Clean Streets
Woman’s historic function having been along the line of cleanliness, her instinct when she looks forth from her own clean windows is toward public cleanliness. Her indoor battle has been against the dirt that blew in from outside, against the dust and ashes of the streets, and the particles of germ-laden matter carried in from neglected refuse piles. Ultimately she begins to take an interest in that portion of municipal dusting and sweeping assigned to men; namely, street cleaning.
A volume itself could be written on the activities of women for clean streets and public places. Little towns have needed and received the treatment even as the great cities—not every little town nor every large city but countless numbers of them. Lack of space prevents the recounting here of many significant or typical cases of women’s work for public cleanliness as an aid to general health.
The Women’s Civic League of Baltimore originated in that city the idea of a “Clean City Crusade,” and its application was acknowledged by city officials to have been of great assistance to various departments: street cleaning, fire and health. Chief Engineer August Emrich of the Fire Department said, in 1913, that the fire losses for 1912 were less than they had been for the previous 34 years, and he gave much of the credit for this result to the Clean City Crusade which led to the removal of rubbish and other inflammable materials.
That Pennsylvania women generally are alert to the needs of greater public cleanliness is evidenced by the publication issued by the Civics Committee of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women of which Mrs. Owen Wister was chairman. This is a list of suggestions for the “Observance of Municipal Housecleaning Day,” and consists of practical directions for this work with a list of civic activities closely allied with “housecleaning day” which should be undertaken as rapidly as possible.
The Civic Club of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, says: “It is no longer necessary for us to maintain at our own cost the practical experiment we began in street cleaning or to advocate the paving of a single principal street as a test of the value of improved city highways, nor is it necessary longer to strive for a pure water supply, a healthier sewerage system, or the construction of playgrounds for the pleasure of our fellow-citizens. This work is now being done by city councils or the Board of Public Works and by the Park Commission.” That was in 1906 and it proves that, after one or two demonstrations of the possibilities and practical advantages of cleanings, the city proves ready to assume the responsibility for them.
The next great problem is how to keep the city clean, for real health protective work is not a matter of annual and sensational hauling away of miscellaneous rubbish, but an every-day-in-the-year campaign for the elimination of disease-breeding germs and dust provokers. As they volunteered to show the wisdom of better disposal of rubbish and of street flushing and oiling, so women are volunteering to educate the people to desire permanent cleanliness. The inherited instincts of the cleanly housekeeper thus become a valuable municipal asset.
In Philadelphia, Mrs. Edith Pearce, a club woman, is a city inspector of street cleaning. The Woman’s Home Companion thus described the way she goes about her work:
First she planned for making the children her aids, teaching them not only to refrain from throwing fruit skins, paper and other rubbish into the street, but also to prevent others from so doing. She reached the children and awoke in them a wholesome interest in the city’s appearance by means of addresses in the public schools and the distribution of simple circulars. Then she urged clubs, neighborhood groups and whole communities to coöperate with the street cleaners. In one week she addressed ten of the city’s leading clubs for women on her chosen theme. In the crowded poorer sections she speaks from a soap box to corner gatherings of the housekeepers of the neighborhood, telling them, often with the aid of an interpreter, how to handle their waste, and inspiring them to do their part in keeping their surroundings clean and sanitary. She has found that the Italian, Polish, and Russian mothers whom she addresses become deeply interested in municipal housecleaning; some of them “point with pride” to alleys, formerly reeking with filth but now clean and orderly.
The American Journal of Hygiene recently printed a paper by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards of Boston on “Instructive Inspection,” elucidating the advantages to be derived from the Board of Health’s appointment of a teacher to be sent with power like any other inspection officer “wherever ignorance, usually diagnosed as stubbornness,” is found.
Detroit club women are asking to be appointed as instructive inspectors to do this kind of work while women in the Municipal League of Boston are already performing a somewhat similar service, clothed with official authority. Fifty St. Louis club women have volunteered and been accepted as city inspectors “to help make St. Louis the healthiest city in the country.”
In the sphere of municipal housekeeping, which forms such an easy transition from domestic housekeeping, women have proved themselves interested and efficient in suggesting reforms and helping to see them completed to the minutest detail.
The sanitary survey of a municipality has had to precede, of course, any large constructive proposals for improvement. One of our leading experts in this field is Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane, who has been pressed into service far and wide for this purpose. A number of her reports on sanitary and social conditions have been published, describing such places as Nashville, Tennessee; Erie, Pennsylvania; Saginaw, Michigan; Rochester, New York; and seventeen cities in Minnesota. These reports represent comparative studies on different topics; such as, water works, sewers, street sanitation, garbage collection and disposal, the smoke nuisance, milk supply, meat supply, markets and food factories, hygiene and sanitation of school houses, housing problems, almshouses and jails. These surveys were made at the request of local associations and officials, usually instigated, we believe, by women. The surveys in Minnesota, for example, were made at the invitation of the State Board of Health and the Federation of Women’s Clubs with the coöperation of the State Medical Association, the local medical societies, and the commercial clubs of some of the larger cities. In Rochester the survey was undertaken at the invitation of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union seconded by the mayor and a number of official and civic organizations. Mrs. Crane has written on “Factors of the Street Cleaning Problem,” and similar questions, in a way that shows intimate acquaintance with the technique of road-making and other municipal enterprises.
The organization of junior leagues for guarding the streets has seemed to some persons, women included, as a very trivial public activity. They have had an impression that budget-making or public accounting were far more intellectual operations and of more social value. Are they?
One of the most expensive of public departments is the street cleaning one. Shall any sum demanded by the present incumbent in the office of chief of that department be granted lightly and the books be well kept and the affair end? Or shall causes of dirty streets be investigated to the full and the problem of heavy expense for cleaning be tackled perhaps by some measure for the prevention of dust and refuse? The education of the people so that they may desire permanent cleanliness instead of the mere excitement of a spectacular clean-up week is of the most fundamental concern. No element in that education is too insignificant to deserve attention.
Children, through ignorance, are habitual misusers of city streets, but they are also the most enthusiastic clean-up crusaders and rubbish preventers when they are once aroused. All sections of the country announce the formation of these children’s leagues to assist the women and the city officials in cleaning-up enterprises, and in carrying home the messages of prevention and the feeling of public interest which they have acquired at school or at their little meetings. In New York, circulars were printed recently in Yiddish, Italian, and English and distributed to children by women’s clubs, teachers, churches, and civic organizations, to aid the Health Department in its annual clean-up program.
Junior leagues may greatly reduce the cost of the street cleaning department and the work of the courts in enforcing city ordinances and thus materially assist in the city budget-making; but it requires tact and patience and more than a mere bookkeeper’s mind to make them effective.