.=--Wisdom and consistency are not yet developed in this new way of helping the young, even against their will, to avoid mistakes of ignorance and folly, but they are developing. Meanwhile, many children still revere their parents' wishes and ideals, even if the wild few do as they please without regard to their elders. Most marriages in our country are not only safely entered upon but happy in results because of tendencies and tastes engendered in homes of love, truth, and goodness. The increase of social control in the direction of knowledge and caution even among the best people, and the safeguarding of the less advantaged in family training, must go on until all the good things parental choice gave to marriage arrangements are retained more perfectly and all the bad things outgrown. The fifth element in the ancient parental control of marriage choices was the definite placing of youth under the leadership of age and thus holding firm the inherited "mores" to make the family stable in ideal as in practice. We have now a revolt of youth against the leadership of age. We have now, even among those whose affection for their parents is strong in feeling and generous in action, an idea that the convictions and reverences of the older generation are outgrown and for the better. There is a general impression, perhaps speeded unduly by the war, that what is new must be good, and what is old must be, if not bad, at least not the best. The decay of family religion lessens respect for old sanctions. The fact that business and pleasure alike take the different members of each family on different ways all the week and Sunday, too, make each age represented in the household influenced chiefly by its own set of friends. The way in which mechanical invention gives unexampled speed in opposite directions to the young and the old alike intensifies the segregation of each group and minimizes the influence of the family bond. The fact, perhaps of all most significant, that every form of art, from the lowest to the highest, is changing before our eyes into something new and strange tends toward the unconscious absorption by youth of new ideals of what is desirable in life. These things all conspire to make youth impatient of age. =The Revolt of Youth.=--Many of the boys who went to torture and cripplement in the war have returned to declare that the old life is gone, and if there can be no better one devised and realized then the old world should go too. Many of the girls who went overseas to a vivid excitement and a stimulus of unwonted comradeship with men feel that they have so much more insight into real things than do their mothers that they know not only what is best for themselves but what is best for all youth. Many women, for the first time earning independent livelihood during the war-struggle, feel that now, at last, they have arrived; and what have they to do with old-fashioned behavior? More than all else, the modern economic independence of women of good breeding and assured position, in social classes which used to consider that only women in direst need could properly earn money, gives a wholly different aspect to many social questions. The tendency to individualism, so often seen in the modern woman, unbalanced by study of the past or its lessons or by any real grappling with present problems as they relate to possible future adjustments, now begins its strongest revolt at the fireside and makes the daughter often a stranger to her mother. Only the older woman who has kept in touch not only with young life outside her own family but with the problems that modern changes in education, in industry, in art and literature, press upon the mind, can understand why so many young people to-day distrust everything that is old and welcome everything that seems new, however ancient it may actually be. Many of the newest things proclaimed are old mistakes of human nature revamped for a masquerade. A little study, for example, would show many young people who think they are responding to fresh revelation of the right relation of the sexes that they are really coming under the spell of some ancient and discarded plan of getting all satisfaction out of a relationship without assuming any obligation in return. =The Wisdom of the Ages Must be the Guide of Youth.=--There is no chance of putting youth back into tutelage to age in any personal relation and in the old sense. Wise older people do not wish that. What is happening, and will be accelerated in action when the first flush of youthful consciousness of power is a bit balanced by knowledge of life's difficulties, is this; the wisdom of the ages, not the wisdom of their own parents and family alone, will be available to youth and used by youth in ever-increasing reverence. Not that some one who has lived longer shall of right determine a young life, but that young life shall learn more than in any past time it could do what the experience of the race has to teach. Happy the child whose parent can interpret this wisdom of life and happy the parent whose child can even now see that there is wisdom from the past to interpret. Meanwhile, the fact that so many people marry and so many marriages turn out happily speaks well for the wisdom of youth or else gives testimony of the kindness of the fate that watches over lovers. We are told that at the ages of twenty to twenty-five half of the women and one-fourth of the men in the United States are married, and at the period of life between thirty-five and forty-five years only seventeen per cent. of the men are single and only eleven per cent. of the women; while at sixty-five years and over only six per cent. of either sex are listed as having never married. If out of this large proportion who dare matrimony on their own motion, and often without even the parental approbation, only one marriage out of ten to twelve turns out so badly that the parties ask to be released from their marriage vows, surely it argues well for independence in choosing one's partner for one's self even if there are mishaps and disasters for the few. =Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now the Widest Range.=--One fact which many overlook when making estimates of the mistakes in marriage (and drawing therefrom dire prognostication for the future of the family in our country) is that personal choice among a circle of friends was not only never so free for young people but also never able to cover so wide a range of divergent national and racial backgrounds as in the United States. Marriages in this country often bridge or try to bridge a chasm between centuries of social development and continents of educational influence. It is estimated that of the 3,424 languages and dialects spoken in the world, about one-third, or 1,624, are spoken in some part of the American continent. The English language is spoken by more people than use either the German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, but the 150,000,000 who thus preserve the "mother-tongue" of the early American settlers have to come into intimate contact with those of far different lingual background. This difference in language, which is found so often a barrier to unity between the respective parents of the young people who choose each other in marriage, is but a sign and symbol of deep-seated and ineradicable divergence in family tradition, in fashion of customary ways of living, in scale of moral values and in personal habits. It is rather a matter for astonishment that so many "mixed marriages" turn out well than that a minority prove disastrous. Mixed marriages will continue and with wider range of alignment in the future than in the past. That is inevitable with our increased complexity of life, which brings together in school and in labor, in social gatherings and in political association, all sorts and conditions of men, and women. Love not only laughs at prison bars, love scoffs at parental differences as well as at parental control. Yet is it true that wide divergence in family background is accountable for many of the tragedies of broken families after love has cooled and the facts of sober obligations incurred have become obvious. The great social need in the United States is for means of acquaintance and friendship for the young in lines of association in which a safe and helpful marriage choice may be made. William Penn said, "Never marry but for love, but see that thou lovest what is lovely." The effort of all social arrangements for the young in families where the elders do not try to reinstate parental control but rather to give a chance for safeguarded independence of choice is to bring together young people who should find, each one of them in that group, a chosen one of the right sort. Financial capacity, mutually congenial relatives, suitable age and similar tastes, after acquaintance giving reasonable basis for hope for permanent agreement in essentials, might insure suitable marriages. The many advantages of close friendships within a group bound together by similar culture and outlook is the real reason for "society." Often foolish in its ways and defeating its own higher ends, it is yet a real effort to give a new and more democratic guidance through favorable circumstances, rather than through personal will or family rule, to the marriage choice of youth. The reason why one is chosen and another not is never clear to any but the ones who make the choice. To them, indeed, it may be a mystery, but one they are sure must have its source in the necessity of things. To others it is often a puzzle past understanding because so many of the friends of each of the twain "would have chosen so differently, you know." Something of racial need both for mixture and for persistency of type, something of hidden demand of temperament for a complementary personality, something of easy awakening of passion and easy holding of attention, something of requirement for a larger sympathy than most friends can give and the favored one seems able to supply--all these enter into the selection of the chosen one from all the rest of one's friends. The need is for as wide a range of personalities and for as large a chance to make friends with the suitable and truly congenial as can be given to youth in order that the choice may be really free and the result happy. =The Value of the Church in Social Life.=--In our day the best opportunities for such a choice within social ranges most likely to offer the right choice is found in the churches. Whatever they may lack in power of leadership, the churches have a social activity to-day which gives the very best opportunity to youth in its quest for the perfect other half. It is not necessary or best to do as the Friends have done, turn out of the communion those who "marry out of meeting." It is not a wholesome sign when religion puts bars before the marriage altar, for one's true mate may be found in another temple than that in which one was consecrated in infancy. It is often the very difference in family faith that unites two people whose religious inheritance has slipped away from bondage and gives only a reminiscent glow. It is, however, true that like beliefs, like forms of worship, like use of the same tabernacle, Sunday after Sunday, which bring parents and elders of families together, give chances for the young to form wide and strong attachments of friendship within a circle of like quality and tastes. In spite of the fact that many people bridge vast social chasms with high success in a marriage venture, the majority of happy marriages are of those who do not have to engage an outside interpreter in order to understand each other in reaction to social habit, ethics, and culture. It is often made a reproach to the modern church that it is so much a supplement of the home, so largely a social opportunity rather than a controlling moral force. In some sense the reproach may be a just one, but in a very real meaning of human service, the church that aids young people to find themselves and each other in a friendly circle of the like-minded, like-mannered, and like-spirited, within the circle of whom a really good marriage choice may be made, can claim recognition as of those functionaries that meet a need not met so well by any other social agency. The straining of this point by advertised "courting parlors" for the friendless and homeless may not be the right thing, but what is needed is an opportunity providing the right atmosphere and chaperonage for easier acquaintance among young people away from home. The sad fact that so many young men and young women never meet the right mates in youth and marry perforce, if at all, any one that "comes along," makes any organization that naturally and simply enables those who need it to make acquaintance with those among whom a congenial mate may easily be found socially useful. Either as substitute for home surroundings or as supplement to unhappy or inadequate family life, the church home may be a benefactor in this direction of enabling young people to find what all need, friends and possible chosen ones among those friends. The prophetic mission of the church, laments an earnest reformer, is now too much in eclipse. Perhaps so, but it may be truer to say that the prophetic mission has now escaped all walls, even of grandest cathedrals, and is now busy at organizing that mission into specialties of social reform and social progress. However that may be, the church as a home-extension meeting-place of the higher, broader, and finer friendly association, in which all ages can come together, in a friendly spirit and for worship of all that is lovely and of good report;--the church as such a home-extension service has a noble place to fill in modern life. =Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage Responsibility.=--At any rate, by whatever means of help, or however left to struggle alone with its problems, the youth of to-day has taken all life's choices in its own hands, especially the choice that puts one friend above all others and takes the first step in the founding of a home. If any one thinks that it is so slight a thing to do this now, since if one is not satisfied one can get a divorce, he or she is not giving the choice a fair chance. It must be held within the heart and purpose as a permanent bond or the marriage will not be likely to realize its own possibilities. The real lover is sure that he will love forever the same. It is that feeling that consecrates the marriage and gives most assurance of its success. If we could get rid of romantic love we should have no good start toward married happiness. If we got rid of the ideal of life-long devotion we should not build the home on sure foundations. The psychology of permanence is an essential of true marriage. On the other hand, if we tried to put the family back into the bondage of the old time, when youth was subject and could never exercise its own power of choice, we should lose the one precious gift of freedom to love, the power to find and keep one's own. If we fear the future of the family because now the spiritual essence of marriage is demanded, even if the form of its first enclosure prove too strait for its growth, we cannot turn back to the harsh practice and coarse ideals that once made all unions seem right that preserved a legal bond and all men and women wrong-doers who sought freedom from intolerable ills. =New and Finer Marriage Unions.=--There is a way of life, full of difficulties and not yet clear, a way of life that leads to such a noble comradeship and such a type of loving union as the world could rarely see in the older days. Our children and our children's children will know how to use freedom for service, and service for mutual growth, and mutual growth for community betterment, in those "world's great bridals, chaste and calm," which the future shall make the common glory of the home. QUESTIONS ON FRIENDS AND THE CHOSEN ONE 1. Does youth now take its own way in choice of companionship as never before? If so, does it mean better or worse choices in marriage? 2. Should early marriages be encouraged? If so, how should the social opportunity for wise choices be secured to youth? If not, how can the social dangers of postponement of marriage be minimized? 3. Should young people in shops and manufactories, in college, in school, in recreation centres, and elsewhere, be guided into social circles in which marriage choices are likely to be wisely made? If so, how can this be done? 4. How can the disproportion in numbers of men and women in given localities, which is an acknowledged cause of late marriages and failure to marry at all, and which is largely due to economic conditions, be mitigated? 5. Is the "revolt of youth," so called, a passing phase of rapid social changes, or is it evidence that old institutions in which the elders had superior power are becoming permanently outgrown? CHAPTER VII HUSBANDS AND WIVES "First, the love of wedded souls; next, neighbor loves and civic, All reddened, sweetened from the central heart." --E.B. BROWNING. "Two shall be born the whole wide world apart And speak in different tongues, and have no thought Each of the other's being and no heed; And those o'er unknown seas to unknown lands Shall come, escaping wreck, defying death, And all unconsciously shape every act And bend each wandering step to this one end--That one day, out of darkness, they shall stand And read life's meaning in each other's eyes." --SUSAN MARR SPAULDING. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light." I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. "A home is not an accidental or natural coming together of human souls under the same roof in certain definite relationships; it is a work of art, to be builded upon fixed principles of life and action."--HENRY WARE, in _Home Life_. "True love is but a humble, low-born thing, And hath its food served up in earthenware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the every-dayness of this work-day world, Baring its tender feet to every roughness, Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray From Beauty's law of plainness and content; A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home." --LOWELL. =Not Fancied but Genuine Happiness in Marriage Now Demanded.=--The fairy tales ended with the wedding and "they lived happily forever after." The dramas and novels of to-day are often devoted to telling how they did not live happily ever after and what or who caused the unhappiness. Although no one need be alarmed that some people get divorced when marital unhappiness becomes acute, every right-minded person wishes that every marriage should turn out happily. We now, however, demand that it shall be genuine, not make-believe happiness, and that places a heavier strain upon all concerned. We have grown wise enough to see that holding people together who should never have been brought into close relationship does not really conduce to high family morality or social well-being. That, however, only makes it seem the more important that we should somehow learn how to prevent the marriage of those who cannot make their union a success. The part that social control can play in preventing the attempt to marry by the wholly unfit in body, mind, or work-capacity has been already suggested, and that pressure of the community upon the individual choice will, without doubt, largely increase as the bad results of too great individualism in the family relation are more clearly perceived. =Social Restrictions on Marriage Choices.=--There will, in time, be a narrowing of the circle within which personal choices can be made, so that the markedly defective in mind, the victims of disease inimical to family well-being, and the pauper strains of inheritance will be ruled out before young people have a chance to marry according to their own inclination. With such helpful narrowing of choices there would still remain many dangers to be avoided if the divorce statistics are to be held within bounds of social safety. The part that the family elders once played in settling vital questions of adjustment within the marriage bond has now, for the most part, to be undertaken for consideration and decision by the young people themselves. To name these most important questions of adjustment and discuss them in the light of modern ideals and desires is to get a better impression of the difficulties they indicate. =Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Name?=--In the first place, the matter of the name for the married couple must be now considered. Shall it be one or two? Shall the new sense of personal dignity, so common to the modern woman, increase the already spreading fashion of retention of the maiden name, her inherited family name, as permanently her own, untouched by the fact of marriage union? No one can be cognizant of the conviction and practice of many feminists without understanding that this is a real problem to be settled surely before the marriage ceremony. There is already in the field a "Lucy Stone League" to give the support of the practice of a great and beloved woman to the fashion of keeping one's own name. The question of the desirability of having children bear the same name as both parents is left for the most part in abeyance by those who thus advocate two names for the married couple. It may be that each child is expected to bear as a second name his mother's and as a last name his father's family name, as, for example, John Jones Jackson, Jones being the mother's and Jackson the father's personal signature; but when the child marries, by what name shall the family line be carried on? To most of us who see in the family name adopted by both husband and wife at marriage a sign of family unity not to be lost without serious embarrassment to offspring, and some danger of easy drifting apart without the knowledge of others, the name seems not to be of vital importance. Why, then, it is asked, should the woman always give up her family connection as indicated by inherited name, and the man retain his? The fact that the custom has grown up by reason of the legal absorption of the wife's life in that of the husband is obvious, and gives much color to the claim that now, when a woman is a recognized personality in the law whether married or single, she should keep the name by which her personality has become known. That is easily seen to be advantageous in the case of professional women of wide influence. The great singer, the great writer, any creative genius or artist, continues, as a rule, to be known by the name under which greatness has been achieved. In such cases, however, women often bear two names, the professional name either of family inheritance or a chosen _nom de plume_, and the social name, which is their husband's and engraved on calling cards. The tendency now is increasing to keep the one designation to which one is born and make no concessions to conventional nomenclature. It must be remembered that in such cases it is the father's name by which the married daughter is called and the mother's maiden name is lost with all the rest of the silent majority of her sex. The fact that men have given the wedded name for ages, and that men are most often senior partners in the marriage firm, and the fact that any other suggested plan gives two names for one family instead of one seems to make that a part of the old inheritance that may not cause great uneasiness if one accepts it without revolt. There is a compromise method which long has been a custom among Friends and is growing even more rapidly than that of holding permanently to the full maiden name. That is the plan of keeping the father's name, or the "maiden name," as a middle one, and adding the husband's name; so that Miss Mary Jane Wood shall, on marrying John Hartley Stone, become, not Mrs. John Hartley Stone, but Mrs. Mary Wood Stone. That keeps in memory her family designation and yet gives her children a chance to call themselves by the one name which is a sign of the family unity. However the settlement may be made, the point is that such a vital question, entering into the legal signature for business purposes as well as into all social relationship, shall reach conclusion before the two enter upon the marriage bond. =Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality?=--In the second place, there is now a question of nationality to be settled, a most important one in all its political and legal bearings. The old law made a wife the subject of her husband's national law and took her automatically away from her own country if her husband was born and was citizen of another country. The national allegiance of her birth and her family was thus automatically transferred to that of the man she had married. The suffering of many a woman in the late war when her husband's national allegiance made her legally an "enemy alien" to her own beloved land has sharpened the claim that now, when women have the franchise, they should have complete choice of the body politic to which they owe allegiance. If they wish to marry men of another country they shall have the determination of whether or not they shall become naturalized by his government or whether they shall keep political relation with their own native country. The League of Women Voters is now hard at work to make the national allegiance of women, as of men, a personal matter whether women are married or single. The Federal Bill that is called for by this body would make it incumbent upon all women of foreign birth desiring to use the franchise in the United States to become naturalized, and would protect any woman on marrying from the loss of her own national allegiance, whatever her husband's might be.[7] Surely such a protection of individual citizenship is best for both men and women, whatever their marital state. It is, however, a matter that often comes up for adjustment in international marriages. It is matter of importance that women of foreign birth as well as men coming to this country from other lands should personally seek for full citizenship and not have it handed to them with a marriage certificate. It is equally of importance that no person should lose allegiance to the country of his or her birth and affection simply by reason of marriage. This question of what country shall one continue to belong to after marriage is one for settlement on high grounds of patriotism and civic duty before the marriage is consummated. =Who Shall Choose the Domicile?