Mothers’ Pensions
On account of the fact that the major portion of charitable relief has always gone to poor widows with young children to support, family rehabilitation has been a main study of social workers. Charity and institutional relief have combined forces—orphan asylums taking the children in many cases of destitution while work for her own support was found for the mother. The slight assistance that could be rendered in each case to supplement the mother’s earnings and the necessity of her putting the children to work too early or overtaxing the oldest child in family labor soon showed the ineffectiveness of this method of family rehabilitation, for broken-down physiques, undeveloped minds, wrong associations and delinquency were recognized as the outgrowth of the enforced neglect of home care and training by mothers.
Thus arose a general demand for public aid for mothers as a preventive measure, for the sake of the family, and for greater economy, much of the institutional care of delinquents, sick, orphaned, in day nurseries and the like being saved thereby. Mothers’ pension laws now exist in seventeen states, the great majority of which passed the laws within the past year, a year in which women have been their busiest in urging this legislation. In Pennsylvania the law creates an entirely new set of administrative officials—unsalaried boards of women, from five to seven in number, appointed by the governor—in all counties which elect to make use of the act.
New York passed a bill for a commission instead of the pension act itself, being conservative enough to desire further investigation. Two women who have worked for mothers’ pensions in that state are on this commission—Mrs. William Einstein and Sophie Irene Loeb. The New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs asked for this commission.
The Federal Children’s Bureau has taken a great interest in state aid for dependent mothers with children and has published a study by Laura Thompson of laws relating to the same in the United States, Denmark and New Zealand, with all the legislative technicalities so much discussed.
Perhaps more women have agreed on the wisdom of mothers’ pensions than on any other single piece of social legislation. They have even been accused of rushing heedlessly into the support of such laws on purely sentimental grounds, and they are vigorously opposed by many charity workers. Public relief for mothers strikes at the very vitals of private philanthropy which makes its most effective appeals for funds for dependent widows. Dr. Devine, of the New York Charity Organization Society, vigorously opposed the idea of public pensions, and published in The Survey his views on the matter. The following spirited defense by Clara Cahill Park, represents the attitude of a large number of women workers who support the measure:
Dr. Devine’s article[[40]] on mothers’ pensions seems to show that even the learned doctors of our social ills may disagree as to this matter. So perhaps it is not surprising that a plain mother may still go on thinking that such aid is in reality preventive in that it reaches the affairs of the home at a crisis, and tides them over without loss of self-respect. You see, mothers, in spite of the sociologists, feel themselves, for once, on their own ground in this matter; and in possession of all their faculties, will continue to think that, as far as children are concerned, not they, but the learned doctors, are in the amateur class.
As far as care and time and money for children’s needs are concerned, they, and they alone, feel that they know how imperative those needs are, and from the mere fact of being able to gain more aid for more mothers by state subsidies the idea seems to them of value. They, and perhaps they only, can also feel the importance of preserving self-respect as an asset to be saved by the new attitude of the states. It is not, for them, “a mere sentiment and solemn pretense of changing the names of things.”
Why, to most of us, is a marriage service a wholesome formality, if changing the name, if deriving comfort from legal sanction (even sometimes of a bad husband), is merely “a solemn pretense”?
The question seems to me to touch the social evil and the housing problem (as shown in Chapter IV of Miss Addams’ “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil”), the menace of child labor, of the sweat shops, and neglected childhood and starved motherhood on many sides. Why is a free chance to live and grow, for a child, any worse than free education? A child does not ask where things come from, at first. He only knows that he is cold, or hungry, or neglected. In the nature of the case he is dependent on someone.
Dr. Devine asks one question, which I should like to try to answer. He asks: “Who are the sudden heroes of a brand-new program of state subsidies to mothers, that they have grown so scornful of poor relief administration, of religious alms, of a thousand forms of organized benevolence, of the charity which, in all ages, organized and unorganized, has comforted the afflicted, fed the hungry, succored the widow and the fatherless?”
They are, if I am permitted to answer what I believe, the old-fashioned givers, the passing of whom Dr. Devine goes on to deplore. They are the people, too, whom Dr. Devine and The Survey are waking up, who are not satisfied to go all through life having their ideas predigested for them; more than all, they are social workers, who have come to distrust some of the methods of social work. Starting out with a blind faith in philanthropic methods, I have found, time and again, not that the work was so much hampered as some have found it, by “investigation, the keeping of records, discriminating aid, etc.,” but that the work was not exact, and not careful and that its faults were not mitigated by that human sympathy which would atone for human faults.
This is not always true, but it has become proverbial, and we see why. If we could have always with us the great people of the earth, like Miss Addams, Miss Lathrop, Judge Mack, and others, there would be no such proverbs as those the poor now murmur among themselves.
State aid, to my mind, is an advance, as showing the policy of the nation, to conserve its children and its homes, and in recognizing the mother as a factor in that campaign, for the welfare of all.[[41]]
Mrs. Park is a member of the Massachusetts commission on widows’ pensions which proposed legislation on the subject, not all the members agreeing on public aid, however. The existence of this commission was largely due to Mrs. Park but Miss Helen Winslow helped by lecturing on the subject before more than sixty women’s clubs in Massachusetts.
All women, however, are by no means committed to the policy of public aid for dependent mothers. Grace P. Pollard, for instance, president of the Liberal Union of Minnesota Women, objects in these terms:
With indications that the “public” is being swayed by appeals to protect motherhood through pensions, the presentation of “Motherhood and Pensions” by Miss Richmond is a relief. Aside from the economic waste of human energy which a “pension” system may induce, it is likely to lessen individual initiative, to reduce its possible recipients to the condition of petitioners for favors, and hence to weaken the social structure.
It is unfortunate that our city, state and national treasuries bear so impersonal a relation to the members of society. Intelligent citizens know that the poor and ignorant pay an indirect tax out of all proportion to their resources, that this condition is fostered by those who have in hand larger resources, and that poverty and ignorance are necessary factors in the explanation of human energy. The poor and the ignorant are paying the price of that which is to be returned to them as pensions.
If the time, money and energy now being used to establish pensions could be directed into the establishment of fair conditions of industry, of sanitary conditions of living, of greater opportunities to acquire knowledge, of equal privileges and duties for men and women, might not the nation’s integrity be better safeguarded?[[42]]
Where mothers’ pension laws are enacted, women are called to aid in their administration. Massachusetts has a “Mothers’ Act,” the enforcement of which is under the Special Committee of the State Board of Charity, with Ada Eliot Sheffield as Chairman. Overseers of the poor administer the law under the direction of this Special Committee, and Emma W. Lee has charge of a corps of women who will work with the overseers. Caroline B. Alexander is a member of the New Jersey State Board of Children’s Guardians which administers the State Mothers’ Pension Law.[[43]]
In all the states where home assistance has been secured for dependent mothers, women have agitated and lobbied for the measure. In states which do not yet have such legislation, women’s clubs and organizations have this legislation as one of their demands. The Association of Neighborhood Workers and many leaders in the women’s clubs of New York are among those who have labored for home assistance in that state.