Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Associations

Women have rendered valiant service in various permanent associations concerned in the improvement of social conditions. The largest gift ever given by a single donor to such an organization was that of Mrs. Abram A. Anderson who gave $650,000 to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, for a specific purpose; namely, the founding of a department of social welfare with experimental and demonstrating laboratories. In the letter accompanying her gift, Mrs. Anderson specifically stated that three departments to be established at once shall relate to public health and hygiene, matters pertaining to the welfare of school children, and the solution of problems connected with the food supply.

A study of the work performed by women engaged in the activities of this Association reveals the fact that they prepare many of its important publications. Interior pictures inserted in the last report show large offices filled with women, in one case forty of them preparing their daily reports on visiting. The advisory committees in the Bureau of Rehabilitation and Relief are composed of women who assume the burden, on stated mornings, of meeting applicants and helping with “instruction; with the correction of defects, physical, mental, moral; with patient, careful planning; with continued interest and personal service.”

The National Consumers’ League was organized by women and is largely supported by them. This society “is an association of people who believe to buy is to have power, to have power is to have responsibility. Therefore it seeks to better the industrial conditions of the worker, and to insure sanitary articles to the consumer, by educating the public to avoid rush orders, to shop early in the day, early in the week, and early in the Christmas season; by furnishing a label which guarantees the product bearing it to be made under sanitary conditions and without hardship to the workers; by assisting in the enforcement of present laws relating to child labor, women workers, sweat shops, fire hazards, pure foods, and other matters. Locally it makes investigations and reports facts to city authorities.”[^[34]] In addition to the direct good which the League has accomplished, it has incidentally interested hundreds of women in the conditions of industrial workers.

The Travelers’ Aid Society, a great protective and preventive agency, which assumes large responsibilities in looking after foreigners, women, and girls traveling on railways, is helped by personal service and the financial support of such organizations as the following: the Granges, the Gideons, King’s Daughters and Sons, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Catholic Women’s League, Council of Jewish Women, other women’s clubs, missionary societies, the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Not only do women coöperate with various agencies for social service. Their clubs and associations of all kinds are turning more and more to the consideration of social matters outside of the range of their immediate interests. Indeed one might say with justice that “social economy” is now one of the chief studies of women’s societies and that social service in an ever broader sense is becoming more and more the goal of their activities.

The women’s clubs, singly and in their federations, have now largely outgrown the self-improvement stage of their career and are going into matters of public health, education, recreation, corrections, and labor. For example, the New England Conference of State Federations of Women’s Clubs representing over 55,000 women is a permanent organization of recent formation designed as an alliance for educational and social service. Speeches at this Conference emphasized the need of better housing and divorce laws; vocational training; pure food legislation; a single standard of morality for men and women; the suppression of “nauseous” news in the daily press; health measures; and the enforcement of laws for the protection and conservation of womanhood, childhood and the home.

The general trend of club women’s development in the United States as a whole is shown by the following resolutions passed at the Biennial Convention of Women’s Clubs held in Chicago in June, 1914: approval of equal suffrage; better fire protection; increased appropriations for city and state boards of health; university extension work for the prevention of disease; federal bureau of Home Economics; the use of school buildings as social centers; the support of Miss Lathrop in her propaganda for better systems of birth registration; and hostility to the liquor traffic. The social evil question loomed large at the Convention and drastic measures for dealing with it were discussed.

The large and influential Council of Jewish Women is also concerned with these lines of social service. Some of their special activities and interests will be considered in other chapters.

If we turn to localities and study the work of single clubs, we find an ever-increasing interest in social service and that interest accompanied by practical action. For instance, the Woman’s Club of Paducah, Kentucky, proved so efficient in its administration of funds for relief of the poor that the mayor and council asked its assistance in other lines: inspection of dairies, slaughter houses, etc.

The social service work of such a specialized society as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union reflects a wide range of interests and activities, its development being an inevitable response to needs growing out of its study of the evils accompanying the liquor traffic. It has worked among all races and industrial groups of men and their families; it has done prison visiting, reformatory and prisoners’ aid work; it has helped courts and probation work; it has helped to secure police matrons and policewomen: it has stood for the single standard of morals and the suppression of the white slave traffic; it has helped to secure playgrounds and other recreational facilities; it has tried to teach thrift through school savings banks; it has done rescue work; and it has drafted and urged and watched the enforcement of legislation relating to industrial education and vocational guidance, child labor, liquor and narcotics and cigarettes, gambling, curfew, polygamy, segregation of prostitutes, labor, and all similar problems. It has opposed segregated districts and worked whole-heartedly for woman suffrage.

The National Civic Federation has a woman’s department interested in “securing needed improvements in the working and living conditions of women and children wage-earners in various industries and the governmental institutions throughout the United States.”