=--In the third place, the matter of chosen domicile is now up for discussion or may be in the near future. The law from time immemorial has given the choice of residence of the family, wife as well as children, into the complete control of the husband and father. A woman may be "posted" in the public press as "leaving her husband's bed and board," and thereby the husband may be released from any responsibility for her debts or support. The inference is that married women have no rights in marriage that can survive independent choice on her part of a residence apart from the husband. Now we have a movement that if successful would place the law behind an equal choice by married men and married women, of domicile, and of all that goes with that possible separation of residence. There are those who declare that separate residence for husbands and wives might keep the flame of romantic love burning longer and more ardently, since "familiarity often breeds contempt" and the absence of the loved one often kindles desire. This is not, however, the general feeling, and the demand for independent choice of domicile has many side-issues not at present fully met, if at all understood, by those who make the demand noted above. The legal right of choice of domicile goes consistently with the legal obligation to "support," The law still makes it incumbent upon a husband to give financial support to his wife commensurate with his earnings or income and still more demands of the father the full support of minor children. Naturally, if he has these obligations to meet, a man must go where he can earn sufficient to meet them. He may be unwise or mistaken in his choice, but, having the responsibility, he must try to meet it as best he can, and among the necessary elements in that trial are free movement to the place or places in which he can find work. If, therefore, the family are all to be kept in one residence, father, mother and children, this economic aspect of the father's responsibility must be considered. If the father and mother each "gang their ain gait," and decide for business reasons or from personal preference to live in separate places, perhaps far apart from each other, then which one is to have the child or children? The old idea that men should have the power to hold women in wholly unsuitable surroundings, and that no matter what home was offered her a wife must submit and accept, is long outgrown in all the States of this Union. The wife has now the right to help choose domicile, and in point of fact, at least among the older Americans, has often more than an equal share in such determination; but to pass a "blanket law" that at once gave the suggestion of two choices for the family domicile without any qualifying statement of release of men from "support" clauses in the family legislation as those clauses relate to wives might be neither just nor wise. The one in the family upon whom is placed the heavier economic burden for support of children must have much freedom of choice of residence. To restrict that freedom might be to add to present family difficulties without really giving women better chances in marriage. Now, any woman who feels herself oppressed in the matter of domicile has the remedy in her own hands. She can make complaint to a court or she can leave her husband and no one can prevent her, and she can establish a separate establishment if she has the means and make herself eligible thereby to a practical if not a legal divorce. But if the twain stay together, and mean to do so, there are mutual considerations that require an adjustment, and there is now little danger of women having to submit to injustice in the matter of choice of domicile, except in cases where no home together would seem desirable to either or to both. The matter of choice of domicile is now in the United States so much a mutual question and to be decided upon economic grounds, that it is one of the things that it is well to discuss from the bottom up if two people wish to marry, provided there are any reasons why the relative merits of two or more places of residence are involved in the issue. The reasonableness and generosity of the average American man quite equals the like qualities in the average American woman; hence the domicile question may well be left in abeyance in any struggle for "equality of rights between the sexes" and confined to personal debate and decision; but in that personal debate and decision it should have recognized place. =Shall the Married Woman Earn Outside the Home?=--The fourth question, now sometimes a burning one, and one most intimately related to that of choice of domicile, is that concerning the continuance of professional or business connection by the woman after marriage. Shall I keep on with my work or not? This is the problem that besets many a woman when the question of marriage with the chosen one is imminent. For the woman who is a teacher, and already established in the educational field in the city or town where both the man and the woman concerned find it easy to choose to live after marriage, there is a probability that she can continue her work after marriage with comparative ease. The laws that used to penalize the woman teacher who married are rapidly ceasing to operate, and although the common legal requirement for a two years' vacation from public school employment when a child is to be born may exert a strong influence upon the birth-rate (either for or against) the fact that marriage does not disqualify for teaching and that teaching is so near the home interest may lead to much continuance of that type of professional work after marriage. The question, however, is not one for the woman alone to solve. Many women find that the ideal of "taking care of his wife," which long ages of law and custom have ingrained in man's nature, may stand in the way of her earning outside the home after marriage. To be settled right this question must be settled by full consent of both parties and that consent may be hard to get from the man who fears that he will be considered incapable if he "lets his wife earn." What is to be done in such a case? That must be determined by the possibility of compromise on both sides. If the woman has attained a high position in some profession, law, or medicine, as preacher, teacher, or nurse, as business manager or welfare worker, the chances are that she feels she can best help in the family life by hiring things done in the household, which she has little skill, perhaps, to do herself, and keeping on with the vocation for which she has been trained and in which she has already gained a place. But she may have attained her vocational opportunity and to keep it must continue to live in a locality remote from the man's home and work. What then? To be near each other and to live together is the chief desire of genuine lovers. That would be no home which had two centres of vocational activity miles apart. Circumstances may compel such separation for economic reasons long after marriage has bound two lives together so closely that distance even cannot really separate them. But at the outset, if two people are to belong to each other, they must be able to combine their home life if that is to be a help and not a hindrance to the joint affection that alone makes the two one. The question of domicile, bound up with that of whether or not the woman shall continue her vocational connection after marriage, sometimes becomes acute in this manner:--the woman earns more than the man and her place of earning is in a far-away location from his and the transplanting of his life has no promise of economic readjustment. Shall she give up her larger salary and go with him to a place in which she is less likely than if single to gain a professional foothold and they both make the smaller income do? Or shall she insist, if he is willing, that the economic advantage of the married firm requires his removal to the seat of her labors at any risk of his getting another hold upon vocational opportunity? Those who ask such a question should remember that the facts of life, social and economic, all make the upsetting of the man in his work seldom a safe or a happy solution. In the first place, the position of a man who even temporarily depends upon his wife's vocational success and relinquishes his own economic position, is far more difficult than that of a woman who sacrifices her own professional standing to go with her husband to a new centre. Any woman asks more of a man in the way of sacrifice, both of his standing as a man and his chances as a worker, if she demands that he take her income as the basic economic element in the joint family treasury (when such demand entails a change of residence and a giving up of assured income on his part) than any man asks of a woman when the conditions proposed are the reverse. No woman loses "caste" who depends upon her husband in an economic sense. Perhaps the time will come when it will cost a woman the loss of social prestige and of the best chance for work outside the home (as it now does a man) when the choice is made to follow the larger income from one locality to another. Now, however, it means that a woman can adjust herself to such change far better than a man, and hence that equal right to demand sacrifice and equal duty to mutually help each other demand that where such acute problems arise the woman shall give the man's relation to his work right of way. Moreover, even those who, like Doctor Patten, believe that women should continue vocational work after marriage place the chief economic burden of the family permanently upon the husband and father. The wife may earn outside the home if both agree and the opportunity offers in the place where the man's work already is; but the maintenance of the economic standing and the improvement of social condition remain, as of old, with the man. And for the obvious reason that if the woman has children they may take a large portion of her interest and of her strength and energy and, in any case, the married woman, if she really makes a home, must mix her vocational work with a more or less extended devotion to that home-making. Also, although a woman at marriage may be in receipt of a larger income from vocational service than is the man she wishes to marry, he will be more likely, if worth-while, to gain steadily toward a much larger compensation. The positions which women fill are for the most part self-limited. They are fast developing high qualities for routine work in the professions, like school doctor and hospital clinician and workers for legal aid and other like salaried employments. These are not highly paid, but have manifest advantages for women in that they give a fixed income, if small, and in that they allow for regulation of hours of service that may easily be made half-time work in case of divided effort. Hence, although at a given point in earlier life (when the usual greater precocity of women give some women the advantage in salary and position), a woman may have a higher salary at marriage, a far greater rise in both income and leadership may be on the husband's side as the years go on. =Economic Considerations Involved.=--At any rate, the question of whether or not the woman shall earn outside the home after her marriage must wait upon the deeper question, shall she do anything which will disturb or render more difficult the man's economic adjustment? There are exceptions, a growing number of exceptions, but as a general thing the question of domicile and the question of which one shall give way when there is difficulty of both being well situated in individual work in one place, must be settled on the basis of the man's longer, larger, and more continuous responsibility for the economic standing of the family. The exceptions make their own excuse and shape their own defense. The average married woman carries on two vocations if she keeps on with her own work, one inside and one outside the home. The one in which she earns outside the home must in the long run and the large way be subordinated to the joint partnership of the household in which she bears a larger share of the internal management and he the heavier burden of the outside support. Any thorough-going discussion of the questions involved in the wage-earning of married women and mothers outside the home must include study of actual expense of alternate plans. The fundamental question may be one concerning the social value of the woman's vocational work. The next must certainly be what would the family treasury gain or lose by the housemother's continued vocational service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled _Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income_, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables at pre-war prices that unless a married woman has a high-grade profession with a good independent income the duties performed by the average housemother within the home cannot be hired without a distinct economic loss to the family treasury. For example, reckoning conservatively the cost of the full-time hired girl or working housekeeper at $600 to $1,000 per year, and estimating the economic value of the woman who does all her own housework except washing and heavy cleaning at only fifteen cents an hour, the saving by the average married woman who is competent and well and does all her own work is a large one. There are the best of reasons, therefore, why, for the woman who is in ordinary circumstances and not so averse to household care and work as to insure her failure in it, the answer to the question, Shall I keep on with my outside earning after marriage?--should be in the negative. The old notion that all women were domestic and would enjoy housework if only they could do it in their own homes is indeed exploded. The natural differences among women are now allowed. The advantages, social, economic, and in matters of health and control of work-time and of leisure, which the average housemother enjoys over the average woman who works at manual labor under the factory system of industry, were, however, never better known or more justly evaluated. The proof of this is in the inclusion of training in household arts by the Smith-Hughes Bill, under which the Federal Government makes large appropriations for vocational training directly aimed at improving the efficiency of women whose labor is confined to the private home. It is a sign, among other things, of desired and needed flexibility in domestic arrangements that there were listed in 1910 as married twenty-five per cent. of the women at work in "gainful occupations." Not all the conditions indicated by this count were socially helpful; since in the textile industries, in which many married women are employed, there are fewer children born and more die before the end of the second year than in the average population. It does, however, indicate that among those of higher opportunity in life there is a growing disposition to treat the question of women's continuance in vocational service outside the home after marriage as a real problem and one to be settled in freedom, and with social approval of that freedom, by the two persons most deeply concerned. Only, it must be insisted, that all a married woman gains in salary or wages cannot be reckoned as increase of the family income. The economic value of the average housemother's contribution is now definitely computed and must be reckoned hereafter as so much actually contributed to the family income. And so far, if a woman is physically able, temperamentally adjustable, and adequately trained for household tasks, she can in the vast majority of cases serve her day and generation in no better fashion than by assuming and carrying the multiple duties of the private home. Hence, although freedom means new choice, prudence and affection alike oftenest point to the old paths of family service for the average woman. As Mrs. Abel well says of the competent housemother who chooses full and personal service to the home and the family, "At her best she represents individual effort fully utilized. She fits her tasks together; she utilizes bits of time; she invents short cuts in her work," Of such it may be truly declared, in the new time as in the old, that she translates every dollar of the family income into many dollars' worth of comfort, of health, and of happiness. =Is It Bad Form to Earn After Marriage?=--One more consideration, quite new in its full significance, should be given place in any discussion of the wife's relation to work outside the home. That consideration is concerned with the use of her time not needed in household tasks. The modern aids to those tasks, of which mention has been made, give many women who assume full responsibility for the housemother's work a considerable amount of strength and time which may be used in some chosen way outside the strictly family service. The general idea is that such time should be given in gratuitous "social welfare work" or in some form of activity divorced from regular vocations. An able President of the Federation of Women's Clubs, the body most distinctly representing the interest and service of women in volunteer social service in this country, has said, in addressing her large constituency, "Sport is work we do without pay--we are all sports." The sentiment was applauded and with evident sense of superiority to the "paid worker." The feeling, so general in many circles of society, that women lose "caste" if they work for wages or salary, reaches its maximum of prejudice in the case of married women. It is thought highly honorable to sell things in a "Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop," unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in multitudinous religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting the service of two first-class people for a second-or third-class salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, realizing that the income is generally insufficient for proper living, to work outside her home, even for a few hours each day, for pay, is to lay herself and her husband also open to harsh criticism; even if her house is kept well and her children properly cared for. It is also thought by many people that the only really justifiable use of time that can be spared from household duties is in furthering the husband's work, if he is struggling up; or, if he has "arrived," in these miscellaneous gratuitous social services in which the club-women so abound. There is great need that this judgment be revised. Not only is this true in the interest of women whose devotion to a chosen vocation has right of way in justice when the debate is on as to the use of any left-over time she may save from domestic duties. It is also true that we can not have the democratic feeling and influence from women of social position which our political life so sadly needs unless it is understood that it is as honorable for a woman, married or unmarried, to earn money for her work as it is for a man with or without an inherited fortune. The class feeling that makes all married women range themselves with those of their sex who have inherited fortunes, and leads them to place those who serve the community in salaried positions as less unselfish and less honorable social workers than themselves, is one to outgrow. An interest divorced from professional standards or professional compensation is not necessarily nobler or more useful. This fact makes the choice of women before marriage as to the use of time that may justly be spared, even when the home makes its heaviest demands upon them, a choice of social as well as of personal significance. Every year social effort once strictly of private provision and support becomes a public service, with organized supervision and standardized compensation. When such volunteer social effort becomes a public service it is highly desirable that the trained women it demands for its staff should (some of them, at least) be married women. Otherwise, the same loss of efficiency that the rapid turn-over of the women teaching staff of our schools occasions will be discovered in our social work as it changes its centre of gravity from the private to the public organization. There is a far greater need from this point of view for reorganization of hours and details of work so as to give more half-time or quarter-time employment to women of proved ability, than for any wholesale condemnation of the woman who works outside her home for pay, even when her husband is able and willing to "take care of her." It is for society to say, indeed, that women marrying and having children owe first duty to the home. It is for women themselves to say whether they shall use any time at their disposal after that duty is met in continuing such relation to their vocation as is now possible, or in being "sports." The fact that men are trying to see both sides of this vexed question and that women, as a rule, are trying to make adjustment that will hold an equitable and happy balance between the personal and the family well-being means that this problem will work itself to a democratic result without social loss. =Shall Parenthood be Chosen?=--The fifth question that should come up for serious discussion and some measure of agreement in advance of the wedding ceremony is that of children. Shall there be any? If so, how many, if we can afford them? If so, how soon shall we try to call about us the new life? If not, why not, and how shall we live together without hope of offspring? These are vital questions. For want of agreement, or at least of understanding of disagreement before marriage, many unions are shipwrecked. In the old days there were no questions of this nature. Every woman must have as many children as nature allowed, and when she could bear no more must give way to a new wife and a step-mother to carry on the family life; and if there were more children in a family than the father and family friends could support, they had to be cared for by the community. The modern condition is the same in the case of those below a certain grade of intelligence and self-control. But as human beings become more rational in other respects, they apply reason, common sense, and prudence to the great function of parenthood. Indeed, so much is this the case that the social danger of breeding only from below the higher levels is felt to be an increasing one. There are not wanting those who believe that rationalism in parenthood is wrong and should be prevented, if possible, but those are the people who decry the use of reason in all other matters, except it may be in the strictly economic field. The fact is that whatever may be said on the side of ancient religious sanction and inherited sentiment, the tendency on all sides is irresistibly toward the personal choice in parenthood as in marriage. =Some People Have a Right to Marry and Remain Childless.=--There are many, however, who believe that no one should marry unless wishing and expecting to have children. That is a belief which will doubtless be more and more outgrown. There are young people, children of dependent parents and near relatives, who see no way of starting a family of their own, who yet should not be denied the comfort and help of married life. The tragedies of sons and daughters made to drag out a lonely existence and either condemning the one they love to like denial or else giving up the hope of union and seeing their chosen one wedded to another--the sort of tragedy that forms the subject of many novels--is a tragedy to be outgrown. It may be that social burdens in behalf of parents or other dependents can not be lifted to the extent of making a completed family life possible to some young people. All the more, two people who truly love each other and are bound to one great sacrifice, namely, that of children of their own, should be able to escape another, that of denial of marriage. There are other cases in which marriage is right and childbearing may be wrong. There are tendencies to disease, in which, although there may be a long and useful life for the one bearing a family taint, it may be socially wrong to risk carrying on that taint. If all who need to know are agreed, and there is a chance of living many years of real union together, no law should step in to prevent, and no inherited view of the limitation of marriage to those seeking parental relation should refuse assent to the union. There are many conceivable limitations to parental functioning, even for those who are keenly aware of the social significance of parenthood, which do not apply to marriage of those truly mated in thought and purpose. It is, however, the height of irrationality, and will more and more be seen to be such, for men and women to enter a relation the natural result of which, in the vast majority of cases, is the bearing of children, with no idea on either side as to what is the ideal and the wish and the purpose of the other party in the marriage union. The question, again, for those who are agreed that they want to start a family as well as begin a mating is definitely to be considered, namely, that of the right time to begin the family they wish to have. It may be, as many believe, that too hasty adding of the strenuous discipline of parenthood to the often difficult task of adjustment of two mature and forceful natures, such as marriage so often brings together, is likely to give an unnecessarily hard start in the new life. Two people who have just got used to themselves, perhaps, have at marriage to get used to each other. It may be that they could succeed better in this great task if they had not so often to adjust themselves during the first year to the needs and masterful claims of a baby. There is no form of tyranny equal to that of the infant, who, assured of his right to unlimited service from all in sight, makes his demands at all times and in all ways. He pays for his subjection of parents and grandparents and they are all usually willing slaves. But it is often a great advantage if the parents, at least, have had a chance to make full acquaintance with each other's pet weaknesses and each other's best qualities before "the baldheaded tyrant from No Man's Land" makes his appearance. It is, therefore, clearly a matter of frank and full discussion and settlement before marriage not only as to the fundamental question of whether or not there shall be children, but also if, as is the case in the overwhelming majority of cases, the young people hope for offspring, when they shall begin to call them to the home. The thing of all others to be avoided is the outgrown idea that heavenly magic attends completely to these matters. It is earthly wisdom and unselfishness and good intent that are needed in this as in all the great decisions of life. Hence, there can be nothing more absurdly out of drawing with a rationalized civilization than any law which forbids the serious discussion of this most vital of social questions or one that forbids the full dissemination of scientific knowledge needed by those who would do the right thing in the parental as in all other relations of life. =What Is the Just Financial Basis of the Household?=--The sixth question that has right of debate before the marriage ceremony is that of the financial support of the household and of the distribution of the joint income. The use of the words joint income prejudges the case on this point. The old idea was of one purse, of right that of the "head of the family," and whatever it held was his to disburse. He it was who determined how the wife should be fed and clothed and sheltered. If he were generous and kind she fared well; if the opposite she fared ill. Her legal right was only the same as that of her minor child. Now the case is wholly different. In spite of some inconsistent left-over laws that can make a showing of belated tyranny when culled from old statute books, the financial right of the wife in the household is generally recognized. It is, however, still true that no logical system of financial sharing has been worked out so clearly as to be accepted by the common mind. We still have talk of a wife being "supported" when, as housemother, she works harder and more hours than her husband. We still have listing of those housemothers, who are the majority of the women of every country, as "without occupation." It is possible for men to speak of "giving" their wives what they think is needed for the household and without reference to any personal preference of the wives in expenditure, as if it were an act of charity and not a debt owed the family life. On the other hand, some women, having achieved partial or entire financial independence of the husband and earning handsome sums in work outside the home, look upon all that the man earns as "belonging to the family," and all that they earn as wholly belonging to themselves. "What's John's belongs to us all; what is mine belongs to me," said one wife, without any idea of the absurd injustice of taking all the advantage that new conditions had made possible for women and at the same time hanging on to all that old-time privilege gave to wives. There is need of the strictest and most balanced thinking along the line of the economics of the household. If, as seems in the vast majority of cases the best plan, the husband and father can be and is depended upon for the entire financial support of the family in the matter of earning and the housemother gives an actual service of great economic value in saving and service (as the competent housewife assuredly does give), then what is earned and what is produced by housework and management makes in justice one family treasury. If to that is added some special earning outside the home which the housemother is able to mix in with her family service, then that also is a part of the family treasury. After the marriage there should be a real partnership. There may be a separate account on either side of the gifts of inheritance or savings preceding the marriage, but after the twain are one in home-building they may justly be one in a common treasury. Two bank-books they may have, it is true, and perhaps better so, although many find one in the name of both husband and wife sufficiently convenient. The main thing is to get firmly in mind on both sides before any actual adjustments are necessary what, on the financial side, is the right attitude and plan of married life. The best way seems to be, for some people, at least, the division of the family treasury into three distinct parts. The first, and alas, in most families the much larger share, to be dedicated to common household expenses. The excellent work of specialists in family budgets shows us how this fund should be distributed in details of rent or dwelling, cost of food, clothing, reading, church, recreation, etc. Any one can now make up with prudence and wisdom such an estimate in proportion to the known income and the ascertained cost of living in any given locality. After this common expense is provided for, with due regard for the duty of saving for future needs, the remaining portion, be it much or little, should be equally divided as the personal fund of the husband and the wife. Some of those who have written on the family budget think that the contribution of the housewife in work, for which wages would have to be paid if she did not give this personal labor in the home, should be estimated in wages value, and should go into her part of a separate fund, after the common household expenses are deducted. That, it seems, would not be fair, for if the man puts in his labor value the woman should put in hers for the first and indispensable expense of the common life together. What is to be made right is the old custom of reckoning the savings and common property acquired after marriage as "his" estate. It is the estate of both, and should be so considered, even if he has earned outside and she saved and earned and helped him earn from within the household only. =What Shall be the Accepted Standard of Living?=--The final question that must be considered by the two who are to marry and set up housekeeping is the scale of living they shall aim to attain. It has been well said that "the standard of living is what we desire; the scale of living what we can achieve." What is desired often, and what seems to the young only reasonable for all to have, is the scale of living the parents' households have attained after a life of hard work. It is a matter for profound ethical thinking to decide what measure of increase in expense of home upkeep should follow upon increase of income where there are children to be affected by changes. It may sometime be seen to be a social duty to keep much farther within bounds the natural desire to expand expense as income increases; both for the reason that income may decrease with advancing years for the parents and retrenchment be necessary when it is hardest, and also for the more important reason that children naturally make standards at the height of parental expenditure and may find it thereby the more difficult to "begin at the bottom" when they marry. At any rate, the young couple starting out must keep within their means or suffer from the worst of fortunes, the dread of arriving bills and the shame of inability to pay them. That means some agreement before housekeeping begins as to what is involved in that adventure. A witty woman said, "I love to travel with my friend Mary, for her economies and mine are the same." Some uniformity of temperamental reaction both to regular economies and to occasional extravagances is, if not an essential, a valuable basis for happy marriage. That means that the engaged couple might well start a game of "Must Haves" and "Would Like to Haves" in the moments that can be spared from other pursuits, a game in which without the other's knowledge each should write the secret wishes and requirements to be later compared for mutual enlightenment. The woman who would gladly go with two meals a day for a fortnight in order to get a ticket for the opera or symphony, and the man who would sacrifice a needed new suit of clothes with pleasure for a fishing trip, may be able to compromise on essentials, but will find it difficult in the matter of extras unless warned beforehand. Affection bridges many chasms, and sensible people learn that even in the best regulated families father, mother, and the children may all get some of their best times apart. A basis of mutual understanding is, however, essential. The necessity to get at a common plan for the economic standards of the household is a vital one. How many men have run in debt for what they believed essential to the wife's happiness because she had such things in her father's house, without letting the wife know that economy was necessary, only to find out that if full confidence had been given a mutual effort would have secured better results. How many women have gone without things they might have had for want of knowledge of their husband's income and suffered fears that need not have been in the mind. How many also, alas, both of men and women, have lived beyond their means from selfish demand one upon the other, a demand which might have been chastened, at least, if full knowledge of economic resources had been attained before the scale of living was fixed. All these items of suggested conference and decision given above are counsels of prudence and wisdom. Many, perhaps most, however, of the young couples starting out in life "go it blind" in all or some of these particulars. The wonder is that these who start on the most serious of compacts and the one leading to the greatest extremes of both happiness and unhappiness with so little knowledge of each other's condition, capacity, or deepest wishes, get along, on the whole, so well. We see them on every side starting on the sea of married life with gaiety of heart because the chosen one is obtained for company and with no conception of the difficulties that may make the voyage tempestuous. But they often make safe harbor of comfortable comradeship for middle life and old age, and if they have had a harder time than they need have had at least prove that "love is the greatest thing in the world." =The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage.=--The rising tide of divorce, however, gives point to the plea of this chapter for a more careful charting of the sailing course in advance. The fact that so many get their discipline of knowledge and direction as they go along and do not make shipwreck even if matrimonial storms grow frequent or heavy, is a very good testimony to the native goodness of men and women and to their ability to make good their mistakes and work out success even from failure provided the indispensable north star of unselfish affection leads them on. It would be well, however, to lessen the failures if that can be done. When men and women show what marriage can become for the wise, the idealistic, and the loving, it gives a picture of satisfaction and mutual service that makes most other human associations seem trivial and short-lived. Only parenthood is equal or superior to marriage in its possibilities of moral discipline and personal development. To make it successful is worth striving for. Literature, science, and art have many great marriages to their credit--men and women brought together by identical tastes and similar capacities, working together in high pursuits through a long life of achievement. They illumine the way of life with a peculiar glow. Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang: "Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another as they strike athwart Their wings in passing." but her union with Robert Browning showed that they were nearer alike than in her sad humility she had fancied. Jonas Lie, the Norwegian novelist, and his gifted wife, it is said, "knew the felicity of a perfect union," and he himself has testified, "If I have ever written anything of merit, my wife has as great a share in it as myself, and her name should appear on the title-page as collaborator." The joint discoveries of the Curies are well known, linking husband and wife together in a great gift to humanity. In humbler circles of the gifted and the talented the married couples are becoming more numerous each decade whose work as well as whose affection binds them together. =The Supreme Satisfactions of Successful Marriage.=--Take it all in all, although no particular marriage may be "made in heaven," the sort of union that monogamic marriage has worked out at its highest reaches is without a rival in depth of feeling, in satisfaction of association, in wealth of comradeship, and in social value as a foundation for family life and for initial training toward social serviceableness. No wise person can do aught to lessen its opportunity for ethical drill, or for that due mingling of attraction and duty which make all the vital associations of human beings helps toward the higher life. No wise person will continue in the ancient error of mistaking show for substance in these weighty matters. All who believe that the family is an institution whose gift to the social order is not yet outgrown and whose possibilities of social value are not yet fully developed, must work to make the right marriages easier to secure, and the wrong ones less easy to be consummated, and to purge the ideals of home of selfishness and of superficiality by constant portrayal of the best in the married life. The stage and the moving picture should more often portray the world's marriage successes rather than perpetual reproductions of the marriage failures. The novel should more often show how many people save, so as by fire, the dreams of youth in rescue of their married life from threatening ills. Such portrayal would not be against a realistic ideal of art, but a more perfect and balanced use of realism. The rise of people on "stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things" is quite as dramatic as the succession of falls that land them in the pit of despair. The struggles that succeed are quite as capable of exciting emotional response as are those that fail. Real life shows a larger measure of successful achievement than of bitter failure, else would life not go on. Marriage at its highest is yet to be used in any adequate measure as the theme of the artist and the stimulant of response to art. The day will come when "Main Street" will reveal its best and not its worst; its richest, and not its poorest products, for the satisfaction of universal sentiment. QUESTIONS ON HUSBANDS AND WIVES 1. Are there any subjects upon which husbands and wives must be in substantial agreement in order to secure a successful marriage? If so, what are some of them? 2. Are there any radical differences in belief, respecting religion, politics, education of children, ways of living, business relationship, etc., which marriage may successfully bridge, provided there is genuine and faithful affection? If so, name some of them. 3. How can "engaged" couples make sure that essentials of agreement, and non-essentials of agreement to differ, are well understood in advance? 4. Are there any new spiritual relationships of men and women in marriage made possible by the modern tendency toward the democratization of the family? If so, what are some of them? FOOTNOTES: [7] This bill, the so-called "Cable Act," was passed September 22, 1922. CHAPTER VIII THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY The human being arrives: "Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me; Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen; For room to me the stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me; Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, And forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me; Now, on this spot I stand with my robust soul." --WALT WHITMAN. "The child grows up in a setting of social functions of a type higher always than that of his private accomplishment. He must grow by gradual absorption of copies, patterns and examples."--BALDWIN. "He is happy who comes with healthy body into the world; much more he who goes with healthy spirit out of it. Nature has implanted within us the seeds of learning, of virtue, and of piety; to bring these to maturity is the object of education. All men require education, and God has made children unfit for other employments in order that they may have leisure to learn."--COMENIUS. "The most critical interval of human nature is that between the hour of birth and twelve years of age; this is the time when vice and error may take root without our being possessed of any instrument to destroy them; the first art of education, then, consists neither in teaching virtue nor truth but in guarding the heart from evil and the mind from error."--ROUSSEAU. "A ladder leading to heaven is let down to every child, but he must be taught to climb it. Education should decide for every child not only what is to be made of its life, but should seek an answer to the question, what was it intended that child should become?"--PESTALOZZI. "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy."--OLD PROVERB. "Come, let us live with our children!"--FROEBEL. =Conditions to be Secured for Every Child.=--There are several conditions which must be secured for every child to insure that it may be born and reared according to high standards. These may be listed as follows: I. Two parents, to secure in advance a favorable social position. II. A competent mother, to insure his first two or three years of life in health, happiness, and growing power. III. A competent father, to stand back of the mother and help make a home adequate at least to the minimum of normal life's demands. IV. Community surroundings that will make possible the successful achievement of parental duty. V. Census provisions for vital and social statistics that will make it sure that every child is counted in the population of his nation, state, and community, and that he is accounted for in all social relationships. VI. State protection against industrial exploitation, vicious influences, harmful use of leisure time, and generally unwholesome conditions. VII. Health standards in the community, fixed by experts and maintained in essentials by public provisions. VIII. Education standards, fixed by experts and maintained, at least in normal minimum, by community provision. IX. Such vital relation between the family, the school, the political system, and all cultural opportunities as shall insure to each child his just share of the social inheritance to which all are heir. =The Need for Two Parents.=--The first point noted is the need of two parents for every child. The illegitimate child is handicapped. It is a sound social movement that aims to make every "slacker" father accept his share of responsibility in the case of the unmarried mother and either marry the woman or give financial aid for the child. It does not thereby secure two actual parents for the child. The orphan child, the half-orphan child is handicapped; more so if bereft of mother than of father, but if the father dies or deserts after marriage, all experience shows that even if the mother lives and is capable and faithful, the child who lacks a father has many difficulties to overcome. The child of parents who have come to dislike each other is seriously handicapped. A forced tie between those who no longer love each other creates an atmosphere often fatal to comfort and happiness and one to which children, sensitive as they are to the feeling of their elders, react most unfavorably. The child of divorced parents is handicapped; perhaps not so often or so seriously as when held for years in an atmosphere of mutual hatred, suspicion, fault-finding, and distrust--handicapped, however, by many social embarrassments, by shock to affection given, perhaps, to both parents equally, and by the often great difficulty of finding a suitable home for the child of the divorced couple. The child that is not wanted and comes into a world hostile to his birth is handicapped in proportion as the influence reaches him at the moment of conception or lessens the power of the parents to give him what he needs before or after he arrives. There must, then, be two parents, in love, as in law, to start a child right--two parents who live until he has reached age of independent direction and support, two parents who pull together for themselves and for him, two parents who are equally recognized in law as acting for him in guardianship throughout his minority. The recognition of some of these needs of every child has been more general and intelligent than that of others. For example, the equal guardianship of the father and mother, their mutual responsibility for financial support when financially competent, their equal control over the family life and their common pledge to the community of parental care--this has not been recognized until recently, is not now in many of the States of the Union and perhaps not perfectly in any one. At an Annual Meeting of the Uniform Laws Commission, at Cleveland, Ohio, Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, partner with her husband in the firm of McCulloch and McCulloch, Chicago, Illinois, and representing the League of Women Voters, secured an almost unanimous recommendation for uniform laws giving equal guardianship to fathers and to mothers. As Mrs. McCulloch is the successful mother of four children, besides being Master in Chancery of the Supreme Court of Illinois in Cook County, and has long represented the legal interests of women in the largest organizations of progressive women in the United States, she could, and did, speak with special authority in urging the right of mothers to protect their children on equal terms with fathers, by a "Uniform Joint Guardianship Law." Some facts have given color to the claim of the extreme feminist that if you can only get the right sort of mother the father is more or less a negligible quantity. The history of the family, however, proves, if it proves anything, that to actively engage two adults in the business of rearing children is an immense asset to those children. The two parents insisted upon as foremost necessity for child-care may, however, be of a poor sort, perhaps only furnished with good-will toward their task. Even so, whatever the lacks may be, however small the capacity, feeble the will and poor the purse, however society-at-large has to make up for deficiencies in the parents, it is at least one step toward a successful life to have two recognized parents who mean to do the right thing by their offspring and never fail in love toward each other and toward the children whom they call their own. =Every Child Should Have a Competent Mother.=--The second demand of child-life is for a competent mother--competent in health, that the baby may get really born alive, competent in nursing and household skill, or in power to secure that skill from others, in order that the baby may be sure of that first long start of two or three years toward physical, mental, and moral sanity and strength. It is in those first years that the child gains power to begin his own conquest of the world at an advantageous point. That many women are not competent physically for even the first test of childbirth we know from many sources of inquiry. The facts brought out in legislative hearings by those urging support for the so-called "Maternity Bill" amply prove this. Taking the figures for New York State alone, in the year 1920 we find a total of thirteen mothers out of every thousand dying in childbirth, with an estimate from physicians that with proper care two-thirds of these women could have been saved. A competent mother, then, physically speaking, means not only one measurably strong but one sufficiently cared for to prevent overstrain before the birth-hour. Again, in New York State alone, we find that eighty-six babies out of every thousand die before they reach the end of their first year. This may be from ignorance on the mother's part, or it may be from her physical weakness unequal to the care of the new baby. It may be there are already too many children near that baby's age who also make heavy demands upon time and energy. It may be that discouragements from unhappy family conditions or worry over economic disabilities sap the mother's vitality. It may be that taints of blood doom the child and the mother. Whatever the cause, it is reason for deep concern that a great state, like New York, for example, has a rate of infant mortality nearly twice as high as that of New Zealand and ranking eleventh in the twenty-three states of the registration area in which the death of babies is set down with care. When we add to this loss the death of at least 25,000 women each year in childbirth, most of whom could have been saved under right conditions, we are still more concerned. Of the 250,000 babies lost last year we are safe in estimating at least one-half whose lives could have been spared with even a minimum care. The effort now making all along the line of social advance to give every child a decent start in life is obviously necessary and wise. If the mother is proved wholly incompetent in mind or character we have acquired a social right to take her child from her and place it where it can receive better nurture and training. We are beginning to recognize the corollary duty of social aid to all women of good character, motherly feeling, and any fair degree of intelligence in their function of motherhood. There are those hopelessly incompetent who should never be allowed to have children. There are far more with power to bear and rear children successfully whom adverse circumstances submerge to incompetency. These, we are now learning, must be helped in some way, for society's sake even more than for their own, if they are willing to undertake parental service to the race. The passage of the so-called Sheppard-Towner Bill is one answer in the United States to the right of the child and its mother to life and health. There are those who deplore the tendency to seek for such aid to individuals through the Federal Government. The Governor of New York State, for example, although a man of progressive ideas and liberal point of view, opposed "starting aid to mothers and babies from the Washington end," declaring that work for the "welfare of citizens of any class should start at the locality to be benefited." He would not have the people educated to depend upon the Federal Government for benefits. He feared that the Sheppard-Towner Bill would tend to "make the public expect to be nursed from the cradle to the grave" and be a detriment to the public life rather than a benefit. New York State made a good appropriation for its own aid to mothers and babies, but did not apply for the Federal aid in addition. By the middle of the second month of 1922, however, nearly thirty states had accepted the Act as a welcome help in their welfare work, and few will be left outside of its provisions by the end of the year. The fear that such an Act would make the general government the active controller and director of the lives of parents and their children in most intimate ways seems not justified by the facts. The Bill, when passed, simply provided money to be given to the states on the fifty-fifty basis "for the purpose of coöperating with them in promoting the welfare and hygiene of maternity and infancy." The specific plans for each state are to be made by the state agency in charge of the work and the only Federal supervision is that of standardization, by which the Chief of the Children's Bureau, the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, and the Commissioner of Education must approve those plans as "reasonably appropriate and adequate to carry out the purposes of the Act" before the money of the Federal Government is passed over to any state. It is rather as a help to states desiring aid in this particular than as a compulsory requirement that the Act is intended to operate. There are those, however, who fear any extension of power of the National Government even through influence acquired by subsidies for necessary aids to the common life. It is a matter for thought and unprejudiced study what form of public aid is, on the whole, the best for our country. It cannot be denied, however, that different states have differing burdens to carry for the immigrant, the ignorant, the destitute, and the defective. It is at least desirable to press the point that no state lives to itself and no one dies to itself. Disease knows no boundary lines of political government and the death-toll of mothers and babies does not halt at geographical limitations. We are all one country insofar as bad social conditions are concerned. We are all helped when any smallest country town most remote from the centres of population is raised in its social standards and conditions. Hence, perhaps, we may not fear national aid to each locality in need or feel concerned as to what agency accomplishes a required social advance. Ellen Key declared that every mother should be maintained by the state during the first year of every child's life and that afterward each child should have one-half its support from the state and one-half from the father. That may not be the ideal. We may believe that to thus reduce the father's responsibility would mean a dangerous lessening of his energy and devotion to the family well-being. It is true, however, that while there are so many in every community without essentials for care in childbirth or for the early nurture of infants, we must find some way of providing these essentials, or the state is endangered at its vital centre. =Every Child Should Have a Competent Father.=--The third demand of childhood is for a competent father. That takes us at once into the area of wages and economic conditions. When the Children's Bureau, itself a testimony to the awakened social conscience in respect to childhood, shows from careful investigation that in families where the father earns only ten dollars or less a week more than twice as many babies die before the age of two years than in families where the fathers earn twenty-five dollars a week or more, we can see with clearer vision than ever before that to give babies a fair chance in life the father must be fairly paid for his work. The following table shows this fact in graphic form: [Illustration: INFANT MORTALITY RATES. ACCORDING TO FATHERS' EARNINGS COMBINED FIGURES FROM SEVEN CITIES STUDIED BY US CHILDREN'S BUREAU. The baby death rate rises as the fathers' earnings fall.] =Economic Aspects of the Father's Competency.=--The death-rate of babies in families in which the mother has to earn outside the home under factory conditions of labor in order to secure absolute necessities is so high that it is seen to be not socially thrifty to thus place a double burden upon mothers. The death-rate and sickness-rate of families in which the children do not have sufficient nourishing food, in which the mother is half starved and wholly deprived of rest and pleasure, and the father is under terror night and day lest the rent money will not be ready when the landlord's agent comes, cannot give us ease of mind. The families in which unemployment is frequent or overwork keeps the father as well as the mother under the pressure of nervous exhaustion, are the families in which the right of the child to two competent parents is grossly denied. The aid given the mother, by even the best of "Maternity Bills," insofar as it transcends the wider dissemination of knowledge and gives actual financial aid in economic distress, seems only a makeshift. The sick have a social claim for social care and the ignorant of all ages have a special claim upon the community for instruction, whether from separate Commonwealth or from the Federal Government, it matters little. The financial aid given, however, the "material relief" that must be rendered in family emergencies, should not be needed by the healthy, law-abiding, thrifty, honest, skilled, or even half-skilled workman. He should be able to earn a necessary minimum for himself and for his family by his own labors. We cannot here enter into the economic problems involved, but must register a conviction that real social progress must include not only a competent father for every child but also a fairer chance for every man to become that competent father through fairer sharing in the profits of industry. Widespread and careful inquiry as to reasons for dropping below the self-supporting line list as one cause of "necessity for material relief, having in the family more than three children under the age of fourteen." This fact must give us thought. At fourteen in many states the child may begin to earn something toward his own support. The question may well be debated whether or not an average man in ordinary economic general conditions should be unable to care for more than three children below the earning period if his wife is a competent housemother and thus earns her part. If such a condition of restriction upon family increase is accepted as inevitable and permanent in our industrial order, then surely the cost of rearing children must be far more widely distributed. In such a condition there would be needed social help for fathers and mothers far more definite and inclusive than merely the aid to expectant mothers. If it is true that it takes from three and one-half to four children from each married pair to keep up the population considered necessary for national well-being, and if there is an increasing number of men and women deterred from furnishing even two of that quota by the expense involved, then it is high time that we consider at least how the family burden may be more equally distributed. =The French Plan of Family Extra-wage.=--One plan of meeting this unequal social burden of parenthood and the social danger involved in too few children born, France has devised by the family extra-wage.[8] This is simply a provision by which married workers with children are preferred before married workers without children, and much preferred before bachelors, in the matter of wages. French work-people with families, irrespective of their station, rate of pay, premium or bonus, receive: 1. An indemnity of 200 francs at the birth of a child. 2. A suckling indemnity, which is given to the wife, of 100 francs a month during the first year. 3. An indemnity of 3 francs a day for each child under fourteen years of age, which becomes a part of the family income. The Paris district alone for the first four months of 1920 shows 39,266 families in receipt of these allowances, with 62,176 children benefited, at an expense of 4,115,014 francs. The money comes largely from a pooling of funds by combines of manufacturers in many industries, so that although business pays the extra charge it is distributed equally among all engaged in the same industry. The trade unions have not been wholly pleased with this discrimination in favor of fathers and mothers. They work for the strict equalization of wages. The national need for more children of strength and health, however, and the effect of low wages upon mothers and upon infant life have led to this social measure. Surely, this is a way not wholly unreasonable by which a society can help pay for the children it demands. =The Endowment of Mothers.=--In England, a different plan has been developed, although not yet applied. _A Proposal for the National Endowment of Motherhood_, advocated by K.D. Courtney, H.N. Brailsford, Eleanor F. Rathbone, A. Maude Royden, Mary Stocks, Elinor Burns, and Emilie Burns, has been published. In this plan the ideal is "that within each class of income the man with a family should not be in a worse position economically because he has a family than the single man in that class." They demand that "the standard of living be not lowered by children." The authors of this plan declare that in the present system "The mother is still the uncharted servant of the future who receives from her husband at his discretion a share in his wages." They want the mother to receive from society, through the Government, "a weekly allowance sufficient in amount to cover the primary cost of physical subsistence, paid to the mother for herself and for each of her children, throughout the period when the care of the children necessarily occupies her whole attention." They claim that such a plan would, in the first place, make "equal pay for equal work" for men and women really possible, since the argument that "men should be paid more because they have families to keep" would be outgrown. They claim also that such a plan would remove economic restrictions on parenthood which now often work social harm. They also claim that the health of children requires this public allowance for their care. The authors of this plan, although frankly stating objections to this point, claim that the payment of this allowance should be directly to mothers "as the first step toward raising the status of women and blotting out, in what has been called the noblest of professions, those conditions which compare only with the worst of sweated employments." The whole discussion of this plan is worthy most serious attention of all interested in preserving the family from injury through economic inequalities. =Does This Plan Make Too Little of Fathers?[9]=--There is one question, however, among others, to be asked of the authors of this plan, and that is, Can not some means be devised to make the father's share in the care of the children more definite and better rewarded, less often shirked or incompetent, in any scheme for state subsidy for the care of young children? The difficulties that inhere in all subsidies for children are chiefly those that make people of small intelligence and little conscience trade with the state for larger subsidies for larger families, begotten by the less fit for parentage and with an eye on the public purse. This catastrophe, not unknown in the past history of England, must be avoided. If there shall develop any scheme for equal sharing by all the community in the expense of raising the coming generation then there must surely be no special honor paid to those that have very large families. Better, for social purposes, that no children above a reasonable number should in any family receive a special allowance, even if older brothers and sisters did do so. It may be that in France large families are desperately needed. Not so in the United States. The number of five or six should certainly be the limit for which any just scheme of family subsidy should mulct the taxpayer. =Just Limits to Number of Children in Subsidized Families.=--The difference between the three under fourteen years which in so many cases can be cared for unassisted by the average workman, and the four and more that bring the family down to the danger-point of financial dependence, might be a subject for consideration in any scheme of family subsidy, and some clear idea of social need in family fertility should be a part of any proposition to make allowance from the public funds for each child under the earning age. In any case, the father's share in the self-sacrifice and burden of parenthood should have some clear recognition in any law dealing with such state aid. In the last analysis, unless some extreme form of socialism is better than the present industrial order and to be sought, the best way to help the family is to make fathers and mothers competent to take care of their own children without too great effort for themselves and without injurious consequences to the children. Those Trade Union leaders may be right in principle when they hesitate to accept any public family aid scheme lest it make wages less rather than more and bring on a condition in which heroic struggle for one's own, the very pith and marrow of manhood in its relation to the family, be less esteemed and less practiced. We are confronted, however, both in the movements for aid to maternity in care before and after childbirth, and in all the many provisions for child-saving that publicly supported Boards of Health are everywhere inaugurating, with a tendency of the greatest strength and social appeal, tendencies toward a sharing by all of the burdens heretofore borne only by the heads of families. Some way must be devised by which such sharing will not cheat society of any gains to character and to sense of family responsibility which old systems of economic support of children have given the race. Some way must be devised to recognize as economic assets of society the special sacrifice and service of the housemother in her function of life-giver for the coming generations and yet not ignore the father but rather bring him nearer to competent fatherhood as social conditions make it easier for him to bear his part of the family load. The place for full discussion of these important considerations is not here, but the need for the child to have a father who can be the efficient partner of the competent mother in the task of rearing him must be always insisted upon, else reform measures that help the mother will only take us backward instead of forward. =The Right of a Child to be Officially Counted.=--The next right of the child we must consider is the right to be listed as a member of the population. A registry of facts concerning himself and his condition that will enable the community to see where he is, what he is doing, and how he, in general, fares, is essential. The fact that only about one-half of the Commonwealths in our Union have full registration of births, deaths, health conditions, school attendance, and other vital matters concerning each individual, and of immense importance to society as a whole, is a confession of social incompetency too shameful for a nation that calls itself civilized. Where there is no adequate registration babies may be easily lost sight of altogether. Children may escape the call to school and child labor be unchecked. When an investigation of conditions in almshouses and remote country districts of a certain southern state was made the numbers of defective and blind and crippled children brought to light was appalling. Yet one political leader of that state, at least, declared when the investigation began that "it was not only unnecessary but an insult to an enlightened state." The enlightened state simply did not know how many children were born dead, how many died the first month or year of life, how many went to school later on, how many were not able to profit by instruction because of congenital defectiveness, how many needed special care and training by reason of some special handicap, and how many ran away from such public institutions as gave poor harbor to those without family protection. One of the fundamental rights, surely, of every child is to be counted, to have the community of which he is a part know something about him, and have his record kept where those interested in his protection and care, in his health, his schooling, his vocational training, may find out what they need to know in order to aid his progress or check his wrongdoing. =Every Child Should Have Social Protection.=--In the next place, the demand of every child must surely be for community protection against those who for greed or evil purpose would exploit his life. The first law passed for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which aimed even at parents who did not act a parent's part, was the Magna Charta of child rights. After that the door was opened for all manner of protective legislation for the benefit of the young. Yet we still have many men and some women whose business it is, and a very profitable one, to debauch youth or despoil children. Surely the time has come when all decent people should unite to abolish such evils. =Child-labor.=--In the field of child-labor we have model laws, not always well enforced, laws that aim to keep inviolate for childhood at least a few years of schooling.[10] We have health laws which aim more and more at reducing the diseases of children and making it possible for all to share in the power and joy of normal existence. Yet, although something has been done for the child who would otherwise be at work in factory, shop, or sweated trade at home, there are, it is said, still "Two Million Overworked Farm Children." In the South, in some sections, the little black children still pick cotton for the little white children to weave in mills. In the North undersized and mentally undeveloped youth still testify to industrial exploitation even where laws against child-labor are on the statute books. The agricultural workers, numbering more than any other class and spread all over the United States, count too many little children in their lists. It is estimated that in our country there are 38,000,000 living on farms, and of this number only 8,000,000 adult men are listed as laborers; we hence can well believe that children and youth are a disproportionate element in the working of those farms. This makes the slogan proposed by Owen E. Lovejoy, the Secretary of the National Child-labor Committee, "Keep the Farmer Through His Children," a highly compelling one. In the tobacco fields of Connecticut, boys and girls ten years of age and over; in the truck gardens of Ohio among the onion beds; in the Michigan sugar-beet fields; in the California asparagus beds; in the Southern cotton fields, where children as young as three years of age have been found--in all these and on lonely farmsteads doing general work we find these children. Cut off from regular schooling, herded often in the poorest substitutes for homes, moving about from place to place with fathers and mothers unskilled or handicapped by weak character, these children are defrauded of every right of a child at every turn. It is not true, as some complacently assert, that all is done that should be to prevent the sacrifice of young life to the industrial demands for large returns for investment. It is not true that such organizations as the Child-labor Committee can rest content with accomplished tasks and disband. The exemption of agricultural labor from the legal protection of children given in many states in the field of manufacture, and the total lack of realization by the general public of the newer conditions which specialized and scientific farming make for the tenant hands, make this particular form of child-protection in farming a question of supreme importance. As this book goes to press the Supreme Court decision which declares the Federal Child-labor Law unconstitutional places upon those working through state channels a still heavier burden of effort at child-protection. This decision of the Supreme Court may well be understood as indicating no indifference to child-welfare but rather as a call to clear the method of child-labor reform from any entanglements of taxation or doubtful alliance with Federal officialism. The principle of child-protection, whether by national or state laws, holds the moral devotion of our citizenship more firmly than ever before. =Children Must be Protected in Recreation.=--The need for the protection of children from commercialized recreation with its centres set near all manner of vicious influences has aroused the conscience of the nation. The investigations of social conditions near the Camps of Training for our army in the Great War and many forms of social service carried on by men and women in connection with the Red Cross have given impetus to the general movement to "clean up the cities" to make the rural communities and village centres more helpful to moral living, and to make the streets safer for "the spirit of youth." Yet the rural schoolhouses are so many of them lacking in provisions of decency and of playground supervision, and the village lounging-places are so often the scenes of vicious association, and the absence everywhere of sufficient provision for healthful and safeguarded recreation is so obvious, that we know we have still a long and heavy task before us to accord children their admitted right to social protection from moral evils against which even the best of parents can not adequately stand alone. =Standards of and Aids to Health.=--Health standards in the community, fixed by experts and maintained, at least in minimum essentials, by public provision, is the seventh right of children which society should insure to each one. The difficulties and dangers which inhere in any form of financial payment to parents, either fathers or mothers, in aid of their parental tasks, are not so clearly present, if present at all, in special aids given to all the population in matters of public sanitation, personal hygiene and the care of the sick. If we make our public aid topical rather than by classes, and to all citizens alike in definite aid, we avoid much of the taint of charity. Few, if any, propose, for example, to give maternity aid to the rich. Fewer still advocate old-age pensions for those of independent incomes of moderate size. Many see, however, that health aids should be so distributed and so universally offered and used that the standard of health may be equally raised thereby for all. The idea that there are no people between the rich, who can pay anything asked, and those poor who can pay nothing for hospital care, diagnosis, or general medical and nursing service, is becoming an exploded one. There is general agreement among those most intelligent in such matters that what is needed more than anything else in the field of physical culture and physical care is provision for the people of small incomes who desire to be self-supporting. It is a common saying that no one but a millionaire or a pauper can afford a surgical operation or a trained nurse. We are moving, too slowly, but still moving, toward some form of provision of doctors, nurses, hospital and convalescent care, to which people of refinement, of independent feeling but of limited purse, can resort when they need such aid without a sense of humiliation or incurring the danger of wholly unsuitable companionship. Whatever difficulties there may be in securing adequate aid of this sort to adults, there can be none in the case of children. When we started Boards of Health we definitely outlined a path from the doctor's office and the nurse's service to the public school and from the public school to the home. We saw more clearly as the years went on that that path must be worn by many feet if we would have adults strong and well and ready for the work of the world. We have in many Boards of Health (as so efficiently working in New York City under Dr. Josephine S. Baker) Children's Departments, officered by those specially engaged in baby-saving, in child hygiene, in the health of school attendants, and in the general instruction of mothers in the care of children. This is an achievement which needs only to be more widely understood, applied and supported to be of the greatest social value. We have now the Federal backing in these matters in many provisions outside that of the special Maternity Aid Bill with its fifty-fifty financial plan to make the general government partner with the states and with the various local communities in health aid to all the people. What we need now is to make the care of the minor child seem to all, as it now does to so many, a duty that can be isolated in the mind from any doctrinaire socialistic plans, a duty to include all the population in wholly free health-service from the state. There are differences which may well be stressed between schemes for placing medical service of every sort under state regulation and wholly supporting it by public tax, and any plan for radically abolishing the capitalistic regime. We are fast coming to a united conception of social duty as requiring help to all parents that they may bring up their children in health and give those children the physical training which they need. Let us all, then, push hardest first for the standardization of health in the case of children and youth and the best possible arrangements of tax-supported aids to the realization of that standard. That is surely one of the ways in which the parental burden of child-care can be socially shared without starting embarrassing questions of radical or conservative theories of logical next steps. =Health Boards Should Help All Alike.=--We can, however, thus divorce health activities from economic disputes only by making the investigation of children, the provisions for free examination and treatment, and the establishment of hospital and clinic facilities exactly the same for the children of the rich and of the poor. A recent investigation of the diet of children deduced from reports of undernourishment furnished by doctors specializing in children's diseases, showed that in some cities, at least, the children of the well-to-do were as often underfed or wrongly fed as were the children of the poor. Sometimes the fact that a family is financially able to employ a nurse, but not intelligent or conscientious enough to employ a competent nurse, results in worse conditions, as to food and other particulars, than are found where poor mothers do the best they can with limited means. =Items of Work in Child Hygiene.=--The standards of health and the public provisions for their realization, which even now in the crowded city of New York are so ably enforced by "The Division of Child Hygiene," show that "the hazardous business of being a baby" is much reduced in risks. The list of details of work undertaken by that Division of Child Hygiene as so fully reported in the document of 1914 and in later publications may be of use if here repeated. They are as follows: I. Control and Supervision of Midwives. II. Reduction of Infant Mortality. III. Supervision of Foundlings Boarded in Private Homes. IV. Inspection and Supervision of Day Nurseries. V. Inspection of Institutions for Dependent Children. VI. Medical Inspection and Examination of School Children. VII. Vaccination of School Children. VIII. Enforcing of Child-labor Law in Issuing Work Certificates. For this many-sided work physicians, trained nurses, and various other helpers are required. Could the public purse be drawn upon for a more vital public necessity than this list indicates? When it is remembered that from forty to fifty per cent, of births are in charge of midwives in the foreign-born population and that the condition of housing and of water, air and food supply are deplorably inadequate in manufacturing centres, and that in rural communities there are few doctors and nurses and little hospital service, it will be seen that the idea of having Federal aid for this large health requirement was not one of concentration of power in the Government (as some have thought), but rather of a diffusion of standards and better sharing in all parts of our country. The health crusade is not bounded by state lines, diseases may cross those lines without consciousness of any check. The help toward the abolition of all preventable illness, the protection of child-life from all manner of preventable weakness, abnormality and suffering, seems to be the business of society in general, if anything can be so called. The children must be saved if the nation is to prosper. It used to be thought that a high birth-rate was a sufficient indication of national well-being. It is now seen that a low death-rate and a high level of strength and vitality, of health and mental power, are still more the required national asset. As Dr. Helen D. Putnam well says, "Democracy must finally depend on its department of education for establishing the right: for mothers, intelligence, health, economic opportunity to care for their babies; for babies, either rich or poor, intelligent, physically competent caretakers," If this be true, then the work of Health Boards and kindred agencies is a part of general education as it has long been a part of accepted charitable duty. The children stand first in line for receipt of that health education because they are the promise of the future. We must take humane care of all the misfits, all the crippled, all the weak, all the defective, all the abnormal and the insane. This is now admitted. We must prevent, so far as we are able, such weight and burden falling upon our children and our children's children, as charity now presses upon us. In this matter, at least, "we must begin with the grandfathers if we would reform the world." =The Educational Rights of All Children.=--The right of every child to a minimum of education, which was our eighth point, is also conceded, and the duty of making public provision in tax-supported schools for these essentials of reading, writing, fair knowledge of arithmetic and the rest, is acknowledged. The idea, however, that some people have that all the children in the United States have an elementary schooling is erroneous. This is not a treatise on education, and elsewhere the statistics of length of schooling per year for the different parts of the country and of dearth of school seats in cities and famine of teachers everywhere must be considered. From the side of the family, however, the claim must be made that equal rights in some accepted minimum of school training, and that determined in quantity and quality of teaching by those who know what education means, should be the demand of all fathers and mothers. In the older time young men going through college on the way to one of the three learned professions then listed, law, theology, and medicine, taught often in the country school to earn an honest penny. Such teaching on the way to some form of vocation deemed far more honorable was not of a sort to make teaching a profession in itself. Later, some measure of higher education was given young women in Normal Schools to fit them for teaching little children, and the teacher of the elementary school became, thereby, a professional. To-day few young men teach to help themselves through college and only a few choose teaching as a profession. To-day, also, the profession of teaching, which once was almost the sole opening for higher vocational work for women, now competes with a large number of professions or types of business or applied art, and fewer women proportionally are headed for the schoolroom when they leave college or normal school. This tendency to take other lines of work increased to unprecedented extent during the Great War, which opened new worlds of paid work to women. This gives us the present teacher shortage, which all who know conditions feel to be the most serious menace to universal education. There are not only not enough teachers to go around, there are still fewer teachers fit to teach. If it is the right of every child to have a good education in essentials, to be well taught as far as he goes in schooling, how shall that right be realized if the teacher famine continues? =The Use of Married Women as Teachers.=--The interest of the family is specially concerned in one way to ease that shortage of teachers. That way is the use of married women in the public schools. All women who have "verified their credentials" as good teachers should be held on to when they marry with all possible strength of appeal to fulfil a social duty as a part of the teaching force of the locality where they live. The old absurdity of making women resign from the teaching force when they issued wedding cards, or conceal the fact of their marriage if they were not scrupulous, so as to keep their positions, is fast passing. Few communities hold on to this penalizing of the woman teacher when she marries, but many school boards retain a sentiment against urging the continuance of any married woman on the staff. This must give way to an intelligent understanding of two things: one, that experience in teaching is an immeasurable asset to the schools and must not be lost in so great proportion of women as it has been; and, in the second place, that teaching lends itself in unique manner to half-time work, to vacations for maternity duties, to combining of two or three married women in positions that might be filled by one spinster, and to other social expedients favorable to married life; and that all that is needed is good sense and some skill of administrative adjustment to keep the larger majority of good teachers in the field after they are wives and mothers. Moreover, from the point of view of the family, it is injurious for social practice to keep women who have the qualities of good teachers from marrying lest they lose their beloved profession. It is one of the best, although one of the least tried, ways of bringing the school and the home together by giving a good many teachers a clearer idea from personal experience of what the home needs from the school, and giving mothers a clearer idea of the reasons for school rules by having them serve in both capacities. The normal school education of women was obtained by appeals based on the fact of the first half of the nineteenth century that unless women teachers were secured and trained for the task the elementary school could never be enabled to fill the need of the public school system. The fact of the early part of the twentieth century should be as deeply pressed, the fact that there are not enough women teachers of education and character for elementary school service unless we mix teaching and marriage for many of them. This fact should make a social appeal to-day equal to that of Horace Mann's great mission. If we are to have enough elementary school teachers and continue to increase the number from the most fit women for the task, we must also institute a new social backing for the profession. In this connection one is obliged to deal with the disrespect shown the average teacher of little children and even of the high school and college instructor as compared with leaders in other professions. The teacher of little children is most often a woman, and if a woman away from home and especially in some rural communities is very nearly a social outcast. The "teacherage" is just beginning to be called for as the suitable home for the teachers of a school; a "teacherage" which can become a social centre if near the school building, and thus be uniquely useful. The jointure of all the best homes in a community with all the wisest teachers in that community, not alone for the occasional discussion of "School Problems" or "Home Problems," but for some common public work which will link both teachers and parents to the larger life of the community--this is a necessity if we would have enough teachers of the right sort. The attention to the physical details of school housing, school gardens, school playgrounds, school lighting and seating, all these the family life which furnishes the children must be keen about in the interest of each child. The curriculum must not be left to a school board chiefly interested in other matters than text-books, except it may be for a business interest in the latter. The supply and testing of teachers must not be left to a body more concerned in getting places for relatives and friends than for securing the best available teaching staff. In all the things that experts should direct, and in all the things that mean health and comfort and happiness to individual children, parents, even if not very learned, should have a voice and seek to make their convictions work to actual progress. =Individual Sharing in the Social Inheritance.=--For the last point of our list, namely, the right of every child to be made a conscious heir to the social inheritance of his time and place in the world, little need be said. The tendencies in American life which give thoughtful people the most satisfaction are the tendencies toward extension of culture privileges in public libraries, lectures, tax-supported and educationally supervised playgrounds, in young people's organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, in summer camps (not all for the rich), in vacation houses full of the flavor of the best of life, in the varied clubs and classes of the settlements, in the pageants and other forms of pictured world-life--all these, and more that might be named, show an exuberance of effort to share with utmost speed and fullest generosity the things that seem to the privileged few the most precious heritage of our race. Yet, with all our effort so much more needs doing that multitudes live and die wholly ignorant of the world they have come to or of the race-life of which they are a part. Doctor Du Bois, in his classic appeal for human comradeship for all, _The Soul of Black Folks_, has shown what suffering comes to the cultured black man who finds all cultured men and women of white races forcing him to be an alien because of his skin. There is a sadder and more terrible, because unconscious, deprivation; it is that of any one, white or black, rich or poor, who loses the chance to partake of the culture of the past. The man or woman, whether able to accomplish much or little on the practical side of vocational service, whose outlook is bounded by the narrow, the superficial, the personal, the ephemeral, is missing the best part of his social inheritance, the capacity to "look before and after and pine for what is not." Such a little time we are here! Even a Methuselah might wish to have in his mental furnishings the glory of the past and the prophetic hope of the future. All children, not merely a fortunate few, should have this sense of a group-life of which each is a part, should be able to see life and see it whole in the social inheritance that belongs alike to each one of us. Children make a large order upon each generation as they come into a vast group of all that have been and reach consciously toward the expanding life of the coming time. The family must begin that culture by which the order shall be filled, but no family can answer even the least of the social demands by itself. "Culture," says Emerson, "shall yet absorb chaos itself," Every child has a rightful citizenship in that order-giving world of thought, of history, of poetry, of art, of science, and of religion. What a nation we might become if only every child had this, its right, recognized and fulfilled! QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY 1. The eighteenth century was called the century of man, the nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the child. What facts justify this statement? 2. What are the main elements in the modern standard of child-care, child-protection, and child-nurture? 3. What of these elements can and should the private home supply, and what must be the community provision and control? 4. In trying to effect both private and public conditions favorable to the best development of child-life, what should be the scale of values used, or what should be the order of effort? 5. Dr. Alice Hamilton, in a Chicago study of I,500 families, found that the infant death-rate in large families of six children and over was two and one-half times greater than in small families of four children or less. Was that an indication that infant mortality rises with fecundity or was it one of many indications that the better-to-do have smaller families? In any case, should such statistics always include the statement of the social standing and the income of the groups studied? 6. In _The Child_ of August, 1920, Miss Julia C. Lathrop summarizes the Child-welfare Standards proposed by the Children's Bureau as follows: (1.) Minimum standards for children entering employment: A. Minimum age, sixteen years in all employments; eighteen years in mines and quarries; twenty-one years for girls as telephone or telegraph messengers; twenty-one years for special-delivery service of U.S. Post Office; prohibition of minors in dangerous, unhealthy, or hazardous occupations. B. Minimum education, compulsory education for all between seven and sixteen years for nine months of every year. Between sixteen and eighteen years those legally employed to attend Continuation Schools at least eight hours a week. C. Physical minimum, annual examination of all working children under eighteen years of age; prohibition of work unless found to be normal in physique and health. D. Hours, minors not more than eight hours a day or forty-four hours a week, and prohibition of night-work. Continuation School attendance to count as part of working-day. E. Wages, minimum determined by wage commission or similar agency. F. Vocational guidance and employment supervision. G. Employment certificate as needed protection against industrial exploitation. (2.) Minimum standards for public protection of health of mothers and children: A. Maternity aids; B. Infants; C. Pre-school children; D. School children; E. Adolescent children. (3.) Minimum standards in relation to children needing special care: A. Adequate income; B. Assistance to mothers; C. State supervision; D. Removal of some children from their homes; E. Home care; F. Principles governing child-placing; G. Children in institutions; H. Care of children born out of wedlock; I. Care of physically defective children; J. Mental hygiene and care of mentally defective children; K. Juvenile courts; L. Rural social work; M. Scientific information. (4.) General minimum standards: A. Economic and social; B. Recreation; C. Child-welfare legislation. Read the above and compare your local conditions with these standards. Do you think all these demands necessary? FOOTNOTES: [8] Described briefly in _The Survey_ of November 12, 1921. [9] In New Zealand, which has so many "modern improvements" in government, the proposition has been made to fix a basic wage for a man and wife without children, and make it the same as for a single man. In addition to this sum, each employer would be required by law to pay into a State Fund a sum slightly in advance of this wage for the single man and the childless married man, and that excess sum would be distributed in the form of a children's allowance to each parent according to the number of children. It is estimated that under this plan the total sum paid out in wages would not exceed that now distributed, but the receipt by the workers would be proportioned to responsibilities. [10] See publications of the National Child-labor Committee. CHAPTER IX THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" "Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused." --SHAKESPEARE. "The apostolic of every age are ever calling for a higher righteousness, a better development of the human race, a more earnest effort to equalize the condition of men."--LUCRETIA MOTT. "To every period its leaders: and the rise of every leader is according to his watching for opportunity; and the chief quality of leadership is the jewel of equity, by which alone the obedience of men is justified."--ARAB SAYING. "He presses on before the race, And sings out of a silent place. Like faint notes of a forest bird On heights afar that voice is heard; And the dim path he breaks to-day Will some time be a trodden way. But when the race comes toiling on That voice of wonder will be gone-- Be heard on higher peaks afar, Moved upward with the morning star. O men of earth, that wandering voice Still goes the upward way: rejoice!" --EDWIN MARKHAM. =The Proportions of Genius to the Mediocre.=--In Dr. T.S. Clouston's suggestive book, _The Hygiene of Mind_, he estimates that at least four-fifths of the human race are legally "sound" and of average capacity. Of the remaining one-fifth who are "unusual" he and other investigators name only one-tenth of one per cent, as entitled to the distinction of "Genius." Clouston adds to this a class of "lesser genius," often extremely useful to the race but often personally unhappy from ungratified ambition or lack of temperamental balance. He lists "reformers" for the most part in this class and "inventors who do not succeed." He also specifically indicates a class of "all-round talent" from which successful social and political leaders are drawn and heads of big business and administrators of large enterprises in educational fields. Dr. Lester F. Ward, on the contrary, believed that we estimate the rate of genius and potential genius far too low and that special talent is vastly more common than the usual observer thinks. He says, "What the human race needs is not more brains but more knowledge." In his clarion call for the better education of all people of every race and condition, he affirms his faith in environmental opportunity and a finer personal development as the chief things needed to send the race onward. Professor Woods, of Dartmouth College, writing on "The Social Cost of Unguided Ability," confirms this conviction of Doctor Ward.[11] He declares that "for ten men who succeed there are probably fifty more who might succeed with adequate development and specialization of effort." He shows how "education as an agency in the selection of personal ability fails because of undue abbreviation of the period of training for most individuals and the omission of elements of training of real significance for the purpose of adjusting individuals to the specific task." When we note that before the fifth elementary grade is reached there is a drop in attendance showing only 80 per cent. of those found in the second grade, and in the sixth grade only 66 per cent., and in the seventh grade only 50 per cent., and in the eighth grade less than 40 per cent. remain of those entering the first and second grades, we see good reason for his statement. When the high school statistics are added, with the drop year by year in attendance until at graduation only one in fourteen pupils remains to the end, we feel that this author is right when he says that "Society suffers less from the race suicide of the capable than from the non-utilization of the well-endowed." [Illustration] =Eugenics.=--When Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and one of the first to apply to human beings the ideas of "selection for better breeds," published in 1873 his article on "Hereditary Improvement," he used the word "Stirpiculture" as indicating the application of evolution to the method of improving mankind by the selection of the superior in the process of reproduction. He later changed the designation to "Eugenics," which is now held as the term best applying in this connection. In 1891 Dr. Lester Ward himself said, "Artificial selection has given to man the most that he enjoys in the organic products of earth. May not men and women be selected as well as sheep and horses? From the great stirp of humanity with all its multiplied ancestral plasms--some very poor, some mediocre, some merely indifferent, a goodly number ranging from middling to fair, only a comparatively few very good, with an occasional crystal of the first water--why may we not learn to select on some broad and comprehensive plan with a view to a general building up and rounding out of the race of human beings?" So keen an observer and philosophic thinker as Doctor Ward, however, could not long accept the first allurement of this idea. He soon began to show with his convincing power that "the control of heredity is possible only to a master creature. Man is the master creature of the animal world. Society is the master of its defectives. But normal people are their own masters. Any attempt on the part of society to control the choice of partners in the marital relation would be tyranny." Recognizing the need for "negative eugenics" fully, and declaring in its name that "mental and physical defectives of society should be kept from perpetuating their defects through propagation," he insisted that "eugenists must recognize and admit the enormous force of personal preference" in marriage. Doctor Ward gives a figure--as above--which might be used to indicate the conclusions of Galton, in his _Hereditary Genius_, and of Ribot and others. Doctor Galton himself gave in his volume on the _Social Order_ a chart somewhat more discriminating. In any case, however, the eugenists must depend upon the mass of the mediocre for a supply of geniuses and those of exceptional talent and depend upon the process of reproduction for securing that supply. Doctor Ward, on the contrary, looks to education, controlled and improved environment, and the stimulus for all people to be gained from more scientific knowledge more widely distributed. In his famous article, entitled "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics,"[12] Doctor Ward says that "eugenists tend to emphasize unduly the intellectual qualities" and "manifest more or less contempt for the affective faculties." "Nature," he thinks, "is far wiser and seeks to prevent all extremes." He also reminds us that "much that is called genius is pathologic and linked to the abnormal and the insane." Perhaps few would agree with Doctor Ward that "genius is scattered somewhat uniformly through the whole mass of the population and needs only favoring circumstances to bring it to conscious expression." But that thought challenges attention. He would improve mankind, first, by getting rid of error through the full use of demonstrated scientific knowledge and, second, by a "nurture" in accord with the laws of progress. =Euthenics and Eudemics.=--The pioneer treatment of "Euthenics," or "The Science of Controllable Environment," with its "Plea for Better Living Conditions as a First Step Toward Higher Human Efficiency," was given by Ellen H. Richards in 1910. Doctor Ward, in alluding to this, reminds us that "there is a tendency for the avenues of progress to become choked and normal upward movements checked" and that "we must at all times take vigorous action and in the direction of the betterment of the human race." In respect to "Eudemics," or the doctrine of the welfare of the masses of the people-at-large, Doctor Ward uses the term first suggested to Doctor Dealey, of Brown University, by Doctor Koopman, Librarian of that University, with approval, and gives it a meaning of the greatest social helpfulness. In his view it is not a misfortune that society is being to so great an extent recruited from the so-called "lower classes." If there are signs of decadence anywhere, he thinks, they are not in the "proletariat;" they are among the "pampered rich," not the "hampered poor." =New Types of Genius.=--Again, his plea is for universal education in real knowledge and true inference from facts of life and a universal sharing of the really best things to secure a just quota of genius and talent from all classes. It seems clear that we are not obliged to limit our hopes for "flowers of the family" to the few at the top of the social pyramid. For the testimony of history agrees rather with Doctor Ward than with the extreme eugenists, and we have often had arising from the common life splendid examples of human capacity and achievement. When the eugenists list their double columns of those whom humanity takes pride in and those of whom humanity is ashamed it is most often from the degenerative or defective members of society that the second list is taken. From the great common life of average condition, neither too rich nor too poor, too cultured nor too ignorant, for "human nature's daily food," one rises now and then to leave a mark high up on the list of great ones of the earth. Hence, humble fathers and mothers can build magnificent hopes on the newborn baby of their love. It is to be considered also that there is difference of opinion as to what constitutes genius and what may be called exceptional talent. One sociologist thinks that there are but three really important classes of men, namely, "Mechanical Inventors, Scientific Discoverers, and Philosophic Thinkers." Another type of judgment may consider that genius shows itself almost exclusively in those creative minds that give us great music, great pictures, great sculptures, great temples, and great books of poetry, drama, and the novel. Another type of mind, now growing fast among us in this machine-dominated industrial era, may find genius the most appropriate name for the master engineer or business-builder who rules a wide realm of successfully administered economic order. There is, also, although it is not often bold enough to claim loud voice, a small section of those who look for supreme excellence in religious or ethical attainment, a line of genius in mastery of the Way of Life. Certainly serviceable goodness, that which does big things for others' safety or help, may be given some place among the specially talented. For example, the little French girl of nine years of age who, bereft of her mother by the accidents of war, has brought up almost unaided five little brothers and sisters, the youngest only seven months old when her task began, and for two years, it is said, washed, cooked, and dressed her charges, and "saw to it that those old enough went to school where she went herself and took prizes for her scholarship," might well be called one of the "unusual." The prize of 500 francs awarded this "little mother" after two years of such able family engineering and personal care of those dependent upon her shows that some people at least rank those with ability to do social services and the high purpose to achieve the best possible for others' welfare as having a place In the company of the specially talented. In an inconspicuous book called _The New Party_, edited by Andrew Reid and containing selections from many "labor" leaders, these words occur: "We have had politics for politics' sake, religion for religion's sake, science for science's sake, literature for literature's sake, art for art's sake: we want politics for justice, religion for right, science for happiness, literature for love of humanity, and art for the social pleasure of all." Those who can thus translate the separate achievements of mankind which taken at the top have won the title of works of genius are beginning to be seen above the human horizon as among the great of earth. It is still, however, as of old, the man or woman who has a special gift of voice or pen or brush or sculptor's tool or command of instrument or ability to compose music or to write literature fit to live forever, or build temples that command wonder and admiration, or who in some form of creative activity makes his mark upon history, who is most often spoken of as a genius. It is now only a little while since we began to add to this list the scientific, the commercial and the political genius. The military genius has held a place for ages, but his specialty is losing standing as a social asset, and we can foresee a time when he must learn constructive rather than destructive methods of action in order to qualify for the "Hall of Fame."[13] =Only Men in Lists of Geniuses.=--Genius along any line has for its topmost reaches the names of men only. Few women have even attained the secondary place of the talented. When we remember that higher education for women is a child of less than a hundred years' growth, and that all the higher walks of achievement in the intellectual, the political, the scientific, and the industrial field have been masculine monopolies in custom and even in law for ages after men had opportunity of specialized development and work, this is not a sure proof of the intellectual and vocational inferiority of women. Until women have had several centuries of equal education and freedom of activity with men no one can tell what they can do in any special line. It is therefore idle at this date for any one to argue either for or against the possibilities of a more balanced list of the sexes in those at the top of human achievement. What we are now beginning to be sure of is that all talent is precious, all special power a social asset, all leadership to be conserved, and all real genius a priceless treasure--hence, that all children who are gifted, whether boys or girls, shall be developed to the height of social power. This means that although every gifted child is born in a private family, society must see to it that its chance for right nurture and fitting education is not limited to the resources of any private family, especially to those of the poorer in economic power. Galton estimates two hundred and fifty in a million as in the "distinguished class," If, as Doctor Ward and others think, many more might be able to qualify for that position if favorably situated, then society, which is the loser by every undeveloped person, must learn to know the possibilities of children as indicated by scientific study and lessen the present waste of potential talent. Dr. Carl Kelsey says "Heredity determines what a man may become, but environment determines what he does become." This is not entirely true, perhaps, since many noble and wise have risen from untoward surroundings, but it is largely true. =Social Need to Learn What Children Are.=--If society is to really set about the business of getting from the mass of mankind all the intellectual and moral power and all the real leadership that may be available for social uses, then surely we must learn first to know more about all the children in every family. How can this be done? In many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and due balance of judgment even between their own children and certainly not as between their own and the children of other parents. ="Charting Parents."=--There is, to be sure, a new plan of "Charting Parents" to find out what they are able to do and what they are actually doing in the moral training and physical care of their children. "The Parents' Score Card," prepared by Dr. Caroline Hedger, of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, and published in the _Woman's Home Companion_ of March, 1922, aims to enable fathers and mothers "to size themselves up as parents." The points to be noted and on which parents have a rating as good, bad, or indifferent, comprise those concerning "physical defects attended to," "adequate supervision of athletics and recreation," "regulations concerning the below-weight or nervous child," on "team-work in parents" (whether they pull together or apart in the discipline of the child), and some very drastic examination points on "fault-finding," "lying to child," "punishing when angry." The chart deals, in general, with the character influence of the parent. It is said that only one child in three hundred had a perfect "score card" in an investigation of a large number of children, and hence only a small proportion of parents could be supposed to measure up to all the requirements of the parent's outline of duties. This new device of putting parents to the test is being adopted in many differing ways by health boards, by school boards, by children's courts, by church committees of investigation, and by the superintendents of charitable agencies. This all means that a standard of child-life is being attained, a measure of the normal, divergence from which is an indication of the abnormal, either in capacity or condition. This is a wholesome movement, although sometimes carried out in unwise and unsympathetic ways. This should enable parents to find out if they have average children and what to do with defects that are remediable. This is also one of the ways by which we measure the social need to help parents who are themselves handicapped in any way to do their duty by their children. What we need, however, is more than this--we need some definite knowledge of what sort of children we have in one generation with which to build the next generation. We need to be able to take account of our social stock as we go along. To do this the home must be supplemented specifically and adequately by the school. In the school we have opportunity of wide study of varying types, of comparison of differing rates of progress, of getting at actual knowledge of actual quality and capacity in a child as related to the like in other children. This investigative function of the school has been used for the most part to ascertain what children were defective. This is useful. We need, also, to use it with far more ingenuity to ascertain what children are most promising and most likely to dower the race with special gifts. =New Observation Records for Children.=--A very important "Observation Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in the Elementary Schools" has been drawn up by Julie A. Badanes, which has been published with an introduction by Dr. Saul Badanes. In this introduction it is well said that "the idea of establishing a norm for every school year" is a new one. The measurement of intelligence by Binet dates only back to 1905. In the treatment of the "Intelligence of Pupils," Meumann declares "that the problem of measuring the intelligence of school children is the basic problem in education." Recently William Stern has dealt at length with "The Selection of Gifted Children in Public Schools" and with related elements of investigation of the intelligence of children. William H. Allen, in his book, _Universal Training for American Citizenship_, has, as Doctor Badanes notes, given a chapter to the "Training of the Specially Gifted." We are all concerned with growing earnestness in the problem of getting in democracy the leadership which all social organization requires. It is, therefore, of the most intense interest to all thoughtful people how the flower of the family is nurtured and in what manner it is made to bloom. This "Psychological-pedagogical Observation Record," which has been devised as an aid in finding out if a child is specially gifted, and if so in what way its gifts should be developed and how it should find its way to achievement, is very suggestive. Any parent might well study its itemized outlines for help in effort to understand the child that is unlike the average. The "Record" requires attention to the "general condition of the senses and nerves," to "memory and power of learning," to qualities of "imagination," to strength and expression of "emotions," to facility in "language," to "manner of work," to "relation to home and community life," and in respect to "adaptation to new demands." These things are vital not only to know about and understand as respects one personality but to compare on the same basis a number of personalities in order to get a ranking that is just and useful for guidance in education. Suppose a father and mother feel sure that a child of theirs is one of the exceptional, the gifted, perhaps of great talent, even possibly a genius in the making. They may get much help in arriving at sober judgment by many books and treatises now available. But far clearer would be their own approach to the matter in hand if they could study some such chart as is here alluded to and get a clear direction as to what to look for and how to measure what they find. If such parents, however, would be really assured in their first appreciation of their child they need the coöperative observation and fuller opportunity of comparison which a teacher of a school, who is herself or himself a good psychologist, can place at their service. All of us can see our own children at their best; few can justly estimate what the power of that best may be in a competitive world. =What to Do with the Specially Gifted Child.=--The child may be one of the few elected to leadership in some field. All who watch and study and understand may agree that it is the gift of its birthright. Then what is there to do? The question often arises, Shall the other children in the family be given less opportunity in order that this gifted one may have the larger chance which genius and great talent really demand for fulfilment of promise? There was no doubt of the answer to this question in the minds of those who believed that a special gift carried with it special privilege provided the special gift discovered were of a sort understood by all. For many generations a boy feeling a "call" to the ministry of religion as rabbi, priest, or preacher would be sure to have, if necessary, all the resources of his family at his command and all possible aid of friends even at the sacrifice of the elementary education of his brothers and sisters. In the same way in a more limited circle the child who could do any creative work of imagination in art would be considered entitled to any self-sacrificing devotion of other members of the family which might be needed to carry forward his work. In a larger way many have looked upon all higher education as solely for those who have shown a power of potential leadership. Not long ago the old saying was revived: "Colleges are for the exceptional individuals who may become the world's intellectual élite." On the other hand, the growth of State Universities and of many forms of adult education, and the offering of college courses in the evening to those employed in earning-work during the day, show that the opportunities of culture are more and more made free to all and that the conviction is growing that it is not alone leaders who should be educated but that the common life must be raised in mental and moral power in order for true leadership to work effectively for the advance of social well-being. In the family the genius or near-genius is likely to get all that should be its privilege and often more. And this not only from pride in his talent and from desire to give that talent its proper chance of expression but because genius and near-genius have often a self-protecting and self-acquiring quality that make sure of much unselfish care from others. If, as has been said, "The genius is composed of a man, a woman, and a child," and there is much in life to give color to that idea, then it is easy to see why the flower of the family so often gets the larger share of every family advantage and when the family resource fails is sure to find friends and helpers on every side to help on his development. This is not unjust provided the talented member can serve well in this specialty. The great trouble is that many think themselves geniuses and find others, in youth at least, to confirm their judgment of themselves, who are only a trifle above the commonplace. This leads too often to selfish claims upon others that tire even the family affection. It would be well on this account, if no other, if every child could be wisely and adequately diagnosed in respect to mental power so that fewer mistakes would be made in confounding greatness with showiness or creative power with mere discriminating taste. If the family really cuts off the education and vocational opportunities of the less gifted below the point required for average success in life, in order to give greater advantages to the gifted one, it is an injustice. The mediocre have their innings now, and it is one of the great demands of democracy, both within and without the family, that the commonplace shall not miss its chance for learning how to serve and enjoy the best it can. The family life must be for all, the one place in which no life is wholly sacrificed to another life. What, then, shall be done for the gifted whose talent, like that of music, for example, means a high demand for expensive culture? The answer we are beginning to give is that social agencies shall aid the parents in securing that culture. Aristocracy had its "patrons" for artists. Democracy must have its special educational aids for the gifted. Already that demand is being met in countless ways that will readily occur to all. Meanwhile, there is the public school organized to meet the needs of the "average child." At first the grade-system had a Procrustean bed that made it impossible to meet the needs of those below the average and almost as difficult to meet the needs of those above that average. We started special schools and special rooms for those subnormal, retarded, slow, or specially difficult to manage. Now we are beginning to consider how we can best make the tax-supported public school serve the interests of the specially gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular track of school promotions and be given extra lessons to "enrich their curriculum." The part of wisdom, it would seem, is to find out what kind of gift the exceptional child has and hasten his regular course, or add to it, in accordance with his type of talent. If he is to be one of those who are to mix with men and lead others in professions that demand administrative and executive power, the chances are that he should have the regular course in the usual order and add studies that will early give him the facts of practical life and an acquaintance with many phases of political, business, and scientific activity that would serve in such work as he is likely to find to do. If, on the other hand, the gift is creative, and the career nature has seemingly marked out is one where the impulse will come from within, and some special technical training can alone give that impulse expression, then the chances are that the sooner such a child "gets through with school," emerges from formal education into his own atmosphere and his own free alignment with the masters in his own art, the sooner he will really begin to be educated for his task. It seems to be true that the more a human being is set apart by nature for a specialty of art the less he gets from all teachers save those in his own field of interest. It seems also true that the wider a human being's range of dealing with other human beings in business, in politics, in religious organizations, in educational work, the surer it will be that "all is grist that comes to his mill" and there can be no study that is at all worthy that fails to enrich his mind. Hence, the new tendency to examination for the sake of finding out the specially gifted children and giving them the special opportunity in education which they need and will profit by, must be one guided toward details of differing gifts as well as toward quantitative power. =Genius Universal in Nature.=--If any family has in it a real genius, that family shines forever in the reflected light of its choicest treasure. Yet a genius belongs to no family, even to no country. Such belong to the world. Mary, we are told, "pondered the things in her heart" which marked the boy Jesus out from all the other lads who played about the carpenter shop of Joseph. And it is not alone poetic imagination that shows her as troubled as well as humbly proud at the testimonies of His coming greatness. Many other mothers of those destined to high achievement have had misgivings as the shadow as truly as the sunlight of that greatness passed across their vision. For true greatness is solitary and often dedicated to tragedies of experience. The family life may be the only refuge from a misunderstanding world while the hero lives and only after death may the high quality of his service be known to all. =Genius Its Own School-master.=--The most comforting thought to parents who have children "different" and perhaps different in ways not yet appreciated by the world around them, is this: nature, which takes care that we shall not have too many geniuses and doubtless will still take such care when we grow wise enough to give all the children a chance to prove whether or not they are geniuses--nature sees to it that the most gifted among the children of men carry within themselves their own school-master. If the regular lines of education do not suit their needs they promptly emancipate themselves from the useless pedagogy, and going after what they personally demand for inner nourishment, get it at all hazards. Sometimes, not infrequently, all the gifted child needs is a library and a chance to be free, or a studio and the companionship of an artist and just his own sort of training, at the time he can best appropriate it. =Varieties of the Gifted.=--Happily all the flowers of the family are not geniuses or specially talented. Some are just beautiful to look at and yet unspoiled by flattery. It is a great gift of nature to be able to give happiness just by allowing people to look at one! The contour of the face, the turn of the head, the light in the eye, the freshness of the complexion, the grace of the movement, and the sweetness of the voice all go together, if the manner and the feeling only match the coloring and the form, to make it well worth while just to be alive. And some flowers of the family are not beautiful but charming, those of tact and graciousness and understanding of others and consideration and unselfish behavior. These are they of whom one has said, "The charm of her presence was felt when she went, and men at her side grew nobler, girls purer, as all through the town the children were gladder who pulled at her gown." Some flowers of the family bloom late and come to their beauty only when some disaster threatens destruction of the home or some sorrow wrecks its happiness. Simple, plain, unassuming, neither very wise nor very strong in other matters, they have a heart that can love with such intensity that it warms the coldest spot and is the refuge most sought when misfortune appears. And sometimes the flower of the family is but a memory of one who early passes on. Emerson sang in his beautiful "Threnody": "The gracious boy, who did adorn The world whereinto he was born, And by his countenance repay The favor of the loving Day,-- Has disappeared from the Day's eye; Far and wide she cannot find him; My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. ...................................... Nature, who lost, cannot remake him; Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him; ........................................ the feet Of the most beautiful and sweet Of human youth had left the hill And garden,--they were bound and still." It is of such that affection speaks most tenderly. QUESTIONS ON THE FLOWER OF THE FAMILY 1. How far should the general family life be burdened for special development of the genius, the near-genius, and the specially talented member? 2. What added social provisions should we seek to secure to aid in the self-training of the specially gifted? 3. What type of education may lead more surely to the discovery of talent and special faculty in the mass of children? 4. Should the chief aim be to bring the subnormal or backward up to grade or to give a free and helpful range of opportunity to natural qualities of leadership? If both should be aimed at equally, how can the public school aid in the double task? 5. A suggestive list of Books for Parents, issued by the Federation for Child Study, headquarters at 2 West Sixty-fourth Street, New York City, includes several of special value in determining the mental powers and special requirements of children diverging from the average quality and capacity. Read at least one of the books indicated and compare local provisions for examination of children with those advocated as desirable. FOOTNOTES: [11] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for November, 1913. [12] See _American Journal of Sociology_ for May, 1913. [13] See chapter on "Democracy and Distinction," in _Social Organization_, by C.H. Cooley. CHAPTER X THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP "It was perhaps an idle thought But I imagined that if day by day I watched him and seldom went away, And studied all the beatings of his heart With zeal (as men study some stubborn art For their own good) and could by patience find An entrance to the caverns of his mind-- I might reclaim him from his dark estate." --SHELLEY. "One man, at least, I know, Who might wear the crest of Bayard Or Sidney's plume of snow. Behold him, The Cadmus of the blind, Giving the dumb lips language, The idiot clay a mind. Wherever outraged Nature Asks word or action brave, Wherever struggles labor, Wherever groans a slave,-- Wherever rise the peoples, Wherever sinks a throne, The throbbing heart of Freedom finds An answer in his own. Knight of a better era, Without reproach or fear! Said I not well that Bayards And Sidneys still are here?" --WHITTIER'S tribute to Dr. Howe. =The Defective Children.=--Not those who die young, full of promise, to leave a memory of exquisite budding loveliness cut short by untimely frosts, but those who live on from infancy to childhood and from youth to physical maturity and even on to old age, yet never become responsible adults--these are the children we must consider. The demand of the eugenists that such, if obviously defective, should be prevented from bringing forth after their kind is clearly the only social wisdom. The statistics of social pathology all point to mental defectiveness as the prolific cause of crime, immorality, vocational incompetency, illegitimacy, family failure, and marital tragedy. In a recent study of one hundred families in which feeble-mindedness was obvious, a study carried on by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, immorality was found in 58 per cent. of them; extreme filth and bad home conditions were found in 30 per cent.; and in 47 per cent. one or more members of these families were public charges. Where the mother is subnormal there is almost certain to be a line of feeble-minded progeny, and in this study, while there were only 7 per cent. of the fathers hopelessly deficient, in 25 per cent. the mothers were notably defective in mind. Thirty-seven of these families showed illegitimate children--a far larger number than the average of normal population. Physical deficiencies also figured largely in these family records. This particular study takes us into the region where Doctor Fernald, Doctor Goddard and many others have prepared material for convincing the public mind that no one thing so increases social degeneracy and so adds to the sum of human misery as the unprotected freedom of defectives to procreate and pollute the family currents.[14] This is not a treatise on social pathology and elsewhere must be found the details of investigation and information that justify this statement. What is here attempted is only a study of what should be the attitude of fathers and mothers toward feeble-minded children if such should be their tragic problem. =Custodial Care of the Defective.=--In the first place, the attitude of mind of the parents, if they are themselves normal, is to be considered. What gives us feeble-minded children from feeble-minded parents is clear. The social prevention for carrying on known degeneracy cannot be too strongly stressed, and hence the first duty of normal parents is to consider the social danger of leaving a feeble-minded child, especially a feeble-minded girl, to any chance of parenthood. This leads to the question of removal from home of feeble-minded children to permanent custodial care in institutions provided especially for their segregation, possible teaching and thrifty use of small work-power. Alexander Johnson, who has done so much in the United States to make all philanthropy wise and effective and particularly has helped to form public opinion concerning right methods of care and training of the feeble-minded, tells us that "one-half of the mentally defective can become one-third of a normal person," can be made happy and useful to the extent of considerable aid toward self-support if under constant supervision and given the trained care of special teachers. There are few private homes in which any feeble-minded boy or girl can attain such a condition. The children who are "different," if having the sole devotion of father and mother, may be protected and made happy in the measure of their power for happiness. But if there are other children in the family neither they nor the afflicted one are comfortable. The measure of feeble-mindedness is usually the measure of unhappiness when the normal and abnormal are in close companionship. In most families it is not possible for either or both parents to give entire time, strength and devotion to one subnormal child. Where it is, there is no security that death will not prevent the permanency of that devoted care. Hence, it is generally safer and better for all concerned to place the feeble-minded in collective homes where their own kind are cared for exclusively and where segregated control can be complete and permanent through life. There is no horror of such places for those who have seen what flowers of happiness and what miracles of devotion may be found in "Training Schools for the Feeble-minded." The affectional side of the nature of a mental defective may be of unusual strength and may find special objects of love among those still more handicapped than itself. Those visiting intimately in such School-homes may see a higher-grade imbecile caring for a lower-grade with patience and devotion; they may see the competitive element in training, reduced in levels for the accommodation of the slender stock of mentality, producing on that lower level the same good results that normal children gain from trying to imitate and to excel. Small attainments are sources of pride in a class of defectives which if exhibited among the normal would give bitter experience of contrast. By making the standard of behavior and of attainment suited to their little power, the delight of conquest over difficulties need not be denied to the feeble-minded. Hence, again, it is far from wise and often far from most loving to keep the child who can never grow up in the company of those who follow the usual path from infancy to maturity. This means, of course, if this idea of the more general use of special homes for the subnormal is to be carried out, a large increase in provision of such homes. Such large increase is often opposed by short-sighted economy. The expense of establishing and maintaining such homes in adequate number and of scientific and humane provisions is counted over and taxpayers made alarmed at the sum total. What is lacking usually in the count is the sum total of the enormous sums society now pays out for the unregulated and socially dangerous neglect of this class of unfortunates. Doctor Goddard's "Kallikak Family" and many other accurate showings of what it costs to leave uncared for one feeble-minded girl in unbefriended freedom should convince any sane person that the most wasteful extravagance any community can commit is such neglect of what Mr. Johnson has called "the divine fragments" of humanity. To make provision for the insane is seen to be a social necessity and the family more than any other social institution profits by the hospitals and asylums for the treatment and care of such. The relief of having an insane relative taken away from the home, after months and perhaps years of anxiety, fear, and suffering on the part of every other member, cannot be too strongly pictured. The effort now making to secure early treatment for the first symptoms of mental derangement and to give even "border-line" cases and exceptionally "cranky" and nervous people special treatment in mental hygiene marks the beginning, we must believe, of effective preventive work in this line. The feeble-minded, however, have a claim of perpetual childhood upon the parental sympathy, and that, together with common ignorance concerning their condition or numbers and the social dangers inherent in their neglect, give us the alarming discrepancy in numbers between the feeble-minded in suitable segregated care and those left to find their way or lose it in the usual walks of life. Since Doctor Seguin wrote his _Treatise on Idiocy_ in 1846 the verdict of science and of philanthropy has been accumulating as to the need for the full and complete protection of all who cannot manage successfully, even in the simplest details, their own lives and the lives of those with whom they are most closely related. Yet to-day, it is claimed by many observers, we have only about fifteen per cent, of those requiring special protection on this account adequately cared for by society. The family must be relieved of personal care of its insane, its lower-grade feeble-minded, and its moral idiots. It must be so relieved for the sake of the normal members of the family. It must be so relieved still more for the sake of lessening vice, crime, degenerative tendencies, and actual waste of public money in public court procedure and in other public institutional provisions. To induce the state of mind in parents which will help on the better and more adequate social care of these afflicted members of society, the sense of shame and the keen suffering from social stigma in such cases must be mitigated. It must be seen that although it may be the fault of one or both parents that such a child has come into the world, it is an added and deeper fault, even in many cases a social crime, to leave that child in ordinary relations of life. It is true that what Dr. Caleb W. Saleeby well calls "racial poisons" are often the cause of the damaged germ plasm that starts the handicapped human being along his devious course. Alcohol, syphilis, and other elements of degenerative action may have doomed the child and in such cases the father's or mother's sin or carelessness is the cause of the child's tragical condition. In such cases the dullest conscience must feel remorse. It is, however, not always the fault of the immediate parents. It may be a far more remote inheritance that has started the degenerative psychosis that results in either insanity, feeble-mindedness, dipsomania, or "general debility of character." =Heredity.=--Prof. E.G. Conklin says, "Heredity may be defined as the appearance in offspring of characters whose differential causes are found in germ cells." Doctor Galton says "the two parents between them contribute on an average one-half of each inherited faculty, or each parent one-quarter. The grandparents contribute between them one-quarter, or each one-sixteenth." The responsibility for a poor specimen of humanity, therefore, is not solely the parents'; they may share it with a considerable group. Many a defective obviously owes his condition to some remote ancestor, "to the third or fourth generation," as the old Scripture said; and many a charming trait, for which the immediate parents would like to take credit, is really a gift from some great-grandparent. This fact should make it easier for parents of defectives to bear the burden and easier to make it seem less a shameful confession of individual responsibility and more a sad confirmation of the fact that we are all members one of another and no one lives to himself alone. =Difficulties in Care of Morons.=--The case is clear as to treatment, so all enlightened social workers and social students agree, in respect to the obviously defective or insane. The difficulty is to care protectively and yet justly for the higher-grade defective or what is now called the "moron." Doubtless we should all see it best to begin at the lower levels of defectiveness and abnormality for pressure upon society to socially protect in segregated institutions all the afflicted. The point at which compulsory methods should be used might be placed at a widely differing level by many most acquainted with the need for some form of social control of and for this class. Parents in particular would resent any snap judgment and should do so as to the mental condition of children not obviously imbecile. It is certain that the high-grade moron makes much trouble and gives social tragedies without number, but it is still more certain that no social machinery has yet been devised ingenious enough to really classify such persons and place them where they can do no more harm. As Dr. Lightner Witmer well says in his warning against careless diagnosis, "In training clinical examiners I advise them not to diagnose a child as feeble-minded unless they feel sure they have sufficient facts to convince a jury of twelve intelligent men that the diagnosis of feeble-mindedness is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the facts." It is undoubtedly true that many high-grade imbeciles or morons would be adjudged not feeble-minded by most juries. It is also undoubtedly true that many youths who are "peculiar" or "backward" or unusually susceptible to influence from others or especially lacking in power of self-control are in social danger and need some form of social protection more effectual than is required in the case of the normal child and youth. Higher grades of abnormality and those less understood must be approached, however, both in matters of examination and of care, from different angles of observation from those used in discovery and treatment of the obviously imbecile. In this connection mention must be made of the efforts to give supervision of special sort and under official direction to those able to earn their own living or partially so, at least, and who yet need special protection and care. _The Proceedings and Addresses of the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Sessions of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded_ contain specially valuable articles on "Extra-institutional Care" and on education of the higher-grade defectives. Two articles published in _Mental Hygiene_ of April, 1921, on the vocational elements in such extra-institutional care are most enlightening as to possibilities in this difficult field. The first of these, entitled "Experiments to Determine Possibilities of Subnormal Girls in Factory Work," by Elizabeth B. Bigelow, shows that certain kinds of routine work may be followed successfully by girls who are mentally under the normal. The second article, "Vocational Probation for Subnormal Youth," by Doctor Arnold Gesell, of Yale University, shows how the courts may use probation power and agency in the interest of self-support and a helpful industrial relationship. The new Children's Code recently recommended to the Connecticut Legislature by a special Commission advocates giving Juvenile Courts power at discretion to establish the status of "Vocational Probation," under the supervision of officers of the Court, in place of commitment to an institution, provided helpfully supervised employment may be found for the boy or girl in which they may become self-supporting. =The Colony Plan.=--The Report of Dr. Anne T. Bingham, Psychiatrist of the New York Probation and Protective Association, based upon 839 mental examinations of girls and women coming under notice because of breaking the laws or because manifestly in moral danger, is an important study. Doctor Bingham highly recommends the "Colony Plan" for the care of the higher-grade feeble-minded. In this plan small groups of those who show mental deficiency or any special need of social care are established under necessary supervision and control in colonies, near their own homes if possible, and given suitable work in the profit of which their families may share if destitute. The natural homes of such girls and women are often lacking both in helpful discipline or moral protection and to leave them in full charge of the parents is often the worst possible neglect. This Colony Plan is described in an article by Charles Bernstein, entitled "Colony and Extra-institutional Care for the Feeble-minded," published in _Mental Hygiene_ for January, 1920. The needed supervision, protection and care for higher-grade morons is difficult to secure unless some form of official control is initiated. That official control is often only available for those who have already suffered some serious consequence of their abnormal condition. What we need to work out is a better and more effective means for helping the family to do what is needed for the mentally handicapped child. =Mental Hygiene.=--No adequate treatment of this vital movement can be given here, but the family need for social provisions along this line must be urged. Few families can afford the money, few parents have the wisdom, to secure the right sort of special treatment for minds not so diseased as to be legal subjects for insane hospital care or for institutions for the feeble-minded, which yet make the family life miserable and the family success difficult. There is growing a conception of the need, especially in our complex modern life, that so often unsettles or overburdens the mind, to have all manner of free clinics and economical methods of care for those who can not well care fully for themselves. This movement will go on until the mental invalid of every sort will find as ready social sympathy and as adequate social aid as does the physically weak, ill, or crippled. Such a serviceable little pamphlet as that of Mr. Brady's on "Mental Hygiene in Childhood" gives useful suggestions. Meanwhile, the family interest is keen and must become more active and commanding in ridding society of the inducing causes of diseased germ plasm. The whole "social-hygiene" movement, so-called, is in the direction of cutting off the supply of the defective and making every family less likely to have children who never grow up. The call during the War, and a call heeded by many who had been ignorant of all the facts taught them in training camps, was "Keep Fit to Fight," The call of peace, and may it be heeded as the facts of inheritance are better known by all, is, Keep Fit for Parenthood. The sins of youth, so often sins of ignorance, carelessness, and unbridled passion, which doom childhood to blindness, to congenital deficiency of all kinds, to permanent twist of mental powers, or to lack of ability to meet life's demands--these sins of youth will be less in evidence when education is fitted to life's full responsibilities of choice instead of being side-tracked in narrow lines of scholarly acquirement alone. Meanwhile, for the parents whose children number one or more of the handicapped there is the comfort of securing for such all that science and special arts of teaching and institutional provision can give to make the life of those who can never grow up at least comfortable and free from exploitation by evil influences. That some of the noblest and best of men and women are giving their lives in wise and loving ministration to these least among the children of men is proof of the overmastering power of human sympathy. Meanwhile, again, we are finding out that the more discriminating observation of children and their more truly scientific rating will take many children from the lists of the "backward" and the "difficult" and even the supposed feeble-minded into the ranks of the educable toward full normality. =Special Rooms in Public Schools.=--The special rooms in the schools and the special schools in the school system and the school nurses and school doctors and the visiting teacher, with her power of making connection between the home and the school and playground, all show that we are coming to a point where every child will have a better chance for having his mental and moral as well as his physical diagnosis correctly made. And such a diagnosis we have already learned often shows that no congenital doom marks the child labelled "different," but rather some curable bad condition in his life that needs only wisdom and economic power to correct. The "Observation Cards" to which allusion has been made as helping toward discovery of the specially gifted may also, if used with discriminating judgment, show that many whom we thought lagged behind their mates from native disability can be made to keep up with the procession if they are rightly fed, have enough sleep, get a chance at fresh air, and are not made the victims of industrial exploitation. The new gospel of environmental change in the interest of better physical, mental, and vocational opportunities for all, includes not only the better care of all incompetent for self-control, self-support, and self-direction, it also is coming to include a far more searching investigation of the causes of degeneracy and backwardness, and many children are thereby lifted from the hopeless classes to the group of those requiring only special care and teaching to be able to be classed as normal. =Training the Nervous System.=--Professor James said, "The great thing in education is to make the nervous system the ally, not the enemy. For this we must make automatic and habitual as many useful actions as we can and carefully guard against growing into ways which are likely to be disadvantageous." His advice for self-discipline is to "seize every first possible opportunity to act on any resolution made, and on every emotional prompting in the direction of habits one aspires to gain." Professor Thompson, in his book on _Brain and Personality_, says, "We can make our own brains, so far as special functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have wills strong enough to take the trouble." These and many other admonitions in the direction of more effective mental training show the trend of modern education. How many a will has been weakened by bad methods of family influence! How many nervous systems made the enemy of education rather than its ally by bad family conditions! The Parent-Teacher Associations are doing valiant service in bringing to the home the best thought of the school and in bringing to the school the best feeling of the home. It is not too much to hope that when the jointure between real education and pure affection is made more complete we may lessen the toll of incompetent personality and raise the social standard of human powers. In this connection one vital thought must not be over-looked, namely, the social advance we may reasonably expect from the new power of women to select the fathers of their children. Doctor Sumner said, "During the ages of the man-family men could not make up their minds what they wanted woman to become." If that be so, it is still more true that now, as the age of the man-and-woman-family begins, women are undertaking to make up their own minds as to what they want to be and to do and are attaining a freedom of sex-selection such as they have not had before in the civilization we call our own. Doctor Todd says truly, in his _Theories of Social Progress_, that "from now onward the centre of selection is shifted from without to within, from passive adaptation to active self-determination;" and he adds, "To rationalize sexual selection and make it serve progress will be to revise the 'mores' and inject into them new principles." While women had no real power to select their mates in marriage; while their economic helplessness led them almost universally to marry as a means of support even when no real affection softened and sanctified the process; while they had no power over laws or customs, or knowledge of actual life outside the household, and hence had to take wholly on trust the character and protestations of the man they married; while women were in this subject condition they could not contribute to family life either a high standard of choice of parental quality or a forceful demand for previous purity and right living in the husband. Hence, women have up to a recent time been more sinned against than sinning if they passed on defective germ plasm or doomed their children to suffering lives. =Responsibility of Women in Marriage.=--Now the case is different. No woman of usual physical strength or natural ability or average vocational efficiency is necessarily tempted to make "marriage a trade." If she has any strength of character she can make her own way and find many good things in life for herself. She can, therefore, exact such a standard of character and attainment from any man who seeks her in marriage as he may well demand of her and can pass by as incompetent to family demand all who do not measure up to the requirements. This may mean (in some circles of society, it is already coming to mean) what Wallace indicated when he said, "Woman is to be the great selective agent of the future." This cannot be, however, unless women hold themselves to the best standards that men in the past have exacted of their sex and so holding themselves (where the race needs that they should stand) hold men also where the race needs that men should find their place. The defrauded children of every generation call with pathos of unique appeal upon men and women that the "racial poisons" shall be abolished, and evil inheritance be checked, and that every potential father and every potential mother shall hold sacred the torch of life to pass it on the brighter for their handling. Meanwhile, such agencies as "The Committee on Provision for the Feeble-minded," with its central office in Philadelphia, and the "National Committee for Mental Hygiene," with its headquarters in New York City and its important quarterly publication, together with local associations of similar type, are at work, as is well stated by one national body, "to disseminate knowledge concerning the extent and menace of feeble-mindedness and to suggest and initiate methods for its control and ultimate eradication from the American people." On such social effort afflicted parents of a defective child may depend for aid and direction. In Whittier's tribute to Samuel Gridley Howe, the pioneer in this social care of defectives, one false hope is pictured, namely, that "the idiot clay" could "be given a mind." That hope could not be realized. The gates of destiny close at birth for many of the children of men. What we can do and are now beginning to try earnestly to accomplish is to prevent so many idiots from burdening the currents of life, to wipe out the social disgrace of leaving neglected wanderers on the highways of human effort who are unable to find the path of safety and of success, and to make a protected place of guidance and possible training for all the weak-minded and abnormal. We can, now we increasingly understand, do more than this; we can help with ever more ingenious and devoted care to give the merely slow and backward a better chance at life's opportunities and help to make these least able to adjust themselves easily to the common ways of the world more amenable to life's discipline and happier in life's restrictions. =The Call for Preventive Work.=--The new call for social service for the children that never grow up is along new lines of preventive work as truly as in demand for more tender care of all who cannot be helped radically toward self-control and self-direction. The family, once overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. For the less seriously handicapped yet specially in need of social consideration--the blind, the deaf, the crippled, those of cardiac weakness, and the children born tired who might become rested and strong--the family has helps in education, medical treatment and work opportunities suited to the particular need, such as no previous era could furnish. Agencies for finding employment for the handicapped now show ingenuity of the highest sort in fitting the work to special needs, and the way in which the blind are taught to rise above their misfortune in happy use of the faculties and powers they actually possess is marvelous. The deaf have as yet been able to triumph over their misfortune in less degree, but the art of reading from the lips and other educational devices used in their behalf make their condition so superior to that of the deaf-mutes of old that it is cause for gratitude to every parent of a deaf child. The crippled children now are seen not to be different from other children in their educational rights and as needing only more consideration of physical requirements to be fitted for useful work. The significance of the removal of educational provisions for the blind, the deaf, the crippled, and the invalid children from the provisions of Boards of Charity and their assignment to departments of state and local Boards of Education, is great. It shows that we are becoming as capable in the community-at-large of understanding the radical difference between those who are defective in mind and those who are merely handicapped by loss of some special sense or some physical power as loving and wise parents have been when either defective or handicapped children have called upon them for special care. The children that find it harder than most of their age and station to grow up to full enjoyment and use of life's opportunities, because of some weight of affliction, are, we now know, entitled to all the training that the normal child receives and whatever else of special education their condition requires. The children that can never grow up to mental maturity, even with all that educational ingenuity can offer, are the permanent members of Society's Infant Class. QUESTIONS ON THE CHILDREN THAT NEVER GROW UP 1. What is the modern social program in respect to the care and training of the feeble-minded? 2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help realize that program? 3. How far should social control compel the segregation or sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become parents? 4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded? 5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane protection and training in the care of those who are not normal but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and direction and with a new home environment suited to their peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful members of society. In the town for which you seek better conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either in their own homes or placed in colony-care? FOOTNOTES: [14] See "Mental Diseases in Twelve States," as reported in 1919 by Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., Statistician New York State Hospital Commission, and Edith M. Forbush, Statistician of National Committee for Mental Hygiene, published in _Mental Hygiene_ of April, 1921. CHAPTER XI PRODIGAL SONS AND DAUGHTERS "Because of fathers' sins the cost Is counted in the children's blood; They starve where once they might have stood Content and strong as bird or bee."--H.H. "The primary function of social science is to interpret men's experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of human values."--ALBION W. SMALL. "Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad?"--JOHN DEWEY. "Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone."--JESUS. "The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness also."--LAO-TSZE. "The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principle of action."--ARISTOTLE. "I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the offspring."--MAUDESLEY. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which can be called good without qualification except a Good Will."--KANT. "The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself,"--JOHN DEWEY. "I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions."--CHANNING. =Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son?=--A young woman deeply interested in social service was asked by the warden of a prison to address its fifteen hundred inmates on a Sunday morning when they should be all assembled in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult to find just the right audience for a preachment on that appealing parable. The harsh-natured fathers who most need its lesson are not likely to be in church when it is read and the tender fathers often need to be stiffened up to work with all the rest of society to make the prodigal behave better; and the elder brothers, the hard-working "sons of Martha," who have to save in order to pay the taxes for the institutions and agencies that take care of the prodigal, should not have the fact that their sacrifice and service are usually taken as a matter of course unduly emphasized when they meet their fellows. The fact is that the prodigal, like the genius, is often one who takes life's practical affairs so lightly that until he is really hungry in the far land whither he has taken himself for pleasures denied at home, he seldom considers how his behavior affects the rest of the family. Moreover, the prodigal is often such a charming and engaging creature that all is forgiven him many times more than is good for his soul, and who, therefore, has many fatted calves set before him in renewed festivals over his repeated home-comings. Yet, when all is said in the way of caution against overindulgence of the wayward, the one thing about parental love that marks it as the supreme type of affection is the fact that it holds all its own in permanent bond whatever the character of the child or his return for devotion. =Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and Defective in Criminal Class.=--The parent who has a prodigal son or daughter to-day has the benefit of much social wisdom and much educational treatment of the wayward, unknown in the past. In the first place, we are learning to sort out in the criminal and vicious classes those who are mentally responsible and those who may be supposed to be the helpless victims of their instincts and tendencies.[15] If it is true, as one has said, that "the test of sound moral character is that it possesses coherence under liberty and has learned those various arts of adaptation to ever-varying circumstance which make it a working quality, constant, rational, and automatic," we must perceive the intimate connection between mental power and moral competency. In point of fact, we now know that the overwhelming majority of criminals and constantly vicious persons, in ordinary times when no social hysteria of recent war gives a "crime wave," come from the mentally feeble or perverted types. The draft examinations in the Great War gave a shock to all students of social conditions in their revelation of the widespread deficiencies, physical and mental, of young men of our country. Mr. Henry Wysham Lanier, writing on this topic, shows "that out of a total of fifty-four millions of men twenty-six millions were either in the Army or Navy or registered and ready for call," and that of these "three millions out of thirteen were unfit to serve their country as soldiers." Nearly three-quarters of a million had some mechanical incapacity, defects in bones, joints, etc. About one-half million had imperfections of sense organs and nearly as many serious troubles of the circulatory system. A third of a million showed nervous and mental incapacity for the soldier's work. About 300,000 had tuberculosis or severe venereal disease. About the same number had skin or teeth ailments. Altogether, the first severe examinations weeded out as unfit for the service nearly one-third of those who were drafted. In addition to the revelation of physical and mental defects in the average young manhood of our country, it was found by further examination that five and a half millions of our young men were illiterate. These facts show that in the mass of people from which criminals and vicious people are recruited, large numbers have defects of body, mind, or education, which handicap them in pursuit of an honest living or in the search for helpful pleasures. The step to be taken in order to help the family to deal justly and humanely, but with due response to social duty, with the prodigal sons and daughters, may be briefly outlined as follows: First and foremost, the weeding out from every field of competitive life those manifestly incapable of holding their own in self-protection and self-support. The unemployable among the unemployed, the hopelessly criminal and vicious who cannot be rescued from their condition, the more permanently backward among the school pupils, the incompetent among parents, and the dead weight of the "born paupers," all these must somehow be socially carried with least expenditure of social force and at least cost to family stability and family well-being. We have not yet learned to do this, but in every field of social effort the primary need is to see what is the right thing to do. When the ideal is accepted we are already a long way toward learning the lesson of the method to be pursued to carry out the ideal. =Moral Invalids.=--In the second place, when we have really ascertained who among criminals and the habitually vicious, and who among the recipients of "material relief" who are constantly returning for more aid, and who among the unmarried mothers, and who among the dependent children are really feeble-minded or morally imbecile, we must segregate these as fast as we are able to supply the right artificial environment for their weakness and treat them as incurable moral and mental invalids. We must cease to deal with such as with responsible human beings, who might do better if only they would. The "indeterminate sentence" is a step toward such treatment, but it is often rendered wholly futile by being mixed with "reward of shortening term for good behavior in prison." Good behavior inside prison walls gives no proof of ability to take good care of one's self outside those walls; it may be only a proof that the moral weakling has to have an external conscience and a strict watch in order to be amenable to even simple rules. The parole system is also liable to great misunderstanding and serious social dangers when it is used without the most scientific knowledge of the mental power of the man or woman concerned, and without utmost care in selection of work-place and living conditions of the paroled prisoner. The essential thing in all social effort to do justice to the wayward is to find out about them and manage for them the essentials of environmental influence. If, as many think, after careful study of large groups of wayward and criminal, more than half, almost two-thirds of those who come before the law for punishment are of less mental capacity than normal children of twelve years of age, then we must take social care of them as we would undertake to do if they were really under twelve. And the parents of prodigal sons and daughters must help with all the might of their parental affection in inspiring and supporting a public opinion to that end. =Rehabilitation of the Competent.=--In the third place, for the one-half to one-third of criminal and habitually vicious left after the mentally incompetent are given proper care, we must use all the rehabilitation methods that society has devised and be more ingenious than we have yet been in adding to them. When such methods as Thomas Mott Osborne used fail, they generally fail because they are applied to those whom we should put under perpetual care, those indicated above as incompetent to life's demands. To try and make over a nature too weak in fibre to have anything of will or determination to "stitch to" is to have a response only when under constant supervision, and inevitable backslidings follow as soon as self-control is called for. It is true, however, that many who have gone far wrong make good and reach to a high attainment of character. They are the "occasional criminals," the "fallen" who met with extraordinary temptation, the too hardly used by fate, the too early exposed to evil influences, the wild natures too strictly curbed by mistaken methods of control, the orphans without parental love and guidance, the victims of broken family life, the "under-dogs" that could not make a way out to successful vocation or to happy human companionship. These occasional criminals among men, and the women or girls leading to sex temptations, may be often saved if so as by fire, and live to help all others to a stronger and better life than they have known. As this book is written the news comes of the death of such a woman in Chinatown of New York slums, a girl who had descended to the depths of vice but who came up at the call of the Salvation Army and spent the life left to her in helping others, such as she had once been, to hear and obey that call. Some men show such power of moral recovery as to put to shame those never tempted to a fall. These prove that mental power and the raw material of character, even after many untoward experiences, may take a fresh start and enable men and women to "rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things." =The Right Use of Leisure Time.=--In the fourth place, the agencies of social protection of child-life must coöperate with all parents, whether those parents are wise or foolish, strong or weak, in preventing occasional criminality and preventable vice. The helpful use of leisure time is a vital factor in the prevention of vice and crime. The pioneer study of "Public Recreation Facilities" in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science_ of March, 1910, indicates lines of social service in this particular which have been followed to great social advantage. =The Moving Picture.=--The influence of the "movies" is the strongest, the most all-compelling influence to which children have ever been subjected. There has never been an agency that so appealed to all the senses, especially to the eye with its supreme registry of impressions, and we have so far let it play upon child-life with little direction from the educative process. What it is right and helpful to read is not always right and helpful to put upon the stage, with the more vivid and popular appeal to eye and ear and with the lessened opportunity of the drama to explain and soften and balance the presentation of tragedy and evil. What the drama may safely give to the smaller and generally older audiences which it draws may not be suitable from any point of view, either of art or of moral influence, for the coarser and more pronounced representation of the moving picture. There is a place for film presentation that is unique and it may easily become the greatest educational agency in all recreational life. That place, however, seems self-limited to pictures of life that can be imitated without social harm, insofar as very young children are concerned. =Needed Supervision.=--Although much will inevitably be given in the moving pictures which contains incidents that any wise person would not take part in for themselves, the main ideal and the outcome of the situations must be such as to leave a tendency toward good and not toward evil, if children and youth are safely to receive its strong impressions. This is understood by those who are "trying to elevate the moving picture," but too often the reformers and the educators are so far removed from the main sources of control of any business or art centre that they only brush the outskirts of the agencies that purvey to public amusement and fail to reach any citadel of real control. There is a general uneasiness, however, among many people of all classes, even those usually very easy-going about any social influence, as they read the tales of children testifying in the courts as to their "hold-ups" and their burglaries that they did them "like the movies" they had seen. It is surely true that the next thing we must do is to tame these "movies" and make them work in social harness for the better, and not the worse, in the lives of children and youth. What line of cleavage may be drawn between what the elders may see and what should not be allowed so vividly to impress the younger minds, no one can predict. The recent public announcement of a determination to cleanse and uplift the moving picture business from within its own management is a most hopeful sign. But surely no parent can throw all the blame of any evil influence of a film exhibit upon the managers of a theatre! Where are the parents, and what are they about, that they do not know what pictures their children see and how often they go to any place of amusement? =The Automobile and Its Influence.=--The same thing is true of the automobile, that now so often takes the youth of the well-to-do classes too swiftly away from necessary social safeguarding. The inventors and makers of these machines are not responsible that criminals use them for unprecedented escape from arrest, and boys and girls go to destruction of honor and purity in a whirl of wind and dust. As in all the new inventions and discoveries, we have gained more control over material things than we have yet learned how to use for either our physical or moral good. We shall sober down, no doubt, and learn to wholly profit by the new wonders of motion and of recreation. =Parents Need Social Help in Moral Training of Children.=--Meanwhile, the parents who are trying to make the right atmosphere and secure the right influences for their children have a more difficult task than in any previous time; for the young can so much more easily take on all the new appliances as a part of their daily life and can so swiftly change from old ways to the unaccustomed. Some of the most selfish and cruel of the prodigal sons and daughters of our time find it easy to escape from any parental appeal in the air or by the whirling wheels of the machine or in any of the various ways by which space and time are now annihilated. And "out of sight, out of mind" is true of their psychology. All of which makes it clear that to-day, as in no previous time, we must all stand or fall together. The old home privacy is for the most part gone, the old home isolation wholly departed. All recreation is more and more in the open and appeals at one and the same time to all youth. The standards have to be raised for all or they cannot be held firm for the favored few. Democracy, which aims to make all better, may work to make all cheaper in taste, more vulgar in language, less capable of fine expression of noble ideals, unless a social conscience and a social intelligence take command of the common life. It is, therefore, to-day, not enough to call upon parents to try and keep their own sons and daughters from the prodigal life, it is a necessity, stronger than ever before, to make the influences which all must share what all careful and wise parents wish for their own children. This is a mighty task, one that in the United States of America, with its cosmopolitan population, and its multitude of people with a smattering only of education or culture but with economic ability to gratify their undeveloped tastes, is more vast and more pressing than any nation has yet tried to accomplish. While we are working at it we may well comfort ourselves by remembering that each generation has to meet new problems, and that somehow, even when the young start wrong or meet with overwhelming temptations or fail to get at the right time the impulse toward the best which they need, life has them in hand and teaches by experience much which helps them onward. The tendency of life is toward strength and health and goodness and idealistic aims and choice of the best each person knows. It is true, and the best thing in human experience, that what parents cannot do for those they love, life itself does for them, perhaps with needless suffering that the wise and loving parent would have saved them had they but heeded, but with a thoroughness which experience alone can give. =Parental Love for the Black Sheep.=--The attitude of parents toward the black sheep who does not change his ways of evil and does not become a comfort but remains always a burden and sorrow, is one of the saddest and one of the noblest of human exhibits in sympathy and affection. A woman of the finest nature who as a girl was captured in imagination by a man of brilliant quality but of peculiar cruelty and wickedness of nature, and guilty, after their marriage, of many crimes, had two sons. One was like herself and became a man honored by all, and of the greatest help to his mother. The other seemed the image of his father in all ways, personal beauty, brilliant talent, and a naturally depraved character. He landed in prison, sentenced for many years for forgery and long-sustained robbery of a bank. His mother said with truth that she never had had a moment's relief from the most wearing anxiety until he was safely behind prison bars, where he could no longer torture his young wife or hurt anyone else by his wrong actions. Yet that mother, when he was breaking her heart by his actions and most willing to do it, never failed in love, in patience, in deep understanding of his moral twist and incapacity. A girl born of ordinarily intelligent and moral parents became a prodigy of sex perversion and the accomplice of thieves and murderers. She gave untold misery to all her family, but the father never gave up his search for her when she left the home and never failed to give her succor and the most tender care when she came back worn and ill, and at last left all other interests in life to snatch her away from bad companions and try to establish her in a new place and a better surrounding. The story of the prodigal son was taken from life itself; it is the moving story of the one greatest affection of the family bond, that for the bone of bone and the flesh of flesh, the child that needs most the tenderness of the parent, the child that has worn out all other patience and lost all other consideration and has only the claim of its deep need to insure its parent's service. =Children's Courts.=--Society has lately become wise and humane enough to establish Children's Courts for Juvenile Delinquents. These, beginning merely in "Separate Hearings" in Boston Courts, and assuming definite and autonomous form in Chicago, have become more widespread and more inclusive in character. Now we are securing, as by a recent State Law in New York, the County Courts for children, in which the limitations of local sentiment and neighborhood reluctance to testify of family conditions are surmounted and yet the near-at-hand interest in the children is preserved. All modern philanthropy tends toward dealing with wayward boys and girls as those who need and should have not punishment but education, necessary but kindly restraint, protection from bad surroundings and training toward self-support. To this we are adding Domestic Relations Courts dealing with juvenile delinquents not, as some one has said, "so as to punish parents for the wrong-doing of their children," but rather as indicating the recognition of the fact that one member of the family cannot be "saved" without an effort to save all the other members, and that in the family relationship there are permanent bonds that courts should recognize and seek to enforce and make more helpful to every individual concerned. =Domestic Relations Courts.=--When the history of cases coming before either Children's Courts or Domestic Relations Courts is studied, certain facts of social condition stand out prominently as causes for juvenile delinquency. First of all, the broken family, one in which there has been separation of father and mother, is a cause of child-neglect and consequent wrong-doing. The death of either parent, also, is often the cause of such unhappiness or privation in the home as to induce disobedience to law and bring the child before a court. The lack of employment by the father or his too low wages, which reduces the family income dangerously and makes the mother attempt to be both breadwinner and care-taker of the home, and hence lessens family comfort and sends the children on the streets for amusement, is also a cause often appearing as a reason for delinquency. The evils of housing congestion, too many families living in one building or in one neighborhood without chance for privacy, choice of companionship or household arrangements conservative of domestic virtue or happiness, these evils constitute a heavy indictment of society in the returns of Children's Courts. The complex problems which the immigrant faces, with his children early learning the language of the country to which he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the "tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of the family life because the children have to become the interpreters and representatives of the family in the new country to a degree that reverses the natural order of dependence and direction in the family life, and gives the children undue power of leadership in family affairs. As Professor Cooley wisely says, "It is freedom to be disciplined in as rational a manner as you are tit for." We might give the converse of this truth in the statement that it is not freedom but dangerous tendency toward anarchy and disaster to be called upon for rational decisions in advance of our intelligence and will-power, and a tragedy to lose the habit-drill of parental control in the period of life when that is a necessary foundation for wisdom in independent choice. The child of the immigrant often lands in the Children's Court not because he is bad or stupid or even mischievous by nature, but because he is too early forced by circumstances into a position of command and of unrestricted choice in action, due to the ease with which the young can learn new ways and the difficulty of the old in mastering strange language and manners. =Dangerous Rebound from Ancient Family Discipline.=--Again, the Children's and the Domestic Relations Courts bear testimony to the fact that to-day we are in a rebound from inherited forms of discipline of children and youth which have given to all, immigrant and native-born alike, a feeling that society exists for their benefit and that they owe nothing to society in return. The very standardization of child-care by public demand, in matters of health and education, of free books and free recreation and free music and free parks and playgrounds and even free lunches in schools, and free baths and medical and nursing care--all that is increasingly called for and provided out of the public purse for the nurture and development of child-life--tend toward giving children and youth the idea that the world belongs to them. The old crushing and often cruel pressure of older life upon the young is happily gone. The new ideals of education, within the school and the home, which emphasize the right of each human being to its own development into a unique, a free and a happy personality, are ideals that must grow in realization more and more if we are to have fit people for making democracy work toward the rule of the best. It is, however, profoundly true that we have gone farther in demand for and effort toward individual freedom than we have in any translation of the old social pressure upon the individual conscience and life to assume social obligations and bear them worthily and usefully. There is a dry rot at the core of any class or any nation which turns its inmost psychology toward what it can get from life without regard to what it should give back to life. Too many children and youth in conditions in which, happily, the old despotism of age is outgrown, have unhappily missed the old sense of obligation and old call to service which the earlier forms of family and school discipline implanted in all responsive natures. =Do Modern Youth Need New Community Disciplines?=--There is abundant evidence that William James was profoundly right when he suggested a need in youth for some required devotion to "the collectivity that owns us," some "moral equivalent for war" and the military drill of older forms of civic order. When the Athenian youth took his oath of devotion to the city of his birth, he signalized his coming of age and expressed the ideal of service of each to all and all to each. This is not the place for detailed discussion of what is lacking in modern training of American Youth analogous in spirit and effect to this classic custom. It must be insisted, however, as we discuss the conditions that make for juvenile delinquency, among the children and youth otherwise normal and capable of useful life, that we have not done all that democracy demands when we have made children healthy, sent them to tax-supported schools, prevented them from too early earning at "gainful occupations," and instituted all manner of recreati